Posted Nov 18, 2005, 12:22 AM
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Gainfully Employed
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Wilmington, DE
Posts: 621
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An update on the move by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware to a new office building on Delaware Avenue on the city's western gateway to downtown:
Blues "Very Close" to Relocation Insurer in Talks to Move to New Downtown Wilmington Headquarters
By MAUREEN MILFORD
The News Journal
11/15/2005
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware, the state's largest health insurer, is "very close" to wrapping up an agreement that would move the company's headquarters to Delaware Avenue in downtown Wilmington, a top city official said Monday.
The city has delivered an economic incentive document to the Blues designed to help the company consolidate and relocate its operations into new space at 800 Delaware Ave., near I-95, according to William S. Montgomery, chief of staff to Mayor James M. Baker. The agreement is under review by the insurance company and an announcement should come before the end of the year, he said. The terms of the agreement are proprietary, he said.
"They have a proposal and I suppose there will be some fine-tuning. We're very, very, very close," Montgomery said.
Ernest F. Delle Donne, president of Delle Donne & Associates Inc. in Claymont, which owns the Delaware Avenue location, would only say "things are progressing in an orderly fashion."
A move would mean about 650 workers relocating to the area known as the city's western gateway, Richard V. Pryor, the city's economic development director, said in September. About 400 of those employees would be new to the city, said Pryor, who is on vacation and was not available for comment Monday.
The insurance company is now at 14th and Orange streets and employs about 235 people downtown, Pryor has said.
Blues officials, who began negotiating in the summer for a new headquarters in the city, said in September a final decision on the company's real estate plans was expected in mid-October.
"It's taking us a little longer than we thought," said Darelle Lake Riabov, director of corporate communications with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware.
Riabov declined to comment further.
If the Blues were to relocate from its building on the Brandywine River, it would help solidify the city's western gateway as an office corridor. For a time in 2002 and 2003, it appeared the area was losing ground.
That began to change in 2004, when ING Direct, the country's fourth largest savings bank, spent about $15 million to renovate 802 Delaware Ave. The 14-story building, constructed in the mid-1980s for Chase Manhattan Bank (USA), had been a vacant, hulking presence along I-95 for more than a year. Today, it houses one of the bank's Internet cafes on the ground floor facing Delaware Avenue.
Earlier this year, WSFS Bank decided to relocate its corporate headquarters from a historic building on North Market Street in downtown Wilmington to a new $90 million glass office tower at Delaware Avenue and Washington Street.
The 15-story WSFS Bank Center, now under construction, is the first multi-tenant office tower in the Rodney Square area since the late 1980s. The bank will be a major tenant, as well as a minority owner, in the 350,000-square-foot building being developed by Wilmington real estate developer Buccini/Pollin Group Inc. on land owned by the bank. The law firm Morris, James, Hitchens & Williams also has committed to space.
The Blues' real estate representative at Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc. could not be reached Monday for comment.
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