By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell
Thursday, March 6th 2008, 4:00 AM
El Diario/La Prensa’s yesterday cover.
El Diario/La Prensa, the nation’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper, is making the crossover — not to English but to Brooklyn.
The paper, which marks its 95th anniversary this year, will relocate about 120 employees from its current offices on Hudson St. in SoHo to the Metro Tech Center.
“It’s been a dream of mine to bring El Diario to a borough, outside of Manhattan,” publisher and CEO Rossana Rosado said yesterday.
The new 18th floor space at One Metro Tech Center is 23,400 square feet with “great views,” said Rosado — compared to about 20,000 square feet now.
“It’s Class A space and we will get it designed for us,” she added. “[El Diario] is a great New York institution and we want to treat it that way, treasure it, give it a new home.”
The move, she said, will take place in the next four or five months.
El Diario’s executive editor, Alberto Vorvoulias-Bush, said the relocation won’t affect their coverage.
“Our new offices will be easier to reach by train than the current ones,” he said. “We’ll remain central — just not Manhattan-centric.”
Rosado said the paper considered locations in the Bronx and Queens but that Metro Tech “provided the best business opportunity.”
She said she had nothing against SoHo but that it’s far from a Hispanic neighborhood.
“Somebody might argue that Metro Tech isn’t either, but Brooklyn’s got so many Latinos that it’s great.”
The business center is also home to large companies such as KeySpan Energy, Chase Manhattan Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and the city’s Department of Information and Telecommunications Technology.
With a daily circulation of 51,300, El Diario is the No. 1 Hispanic daily in New York. It’s headquarters have been at 345 Hudson St. for 10 years, and before that it was on nearby Varick St. for 16 years.
“I’ve heard that in the 20s, when the paper was first founded, it was also located in Brooklyn. So, in a way it’s kind of going back to the roots,” said Rosado, who’s been the publisher since 1999.
The newspaper’s origins go back to 1913, when the weekly La Prensa was founded in Lower Manhattan on 87 Broad St. Five years later it became a daily publication and in 1963 it merged with another newspaper, El Diario.
El Diario’s owner, Impremedia, bought its competitor Hoy last year, but Rosado says the free publication is not involved in the relocation.
“Hoy is run independently, it’s a separate shop,” she said about the Midtown-based daily.
Impremedia is the owner of several other Hispanic newspapers across the country, including Chicago’s La Raza and Los Angeles’ La Opinión.
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