USAA to Leave Norfolk, Move 500 Employees to Chesapeake

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

USAA plans to relocate more than 500 employees from its current office in Norfolk to Chesapeake by December. The San Antonio-based financial services company will move from its mid-Atlantic regional office at 5800 Northampton Blvd. to Battlefield Technology Center II in Chesapeake, according to Inside Business. USAA employees will provide claims support for 9.6 million clients at the company’s new location.

Located at 520 Independence Parkway in Chesapeake, USAA’s future home is an 81,478-square-foot building that was completed in 1998. The company’s new space will be about 10 percent larger than the 73,000 square feet it now occupies at The Concourse at Northampton, a 319,444-square-foot, four-story building lowned by USAA Real Estate Co., a USAA affiliate. Battlefield Technology Center II is less than 10 miles from Downtown Norfolk and 14 miles from Norfolk International Airport.

Another Concourse at Northampton tenant, Amerigroup Corp, is in expansion mode. The healthcare insurance company signed a long-term lease at the building last year and by spring 2015, it plans to more than triple its workforce there from 500 to 1,600.

According to CBRE Group Inc., the office vacancy rate in the Hampton Roads area increased to 16.9% during the fourth quarter of 2012 as the market recorded 106,780 square feet of negative absorption.

The best-performing submarket at year’s end was Central Norfolk, thanks in large part to leasing activity at the USAA building, which accounted for much of the submarket’s 256,246 square feet of absorption.

Charts courtesy of CBRE Group Inc.