(Bloomberg) -- Foot Locker Inc. is moving its headquarters to Florida from New York to save on costs and build on its existing presence in the state.
The sneaker seller’s move to St. Petersburg, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, is set to take place in late 2025. The firm, which announced the relocation on Wednesday with its earnings report, already has executives based there, as the city was home to the previous headquarters of Foot Locker’s sister brand Champs.
The city has been “a center of gravity for Foot Locker for a long time,” Chief Executive Officer Mary Dillon said in an interview. “There are cost efficiencies over time by doing this, but we’re going to continue to have a presence in New York to keep connections to basketball and sneaker culture.”
St. Petersburg, a city of about 250,000 near Tampa, hasn’t attracted nearly as much attention from corporations and billionaires as Miami, which is now home to Ken Griffin and Jeff Bezos. But the city’s lower cost of living relative to South Florida, plus beaches and lower taxes, has lured some.
In 2021, Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management traded New York for the Florida city, which has also been the longtime home of Raymond James Financial Inc.
St. Petersburg helped support the relocation with potential tax incentives. For the city, the move “serves as a transformative project that boosts the growth of job opportunities,” said Cynthia Johnson, director of Pinellas County Economic Development.
Foot Locker’s relocation is expected to lead to 175 net new jobs by 2026, for an estimated total of 330 employees in the Florida city, according to Pinellas County Economic Development. Dillon said Foot Locker will not require employees to relocate to Florida.
(Updates with estimated impact on St. Petersburg starting sixth paragraph.)
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