Safeco Hires Brokerage to Move Business Unit

SEATTLE-Safeco Corp. has retained the locally based corporate real estate services firm Flinn Ferguson to find a new home in the region for its life and investments business unit. The 1,200-employee unit, currently located in about 275,000 sf on Safeco’s Redmond, WA campus, is in the process of being sold for $1.4 billion to an investment group led by White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.Flinn Ferguson has been providing corporate real estate services since 1995. Its current client list includes Wells Fargo and Adobe Systems. Parker Ferguson tells GlobeSt.com his firm was chosen for the assignment last week after interviewing along with several other brokerage firms. Ferguson adds that it’s unclear as yet exactly how much space the business unit will need, but it may well be less space than it is currently occupying.”We’re in the process of examining exactly what their space requirement will be; right now we only have a headcount,” says Ferguson. “They are currently part of Safeco’s campus and there are a number of common areas that might not be so necessary on the same scale.” Safeco’s goal is to have found the new home within a year of the unit’s sale. The sale is scheduled to close sometime during the third quarter. Ferguson says his firm will be looking at both high-rise office space and campus-style product. “There are a handful of each available,” he says.While it appears Safeco will now have plenty of space available on its 46-acre Redmond campus for future growth, the company last month won significant changes to its development agreement with the City of Redmond, including a six-year extension of the agreement and an additional 88,600 sf of development on the property, which currently holds some 1.4 million sf of buildings.