After State Farm Insurance moves two miles down the road in Richardson, Texas, it will leave behind a building that can house thousands of employees.
The relocation is one of the biggest office moves the Dallas area has ever seen. The new facility, part of the CityLine project, will serve as a base for almost 8,000 of the insurance company’s regional employees.
But in a couple of years, the old building will sit empty, leaving more than one million square feet of office space.
Gary Stephenson, spokesperson for State Farm, said that the company projects a move throughout 2015 and into 2016 in four new buildings.
However, due to State Farm’s lease of five buildings south of its new campus, with some leases running until 2018, the entire block of old office space is unlikely to go on the market at the same time.
John Jacobs, executive vice president of the Richardson Economic Development Partnership, is optimistic that a sale will be made.
“We have some companies that are expressing an interest in the space,” Jacobs told reporters. “It’s an opportunity for us to have 1.5 million square feet of attractive office space to work with.”
When the move finalizes, Richardson will have the most empty office space since the telecom bust of the early 2000’s. But Jacobs isn’t worried about that.
“The whole area is on fire with growth,” he said, commenting on the difference in the economy. “You don’t have very many large blocks of office space in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth market.”
Jeff Ellerman, office broker with the CBRE Group, agreed and said that the office space will contribute to the area’s growth.
“There continues to be a shortage of large blocks of functional office space that has the infrastructure and parking that corporate America wants,” Ellerman commented.
However, some other large companies may avoid the area known as Telecom Corridor, in order to not “bump up against State Farm,” said Ellerman. “There are some large employers that are concerned about being in State Farm land and competing with them for employees.”
However, before State Farm’s leases end in 2018, they could also sublet to other businesses. That could be good news, said one broker, for companies looking to move into the Dallas area.