A financially strapped alternative weekly in Colorado Springs that shut down in December and whose nonprofit publishing company since has folded will relaunch in a few months, according to two local investors behind the reboot.

Business partners J.W. Roth and Kevin O’Neil said Wednesday that they have acquired the rights to publish the Colorado Springs Independent and its ancillary Colorado Springs Business Journal.

They have formed a new, for-profit business, Pikes Peak Media Company, which will produce the papers, Roth said.

“One of the things the paper has lacked over the last few years is sufficient capital to operate the business the way they wanted,” O’Neil said. “We’ll add capital to engage the entire City for Champions, including local academia, tourism, technology, nonprofits and military installations.”

They made their plans public on Thursday.

Roth is founder, chairman and CEO of Notes Live, a Colorado Springs entertainment company that’s building the 8,000-seat, open-air Sunset Amphitheater on the city’s north side and owns Bourbon Brothers Smokehouse & Tavern restaurants and Boot Barn Hall live music venues.

O’Neil is founder and CEO of the O’Neil Group, a business and real estate acquisition firm that developed the Catalyst Campus for Technology and Innovation business park on downtown’s eastern edge and is one of two developers behind a proposal to build a 36-story apartment tower near the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. 

The pair declined to disclose the purchase price but said the transaction includes acquiring the papers’ brand names, trademarks, copyrights, associated events and distribution routes. 

Roth and O’Neil said they will not assume unresolved liabilities that Citizen-Powered Media, the nonprofit that had been producing The Indy and the Business Journal, might have.

“Kevin and I don’t have anything to do with the business prior to the acquisition,” Roth said. “How they go about dealing with their end balance sheet doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

Citizen-Powered Media announced last Friday that it had ceased operations, liquidated all physical assets, and would continue to collect outstanding debt until March 1. Board President Ahriana Platten declined to say how much debt it still has. Fran Zankowski, who had been The Independent’s most recent publisher, explained to readers in the final edition in December that the paper was unable to recover from nearly $400,000 debt accrued after a failed rebranding effort.

The organization also said last week that it had given to Zankowski the intellectual property of the publications’ names, websites and social media platforms.

Zankowski said Wednesday that he sold the rights to O’Neil and Roth for a “nominal fee,” and the new owners have hired him as publisher of the reborn Independent, which he said was unexpected.

“I thought they’d find someone else to run it,” said Zankowski, who has led progressive weeklies in various cities for 30 years. “I’m excited — I wanted to make sure the papers stayed with local ownership, and Kevin (O’Neil) and J.W. (Roth) are enthusiastic visionaries.”

Zankowski said he will keep his job as publisher of Boulder Weekly, as well, and had talked with a handful of groups who had expressed interest in continuing the Colorado Springs publications.

“Kevin and J.W. were the ones who could stabilize the company for the long-term,” he said.

The revived Independent will remain “left-leaning,” as many people view it, Roth said, and add “a platform for a variety of voices” to its repertoire “to foster a healthy diversity.”

The Indy will publish twice a month, and new owners expect to launch it in late spring. The revived Business Journal will follow, but there’s not a timeline for that publication, Roth said.

Also, Roth said he will fold an existing hospitality and entertainment guide he publishes into The Independent and separately retain a quarterly magazine he owns, VENU.  

“We’re not going to change The Independent or the Business Journal but expand it and be relevant to everyone,” he said.

The new owners intend to direct-mail 20,000 issues of The Indy across the city and have another 10,000 copies for free pickup at local businesses.

The 30-year-old Independent faced turmoil after co-founder and longtime publisher John Weiss unexpectedly announced in October 2022 that he was retiring and closing his privately owned Colorado Publishing House.

The operation then shifted to a nonprofit business model and in December 2022 consolidated publications into a single tabloid renamed Sixty35.

The changes did not attract more advertising revenue, the organization’s board said, which led to half the staff being laid off in March 2023. Most of the remaining staff was let go in December.

Regarding the nation’s declining newspaper industry, Roth said the venture is not something he or O’Neil — both Colorado Springs natives — consider to be a lucrative investment.

“We’re going to invest what it takes,” he said. “We’re not doing this to make money; we’re doing this to preserve a legacy.”