State Farm is ending its 60-year history in Newark, announcing that it will no longer have employees working at its operations center in the area, as reported by Newark Advocate.
However, that doesn’t mean its Newark employees have to say goodbye to the company. State Farm is not renewing its lease on the building at 1440 Granville Road, but it will allow staff to continue to work from home, as they have been since March.
“We recently announced that employees will no longer physically report to a number of State Farm operations centers located across the country,” State Farm spokeswoman Gina Morss-Fischer told Newark Advocate. “Most employees assigned to these locations have been working from home since March and will continue to do so.”
The Newark Operations Center has had a long run, holding the title of State Farm’s largest facility in Ohio back in 2012, and growing from a 60,000 square foot building when it opened its doors in 1960, to the 325,000 square feet building that stands there today. In October 2018, State Farm said that it would extend its lease for five more years, but only planned to use 46% of the building’s space, with the property owner looking for another tenant to occupy the remaining square footage.
State Farm’s lease on its facility in New Albany, which was part of the company’s portfolio sale package to Lone Star Funds in 2013, will likewise not be renewed.
The insurer had 650 employees working at the Newark center in late 2018 – a figure that reflects the slow dwindling of the workforce from the 1,300 employees who worked there in 2013. That same year, State Farm said that some work performed at the Newark Operations Center would relocate to Atlanta, Dallas, and Tempe, AZ.
The news comes as Ohio’s COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations reach record highs.
