BY TOM WALSH

DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST


LANSING -- Last weekend, the second wave of 300 Accident Fund employees moved into their new downtown corporate headquarters, conjured from the shell of a long-dormant 73-year-old power plant and transformed into an eco-friendly, high-tech showplace.

And next week, on May 2, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the state's largest health insurer and owner of Accident Fund, will begin moving nearly 3,000 employees from Southfield into Renaissance Towers 500 and 600 in downtown Detroit.

Those back-to-back moves will cap the biggest shift of a major Michigan employer's workforce from suburbs to urban downtowns in recent memory. When the RenCen move is completed, Blue Cross will have more than 7,750 full-time and contract workers located in the downtowns of Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids.

In all, 97% of Blues' workers in those three regions will be in the urban cores, up from 49% a few years ago.


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