Printing House (Riga)

The building is built on a monolithic frame, has 20 working floors and two technical above. Its height is 75 meters ^[1] . The two-storey building opposed to it adjoins the high-rise building, but the former printing-house occupying a large area.

The building had a bomb shelter for 250 people ^[1] .

Concrete panels, natural marble and granite were used for the exterior of the entire complex, and wood was used in the conference room.

Since 1978, the building has housed the newspapers of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia , the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR and the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR “ Cīņa ” (in Latvian, 4-5 floors) and “ Soviet Latvia ” (in Russian, 6-7 floors), The Central Committee of the Latvian Young Communist League of Latvia “Padomju Jaunātne” (10th floor) and “ Soviet youth ” (11th floor), the Riga City Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia and the Riga City Council of People's Deputies “ Rīgas Balss ” (evening newspaper in Latvian and Russian, was on 8-9 levels ^[1] ), the State Agricultural Committee « Lauku avze », the Ministry of culture Literatūra un māksla , Repub anskogo "Sports", "Horizon" magazine for Physical Culture and Sports Committee, "Daugava" (literary), "Dadzis" (catirichesky), "Ezītis" (for children), "Communist Soviet Latvia», «Padomju Latvijas sieviete» ( eng. "Woman of Soviet Latvia" ). On the 17-18th floors was Glavlit - censorship, which looked through all the materials of the publications before handing over the finished layout to print ^[1] .

In the central part of the ground floor and ground floor there was a lobby with a post office, a paid ads reception center, a Soyuzpechat kiosk, 2 dining rooms (day and night), a Zebra cafe, a 600-seat movie and concert hall ^[2] , and a library on the 20th floor .

The two-story large-area building housed the newspaper and magazine printing house of the Publishing House of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia ^[3] , which was commissioned first in 1977 ^[1] . The latest offset equipment at the time of launch was placed in it, and the high-altitude part was equipped with pneumatic mail, which allowed sending texts and galleys to the printing house and receiving proofs from there.

The press house has become one of the centers of creative thought, where journalists of various publications spoke in an informal setting, conceived joint projects and took career steps. From the city or branch newspaper it was possible to go on increasing to a party one, and from there to the sobor correspondents of the central newspapers or the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, the Riga City Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia or the Komsomol, the Riga City Executive Committee.

The journalist of “Soviet Youth” Pavel Mukhortov even got into the Cosmonaut Training Center after a series of popular science reports “The Moscow Triangle ”!

Here, in perestroika times, the ideas of the Latvian national revival, Atmody, began to develop, the forerunners of which were the youth newspaper Padomju Jaunātne and the rural Lauku avīze .

On January 2, 1991, by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and at the request of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, the building of the Press House took control of the Riga OMON . In protest, about 1,000 journalists and printing workers left workplaces and ceased production of printed materials ^[1] .

In the 1990s, many journalists and novices who had previously worked in the press created private publications, consolidating the premises of the Press House. Such editorial offices had 2-3 rooms that they rented from Preses Nams , which, as a result of privatization and corporatization, turned into the Publishing House of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Thus, the Baltic Newspaper, Business & Baltic ^[4] , SM-Advertising, Saturday , and Panorama of Latvia settled in the Press House. "Russian way", "Business Chance", "Praktiskais Latvietis". They continued to appear as private publications of the Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (successor to the newspaper Cīņa ), the successor to “ Soviet Youth ” “ CM-Today ”, Rīgas Balss , Sporta avīze .

All of them were printed in the printing house printing house.

In June 1998, at an auction, a controlling stake in Preses Nams was acquired by Ventspils Nafta for LVL 5.05 million ^[5] . The first step of the new owner was the increase in rental prices, prompting publishers to look for new premises outside the House of Printing.

In the early 2000s, the premises in the Printing House began to become empty, there were no new tenants. Ventspils Nafta tried to sell the property for 15 million euros, however, the Danish buyer Kristensen Baltic found the price too high and refused the transaction ^[6] .

Meanwhile, a boom in real estate unfolded in Riga, during which Kipsalu began to be positioned as Riga's Manhattan - a multi-storey construction site. JSC Ventspils Nafta Nekustamie īpašumi VN, a subsidiary of real estate, decided to join this campaign and held a competition for the best architectural vision for a plot of almost 60 thousand m² of land occupied by the Printing House on ul. Balasta Dambis . It won the proposal of the architectural bureau Tugalev LTV , according to which 4 buildings with a height of up to 150 meters (40 floors), worth over 220 million euros, should have appeared on the site of the Press House ^[7] .

However, these plans were not realized. In 2017, the former owner of the building ( Latvian Shipping Company ) sold it to a subsidiary of the Lithuanian company Lords LB Asset Management for 16.8 million euros. ^[8] In September 2018, a representative of the British hotel company InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Liga Tregere, announced that the first Holiday Inn hotel in Latvia with 280 rooms, with a conference hall with 400 seats and a fitness room, will open in September 2022 in a building the hall ^[9] .

• On November 4, 1997, at 21.30, a fire broke out on the 9th floor of the Press House at the office of the Business & Baltic newspaper. At first, the staff of the newspaper and the House of Press localized the flames on their own, then the firemen arrived. The issue was handed over thanks to the support of colleagues from the Chas newspaper, for which the editors expressed their gratitude on the pages of their publication ^[10] . The danger of fires in the Press House is due to the fact that the supporting frame of the building is built around a 75-meter elevator shaft located in the center, which would have become a huge exhaust pipe if a fire hit, which would lead to a catastrophic fire. Therefore, civil defense exercises were regularly held at the Press House in Soviet times, when all the editorial staff learned to quickly exit through the fire escape located at the end of the Press House facing the Gulf of Riga. This butt consisted of wide loggias.
• 510 steps along a narrow staircase overcame Kristap Skudra on a bicycle to get to the roof of the House of Printing. So the multiple champion of Latvia decided to advertise a bicycle trial - a sport based on overcoming obstacles on a bicycle. The path to the roof (more than 20 floors) took 10 minutes from Skudra, ”wrote the newspaper“ Hour ”on April 12, 2003 ^[11] .