Brown & Brown steps up hiring plans
Chairman
The planned
"All of what's going to happen down there is going to happen explosively," he said, adding that he knows of other developers who are considering projects that will create housing in downtown
The company has pledged in its agreements with the state and
Brown told The News-Journal that his company intends to begin relocating those profit center operations here before the completion of the future headquarters campus. "We can't afford to wait that long," he said.
In order to accommodate those additional workers, Brown & Brown is already working to reconfigure its current five-story 75,000-square-foot headquarters building at
The company also recently leased temporary office space in the Martin & Klayer building on the corner of
Brown & Brown, which employed approximately 350 workers in
He declined to specify what kind of jobs the company was creating locally, but said they aren't entry-level positions.
"They're highly complex jobs dealing with specialty lines of insurance," he said.
Brown said the new trainees the company has added recently in
If Brown & Brown makes the job-creation and average annual wage targets set forth in its agreements with the state and county, it stands to receive
The company also is eligible to additional incentives to offset some of its costs in developing the site and making public infrastructure improvements to the surrounding area:
The site is in the city's Downtown Community Redevelopment Area. The incentives agreement for redeveloping the property requires the planned office tower to be at least 175,000 square feet in size. Brown said his company is looking to build a tower between 180,000 and 200,000 square feet in size. The design and look of the building are yet to be finalized.
"What we want when you see it is that it's a 'wow,'" Brown told the VCARD gathering, where he was being honored as the organization's citizen of the year.
Founded in
The company's growth has been fueled in part by acquisitions of other businesses.
Brown credited his son,
"He said, 'We have to think what are we going to do (as a company) when we grow to 25,000 teammates (employees),'" Brown told the VCARD gathering.
He said the company chose to build its future headquarters on the vacant 10.5 acre downtown property that once was the site of two long-gone auto dealerships in part out of a desire to revitalize a blighted area that has "languished" in recent years. He added that when he was growing up, his father, who co-founded Brown & Brown, was "a Chrysler kind of guy" who after World War II bought a new
Brown & Brown in late November paid
The site includes room for a second office building should the company need to add one at a future date, Brown said.
"Fantastic is the only word that comes to my mind," said Volusia County Chair
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