State Farm Insurance Co., of Bloomington, Ill., is consolidating its Spokane-area and Coeur dAlene automobile and homeowners insurance claims offices by moving them to a building at the Iron Bridge Corporate Campus here.


State Farm will employ about 60 people, including roughly a dozen new employees, at that facility, at 1224 E. Trent, which will serve as a regional claims-processing center, says Marc McCaslin, a Spokane-based State Farm claims-section manager.


That building also will house the companys Spokane agency-leadership team, which oversees State Farm agents operations here, he says.


The company has leased about 19,000 square feet of floor space in the 24,000-square-foot building, and has asked the owner, Iron Bridge LLC, to reserve nearly 80 parking spaces for State Farm employees and customers, McCaslin says.


One-third of the State Farm employees who will work there have moved already, and the rest will move by February, McCaslin says.


State Farm will relocate a total of about 40 employees to that center from its claims-service center here, at 519 E. North Foothills Drive, and has moved about six employees from its agency-leadership office, at 1010 N. Normandie, he says.


Once all of those employees have moved, State Farm will close the 10,500-square-foot claims-processing facility on North Foothills Drive, which it opened in 1990, McCaslin says.


State Farm owns the building on North Foothills Drive and likely will sell it after vacating it, he says.


It already has closed the 3,500-square-foot office it had been leasing for the agency-leadership team, he says.


Also, State Farm is moving about five employees to its Spokane operations center from a claims-service center in Coeur dAlene, at 1917 Lakewood Drive, and a handful of employees from offices in Kennewick, Yakima, Wenatchee, and Vancouver, Wash., McCaslin says. The company will keep two to 10 employees stationed in each the latter four cities, but will move them to smaller quarters from the larger spaces they currently occupy, he says.


State Farm hasnt determined whether it will move the remaining employees from its office in Coeur dAlene, he says.


State Farm is consolidating its claims-processing operations throughout the country by shifting employees to a number of regional centers to cut costs and use the companys resources better, McCaslin says.


It ultimately results in a more cost-effective way of handling our operation, he says.


The company already has moved a number of employees to centers in Portland, Boise, and several cities in Western Washington from other offices throughout the Pacific Northwest, McCaslin says.


State Farm is keeping employees at those offices, which are named field associate offices, to maintain on-site claims-handling services for customers in those areas, he says.