The Mercedes-Benz USA headquarters at 1 Mercedes-Benz Drive (the intersection of Abernathy and Barfield roads). Credit: Rob Knight
Sandy Springs is a corporate-headquarters magnet, boasting nearly as many Fortune 500 companies as Atlanta and plenty of smaller but sometimes prestigious outfits. The New York Stock Exchange is based here; so is Mercedes-Benz’s U.S. arm.
The six Sandy Springs-based companies on the 2021 Fortune 500 list include:
Compare that with seven headquartered in Atlanta proper: Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, Global Payments, NCR, Norfolk Southern (recently relocated from Virginia), PulteGroup and Southern Company. Only four other Fortune 500 companies are located elsewhere in the metro area.
Smaller but powerful companies headquartered in Sandy Springs include Inspire Brands. Based at 3 Glenlake Parkway, the restaurant holding company owns the familiar chains Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’ Donuts, Jimmy John’s, Rusty Taco and Sonic.
Sandy Springs is also popular for major office hubs of corporations headquartered elsewhere, especially for customer service and financial technology functions. Deluxe Corporation, a Minnesota-based company specializing in transactions for large financial institutions — and for printing once-familiar paper checks for bank customers — in August 2021 opened a 700-job technology hub at 5565 Glenridge Connector.
Why is Sandy Springs so popular for corporate HQs? Location, location, location.
For one thing, it’s right next to Atlanta, with its main attractions of cultural and financial centers, a major international airport and a lower cost of living than many other cities. And it’s in Georgia, where relocating companies can be assured of significant tax incentives.
Sandy Springs is special in the metro area for its own transportation infrastructure — two major highways (I-285 and Ga. 400) that can take people in all directions, and MARTA’s Red Line train. All of the local Fortune 500 companies are located right on a highway or Red Line stop. Also making Sandy Springs attractive is a demographic of the managers and technology workers corporations are seeking and the suburban style of living many of them want. And there’s plenty of office complexes and towers.
Many of the companies moved to Sandy Springs from elsewhere in search of some combo of these benefits.
Shipping giant UPS moved here from Connecticut in the 1990s, citing lower housing costs for employees and proximity to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. WestRock, a packaging company, moved from Norcross in 2017 to the Northpark office towers atop the Sandy Springs MARTA Station, citing in part better transit options for employees. It also became a neighbor of Veritiv, another Fortune 500 packaging company.
Tax breaks and other incentives can play a major role. Mercedes-Benz USA moved from New Jersey to the corner of Abernathy and Barfield roads in 2018 with $26 million in state and municipal incentives. The deal even included the right to rename Barfield to Mercedes-Benz Drive in a branding exercise that was scaled back to just a small section of road after a neighboring Mormon temple objected to having a luxury brand on its street address.
Newell Brands is a holding company whose many household brands include Rubbermaid, Sharpie pens, Krazy Glue and Coleman. Between tax incentives and corporate restructurings, it’s made a dizzying series of HQ moves in recent years. In 2016, it moved its headquarters less than a third of mile within Sandy Springs into a building it owned. But just months later, following a corporate merger, it announced it moving to New Jersey in a deal involving $27 million in incentives. But three years later, it moved right back to the same Sandy Springs address.
Such fast comings and goings may be part of Sandy Springs’ future. In modern times, corporate headquarters tend to be more mobile and their locations more opportunistic as sprawling company campuses have gone the way of the dinosaur. Many companies have decentralized, with the formal HQ a relatively small office that can fit almost anywhere.
While many companies move here, others were founded in Sandy Springs or Atlanta. Intercontinental Exchange is one, founded by Atlantan Jeffrey Sprecher and long run in partnership with his wife Kelly Loeffler, who is now better known for her brief stint as a Republican U.S. senator before being ousted by Democrat Raphael Warnock in the historic 2020 election. (Loeffler no longer works for the company and remains politically active.) ICE, as the company is known, is a holding company for various financial transactions marketplaces. Its claim to fame was its surprise acquisition in 2013 of the New York Stock Exchange, one of many exchanges it now owns and operates. It’s headquartered in a nondescript office park along I-285 near the Cobb County line.
A sore spot for local leaders is that, while Sandy Springs and its tax incentives are attractive to so many companies, the city name is not. The vast majority of companies located here use “Atlanta” in their business addresses, which works fine for getting mail and is more familiar and arguably more prestigious. Mercedes-Benz is one of the few companies that has deliberately used Sandy Springs in its public-facing contact addresses.
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