I know the inside story of our big local labs quite well, not only because the owners were friends, but because I was a supplier to their facilities and maintenance needs. One of them was highly successful until they allowed Kodak to talk them into getting on the ground floor of digital printing, which came with not only big equipment payoffs, but with mandatory expensive service contracts. But it wasn't long until more practical and more affordable equipment was being offered by competitors, so Kodak had second thoughts and shut down their own service while still demanding payment on the unserviceable equipment! In that case, the lab owner simply called it quits and liquidated everything in a bankruptcy sale while he could still salvage enough funds for retirement.

Another lab threw in the towel because the owner had become so sensitized to RA4 and Ciba chem that he broke out in hives even entering his own building. Yet another needed lung surgery. That's why I'm a small quantity guy doing just a print at a time in a drum on a portable processing cart outdoors. One of these guys had 250 gallons of Ciba dev and bleach each in working solution on a daily basis - that's a hecka lot of sulfuric acid! I work with less than a quart at a time.

Then local labs got pushed out by skyrocketing leases in a deliberate attempt to clear out all industrial and warehousing businesses in order to make room for very expensive condos and techie office spaces. Ironically, one of the biggest local re-developers earned his money with a photo lab first. He still has a giant lab space, but now in his late 70's, now only uses a small portion of it as a high-end cuisine photography site, replete with gourmet kitchen. His remaining help is very well paid and incredibly good at multi-tasking. They can digitally output the studio shots directly to pre-press, and simply swivel a chair to man a real estate or construction issue in a kind of command-central computer station. He's never himself taken a vacation in his life, even though he owns multiple resorts. Work adrenaline keeps him going. The studio work is done mostly at night with Sinar and Broncolor gear, now itself re-purposed for digital capture. But a well-done cookbook is no comparison to the giant intricate Ciba prints he used to make from 8x10 chrome film, mostly for Japanese clients. Seeing a superbly designed suite of Sushi atop a classic plate of intricately painted Japanese porcelain, then printed in extreme detail onto five by eight foot Ciba stock was quite an experience.

Several smaller labs have filled in the niches. Some offer film development plus scanning and digital printing. Some just do printing, some mainly just development. Laser printing onto RA4 chromogenic materials is also available in the area. But I don't know if any big optical enlarger printing is still going on commercially. I'm very well equipped for it myself, but don't print the work of others.