Centene closes on financing for HQ project - Business Courier of Cincinnati:

sucujovide.wordpress.com
A U.S. Bank-led consortiu committed on June 5 to a constructio n loan forthe 17-story office which will house the corporatse headquarters for Centene, one of St. largest public companies, and , one of the area’s largesft law firms. Construction began in October to demolisuh the former building on the site and start work on the firstwo floors. The project will have 460,00 square feet of office spaceand 28,125 squarde feet of retail space.
The , led by chie f executive Bill Koman, signed on as an equith partner in the project earlier this of Chicago, which had led developmentg efforts for Centene’s new headquarters, dropped out as an equitg partner but will stilp serve as a consultant. The equity partners in the projecytare Centene, and . Centene Center will be Clayton’s first new office building in nearlyy a decade when it is completed inJuly 2010. Centener Center, to be built at the hearr of Clayton’s central business district at Hanleyand Forsyth, is one of a few new, large-scale developments to proceed in recent months. Retaining Centene, St.
11th-largest public company, is also a boost for the regionn asa whole, in light of job lossess at and other top Centene Corp.’s 2008 revenue was $3.4 billion and the compan has more than 500 local employees. Centene is led by Presidentr and CEO Michael Centene Center’s other main tenant, Armstrongv Teasdale, the city’s third-largest law is moving its 200 local attorneys ther e from the Metropolitan Squarse building downtown. Centene Corp.
, one of the nation’e largest providers of managed care program s and related services to individualsunded Medicaid, first sought in 2004 to builfd a replacement building a block away from its existinb headquarters at 7711 Carondelet Ave. That year, it boughrt a former bookstore, Library Ltd., at Forsyth and Hanlet from Summit Development Group for about $10 million. Centene then faced a two-yeaer court battle with threes commercialproperty owners, the late Dan Sheehan, Davi d Danforth and Debbie Pyzyk, who resisted the city of Clayton’zs efforts to take their buildingz on Forsyth through eminent domain to make way for the new , a development firm with projectse around the world, conducted a nationwide search for possibled sites for Centene’s headquarters, with proposald from Illinois and Colorado in the runningg for a potential relocation of the Centene abruptly changed courss in September 2007 and announced its pland to be an anchor tenant in the propose d Ballparkj Village development downtown.
By March Centene reversed course again and droppedx its plans to move After the Missouri Supreme Court ruledf in the Clayton property favor on the eminentdomain suit, Centenes ultimately bought the threee Forsyth properties in early 2008 for $19 In February, the Clayton Board of Aldermen approves a scaled-down version of the project from the original cost of $215 The planned office tower was reduced in size by severalp floors as Centene opted to initially lease just 200,000 squard feet of space instead of 300,000 square and the retail portion was minimized to 28,125 square feet from 34,0009 square feet.
Armstrong Teasdale has signede a leasefor 125,000 square feet of making it one of the largest localo office lease deals announced in 2009.