What was to be a new call center grew into the company's regional headquarters. The company has had a presence in Virginia Beach for 36 years. It's a much larger economic base than I thought. More than 1.5 million people live in Hampton Roads. It was the Old Dominion's largest employment expansion of 1998.
Economic development is high stakes.
They're going from 200 employees to 4,500, but if we don't team up with the state and retain this business and help them expand, we have nothing. According to Miller, Geico was also looking at sites in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. But the company announced in February 1998 that it would build a new facility on 27 acres in the Virginia Beach Corporate Landing Business Park. Virginia Beach came up with attractive land-option agreements. The Virginia Beach economic development folks and the mayor are certainly very aggressive and very persuasive.