UW will buy Safeco tower
The University of Washington's Board of Regents voted unanimously today to buy Safeco's university campus, including the Safeco tower, for $130 million. The deal will close in a month.
Safeco will lease back the space until January 2008, when university personnel move in.
"Given our impact on the region, this will be very good for the university and the University District as well," Regents Chair Sally Jewell said at the beginning of the meeting.
The UW made its final offer to Safeco on Aug. 16 and subsequently learned that it was the winning bidder, she told the regents.
University officials expect to save money by relocating staff from 300,000 square feet of space that is currently rented at a cost of $20 to $24 a square foot.
It is not clear which university offices will move into the newly acquired buildings, but Vice Provost Harlan Patterson said he expects a significant portion of the employees there to be administrative staff whose jobs do not rely on close interaction with students on campus.
The university will work with Merrill Lynch to issue commercial bonds to finance the project in the short term. It later hopes to issue long-term bonds.
It also will ask the state for about $7 million a year to operate and maintain the buildings, which total about 510,000 square feet. To whatever extent those funds are not available, the university will lease out some space to cover its expenses.
Safeco put the property on the market in the spring, when the insurer decided to consolidate its headquarters into leased space in downtown Seattle.
The UW will not continue operating Safeco's rather elaborate cafeteria, a move that officials hope will lead to more commerce for the University District at the corner of NE 45th Street and Brooklyn Avenue, where the Safeco tower is located.
As for a name for the tower, which now prominantly features the name "Safeco," Jewell joked with Bill Gates Sr., a UW regent who attended the meeting by phone, that "For $130 million, it'll be the Gates Tower."
Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com
