Atascadero native Mike McNamara kept a keen eye on the historic Atascadero Printery ever since the San Simeon earthquake rocked its foundations into disrepair in 2003.
“My husband started an online conversation about the printery and how it was being vandalized and destroyed,” his wife, Karen McNamara, said. “He just never was one to kind of sit back and go, ‘Somebody ought to do something.’ He would just get involved and do it. So, he did.”
Mike got the conversation to save the printery rolling on Facebook. The active group soon took their discussions out into the real world, gathering for meetings and trying to find the owners of the century-old structure.
When Mike suddenly passed away, their kids requested that Karen take on his mission to help. During the city’s Colony Days celebration in 2015, she placed a banner on a table that urged for volunteers to help rebuild the printery. Karen then launched the nonprofit Atascadero Printery Foundation and became its president the following month with community support.
Almost a decade later, the nonprofit is diligently committed to restoring the printery for public use with a focus on the arts.
“We’ll have different groups renting it for different things, like helping get youth art and the senior programs in there,” Karen said. “When we get the theater open, there’ll be all kinds of entertainment. … It’ll help economically strengthen Atascadero.”
The Atascadero Printery was built in 1915 to house the Women’s National Publishing Company. It took on new roles as the years passed, printing copies of the Illustrated Review and Atascadero News along with supplements for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The printery was an instrumental employment hub for residents of the nascent town.
Beyond printing, the building also served as junior colleges, the Masonic Lodge, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, and a youth services venue.
Printery nonprofit director Mary Rush told New Times that until 2017, the structure was privately owned. That changed when the nonprofit and its volunteers stepped in to renovate.
“We bought it in 2017 at a tax auction for the county for $300,000,” Rush said. “They [the nonprofit] raised it through fundraising. The goal is to continue to raise funds for the seismic retrofit so we can be in the building to utilize it.”
The nonprofit needs $2 million to complete the retrofit and finish revamping the interior of the printery. According to Karen, that level of funding would mean the new and improved printery could be open within a year. Since 2015, they’ve raised more than $750,000.
The repair work before them is intricate.
Atascadero founder Edward Gardner Lewis wanted objects in the city to be beautiful with a purpose, Rush said. The 19,000-square-foot printery features a marble entryway, oak interiors, a copper-clad front door, paned windows, original commissioned murals, and exteriors bearing detailed etchings, carvings, and brickwork.
Volunteers currently keep the printery from looking like an abandoned structure.
“We’re working to make sure the building does not get any further destruction to it,” Rush said. “We’re also working on the windows currently with another organization that is raising funds to do the windows piece by piece.”
Currently, volunteers perform outdoor maintenance. They trim trees, rake leaves, plant flowers, and keep the grounds in good condition. Most recently, they put up Christmas lights on the building for the community to enjoy.
Since November, volunteers also occasionally conduct hard-hat tours for the public. The purpose is transparency—to take people inside to show progress and potential.
“People don’t realize that this room where there was an indoor pool … could be utilized as a beautiful reception hall for meetings and that sort of thing,” Rush said. “They come in inside, … see the old gymnasium, and visualize the theater going in that section. Then upstairs, there are actually classroom areas and another big ballroom that would probably be divided up for multiple uses.”
The nonprofit’s 12 board members consider themselves volunteers who carry out both physical improvements and fundraising efforts. Another roughly six people from the community sign up to work the grounds monthly.
Local organizations step in as volunteers too. A crew of eight people from Home Depot arrived in November to trim trees. That same day, a Boy Scout troop raked leaves and picked up trash.
The printery nonprofit held its first gala in November, Restoring the Arts to Atascadero. It proved to be its biggest fundraising event to date. Attendees bid on bronze statues and art pieces, and some of the bronze statues were donated to the printery itself.
Now, the nonprofit is gearing up for another fundraiser in the form of the Mother’s Day Fair. It’s also calling on the community to raise $250,000 through a “brick-by-brick fundraiser.” Individuals and businesses that donate will be honored through bricks of varying sizes that will be placed into the grounds, corners and center of the outdoor stage, and pathway. An online art auction to help the printery is open until Jan. 25, which is accessible through atascaderoprintery.org.
For Rush, the printery has cut a curious figure over the 25 years she’s lived in Atascadero. Her family always drove past it wondering what it held. She volunteered as a yard worker, then got invited to join the board, found herself fundraising, and now dedicates time as the volunteer coordinator.
It’s a family affair too, with Rush’s husband joining hands with the work crew once a month.
“It’s like the biggest recycle project we’ve got going on in town,” she said. “It always amazes me how many people said, ‘I just thought it was an abandoned building,’ or ‘Oh, I didn’t know anybody was working on that.’ And they’ve lived here in Atascadero for a long time.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Volunteers 2025.