Breaking: UW to buy U-District’s Safeco Tower
Say what you want about buying at the peak of the market, but the University of Washington has just paid $130,000,000.00 for the former SafeCo Tower at 4333 Brooklyn Ave NE.
Rumors were that the University had sought to forestall other buyers from bidding higher and then renting out floors to administration by threatening to never rent from any other owner — now they won’t have that problem.
Damn, Peter, beat me to it.
And I can tell you the rumor is true — UDub told Safeco that if they didn’t win, they would not lease any space in the tower. I heard it from someone in the administration.
Now the battle within the U begins for floor space. The space will be all administration. That means a lot of off-campus labs will have to stay put in the interim.
Well, a lot of administration is off-campus at the moment too. Like the Office of Sponsored Programs, which all of UW’s grants go through. So it’s not just on-campus moving to Safeco, it’s a lot of offices that are already off-campus and just won’t pay rent anymore.
Personally, I would cry if they moved my off-campus lab back into Health Sciences. We love our little SLU fiefdom. Blue Flame foreveeeeer! (Actually I don’t work in Blue Flame, but yeah.)