45,000 square ft. Class 10 Cleanroom for Sale or Lease

By John Haystead

Lee`s Summit, MO–AT&T has put its entire 1.3 million ft.2 Kansas City Works plant (Lee`s Summit, MO), including 45,000 ft.2 of Class 10 cleanroom, on the block for $45 million. The cleanroom space, located in the complex`s 557,000 ft.2. “Building 30” was designed for VLSI wafer fabrication of NMOS or CMOS ICs. In order to use the Class 10 and other clean rooms totalling 144,000 ft.2, it would be necessary to have control of all of building 30, including its basement, waste treatment facility, gas/utilility distribution system and other out-buildings.

AT&T is also willing to rent the cleanroom area, including support and outside water treatment facilities. Stein & Company Investment Services (Rosemont, IL), who are handling the sale/lease of the property for AT&T quote the net rental cost at $15.65 per ft.2. This price, notes Philip Simborg, Stein & Co. VP of Corporate Accounts, is far cheaper than the cost of building a comparable new facility “and they could be in the space two years sooner. The cost of a new or replacement facility would be on the order of $350.00/ft.2–and higher for the cleanroom space.”

The cleanroom spaces include filtered vertical laminar air flow with raised flooring throughout, including smocking rooms and aisleways; a five zone static pressurization system; class 10 conveyer system; service chases between cleanroom tunnels and a full 10-ft. high service basement.

Fabrication services include an electro-polished stainless steel, ultra-pure gas distribution system; reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration deionized water (18 meg ohm PVDF system, 300 gpm capacity each room); and specialty gas and bulk chemical buildings adjacent to external walls. Says Simborg, “according to the experts who have looked at it, the quality of the cleanroom and infrastructure equipment is as good as anything you would build today, and could conceivably be upgraded to Class 1.”

So far, however, interest in the facility has been tempered by skepticism of its mid-west location. Says Simborg, “with something like 90 percent of cleanroom facilities located on either coast, the greatest difficulty we`ve had is the location. People in this business just aren`t used to thinking about the midwest for their manufacturing facilities.” He is quick to point out, however, that according to their studies, the region does have an adequate base of people with the requisite technical skills to staff such a facility, as well as a number of economic incentives.

A third option for the site is a purchase and leaseback arrangement where an investor/company would purchase the entire KC Works facility, use the cleanroom capacity themselves, and take leasebacks from other tenants including AT&T. “Purchasers could save $3 to $5 million per year by taking advantage of these additional income streams,” says Simborg. n