HealthNow New York [BlueCross BlueShield] is one of Western New York’s leading health insurance providers.  Currently HealthNow’s facility, located in the outskirts of the City of Buffalo, is a former department store that was retrofitted to suit the needs of the company 25 years ago.  HealthNow has since changed the way its business operates and the current building was determined to be no longer suitable for the company.  The building is located adjacent to Canisius College.  With Canisius College being in an expansion mode there was an opportunity for the College to acquire the building to be part of their campus.  From the beginning of the process, HealthNow New York had made a commitment to relocate within the City of Buffalo provided that “there was not a compelling reason to the contrary”.  

The CBRE team of Jeff LiPuma and Shana Stegner met with HealthNow in the spring of 2004.  The CBRE team worked with HealthNow’s management, providing them with market information and worked through their strategic planning.  Given the CBRE team’s extensive local market knowledge and the broad range of services that CBRE as a whole could offer, the CBRE-Buffalo team was then selected to work with HealthNow on the site selection phase.

Once CBRE-Buffalo was brought on board, a committee made up of CBRE-Buffalo and HealthNow’s upper management was formed, ensuring that the needs of all aspects of the company were met.  Communication was clear and concise as a result of the utilization of iprojects. Furthermore, the flow of the project was made especially smooth with the formation of such a solid team.

Once CBRE-Buffalo gained an understanding of the vision for the project, over 125 sites were reviewed as potential relocation sites.  These sites ranged from existing buildings to build to suit sites; developer controlled to non-developer controlled.  After a detailed process of narrowing down the potential sites, approximately a dozen sites were short listed.  By bringing a Brownfield option to the attention of HealthNow, CBRE-Buffalo was able to help overcome the economic issue of an urban site.

A prime city option was a former gas production site that had been known to have environmental problems.   With CBRE-Buffalo’s assistance HealthNow made the choice to remain in the city, and it chose to be part of one of the largest environmental cleanup projects that the Buffalo had seen.  To take an environmentally challenged site and bring it back to a “healthy” state was greatly applauded. 

Many obstacles and hurdles had to be overcome during the negotiation process.  The largest obstacle was the increased costs of a City location. The economic incentives derived from a “Brownfield” site helped overcome this obstacle, yet at the same time brought a great deal of complexity to the project. Client interests had to be coordinated with the City, County & State agencies, as well as those of an anxious seller, community and employee concerns, financing issues, public relation communications and others.

After the lease negotiations were completed, HealthNow chose to keep the CBRE-Buffalo team on board throughout the process on a consulting basis.  With a very tight schedule, CBRE-Buffalo is helping to ensure a smooth construction process.  In 2007, HealthNow New York will take possession of their new corporate headquarters.  They will bring over 1400 employees into the Buffalo’s CBD each day. 

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