Government officials want to turn an 11-acre BlueCross BlueShield site for sale in Chattanooga, Tenn., into a public school campus.
In a May 7 news release, Hamilton County, Tenn., Mayor Weston Wamp said repurposing the site would be a "generational investment" in public education in the city's downtown.
BCBS Tennessee listed the 185,000-square-foot campus for sale, the Chattanooga Times Free-Press reported April 28. The real estate is valued at $11.8 million.
The campus up for sale is not BCBS Tennessee's main headquarters in the city. The payer, which has committed to permanent remote work and does not require most of its employees to work in an office, intends to keep its Chattanooga headquarters.
If the county purchases the campus, it would not be the first payer office site repurposed in Chattanooga.
In December 2022, the Hamilton County school system purchased a 98,000-square-foot office building in Chattanooga, formerly used as a Cigna call center, for $7.9 million, the Chattanooga Times Free-Press reported. Another parcel of the Cigna campus was sold to a developer and will house over 500 apartment units.