Insurer moving offices, 140 jobs to Town Center

Oct. 24--A New York-based insurance company has signed a lease for 19,335 square feet of office space at Town Center in Virginia Beach and plans to move about 140 employees there from Norfolk.

USI Insurance Services leased the space in the newly renovated 4605 Columbus St. building.

The first-floor space has been vacant since June 2013 following the closing of the Guadalajara restaurant after a fatal shooting nearby.

Jeff Snyder, a USI senior vice president, said the Valhalla, N.Y.-based company's national accounting center will relocate to the space in mid-December. It has been located in Main Street Tower in downtown Norfolk.

Snyder said the center now occupies space on three floors in the Norfolk tower and will be able to consolidate all of its employees on one floor at the Town Center location, with room to add as many as 40 more. In addition, employee parking will be free.

"We did get a very good deal on the space," he said. He declined to provide the rate per square foot USI will pay.

USI also has a retail brokerage office in the Main Street Tower, and that operation, which has several dozen employees, will relocate late this year or early next year to the World Trade Center in downtown Norfolk, Snyder said.

Town Center's owner is Armada Hoffler Properties, based in Virginia Beach. The deal with USI was arranged by the center's leasing agent, Divaris Real Estate.

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