Several possible tenants are expressing strong interest in office space that will be vacated in May with the closing of Lawrence’s Sprint PCS Customer Service Center, the property’s landlord said Thursday.

Dan Simons, a member of the ownership group of the former mall, said three call centers currently are studying the office space, which is in Lawrence Riverfront Plaza.

Simons said it isn’t the availability of the space that is driving the interest, but rather the availability of 500 Sprint PCS employees who will lose their jobs when the center closes May 31.

“There is available space all over the country, but what makes Lawrence sexy is that we have 500 well-trained people who will be available on a given date,” said Simons, who also is director of new ventures for the World Company, which owns Lawrence Journal-World.

“That has put a lot of eyeballs on Lawrence, Kansas.”

Simons said there are three different call center companies looking at the location, but declined to release the names. The largest of the trio actually would employ more people than the current Sprint PCS center. The company would be interested in taking the entire 84,000 square feet available on three levels in the former outlet mall building, and would employ 700 people.

Simons said there also is interest from a call center company that would employ approximately all 500 of the Sprint PCS employees and another company that would have a slightly smaller work force than the current center.

If a deal is to happen, Simons said he expects it to happen relatively soon because all three companies would want to be ready to hire Sprint PCS employees by the end of May.

At least one non-call-center company also is interested in significant amounts of space in the building, Simons said.

He said the building’s management group has started preliminary discussions with a company with area ties that would occupy approximately 40,000 square feet on the top and middle floors at the eastern end of the building.

“It’s neither retail nor office use, but its very exciting,” said Simons, who declined to identify the possible tenant.

Sprint PCS officials announced in mid-February they would close the Lawrence center at the end of May. The center, which handles customer service calls for the wireless phone division of the company, was slated for closure along with four other centers because it was one of the company’s smaller service centers.