With the size of their campus over there on Creyts 'm not surprised they decided to expand rather than move. If they would of moved way out in Dewitt that would of been very, very bad.
Without building parking structures ($$$$), there's not really space on the "old" Auto-Owners campus for any new large office buildings. Having the Blues property across 496 now allows Auto-Owners to expand essentially next door while continuing to occupy its massive existing campus.
This is a very good thing from a planning perspective. Think of all the headaches had Auto-Owners moved to DeWitt Township. There's no one in this region equipped to take over a corporate campus of that size, which would mean big empty buildings in Delta Township or a pretty inefficient local Auto-Owners operation with essentially two corporate campuses. (Accident Fund might have once been a possibility to take over the Auto-Owners campus since they were in the market for a larger corporate headquarters, but they thankfully decided on the downtown power plant.) And all the infrastructure is in place right there in Delta Township - the big hotel, a few eateries, decent highway interchange. All of that doesn't now need to be duplicated in DeWitt Township.
I wonder if they'll find a way to link the two sides of 496 for pedestrian traffic once they start building on the south property.
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.
@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.
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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This is a very good thing from a planning perspective. Think of all the headaches had Auto-Owners moved to DeWitt Township. There's no one in this region equipped to take over a corporate campus of that size, which would mean big empty buildings in Delta Township or a pretty inefficient local Auto-Owners operation with essentially two corporate campuses. (Accident Fund might have once been a possibility to take over the Auto-Owners campus since they were in the market for a larger corporate headquarters, but they thankfully decided on the downtown power plant.) And all the infrastructure is in place right there in Delta Township - the big hotel, a few eateries, decent highway interchange. All of that doesn't now need to be duplicated in DeWitt Township.
I wonder if they'll find a way to link the two sides of 496 for pedestrian traffic once they start building on the south property.
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.