Healthcare Service will pay $5 per sf absolute net or more than $1 million for the building. The 10-year lease comes with two five-year options. Bill Robertson and Robert H. Feinberg, both of First Commercial Real Estate Services Inc., represented the building owner, Southridge Co., a Wisconsin general partnership.

Robertson tells GlobeSt.com the lease has 1.7% annual escalations. He says the Healthcare consolidation will fuel a call center and back office operation in Albuquerque. CB Richard Ellis' Albuquerque and Chicago offices represented Healthcare Service.According to Robertson, the 17-year-old building was developed by Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co.'s team in Albuquerque for a Home Base home improvement store.

Southridge acquired the property in 1986 and leased it to Home Base until its recent bankruptcy. The fiscally strapped company also vacated two other Albuquerque locations, but those, says Robertson, were individually owned and leased.

Healthcare Services' acquisition is located in the a corridor comprised of newer big box retail, high-tech space and nicer office accommodations. "This is a growth area," Robertson explains. The signing will result in some 500 jobs being created.

The lease takes 103,951 sf from the big box retail market, but will add to the region's office-tech sector, which is particularly soft these days. Many companies, says Robertson, have fled to the city's northern tier as a result of a major construction project for Interstates 40 and 25, which bisects the downtown.