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Contributors
Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Here's the full story from C.R. Roberts:
DaVita will remain in downtown Tacoma.
With some 900 employees at its Tacoma support center, the kidney-care service company is the city’s second-largest private employer and over the past year had considered moving its operations elsewhere.
Full details of the deal, signed Thursday, have not been released. The company did offer a statement late Friday afternoon saying it “has completed negotiations to extend its lease on office space at 1423 Pacific Ave. as well as at the Columbia Bank Center.”
Jim Hilger, DaVita vice president and controller, said in the statement, “Tacoma is a great location for many of DaVita’s important support operations.”
He continued, “The City of Tacoma and the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County have gone out of their way to assist DaVita during our search for solutions to our local office space needs.”
“I’m really glad about the news,” said Ryan Petty, director of the city’s Community and Economic Development Department, on Friday. “I think it’s just tremendous. Here we are in this recession, and a company that has a lot of available choices makes a decision to stay downtown. I think they see strategic advantages in that.”
Offers, Petty said, had come to DaVita from “across the South Sound region, and Tacoma, and south of Tacoma. It’s nice to have this as an indicator of corporate resolve to stay here.”
Although full details of the deal were not released, reports earlier this year had the city proposing sales tax exemptions on new construction, the provision of parking downtown and infrastructure improvements including new sewer connections.
In Thursday’s deal, the company agreed to a long-term lease – perhaps for a period of 10 years – on the current Schoenfeld Furniture Building, along with a sublease of at least three floors in the nearby Columbia Bank Center.
The lease on the Schoenfeld property had been set to expire in April 2011.
“It looks positive for DaVita to stay in Tacoma. We’re close to final execution,” said Nick Cassino, managing director of the Tacoma office of CB Richard Ellis Commercial Real Estate, which led the Schoenfeld negotiations and examined other possible locations on behalf of DaVita.
“DaVita has made a long-term commitment,” he said.
John Barline, who led negotiations on behalf of the Columbia space, said Friday, “I think that’s a great win for Tacoma and a big win for DaVita. It’s a positive for everybody. It’s a positive for the Columbia Bank Center. We welcome DaVita as a new tenant.”
The Columbia space had been occupied by Tacoma-based Russell Investments, which is itself reviewing siting options in the area.
Bruce Kendall, president and CEO of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County, said Friday that efforts continue to retain Russell in its Tacoma headquarters.
Meeting a Friday deadline for proposals, a group of Tacoma proponents made a final submission to Russell on Friday, Kendall said.
“We’re in the midst of very robust negotiations with Russell, and those continue,” he said.
