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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

City Chase Center, We Hardly New Ye

Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 11:24 AM

Nearly one year after acquiring a svelte, 42-story tower when it consumed the failing Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase is selling the mostly vacant Chase Center at Second Avenue and Union Street, executives told employees in an email this morning. The new owners, Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual, will house its subsidiary Russell Investments in the three-year-old tower.

“We wanted to get out of the landlord business, and we said many months ago that we wanted to sell the building since Seattle is not headquarters for Chase, as WaMu was,” says Chase spokeswoman Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot. “We just don’t need that amount of space and we want to focus on the business.”

Donahoe-Wilmot says only 300 employees currently occupy the tower, spread among the floors. All of them will stay on as tenants; however, they will only require about three floors. "Chase will maintain a presence in downtown Seattle and our branch [on the ground floor] will remain," she says.

Russell Investments is an international financial firm currently based in Tacoma, where it employs roughly 900 people. In a statement, mayor Greg Nickels says, "As we welcome the employees of Russell Investments, we recognize the effect of Russell’s decision on our neighbors in Tacoma. Ultimately, the most important fact is that workers can stay in the Puget Sound area..."

Obviously, this is a major downer for Tacoma—expect a devastating cover of the Tacoma News Tribune tomorrow—but it's not entirely unexpected for Seattle. Folks have been predicting that Seattle's surplus of new and vacant office space, which could sell for a song, will attract big companies to move their headquarters.

Donahoe-Wilmot could not disclose the terms of the deal, the sale amount, or when new tenants would move in. Nor did she know what impact, if any, the transaction would have on the Seattle Art Museum, which occupies portions of the bottom floors.

Comments (20) RSS

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Oh snap, Tacoma.

Northwestern Mutual is a pretty classy company, I loved working for them. I wonder if they'll move a home office into the building, too, to go along with Russell?

Posted by Baconcat on September 9, 2009 at 11:41 AM

I wonder if they will rename the building since Chase will only be occupying 3 floors...

Posted by Mantooth on September 9, 2009 at 11:43 AM

I know this was rumored to be in the works since the moment Chase picked WAMU's bones clean last year, but still, Tacoma's downtownie types and City Hall folks have to be bricking shits.

Posted by gloomy gus on September 9, 2009 at 11:48 AM

i'm pretty sure SAM owns their portion and has rights to expand, so i don't believe they will be affected. then again, i don't know commercial real estate.

Posted by keith

on September 9, 2009 at 11:52 AM

ho - hum

this was all the talk months ago downtown

nothing new, except, an angry mob should have tarred and feathered the inept greedy clowns that drove Wa Mu to the brink. That fiasco cost Seattle its standing in banking and 4,000 white collar downtown jobs.

reports are the building is selling for 1/2 the cost of building it..... thus, long term a hell of a deal for Russell and cash for something Chase does not need.

and for the most negative banking possible, stick with Chase.

Posted by Albert Bramble on September 9, 2009 at 11:55 AM

No comment as I still work in the building.

Posted by CommonKnowledge on September 9, 2009 at 11:56 AM

Say goodbye to your corner offices, middle managers.

For some reason I haven't moved my Chase account. God it's a miserable bank.

Posted by Dougsf on September 9, 2009 at 12:06 PM

Dougsf, the current design of the offices is an open floor plan where "regular workers" have window views even on the corner, heck mine is.

Middle managers work/worked where ever their internal "villas" are.

If anything Chase will probably remodel and ADD corner offices all east coast style.

Posted by CommonKnowledge on September 9, 2009 at 12:19 PM

@7 is right.

I've moved one of my recurring charges out of Chase and only have one more to go.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on September 9, 2009 at 12:24 PM

Sucks for Tacoma.

Posted by Sir Learnsalot

on September 9, 2009 at 12:25 PM

900 new workers = 9 floors... so that's 12 floors total occupancy out of 42.

Posted by meks on September 9, 2009 at 12:30 PM

“We just don’t need that amount of space and we want to focus on the business of screwing our retail customers out of their money,” said the Morgan Pirate Bank mouthpiece.

Fuck them and their corporate bad boy bloodsucking brethren: Bank of Effing America, It's All About US Bank, Well Off Bank et al.!!! Don't drink the Kool-Aide! Back away from that bogus $100 offer to start a "free" checking account! Instead, chase them all the way back to Manhattan!

A huge welcome to Russell and its corporate daddy, Northwestern Mutual, who hopefully won't be evil like AIG.

Regrets, City of Destiny.

Posted by Mud Baby on September 9, 2009 at 12:37 PM

Tired of being parasitized by your bank? Get thee to a credit union!!!

Posted by Mud Baby on September 9, 2009 at 12:39 PM

@8 - I was probably channeling my own angst, for just a few years ago my company superfluously occupied two floors for a dwindling staff, leaving me with a classroom sized office, which sadly has since been consolidated into a "more prestigious" building, leaving me in a windowless interior office (of sadness).

Posted by Dougsf on September 9, 2009 at 1:01 PM

God, I would kill to get my windowless interior office back. This cubicle farm is louder than a bus station.

Posted by Fnarf

on September 9, 2009 at 2:00 PM

@13 for the win. God the view is nice right now.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on September 9, 2009 at 2:07 PM

Well, at least "The Quiet Company" should be a good neighbor.

Posted by rob!

on September 9, 2009 at 2:14 PM

Awesome! You could fit a dozen Tent Cities in there! And they even got bathrooms!

Think creatively, people! !!

Posted by dingo on September 9, 2009 at 2:38 PM

Seattle , the new Tacoma.

"back away from that bogus $100 offer to start a "free" checking account!"

$100? Barely enough for a good dinner for one person.

Posted by Roger That on September 9, 2009 at 4:45 PM

WaMu ran a full upscale cafeteria on the 17th floor (or was it the 16th?) of that joint. I wonder what the new owner will do with it. Make it into a cafeteria or rip it out entirely?

Posted by Gomez