MSC incorporated as Premera Blue Cross, one of Eastern Washingtons biggest health insurers, has leased the entire third floor of the nearly completed Northpointe Office Building on Spokanes North Side for expansion of its operations here.


The nonprofit health insurer plans to move next month 140 employeesor about one-third of its Spokane work forceinto the 33,000-square-foot office space, which will alleviate overcrowding at its main facility here at 3900 E. Sprague, says Laura Dovey, a Spokane-based spokeswoman for MSC/Premera Blue Cross.


She says MSC/Premera doesnt have any immediate plans to increase the size of its 440-person work force here.


The three-story Northpointe Office Building, at 609 E. Holland, includes a total of 102,000 square feet of floor space. Dick Vandervert, a Spokane contractor who heads Northpointe Office Building LLC, which is developing the structure, says construction of the building is about 75 percent completed. He says work on the space to be occupied by MSC/Premera is scheduled to be completed by mid-July, and the entire building is expected to be completed by August.


The buildings first sizable tenant, Cancer Care Northwest PS, of Spokane, already has opened a 12,000-square-foot treatment facility in the Northpointe building, and Vandervert says seven additional businesses have agreed to lease smaller amounts of space in the building. Those companies, all of which are expected to move in at the beginning of August, include Hahn Engineering Inc., Progressive Lending LLC, All Points Financial, Rita Maries Deli, Bank of Whitman, Spokane Dermatology Clinic PLLP, and Brighter Smiles Dental & Northwest Headache Treatment PS.


The building now is about 75 percent leased, Vandervert says.


MSC/Premera will move a number of administrative departments to Northpointe, including finance, sales and marketing, and several divisions that deal with health-care providers, Dovey says.


Its customer-service operations will remain at the East Sprague facility, and enrollees in its health-care plans wont need to change where they go for services, she says. MSC/Premera currently has about 280,000 enrollees in Eastern Washington.


The insurers East Sprague facility includes two buildings with a total of about 60,000 square feet of space and two small modular buildings MSC/Premera brought in a few years ago when it first started to run short of space.


With the offices at Northpointe, the insurer expects to have enough space to accommodate growth of its Eastern Washington operations for the next five years, Dovey says.


After some of its employees move to the Northpointe building, MSC/Premera plans to remodel its East Sprague buildings, Dovey says. That project will involve reconfiguring and updating cubicles and renovating the front lobby, she says. Madsen Mitchell Evenson & Conrad PLLC, of Spokane, has designed the remodeling project, but MSC/Premera hasnt selected a contractor yet and declines for now to disclose estimated project costs.