communication throughout history. Although NOLA Media Group said in 2014 that it hoped to donate the building to a nonprofit institution in the community, it ultimately sold the building on September 2, 2016, to a local investor group for $3.5 million. The newspaper of Sunday, January 17, 2016, was the last Times-Picayune to be printed in New Orleans. The street-sales-only newspaper of Monday, January 18, 2016, was the first to be printed in Mobile. The New Orleans presses were to be decommissioned. The circulation numbers for the printed Times-Picayune were the largest of any newspaper in Louisiana until the end of 2014. By then, declines in its sales, combined with circulation gains by The Advocate, dropped The Times-Picayune to second place behind The Advocate. NOLA Media Group announced on June 15, 2015, that it would join with Alabama Media Group in a new regional media company across Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, to be called Southeast Regional Media Group. Additional job losses were expected in Louisiana; those cuts came September 17, 2015, when NOLA Media Group fired 37 journalists, 28 of them full-time employees and nine part-timers. Hardest-hit were the Baton Rouge bureau, which had been expanded in the 2012 makeover, as well as The Times-Picayunes high school prep sports staff and its music reporting staff. The merged company was named Advance Media Southeast, registered in New Orleans. A facility to design and produce the pages of The Times-Picayune and four newspapers in Alabama and Mississippi—The Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register, The Huntsville Times, and The Mississippi Press in Pascagoula—was opened in January 2016 in a former suburban bureau of The Times-Picayune in Metairie, emptying the Howard Avenue building of the remaining staff. The Metairie building also houses Advance Central Services Southeast, formed from the combined Advance Central Services units in Louisiana and Alabama. Production of another Advance newspaper, The Oregonian, was moved to the Metairie location in late 2016. 2019 acquisition On May 2, 2019, Advance Publications announced that The Times-Picayune had been sold to Georges Media, owner of The Advocate. The new owners stated that both papers would be folded into a single operation by June 2019, and that the NOLA.com brand would be maintained for the combined newspaper's digital operations. A filing required under the WARN Act stated that the entire staff of the Times-Picayune had been laid off, resulting in a loss of 161 jobs, including 65