Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield is evaluating whether to sell and lease back its nearly half-million-square-foot St. Louis office property downtown or move elsewhere in the region.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield owns its 465,000-square-foot building at 1831 Chestnut St., which serves as its base of operations in Missouri, but put the property on the market in recent weeks. The company is scouting other real estate in the region, looking for between 220,000 and 240,000 square feet of office space, according to spokeswoman Deb Wiethop. Jones Lang LaSalle is handling the search efforts for Anthem.
"We've been here 15 years and we're taking the opportunity to look at our options," Wiethop said. She said the availability of new office space in the region prompted the search effort. "There are a lot of good office buildings out there."
Anthem occupies 312,000 square feet of space in its current building, making the downtown location Anthem's fifth-largest block of office space out of 32 properties nationwide that the company owns or leases, according to its most recent annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Anthem leases two floors in the Chestnut building to tenants Bank of America and engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.
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Another potential step backward for downtown. It might come off as self-flagellation, but downtown cannot continue to bleed office tenants and think that the 2000-2007 boom in retail and residential development is sustainable.
, a depressed interstate and east. St. Louis...oh yeah plus 1% of your profits. The city has come a long way but there is a lot of things that need to be fixed AND THAT MEANS ASAP. What ever happened to the land tax idea to replace the earnings tax, what is going on with the arch grounds, when will the work on the riverfront?