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Elizabeth Baier
St. Paul, Minn.

Cray, Inc. signs lease to move to downtown St. Paul

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Seattle-based Cray, Inc. has decided to move its Minnesota office from the suburbs to downtown St. Paul.

Cray, which makes supercomputers, signed a lease on July 14 to move its approximately 225 employees based in Mendota Heights to the Galtier Plaza building in downtown St. Paul.

"We are thrilled that this got done," said Bob Hume, spokesman for St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. "Cray, Microsoft, even stretching back to IBS [Internet Broadcasting Systems], there's really something starting to happen in the technology industry in St. Paul."

Company officials expect the move will happen sometime around November, according to an SEC filing. The lease is for nearly 51,100 square feet of space, and will last 10 and a half years.

The deal includes six months of free rent, according to the SEC filing. It also includes options for up to 15,000 square feet of additional space at Galtier Plaza.

Cray Inc.'s corporate headquarters are in Seattle. The firm also has offices in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and Austin, Texas.

Cray has local roots. It was founded by the late Seymour Cray, a graduate of the University of Minnesota who was a key player at the locally based Control Data Corp.

Cray founded Cray Research in 1972 in his hometown of Chippewa Falls. In the 1980s, Cray built the fastest computers in the world.

In 2000, Seattle-based Tera Computer Co. acquired Cray Research and changed its name to Cray Inc.

Cray is the second technology-related company to recently consider moving to downtown St. Paul.

In June, Microsoft announced it had selected downtown St. Paul to be the site of its Expression Product Development Team, which produces software for creative professionals.

Other technology-related companies in downtown St. Paul include Lawson Software, GovDelivery and Visi.