A new national site selection study names St. Petersburg, Florida one of the top 15 sites in the country for corporate headquarters following the pandemic and the associated trends in remote work and worker attraction.
John H. Boyd, Jr., principal of The Boyd Company, told Site Selection magazine that as corporations are downsizing their headquarters or designating satellite offices as their new corporate HQs, the new drivers for site selection include:
(1) States with superior corporate income tax climates for companies;
(2) States with superior personal income tax climates for C-suite executives and staffs;
(3) Locations with attractive lifestyle amenities;
(4) Locations with favorable operating cost structures;
(5) Locations with excellent travel and hospitality support services for periodic staff meetings, employee training and enrichment sessions, and client-servicing functions;
(6) Locations showing positive demographic and business attraction trends; and
(7) Locations with attractive housing markets for C-suite executives.
Boyd told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that, “A thousand people a day are moving to the Sunshine State, and given the new preferences for corporate offices—this ‘live, work and play’—St. Petersburg is showing up on the radar screen for a number of our projects.” He notes new projects coming online to support this kind of growth, including new office space in Orange Station at the EDGE (J Square Developers, DDA Development, Backstreet Capital) and The Residences at 400 Central (Red Apple Group NY).
The 15 top U.S. locations identified by Boyd as meeting the new headquarters standards as identified by Boyd alphabetically by state are: Florida: Lake Nona, Punta Gorda, St. Petersburg, Westlake; Nevada: Minden; North Carolina: Cary, Kannapolis; Ohio: Blue Ash, Dublin; Tennessee: Mt. Juliet; Texas: Leander, Plano, Round Rock, Woodlands; Washington: Bellevue.
For more information on how St. Petersburg is a good fit for the “new normal” for corporate headquarters, see:
“St. Pete ranked in top 15 cities for ‘new normal’ corporate headquarters” (Tampa Bay Business Journal)
“Will Twitter Leave the Nest? — Experts in HQ movement handicap the potential winners of a high-profile relocation” (Site Selection magazine)
