“This is an exciting day for Norfolk Southern: We break ground on a new headquarters building, and equally important, begin a new chapter of our railroad’s proud history in Atlanta,” said James A. Squires, chairman, president and chief executive officer. “Today, we celebrate the start of an exciting era of collaboration and alignment for the NS corporate team that will benefit our employees, our customers, our shareholders, and the communities we serve.”
Among state and local leaders joining Squires for the event were Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Both the state and the city worked closely with Norfolk Southern on development agreements that contributed to the company’s decision, announced in December, to relocate its corporate headquarters from Norfolk, Va., to Atlanta.
“Norfolk Southern is especially appreciative of support received from the Georgia Department of Economic Development and Invest Atlanta, who share our commitment to business growth that generates good-paying jobs and economic prosperity in Atlanta and across the state,” Squires said. “In addition, Norfolk Southern thanks the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and Central Atlanta Progress for their efforts in promoting our headquarters relocation.”
“It’s a great day in Georgia when a Fortune 500 company returns home to its Atlanta roots and breaks ground on a beautiful new headquarters building in Midtown,” said Kemp. “Today’s celebration is a direct result of the hard work and commitment of many partners in the public and private sectors who supported this relocation project, including Gov. Nathan Deal. Georgia’s leading logistics infrastructure is among our greatest economic development assets, and this announcement is a testament to the critical role our logistics network plays in creating jobs and investment opportunities in every corner of our state. Norfolk Southern is an outstanding employer and civic partner, and I look forward to seeing them grow and prosper here in Georgia.”
“I would like to thank CEO Jim Squires and the entire Norfolk Southern team on their decision to make Atlanta their new home,” Bottoms said. “This relocation is not only a testament to Atlanta’s thriving, inclusive business community and talented workforce; it exemplifies the power of public-private sector teamwork in our city. We look forward to continued work with the Norfolk Southern team as they begin to transition to Atlanta.”
Norfolk Southern has engaged Atlanta-based Cousins Properties to oversee construction of the new headquarters complex. Located on a 3.4-acre property at 650 West Peachtree St., between Ponce de Leon Avenue and Third Street, the two-tower glass structure will feature approximately 750,000 square feet of office space. A campus-style hub will connect the two towers, serving as a destination for employees to work and socialize throughout the day. Outside, a lush entry plaza will welcome employees, guests, and neighbors into the building’s main lobby, where they can enjoy soaring ceilings, beautiful views, and a bustling coffee shop open to the public.
“Cousins is thrilled to partner with Norfolk Southern to develop their new corporate headquarters in Atlanta,” said Colin Connolly, president and chief executive officer of Cousins Properties. “We share their vision in creating an iconic project that will have a positive impact on the Midtown community and the Norfolk Southern team.”
Norfolk Southern and Cousins Properties are designing a campus that reimagines the employee work environment and experience. Amenities to help employees thrive will include a vibrant on-site dining facility, an adjacent rooftop garden and private greenspace, a comprehensive fitness center, state-of-the-art conference and training facilities, on-site child-care, and a variety of individual and shared workspaces to serve employees’ diverse needs while promoting interaction and collaboration.
The headquarters site is in “Tech Square,” a hub of innovation, technology, and talent in the heart of Midtown Atlanta with close ties to Georgia Tech, a continual source of talent for Norfolk Southern’s management trainee program. In addition, with easy access to MARTA, highways in every direction, and a world-class airport, Norfolk Southern employees will be close to home, close to the Norfolk Southern rail network, and just a step from partners and customers in North America and across the globe.
Plans call for the building to be completed and occupied by Norfolk Southern in the third quarter of 2021.
Through Southern Railway and other predecessor railroads, Norfolk Southern traces its roots in Atlanta to the mid-1840s. Currently, more than 2,000 Norfolk Southern employees work in Midtown Atlanta at the company’s Peachtree Street operations center — about a mile from the new headquarters site. Around 500 employees work at the company’s Norfolk headquarters. Norfolk Southern’s migration to Atlanta already has begun, with another 300-plus dispatchers already relocated and in place at the company’s newly opened Network Operations Center. The first wave of Norfolk-based employees relocates in July, and the consolidation will complete when the new headquarters building is finished.
