Monday, February 18, 2013

Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Flees Illinois

The 67% hike in its corporate and personal income tax rates makes Illinois about as attractive a place to locate as Belarus.
Insurance chain State Farm is reportedly buying up substantial workspace in Texas, which may signal a coming exodus from the company's home state of Illinois.
State Farm is keeping the move quiet so as not to alarm employees. But the Dallas Morning News reports that it is a “major business relocation” already underway and that this is “one of the biggest stories in the Dallas-area real estate market and will ultimately involve thousands of workers.”

Texas-based real estate expert Bob Gibbons notes in a blog post that State Farm’s Dallas office space lease--about 2.5 million square feet of workspace in a few different places--is the Dallas area’s largest-ever office space lease by a single company.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week, too, that State Farm leased several hundred thousand more square feet of office space in Atlanta.

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