Other companies have sought to profit from their property holdings. New York Times Co. in 2009 sold the space it occupies in its Manhattan headquarters for $225 million to pay debt and leased it back. The newspaper moved to the building in July 2007 after selling its former headquarters to Tishman Speyer Properties LP for $175 million in 2004.

Tribune Co., which exited bankruptcy on Dec. 31, is now in a position to begin asset sales, including real estate, Lance Vitanza, managing director at CRT Capital Group LLC, said that day. Gary Weitman, a spokesman for the Chicago-based publisher, declined to comment.

Boston Site

For developers, the real estate can be more valuable as housing or retail sites. In Massachusetts, builder National Development plans to early this year begin the redevelopment of the former home of the Boston Herald, razing the old building and constructing a mixed-use property with 85,000 square feet of retail space and 475 residential units, according to Theodore Tye, a managing partner at the Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts-based company.

“This is a very unique opportunity to build an iconic project in a very high-density area in Boston,” Tye said in a telephone interview. “There aren’t too many six-acre sites available in prime downtown locations.”

The Herald is now leasing a smaller office building in the city’s Seaport District “simply because we did not need all the space,” Gwen Gage, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

‘Good Play’

Redevelopment of the buildings is a more profitable option for property owners, said Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California’s Lusk Center for Real Estate in Los Angeles.

“Today, almost certainly it’s not the highest and best use of a property to house a newspaper,” Green said in an interview. “In high-barriers-to-entry markets, like Boston and nowadays Miami, building a new residential or mixed-use development instead will be a very good play.”

Developer Bart Blatstein’s Tower Investments Inc. is embarking on the redevelopment of a two-city-block property in Philadelphia with a 526,000-square-foot building that served as the former offices of the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com. He purchased the real estate from Philadelphia Media Network in the fourth quarter of 2011, paying $22.5 million for the building and the second block.