Friday, CHS took you inside the Richmark Label factory Capitol Hill’s largest manufacturer which — until now — has been hidden in plain sight on E Pine between 11th and 12th:
In 1970, owner Bill Donner moved the business from downtown to the former auto garage on the southeast corner of Cal Anderson Park. He has been running the business since he was 22 after his father started it decades earlier. The company originally printed buttons and award ribbons, transitioning to adhesive labels after they were popularized in the 1950s.
“It’s not because we make things nobody else can make,” Donner said of his longevity in the business. “We’re just faster than anybody else and… I’ve developed systems for manufacturing and selling.”
Here is a visual update thanks to neighborhood shutter bug Kate Clark of the progress on the massive — and pretty amazing — mural underway on the old auto row-era building. CHS wrote here about the “Read Up, Hands Down” work from muralist Erik T Burke and Urban Artworks.
It’s really great they finally did something to that drab baby feces-colored building.
Yes it is. I don’t usually think it helps to “put lipstick on a pig,” but in this case it’s a big improvement.
THIS is awesome. Now they should do that to every single horrendous looking new building that has gone up on the hill over the last couple of years…