State Farm’s expansion continues with $600M campus in Arizona [The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.]

July 31--BLOOMINGTON -- State Farm's expansion plans continued Wednesday, as developers broke ground on a $600 million office complex in Tempe, Ariz.

State Farm will anchor the 2 million square-foot campus, which is being jointly built by Sunbelt Holdings and Ryan Companies US Inc. The office complex, dubbed Marina Heights, is among three major State Farm hubs planned in the Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta areas that have fueled speculation about possible changes at the company's Bloomington headquarters.

As the nation's largest home and auto insurer, State Farm is likely trying to keep pace with parts of the country that are growing the fastest, said Robert Hartwig, president and economist at the New York-based Insurance Information Institute.

"The three centers are in the southern half of the U.S., where more homes are being built and more cars being purchased than in the Midwest," Hartwig said. "These decisions fit logically in a long-term business plan for such a large company."

State Farm has said its headquarters will remain in Bloomington, where it employs about 15,000, and the new hubs will be staffed by a combination of new hires and existing employees. Some jobs are being reevaluated for relocation to the new facility, but spokeswoman Holly Anderson declined to comment on which jobs or how many local employees may be relocated.

The five-building, 20-acre Marina Heights is the largest development deal in Arizona history, according to the city of Tempe. The buildings will provide roughly the same amount of space as State Farm's Corporate South campus in Bloomington when it opened in 1996. State Farm will lease 1.9 million square feet, but Anderson declined to provide other details of the lease's terms.

Construction will take about four years, with the first building slated for completion by mid-2015, according to a release from the construction companies. Once the buildings are completed, State Farm will have the capacity for 8,000 employees in the greater Phoenix area, where it currently employs 2,100. Other nearby employers include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Intel Corp., each with more than 10,000 employees.

Developers broke ground on State Farm's suburban Dallas hub in early July, where the company will anchor three office towers. It will give State Farm the capacity for 8,000 employees in the Dallas metro area, where it currently employees 2,500. The $1.5 billion complex will also include a 150-room hotel, a health clinic and fitness facility, and more than 75,000 square feet of retail and restaurants.

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