ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

The hospital system will sublease the entirety of Corporate Hill IV, a 181,000-square-foot property off Manchester Road and Interstate 270 in Des Peres, according to a new report from commercial real estate firm CBRE.

SSM Health did not respond to a request for comment regarding how it will use the space.

But the company had been on the hunt for 200,000 to 300,000 square feet for a new headquarters to consolidate all of its administrative employees in one location.

SSM will sublease the building from Centene, the Clayton-based managed health care company that signed a deal for it in 2019. But it’s not clear whether Centene ever occupied it — no occupancy permit exists for Centene at the site, at 12800 Corporate Hill Drive, according to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County records.

Centene vacated last year approximately 1 million square feet of office space across the metro area last year as part of its effort to slim its real estate portfolio amid headwinds from investors.

Centene maintains its headquarters in Clayton.

The shift in the office market is part of the broader impact from the coronavirus pandemic in which companies across the U.S. are rethinking their real estate needs.

Office occupancy throughout the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ region fell roughly 3 percentage points to 83.9% in the third quarter of this year compared with the same time last year, according to CBRE. In west ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, occupancy fell nearly 5 percentage points to 82.2%.

SSM previously told the Post-Dispatch that its search for a new, consolidated headquarters coincided with the pandemic. The company had leased about 400,000 square feet of offices for all of its administration employees. Its patient services weren’t expected to be impacted.

Corporate Hill IV was the longtime home of online brokerage firm Scottrade Financial Services before it was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2017.

Jim Mosby and Paddy Mullen of Cushman & Wakefield represented the landlord in the deal with SSM.