Potlatch Corp., the big Spokane-based forest products company, has leased two floors of the Wells Fargo Center downtown and is moving its corporate headquarters there from a smaller space to make room for 25 key managers in its finance group who have been relocated here from Lewiston, Idaho.


The changes more than double the size of Potlatchs staff here, to 45.


The offices will occupy the 15th and 16th floors of the Wells Fargo building at 601 W. First, which will give it about 22,700 square feet of floor space there, says Matt Van Vleet, a spokesman for the company.


Potlatch is moving its corporate offices from the Bank of America Financial Center, which is two blocks to the north, at 601 W. Riverside, where the company has occupied about 15,000 square feet of space, Van Vleet says.


We needed the bulk of our finance team to be able to move quickly and be responsive to the market, he says. We needed to get more space to do it.


Potlatch will move its 20 other Spokane-based corporate officials to the Wells Fargo building over the course of three to six months, Van Vleet says.


About 50 finance-group employees will remain in Lewiston, he says.


The companys headquarters has been in the Bank of America building since 1997. Before then, it was based in San Francisco, having moved there from Lewiston in 1965. Potlatch shares its name with the small North Idaho town about 75 miles southeast of Spokane, where its origins date back to 1903.


The company continues to maintain a large operation in Lewiston that includes pulp and paper, consumer products, and lumber divisions in Lewiston, and employs 2,000 people there, Van Vleet says.


There are no plans to move anyone else, Van Vleet says.


Potlatch employs a total of 3,800 people at its operations in Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Arkansas.


Jeff McGougan, of Tomlinson Black Commercial Inc., handled the lease.


Contact Mike McLean at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at [email protected].