Avista Corp. has agreed to buy the former Horizon Credit Union headquarters building, at 14523 E. Trent, from Horizon, and plans to move its Spokane-area call center there from its own headquarters office building at 1411 E. Mission.


The Spokane utility company expects that its purchase of the building, which has about 15,000 square feet of floor space, will close in September, and it plans to do some remodeling work before it moves its roughly 80 call-center staff members here into the structure, says Laurine Jue, a company spokeswoman.


Were targeting probably the end of November for that move, says Jue. She says the company doesnt have an estimate to release yet of the anticipated cost of the remodeling, but much of the work will have to do with energy-efficiency improvements rather than structural changes.


The structure is in great shape, says Jue. They had renovated it recently.


The company isnt releasing the price it has agreed to pay for the 28-year-old structure. Horizon moved into its new headquarters, at 13224 E. Mansfield, last November.


Avistas call-center personnel handle all of the calls that come in to the company, Jue says. Avista has much smaller numbers of call-center personnel at other centers in Coeur dAlene, Lewiston, Idaho, and Medford, Ore., and those workers will stay where they are, she says.


Horizon will continue to use 2,400 square feet of floor space in the building on Trent, which has a main floor and a daylight lower level, for some of its employees through January 2010, Jue says.


Avista had looked at building a 36,000-square-foot building near its headquarters to relieve crowding there, then told employees in an internal newsletter May 30 that it didnt make sense to move ahead with the project when the company and its customers faced rising costs.


The company weighed both cost and environmental factors before deciding to buy the structure from Horizon, Jue says.


It really does represent the most cost-effective solution before us, she says.


The companys Spokane-area call center is located on the first floor of its headquarters building now, and Jue says that after the center is moved to the new building, the company will use that space as a transition area for other departments as it upgrades the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems of its central offices after Jan. 1. The Spokane office of McKinstry Co., a Seattle-based mechanical engineering and construction company, will handle that renovation and already is doing a $4 million HVAC upgrade in Avistas service building just north of its headquarters.