MVP to add 50,000 square feet in downtown Sch'dy

PHOTOGRAPHER: James Schlett

MVP Health Care has already maxed out the 175,000-square-foot headquarters it built atop a hill on State Street and it is close to gaining additional office space in downtown.

Only six years after consolidating 850 workers into a $35 million downtown building, the health insurer is on the verge of completing a deal for up to 50,000 more square feet.

MVP spokesman Gary Hughes confirmed that the deal is “substantially complete,” but he would not specify were the office space is located because “it isn’t finished.”

MVP currently has 950 full-time employees working at its headquarters, though it is not expecting to immediately add to its work force. The Schenectady insurerÕs employment surged after it merged with Preferred Care, which has 600 employees in Rochester. MVP, which operates in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire, employs 1,600 companywide.

“We’re not intending to add more people. This is just to accommodate the work force we have,” said Hughes.

Hughes said MVP has spent the past year searching for suitable additional office space. The search marks the latest surprise MVP has encountered at its headquarters, which it initially did not intend to fully occupy. Over the last six years, MVP’s membership has risen 46 percent from 480,000 to 700,000.

Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority Chairman Ray Gillen declined to comment on MVP’s office space hunt, saying he does not comment on deals until they are signed.

Hughes declined to specify how the new office space will be used for. He said the insurer will be “doing what we’re doing today in the appropriate amount of space, which we don’t have now.”