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World Wide Packets' New HQ Is Old Future Shop

Thanks to a depressed big-box retail market, the communications startup paid $500,000 cash for a $1.3-million building.

By Brian K. Miller | Updated on July 28, 2000

SPOKANE, WA—It’s a very visible space for a company that doesn’t get much walk-in traffic. World Wide Packets, a designer, developer and manufacturer of optical networking equipment, recently paid $500,000 cash to purchase the vacant Future Shop retail building just east of Downtown Spokane. World Wide will use the asset, which has been valued at $1.3 million, for its new headquarters.

The location puts the new owner not in the heart of the professional services district but rather in the midst of a retail district. “The real estate market is different here than (in Portland or Seattle),” World Wide Packets CEO Bernard Daines told GlobeSt.com. “There’s not a lot of space, and a build-to-suit means a 10-year lease. I’ll be out of business or out of the building before then, so you have to do things different here.”

Matt Hawkins of Kiemle Hagood, which represented World Wide Packets, says the 10,000- to 40,000-sf spaces in town have been snapped up by the high-tech sector in the past six months. New space is being built to add some slack, but finding space on short notice is tough unless you get creative.

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