Parkview buys Raytheon campus
May 14, 2016
Parkview buys Raytheon campus
Parkview Health has acquired a big asset – the 43.76-acre Raytheon campus with its landmark buildings near the Lima Road exits of Interstate 69 in north Fort Wayne.
But the defense and homeland security contractor is not closing up shop in the city, spokesmen from both sides of the transaction said.
According to a listing on LoopNet.com, a commercial real estate website, Raytheon put the property on the market in the summer of 2014 to consolidate its Fort Wayne operations into one building.
Parkview acquired the property in January but had not announced the purchase, Eric Clabaugh, a Parkview spokesman, said this week – after the sale was mentioned briefly at a Fort Wayne Plan Commission meeting.
Parkview will lease space on the campus to Raytheon.
“They are leasing for the next seven years,” Clabaugh said.
Mike Doble, spokesman for Raytheon’s U.S. operations, said Raytheon’s engineering, design and support staff will remain.
“This real estate transaction is part of our companywide effort to make efficient use of the space we own or lease,” he said. “Fort Wayne is important to our company – we rely on the great engineering talent there to be successful on many key programs.”
Doble said 540 people now work for Raytheon in Fort Wayne, and no cuts are anticipated because of the sale.
However, Raytheon, based in Waltham, Massacusetts, had 950 local employees about five years ago, according to the Major Employers Report by IPFW’s Community Research Institute. The company’s current number would rank it 23rd among Allen County’s largest employers.
Parkview plans to move several nonmedical administrative departments to the site, while Raytheon will remain in about 200,000 square feet, Clabaugh said.
Altogether, the health system now owns more than 790,000 square feet on the Raytheon campus – including a building Parkview had been leasing from Raytheon as a distribution and logistics warehouse.
“Eventually we will be occupying everything not currently leased out, but in the beginning there will be some shell space that we will maintain for future growth,” Clabaugh said.
The information technology, billing and accounting departments will likely move, he said, although the number of employees and the configuration is still being determined as “a planning phase of construction and remodeling in all the buildings we acquired” proceeds.
Those workers are not hospital-site-specific and now housed in a corporate office building on the Parkview North campus and other locations where Parkview leases space, Clabaugh said.
Mike Packnett, Parkview president and chief executive officer, said he and other top administrators will not be moving from the corporate office building. As far as other workers are concerned, “We’ve just outgrown that building where we are on Dupont and I-69,” he said.
According to the LoopNet listing, Building 10 at 1010 Production Road contains three “pods” of three-story, Class A office buildings totaling 306,000 square feet, including the space Raytheon plans to lease.
Building 3 at 1320/1540 Production Road contains space that had been leased to Parkview and Safran Group, a high-tech security company. Together, the two occupied 42 percent of the building’s 476,450 square feet, according to the listing.
Raytheon expected to occupy that building and a 6,985-square-foot warehouse building at 1410 Progress Road only until the end of 2015, the listing says.
The listing provided no details about the property’s price. Clabaugh also could not immediately provide it.
Parkview’s name as the buyer came up in a presentation Monday by an attorney requesting changes in Raytheon’s development plan to help clear the title for sale of the property.
Changes in defense spending trends have been cited in media reports as to why Raytheon has trimmed its footprint in recent years.
Another Fort Wayne defense contractor, Exelis, went a similar route, putting its complex at Lima and Cook roads on the market with a plan to lease it back through 2016.
However, the company announced last year it would close the facility by the end of next month and offer some of its approximately 360 workers positions elsewhere.
Exelis was acquired by Florida-based Harris Corp. last June for about $4.75 billion.
The new company is consolidating local operations to Rochester, New York.
Parkview Health is now the county’s largest employer, with 4,710 full-time employees. Clabaugh said Raytheon’s vacant space was good news. He said the first Parkview workers should move by late fall.
“Raytheon is downsized, and we are growing and needed space,” he said.
