HAMMOND | BP refinery office staff won't be moving to a new facility near the Lost Marsh Golf Course.

The company announced plans last summer to build a 36,000-square-foot office building and training facility near the warehouse it owns at the intersection of Calumet Avenue and 129th Street.

A $27 million upgrade to the 90,000-square-foot warehouse is nearly completed, but building the office park on the 10-acre site would be too expensive, company spokesman Thomas Keilman said Tuesday.

"We encountered significant amounts of underground slag adjacent to the warehouse, which made it cost-prohibitive to construct the office and training facility there," Keilman said.

Some 230 staffers were scheduled to move from refinery property in Whiting to the new complex after a safety assessment of the refinery last year determined they would be "at risk" in the event of a disaster at BP.

Keilman said BP currently is in the process of looking at other locations in the northern communities -- primarily Hammond and Whiting -- both for interim and long-term uses as office and training space.

"We're doing assessments of properties now, and hope to have a decision soon," Keilman said.

Along with 50 full-time positions at the refurbished warehouse, the city also got a new sanitary sewer line from the golf course to the main Sheffield Avenue sewer from the truncated project, said Peter Novak Jr., executive director of planning and development for the city.

"The street work was a good thing, but it's unfortunate that the office park isn't going to go there -- it would have made a very nice addition to that part of town," Novak said.

He said his office has been working with BP to find appropriate space for the office workers and the training facility elsewhere in the city.