Foot Locker was laced up and ready to move its global headquarters from New York City to Florida — until its $2.4 billion sale to Dick's Sporting Goods.
Two months after that deal was announced, the shoe retailer has opted to nix the relocation plans, adding some uncertainty to the company's real estate strategy.
"Following the acquisition, the company reevaluated its corporate strategy and decided not to move forward with relocating its global headquarters to St. Petersburg," James Corbett, St. Petersburg's city development administrator, wrote in a recent memo to city councilmembers.
The fizzled plans come after Foot Locker finalized a lease earlier this year to fill just under half of the building at 570 Carillon Parkway in St. Petersburg. The commitment was seen as a major win for the Tampa area after local officials spent about a year trying to lure the company from its longtime Manhattan outpost.
Dick's Sporting Goods finalized an agreement to purchase the sneaker retailer in September, a move that — along with a major executive shake-up — also raises questions about the fate of Foot Locker's real estate footprint.
Foot Locker currently occupies nearly 148,000 square feet in New York City at the Vornado Realty Trust-owned 330 W. 34th St. building, where the retailer has been based for the past decade, according to CoStar data. While the company's lease there is not set to expire until 2031, it isn't yet clear whether its headquarters will remain based in all or a portion of that space, or if the retailer's new Pennsylvania-based parent company will ultimately fold everything into its own real estate portfolio.
What is also unclear is how Foot Locker will go about terminating its recent St. Petersburg lease. The company was set to occupy more than 110,000 square feet in the Feil Organization-owned property as part of a deal scheduled to kick off next month and expire in late 2038.
Neither Foot Locker nor Dick's Sporting Goods responded to CoStar News' requests for a comment.
Lost incentives
Similar to other companies across the country, Foot Locker's relocation plans were born from an effort to leverage its real estate to cut down on expenses and prioritize profitable growth.
"The intent of the relocation is to further build on the company's meaningful presence in St. Petersburg and to enable increased collaboration among teams across banners and functions, while also reducing costs," Foot Locker said in an earlier statement on its headquarters move.
Foot Locker already leases space for a small Florida office at 140 Fountain Parkway in St. Petersburg, a short drive from its no-longer-future headquarters. It remains to be seen whether the company will retain that outpost or ultimately decide to uproot its Florida presence altogether.
Its St. Petersburg move was part of an incentive package it landed last year, in which Foot Locker committed to invest at least $20 million into its new headquarters and create upward of 150 high-paying jobs.
The nearly $500,000 in incentives that Foot Locker was set to land "will remain unexpended and available for future qualified projects," Corbett wrote. "There is no fiscal impact to the city."
End of a five-year saga
The collapse of Foot Locker's relocation plans to St. Petersburg marks the second time in five years that the retail giant has failed to make the move down to Pinellas County.
In 2022, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported that "Project Athena," a codename used to conceal the identity of a Fortune 500 company whose description matched that of Foot Locker, had fallen through. The publication cited Pinellas County's director of economic development, Cynthia Johnson, who said the deal went inactive in late 2021.
Though the latest move by Foot Locker to cancel its attempted relocation represents a "disappointing" end to the nearly five-year process, the wider Tampa Bay office market continues to show momentum, said Michelle Rumore, CoStar's director of analytics for Tampa Bay.
"Even without the 110,000-square-foot lease, Tampa Bay easily leads Florida in office leasing activity, with areas in Hillsborough County seeing considerable activity," Rumore said.
Leases announced this year by major players include Fisher Investments' 320,000-square-foot lease across multiple buildings at Vision Properties' Renaissance Center, representing one of the largest deals in market history. Similarly, Geico committed to a 190,000-square-foot campus at Corporate Oaks in Westshore.
"Westshore, Downtown Tampa, and even some suburban areas in Hillsborough continue to attract tenants, some even relocating from Pinellas County," said Rumore.