Local Firm Buys Bank Building Metropolitan To Consolidate At Farm Credit, Alter Old Site For The Arts

Metropolitan Mortgage and Securities Co. Inc. announced Monday that it will buy AgAmerica’s 18-story Farm Credit Banks Building in downtown Spokane.

The deal on the 15-year-old white tower at 601 W. First should close this summer. Neither Metropolitan nor AgAmerica would disclose the purchase price for the building, which is assessed at $14.6 million.

“It’s an all-cash deal,” said C. Paul Sandifur Jr., Metropolitan president and chief executive officer.

It’s “quite likely” that Metropolitan will rename the building, Sandifur said, declining to elaborate.

James Kirk, president of AgAmerica, said the deal has gone smoothly.

“It couldn’t have worked out better,” Kirk said. “We’re pleased we’ll be able to sell to a local, well-established company.”

In its current building at 929 W. Sprague and other office space across the street, Metropolitan occupies about 80,000 square feet of space.

The company’s building at Monroe and Sprague likely will be used to support downtown revitalization in some capacity, said spokesman Erik Skaggs.

“We have a strong commitment to downtown,” Skaggs said. “We’re going to do something neat with the site that supports The Met theater and the downtown arts community.”

Metropolitan was founded in 1953 by the late Paul Sandifur Sr. and has had nationwide success as a parent company with diverse subsidiaries in financial services, insurance and property development.

The company has been looking for room to expand for nearly two years. Twenty percent growth every year since 1980 has enlarged the company from $60 million in assets and 160 employees to $1.2 billion in assets and 474 employees.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” Sandifur said. “We’ve run out of space.”

Most of the company’s growth can be attributed to aggressive activity in buying seller-financed, high-yield real estate receivables, Sandifur said.

Technology also has allowed Metropolitan to consolidate its services, moving employees to Spokane from nationwide satellite offices. With the consolidation and hiring of new employees, the company has had to lease additional space in the past few years - at 908 and 912 W. Sprague, and, most recently, on the second floor of the Chronicle building, 926 W. Sprague.

Still, the move to the Farm Credit Banks building won’t immediately solve the company’s space problem. Metropolitan will occupy about seven floors, totalling 80,000 of the building’s 262,000 square feet.

“It’s a pretty close fit” with Metropolitan’s current space, Sandifur said.

But the building provides Metropolitan room to grow as other tenants’ leases expire and space becomes available. The building’s tenants include: Washington State University’s branch campus, the U.S. Small Business Administration, Merrill Lynch and Pegasus Gold Corp.

The Farm Credit Banks building was completed in 1982, at a cost of $21.5 million. Much of the building was vacated earlier this year when AgAmerica Farm Credit Bank moved its headquarters to Sacramento after 73 years in Spokane.

Metropolitan’s exhaustive search for new quarters speaks well of downtown Spokane, Sandifur said. The company researched sites in the Spokane Valley and Post Falls, but chose downtown because of transportation, business support services and employee needs.

Metropolitan also owns property in Liberty Lake, which would have made for an easy move.

“We selected downtown as the best location,” Sandifur said.

, DataTimes