Wait, so they will continue to use the existing site on the north side of 496 and the new 250,000 square foot building across the freeway will be essentially an annex? That makes sense, since I read, today, that the current campus is 600,000 sq ft, and I was wondering how in the world they'd be expanding if they were going to move into a much smaller building. lol
Also, the LSJ article says that BCBS plans to relocate somewhere in Lansing.
Now I'm dreaming here, but maybe they'll move downtown and build a midrise office tower???!!! Or a close second would be filling Accident Fund's current headquarters since AF will be moved out by 2012 and is a subsidiary of BCBS. Even if they didn't build a new tower downtown, at least it would move workers downtown and fill the tower.
The LSJ says they are moving somewhere in the area, right? I don't remember reading that they said the city of Lansing, specifically. I'd guess they'll pick some township or East Lansing's northern tier unless the city gets right out in front of the pending move, which they rarely seem to do.
@micro, I agree. It sure would be nice if they chose the former Accident Fund headquarters, but I think I remember hearing that the old Accident Fund headquarters was still going to be in use by some of the employees for a while. Either way, there are plenty of buildings in downtown that could house BCBS.
Well, we had heard that 400 workers would possibly be moving into the old AF building, I think with this bit of news Blue Cross Blue Shield is by far the most likely prospect. It would be great to get them downtown. Now if we could get a couple more sizable private companies to come downtown we would be doing very well, personally I'm hoping for TechSmith to come downtown.
No. The City Pulse reported a rumor going around that 400 new employees may be moving downtown once the AF riverfront complex is complete. We'd speculated from that announcement a few weeks back that it's very likely that they were talking about BC/BS given that BC/BS owns AF.
Some pretty good news. The Bureau of Economic Analysis released their annual numbers for Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP), and in Michigan, I believe, has had the greatest amount of economic output of any of the states metropolitan areas this decade. Here is a graph and story from the Detroit News showing a few of the metros:
Any idea why Grand Rapids is missing from that list? They would be the ones I'd expect to be about on par with Lansing economically. This does look like good news for Lansing. It's also good to note that it looks like Lansing's economy will continue to expand for the foreseeable future.
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Now I'm dreaming here, but maybe they'll move downtown and build a midrise office tower???!!! Or a close second would be filling Accident Fund's current headquarters since AF will be moved out by 2012 and is a subsidiary of BCBS. Even if they didn't build a new tower downtown, at least it would move workers downtown and fill the tower.