The railroad’s relocation will bring approximately 850 jobs to Atlanta with an average salary of $105,000 and generate an economic impact of around $811 million for the region.
“Moving Norfolk Southern’s headquarters to Atlanta drives our railroad forward as we ‘Reimagine Possible’ and create an even brighter future for our company,” Squires said.
— A Norfolk Southern news release. March 26, 2019.
Got to wonder how many years it will be before a merger causes all these employees to relocate…to Omaha—or Fort Worth?
Arthur,
I have traveled a lot, and in my experience (and 99% of the rest of the population) the most inconvenient and uncomfortable travel is an overnight bus, very closely followed by an overnight train. If you think an NS employee would get a good night’s sleep on an overnight train (never mind the horribly inconvenient once-daily schedule, never mind it running six hours late), shower and shave, and be refreshed and well-groomed for a morning meeting in DeeCee, you’re putting the best face on it.
Yeah I know it’s been done in the past and as recently as Graham Claytor’s term heading the Southern Railway in the 1970’s. This is 2019. There are airplanes every hour from ATL to a choice of Dulles, Ronald Reagan, and Baltimore-Washington, flying when you want to fly, and a total elapsed time for the trip being fewer hours than the Crescent is running late.
Then at the end of the day, a choice of airline schedules getting home to Atlanta and sleep in one’s own bed. In contrast to waiting ’til whenever the Crescent leaves DeeCee and God knows (but God seems not to much care care) when it will arrive it Atlanta.
Since 2001 has security upped the hassle of airplane travel? Yes it adds some time. One can no longer step out of the taxi and onto the airplane. Virtually all my trips start out of either BNA or MKE, where security adds about twenty minutes or so. On two occasions between planes changing at Ronald Reagan I left the terminal, once for a walk and once to test-ride Metro. Re-entering Reagan through TSA each time took about five minutes.
If NS employees rode the Crescent, I suspect NS’ handling of the train would improve, just like it did under Southern when Claytor was president and mandated that employee travel between Washington and Atlanta be on the train. As for the comfort level, I’m 6’3”” 250 and have no trouble fitting and sleeping in a Viewliner roomette. I have had many excellent overnight travel experiences on the Crescent, Silver Meteor and Lake Shore Limited in recent years.
But they will be pretty close to Georgia Pacific which is a very large NS customer. And I’d guess within an hours drive of the new HQ; there are more large customers than has been the case with either Norfolk or Roanoke.
And hey; who doesn’t like The Varsity? (What’ll ya have; what’ll ya have?)
I couldn’t help but remember reading about how Avis Rent-A-Car approached the problem of where relocate their headquarters from Boston (UP THE ORGANIZATION, by Robert Townsend). Avis asked itself, “Where would a man from Mars (their way of promoting “outside of the box” thinking) locate the headquarters of an international company in the business of renting and leasing vehicles without drivers?’ Their answer was near active domestic and international airports, so headquarters people could go see managers and managers could get to see headquarters people, and in a good accounting and clerical labor market. Avis moved to Long Island between JFK and LaGuardia airports. Hertz, their larger competitor, moved to Manhattan.
So NS moves, not near Jackson-Hartsfield international Airport and southern Fulton County/norther Clayton County, but to cramped, traffic-jammed midtown Atlanta. Georgia Tech alums and The Varsity patrons must be happy. Maybe, in a nod to history, the headquarters have a Spring Street address.
Can’t stand corporate welfare by the states. Every state does it though. Just boils down to how much and to what degree. Only one way to slow it down (you can NEVER stop it) is for Uncle Sam to tax it.
If a company was to get $20 mil in tax breaks over 10 years ( equal to $2 mil a year) to move from one state to another, tax that amount as income. Present corp tax rate of 21% = $420 k a year. Some companies MAY think twice about moving if they had to pay a tax like this. But you aren’t going to stop one that WANTS to move for other reasons.
Have contacts in Virginia. They heard rumors that VA officials had take it or leave it attitude with railroads in general. More interested in all the government jobs that spill over from D.C. Into northern Virginia. They only complain after they loose a business to another state and then try to make that business look bad.
