On Thursday the Greenville Area Chamber of Commerce will hold a Business After Hours that will be hosted at the offices of The Greenville Advocate at 103 Hickory Street. The event begins at 5 p.m. and all Chamber members are invited and encouraged to attend.

The Advocate, which is published by Greenville Newspapers LLC, which also owns and operates, The Luverne Journal, The Lowndes Signal, the Butler County News, the Butler Express and the Bonus Express and the websites greenvilleadvocate.com and luvernejournal.com, recently underwent a complete renovation where the entire interior of the building was remodeled.

&uot;Basically we gutted the whole building and started over,&uot; said GNL president and publisher Dennis Palmer. &uot;While the work continued for approximately one year, our staff continued to work out of the building, which was pretty challenging, and I’m very proud of them for making the most of a difficult situation.&uot;

Palmer said one of the driving factors in the decision to renovate was it positioned the newspaper to be on the leading edge of the growth cycle Greenville is currently beginning.

&uot;This also fits with our long-term plan,&uot; said Palmer of the renovation. &uot;We have plans to increase our publication cycle in the very near future and we needed to get our facility right before we do that. It also brings our facility up to date and confirms our investment in this community. We’re celebrating 140 years of serving Greenville and Butler County this year and we want to make sure the community’s newspaper reflects positively on the community and that the community knows we’re going to continue to serve them well in the future.&uot;

The Greenville Advocate was founded in 1865 by Gen. J.B. Stanley, whose family owned the newspaper until Dec. 1995.

At that time, Boone Newspapers Inc, a community newspaper company that owns more than 35 publications in nine states and is headquartered in Tuscaloosa, purchased the newspaper from the Stanley heirs.

Minor renovations followed the sale in 1995, but during the recent renovation many structural changes were made to accommodate a growing staff and to create a more professional and organized environment for employees and customers to conduct business in.

In addition to the building’s formal unveiling, the Advocate will also present a short program honoring Joan Reynolds, who was chosen as the 2005 Greenville Advocate Citizen of the Year recently.

The Advocate will hold an open house for the general public later this year.