Four buildings at the former Pfizer complex in northeast Ann Arbor will be ready for occupancy in early 2010, and the University of Michigan appears ready to consolidate some of its off-campus offices into the space.

Those offices will be the first to move into the facility, which U-M bought during the summer.

U-M’s Board of Regents will vote today on a request to spend $1.8 million to update about 92,000 square feet of the 2 million-square-foot ex-Pfizer campus, renamed the North Campus Research Complex.

The work - including paint and new carpet - will be done “in order to consolidate the functions of several administrative units currently in leased space,” according to materials submitted to the regents.

U-M officials said they won't discuss specifics on who will be making the move.

However, U-M officials have been notifying landlords that they can expect either pending vacancies or requests for short-term renewals on officials likely to be making to move to the Pfizer campus by the end of 2010, according to local real estate sources.

“We are talking with all of the landlords,” said Mary Masson, spokesperson for the U-M Medical School, which has oversight of the NCRC.

That process was under way early this month, according to landlords.

“We have had communication with the University of Michigan regarding one tenant,” said John Petz, spokesperson for Domino’s Farms.

Petz said that one U-M office that has space in his nearly 1 million-square-foot building in Ann Arbor Township will be leaving in early 2010. U-M leases just shy of 230,000 square feet of space in the building, which has about a 93 percent occupancy rate.

Most of those leases involve clinic space, Petz said, which the university has indicated won’t be moving to the NCRC.

Unclear is whether those offices could move to other campus facilities that are freed up by the moves, but Petz said he’s not concerned about losing more tenants soon.

“We feel that it’s not going to be a major concern for us in the short- to mid-term,” he said. “Most of our leases are fairly long-term with the university.”

The next step, Petz said, was for U-M to notify affected departments.

But Masson said U-M would not publicly discuss what departments are targeted and where they stand in the process of identifying which offices will move to the NCRC.

So far, it is just offices moving to the NCRC and not lab facilities.

The evaluation of which offices should move to the site remains in progress. And the implication of what happens to the space the office leaves behind, either on campus or off, remains undetermined.

Masson called it “a bit of a domino effect.”

“We are currently studying all of our leases,” Masson said, “and determining how NCRC is fitting into that.”

Paula Gardner is Business Director for AnnArbor.com, where she covers real estate and development. Contact her at (734) 623-2586 or by email.