Charles,
I cannot imagine why railfans think that the elderly and the disabled are better off on Amtrak than they are flying. I’m 70 years old which is elderly by just about any definition. I may be old but hardly disabled. I’m a runner and I still run in multiple races a year and unless they are local I generally take Amtrak to the city (or as close as I can get) where the race is being held. I also regularly exercise, hike and ride my bicycle to stay in shape. Even at all of that I find overnight rail travel to be uncomfortable and stressful. When I fly the seats are narrower but the trips are considerably shorter, boarding is a hassle but far less so with my TSA Pre-check Number, the flights are usually crowded but for the cost of a first class ticket you can avoid the mob scene back in coach. Most first class air tickets are about the same cost or less as an Amtrak sleeper. I have seen many elderly and disabled people struggling with climbing steps and trying to walk on a moving train or standing on the platform waiting for a red cap to help them with their luggage and wonder why they put themselves through all that when planes are so much easier to walk aboard, the flights are shorter and they bring what you need to your seat rather than you having to negotiate your way up the aisle and stand in line to get it. Sometimes it is fun to travel by train but most of time it now has turned into an endurance fest to see how well you can survive. I remember that when I ran the Philadelphia Marathon I ran the 26.2 miles in about 4 1/2 hours. If you are on the Canadian or one of Amtrak’s long distance trains you can spend that much time sitting on a siding out in the “boondocks.” I just can’t understand it but then again I’ve never been the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
In addition to bribes with the taxpayers money, these type of moves are more about the vanity of corporate executives who think they are too important to have to reside and work in a place they deem unworthy of themselves.
The way NS handles the Crescent none of them would want to take it.
Arthur Hazeldine: Your post certainly makes Amtrak overnight travel sound wonderful. The reality, and I believe a large portion of the population will agree with me, is that those NS employees will be trading “today’s hassle and discomfort of commercial air travel” for today’s hassle and discomfort of Amtrak travel. The difference is that the discomfort of air travel lasts just a couple of hours rather than parts of two days (not counting a couple of hours of lateness). As far as working goes, these employees will get more work time by arriving within a couple of hours of departure than having to endure a small bed, poor food, occasionally rude and incompetent service and who really wants to take a shower on a moving train rather than in a hotel room. I don’t even think there is WiFi on the LD trains. So much for checking email. The American people (whether NS employees or not) have voted with their feet that they would rather sleep in their own bed or a king size hotel room bed than in Amtrak’s contraptions that barely fit my 150 pound body. And it really is easier to get dressed in a hotel room rather than the six inches of space between the bed and the wall of an Amtrak roomette even in today’s casual dress workplaces.
I do agree that profitable companies should not be receiving corporate welfare. If building the headquarters is too expensive with all the “bells and whistles” that don’t make sense (roof top deck, fitness center, etc.) then scale it back. If I was a shareholder of NS i would be quite upset with this state of affairs. Average salaries of $105,000 – no wonder railroads have financial difficulties. And this is not the best managed company by a long shot. There’s a lot wrong here.
Right on Gregg.
All we need to know about this (and NOT reported here):
“The city’s development arm, Invest Atlanta, last week approved $23.6 million in tax breaks for the campus in Midtown at West Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue, and state tax credits for new jobs”
Corporate welfare for a highly profitable corporation. We wonder why local and state taxes are so high? Just look at the pigs feeding from the public trough.
Who wrote this piece, the NS PR department???
What a puff piece that press release was! You would think that Atlanta was the center of the Universe to hear all those claims. As a stockholder of Norfolk Southern, I wonder how much this is costing and how much of the cost is necessary to have a functioning headquarters.
Conspicuously and sadly missing from Norfolk Southern’s announcement is that its new headquarters is also near the former Southern Railway, now Amtrak, Peachtree Station, where those Norfolk Southern employees and guests who travel between Atlanta and Washington and who would like to avoid today’s hassle and discomfort of commercial air travel can board Amtrak’s Crescent for a pleasant, comfortable overnight journey over Norfolk Southern rails in an Amtrak Viewliner sleeper, where they can enjoy meals in the dining car, continue to be productive and get work done using the onboard WiFi, have access to an on board shower and arrive rested, refreshed and ready for business at either beautiful and conveniently located Washington Union Station near our nation’s Capitol or Peachtree Station near downtown Atlanta.
was downtown this weekend and saw the former office building gutted and windows removed. Appearently Terminal Tower is gone. Gave me pause as I have visited this area since 1979. Everything changes, except the memories, and photos.