New York-based Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America has agreed to lease a new 14,000-square-foot building at Cedar Creek Village, near Guardians big Spokane operations center on the citys North Side.


Kathleen Greco, Guardians top executive here, says the insurer plans to move 75 to 85 workers to the new building from a larger building on Lyons Avenue, about a mile and a half to the south, that the company has been leasing for five years. The Guardians lease at that location was about to expire, and the company decided it could cut costs by moving the satellite operation housed there closer to its main facility at 777 E. Magnesium, Greco says.


The new building that Guardian will occupy is located just south of a Chevron gas station and convenience store at the southeast corner of Magnesium Road and Nevada Street, in a commercial area that adjoins the Cedar Creek Village apartment complex. Guardians main operations here are located just across the intersection from Cedar Creek Village in a 100,000-square-foot building located on a 32-acre campus. Cedar Builders Inc., of Spokane, has been developing Cedar Creek Village and earlier this year completed construction of the new building that Guardian will occupy.


Greco says Guardian expects to be operating in the new building by the end of October and to be moved entirely out of the old location on Lyons by the end of this year. The new building has room to accommodate about 120 workers, which is enough space to meet the companys growth needs for the foreseeable future, she says.


Guardian at one time had about 180 people working in the 20,000-square-foot building on Lyons, but that number has shrunk partly because of increased emphasis on a telecommuter program that allows employees to work out of their homes, Greco says.


Guardian employs a total of about 585 full-time and 100 temporary workers here. The company focuses here on underwriting group, medical, dental, and other insurance policies that Guardian sells and on processing claims from people insured under those policies.


The big company opened an operation in Spokane in 1986 and moved to the building on Magnesium in late 1988. By the fall of 1993, it had used up all of the space in its processing center there and began leasing the building on Lyons to ease overcrowding.


Guardian once had considered developing a second big building here to handle its growth, but those plans faded as the nations health-insurance arena changed and the companys operation here began looking for efficiencies to remain competitive. Greco said in an interview last year that the company was looking to reduce, rather than increase, its space here.


In addition to handling underwriting for group dental policies issued throughout the U.S. and for group medical, group life, and some group and individual disability policies sold in the Western U.S., the Spokane operation provides customer service and claims processing in support of those policies.


Guardian employs about 5,000 people companywide. It had total insurance in force of about $185.3 billion at the end of 1997, and net income of just under $300 million for that year.


Dan Cantu, of Kiemle & Hagood Co., represented Guardian in the companys lease of the new building, and Jim Quigley, Carl Guenzel, Tom Carstarphen, and Mac Whiteford, all of Kiemle & Hagood, represented Cedar Builders.