I would be suprised to see Auto Owners actually end up moving out there, they may not even want them out there. I really expect them to expand where their at somehow with a slim chance of moving downtown, depending how downtown development goes.
It’s my understanding that JNL has already outgrown its Okemos office building. They have apparently moved some of the employees back to a portion of the original building in south Lansing.
I agree with you hood, I’d be surprised to see them move in the near future. Auto Owners just finished that nice addition a few years back.
Yeah, Jackson National is preparing for an expansion of their headquarters.
I don't know why anyone would expect them not to move. You don't purchase land, and then purchase more land, in the middle-of-nowhere for kicks-and-giggles. I'm not sure how anyone could doubt their intentions from what information we have. Nothing points to them not moving. In fact, the only information we have is in direct opposition the baseless hunch.
All they did was buy a huge chunk of land in the middle of nowhere, obviously any plans they have are in the distant future. Besides, their an insurance company they could easily just dump the HQ plans and hold the land as a long-term asset.
The LSJ reports this morning that Auto-Owners is buying the Blue Cross Blue Shield property across I-96 from its Delta Township headquarters. It's a significant chunk of land. I wonder if it's another sign that a new headquarters in DeWitt Township could be off or kicked much, much further down the road (the first sign being the investment in a new data center in Delta Township).
It certainly makes financial sense for Auto-Owners to stay put. No other single company reasonably would take over their massive existing HQ (look at how long it's taken Jackson National to put its old Lansing HQ building back to good use), the office space market generally is weakening with the national recession and the upheaval of Wall Street and financial companies (including banks and insurance companies) has got to impact Auto-Owners to some extent. So the company faces the choice of having a fragmented campus with locations in DeWitt and Delta townships or having an empty building.
While I would love to see Auto Owners move back downtown, I know thats not going to happen. However, I would like it much more if they stayed at or near their current site rather than move out into the middle of nowhere in DeWitt.
This news is just makes their future move more confusing for those outside looking in. I wonder if they even know what they want to do? They've got their headquarters on Creyts and 496, a plot of land up in DeWitt, they just recently constructed a data center down in the south part of Delta Township, and know have bought up property on the other side of the freeway?
In a world that made sense, they'd do what every other large insurance company does and consolidate their space in a downtown office tower, but the world doesn't make sense. lol But, really, when you get this big, you don't want all of your head offices squattered here-and-there.
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I agree with you hood, I’d be surprised to see them move in the near future. Auto Owners just finished that nice addition a few years back.
I don't know why anyone would expect them not to move. You don't purchase land, and then purchase more land, in the middle-of-nowhere for kicks-and-giggles. I'm not sure how anyone could doubt their intentions from what information we have. Nothing points to them not moving. In fact, the only information we have is in direct opposition the baseless hunch.
It certainly makes financial sense for Auto-Owners to stay put. No other single company reasonably would take over their massive existing HQ (look at how long it's taken Jackson National to put its old Lansing HQ building back to good use), the office space market generally is weakening with the national recession and the upheaval of Wall Street and financial companies (including banks and insurance companies) has got to impact Auto-Owners to some extent. So the company faces the choice of having a fragmented campus with locations in DeWitt and Delta townships or having an empty building.
In a world that made sense, they'd do what every other large insurance company does and consolidate their space in a downtown office tower, but the world doesn't make sense. lol But, really, when you get this big, you don't want all of your head offices squattered here-and-there.