With a division of Caterpillar set to take up temporary residence in a county-owned building downtown, that building’s current tenants have had to look for new homes.
One of them, the Tucson Indian Center, will buy another downtown county building for $1.5 million, according to terms of a deal approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
The Tucson Indian Center will pay for the three-story building at 160 N. Stone over eight years, and Pima County will spend up to $270,000 on improvements to the building and moving costs.
The building at the corner of West Alameda Street was recently appraised at roughly $1.4 million.
At the Tuesday board meeting, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said that “some people say we own too many buildings in the downtown” and that the deal would allow the property to go “back into private ownership.”
The Tucson Indian Center will move out of the building at 97 E. Congress St. that Caterpillar’s Surface, Mining & Technology Division will temporarily occupy while the division’s new roughly $50 million headquarters is constructed by Rio Nuevo on land west of Interstate 10 and just south of West Cushing Street.
The Caterpillar division announced in May that it will move to Tucson with up to 600 executive jobs over the next five years and an estimated economic impact of $600 million.
