West Palm Beach city commissioners have approved $2 million in incentives for an unnamed technology company that plans to open a regional office downtown employing more than 800 people.
The California-based company, which city officials say provides cloud-computing services to businesses, would operate an “innovation hub” in an office tower being built in CityPlace.
If the company expands to the projected level, it would become one of Palm Beach County’s largest employers and potentially the largest private employer downtown.
Kelly Smallridge, president of the county’s Business Development Board, told commissioners Sept. 2 that the company’s move would amount to the largest corporate expansion into the county in a generation.
“I believe this is the largest relocation deal I have ever seen in over three decades of doing this,” she said.
Smallridge said the plan underscores the transformation of West Palm Beach’s downtown, which has seen a boom in construction of Class A office space after years of complaints that the city offered too little to attract large corporations.
That boom, Smallridge said, also allowed the city to draw mortgage lender NewDay USA to commence plans in 2021 for a 600-person office in CityPlace.
“You would never have seen this 10 years ago,” she said in an interview. “There was no office space.”
Christopher Roog, director of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, said in an interview that it would be up to the company to make its plans public, but that he expected an announcement “in the near future.”
The company plans to move in at 10 City Place, one of two office towers being built by Related Ross on the site of a former movie theater in CityPlace. The two towers are expected to be completed in 2027.
City officials did not name the company, citing confidentiality rules, but its description in city documents appears to align with that of ServiceNow, a Fortune 500 software company that confirmed in March that it was considering opening a West Palm Beach office.
ServiceNow, which employs more than 25,000 people worldwide, declined to comment last week but told Bloomberg in March it was “considering West Palm to support our global growth and future workforce expansion.”
ServiceNow provides software platforms that use artificial intelligence to help companies automate and organize office tasks.
The company has posted job listings on its website for at least six open positions that would be based in West Palm Beach, including a “senior staff AI architect” and a “senior staff software engineer.”