MSC/Premera Blue Cross, one of Eastern Washingtons largest health insurers, has started work on a $1.7 million remodeling project at its main office complex.


The complex, which is located at 3900 E. Sprague, includes two buildings with a total of 60,000 square feet of floor space. Remodeling work started there earlier this month and is scheduled to be completed by July, says Laura Dovey, a Spokane-based spokeswoman for MSC/Premera.


A large part of the project involves reconfiguring and expanding work spaces for MSC/Premeras 300-some employees there. Those employees handle the nonprofit insurers Eastern Washington operations, such as customer claims, billing, and information-technology work.


MSC/Premera also will update and expand the buildings bathrooms, and convert some office space in the complex into a cafeteria and private rooms. In the larger, three-level building, an elevator will be installed.


Leone & Keeble Inc., of Spokane, is the general contractor for the remodeling project, and Madsen Mitchell Evenson & Conrad PLLC, of Spokane, designed it.


MSC/Premera freed up space for the project last summer when it moved its Eastern Washington administrative offices to the Northpointe Office Building, on Spokanes North Side, from the East Sprague campus. Dovey says about 150 employees currently work in the administrative offices.


Between the two offices, MSC/Premera expects to have enough space to accommodate growth of the Eastern Washington operations for the next five years, she says. The insurer currently has about 280,000 enrollees in Eastern Washington.