Kaiser Permanente is reversing its plans to build a $500 million medical tower in Seattle's Yesler Terrace neighborhood.
Kaiser confirmed this week its decision to step back from a years-long project that involved building a nine-story, roughly 250,000-square-foot facility.
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The Oakland, California-based health system announced in 2020 it was purchasing a 1.6-acre parcel from the Seattle Housing Authority for $38.2 million. The project was part of a larger $1 billion investment Kaiser announced in 2017 to update facilities in Washington over the next decade.
"The sale will not result in any changes to patient care or daily operations for Kaiser Permanente, and we will continue to serve our members at ... locations across the state," Kaiser said in a statement Thursday.
Kaiser said it plans to sell the property to King County, where Seattle is located. Yesler Terrace became the nation's first racially integrated public housing development in 1941, but as infrastructure deteriorated over multiple decades, local officials decided to revitalize the area as a mixed-use development.
Kaiser operates 40 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states. Its health plan has more than 12.5 million members. The system reported $7.4 billion in first-quarter net income — which includes a $4.6 billion boost from its Geisinger acquisition that closed March 31 — compared with net income of $1.2 billion in the year-ago period.
With the Geisinger acquisition, Kaiser formed Risant Health, a nonprofit that will acquire health systems to create a national network for value-based care.
Kaiser is reportedly looking to sell up to $3.5 billion of holdings in private-equity funds this year to free up cash.
