Alaska Airlines bought a building at Boeing's former regional headquarters near Seattle, with plans to revive the property as a state-of-the-art training facility for pilots, flight attendants and other employees.

The airline, with headquarters near Seattle Tacoma International Airport, paid $85.8 million to buy the more-than 600,000-square-foot North building at Longacres in Renton from Seattle-based Unico Properties.

Alaska plans to spend another $100 million to upgrade the 19-acre property with a mock aircraft for in-flight simulations, classrooms, an auditorium, a production studio and office space for about 600 departments by the end of 2025.

"Our remarkable operations team members will, for the first time in our history, all come together and train under one roof,” Alaska Airlines Chief Operating Officer Constance von Muehlen said in a statement.

Alaska now owns the North building after leasing just over 100,000 square feet last year for pilot training.

The airline's nearly $86 million purchase is among the highest price paid for a stand-alone office building in the Renton and Tukwila submarket, CoStar data shows. The price represents more than six times the total sales volume over the past year in the area, where only a handful of mostly smaller deals have traded in the region's moribund office market.

"Alaska is signaling its long-term commitment to its hometown," said Elliott Krivenko, director of market analytics for CoStar in Seattle. "Not counting its investments at SeaTac International Airport, this acquisition brings the company's footprint in south King County to over 1 million square feet."

Boeing built the three-story offices as an aviation training facility in 1993, but moved operations to other locations across the country over the past decade before selling the entire 173-acre Longacres campus to Unico Properties for $100 million in December 2021.

Unico plans to develop a mixed-use center in other parts of the campus that includes an arts and entertainment district with trails, ponds and wetlands with access to the Renton/Tukwila Sound Transit station.

Alaska's purchase, on the heels of the opening earlier this year of a new training facility by the Seattle Sounders soccer team, "has created significant momentum" for development of the mixed-use campus, Unico Director Liz Thorson said in a statement.

Alaska — which already operates nine full-motion flight simulators in the facility with plans to add a 10th in the next few years — expects to build a mock aircraft for in-flight simulations, classrooms, an auditorium, a production studio and upgraded offices in the building, the company said.

The investment comes as Alaska expects improved earnings in coming quarters after reporting a $162 million first-quarter loss that executives partially attributed to repercussions from the blowout of a door plug in a Boeing-made 737 Max shortly after a takeoff on Jan. 5 from Portland International Airport.

The incident caused only a few minor injuries but forced Alaska to briefly ground its fleet, and also resulted in production delays during an investigation by Boeing and federal authorities.

Higher productivity and cost management "positions us well to deliver solid financial results over the next three quarters," Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci told investors during a April 18 earnings call.