The News also received $300,000 for parking spaces on Regent Street that it sold to the Tribune. The Tribune will sell those parking spaces, along with its former building on Main Street. The Tribune moved from its Main Street building to The Gateway two years ago.

But the News was unable to sell equipment inside the buildings, also worth about $1.9 million.

"There was no market for them," Wall said. "We had to write that off."

Furthermore, the News and Tribune had to pay a company to remove the presses from the buildings. The presses were sold for scrap metal, which helped reduce the cost of the removal. The News had to pay 42 percent of that bill, about $400,000.

"Somebody had to do it (remove the presses)," Wall said, adding that the News and Tribune would have had to reduce the selling price of their properties if the presses hadn't been removed.

On Friday, the News sold the Regent Street property to a real-estate arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for $3 million. The LDS Church owns the News, and Wall said it was the "appropriate" action to sell the property back to the owners, since the newspaper no longer needs it. While the News is a for-profit company and has to pay property taxes, the real-estate arm is nonprofit and does not.

Of the $3 million from the sale, the News will pay $1.2 million in capital gains and other taxes. The remaining $1.8 million will be used on severance packages to the laid off employees, who comprise about 18 percent of the full-time staff.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com