Billion-dollar company Frontdoor moving HQ from Downtown to Southwind
By Stephen MacLeod – Reporter, Memphis Business Journal, Sep 27, 2022
Frontdoor Inc., a publicly traded, Memphis-based home services provider, is moving its headquarters to new office space in the Southwind area.
Frontdoor's new HQ is set to be located at 3400 Players Club Parkway, according to a building permit filed with the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development. The office space is near TPC Southwind and the FedEx World Headquarters.
“Southwind is an ideal location for our corporate headquarters,” said Frontdoor SVP and CFO Brian Turcotte in a prepared statement to MBJ. “This is an exciting time in our business, and this space will allow our team members in the Memphis area and beyond even greater opportunities to work together to simplify homeownership.”
The new location for Frontdoor is significantly smaller than the company’s previous Peabody Place location. Frontdoor held more than 50,000 square feet in Peabody Place.
Frontdoor is Memphis' eighth-largest public company based on its most recent revenue of $1.6 billion. The company employs about 2,000 in total and over 400 locally, according to MBJ research.
The company’s new headquarters at Southwind is set to encompass 18,000 square feet of the 3400 Players Club Parkway building, according to a Frontdoor spokesperson. The company is expecting the new space to be ready in the first quarter of 2023. The space is “well suited for our headquarters and collaboration needs, now and into the future,” according to the spokesperson.
Grinder Taber & Grinder is listed as the contractor for the project. CBRE’s Ron Kastner represented the landlord, Southwind Memphis Realty LP, in lease negotiations. Jim Rainer and Aaron Sommer of Newmark represented Frontdoor.
Frontdoor departs its current Peabody Place space after it had shifted to a more virtual work environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a company spokesperson told MBJ in June, "Over the past two years, we successfully transitioned to a virtual-first business with employees in the Memphis area and across the nation. As a virtual-first business, our current space is no longer ideal for our needs."
The move comes amid a year of significant challenges for Frontdoor, which has been hampered by inflationary headwinds and trends in the housing market, and seen its gross profits decrease despite rising revenues. The company has also seen a slate of new executives this year. On May 20, Frontdoor announced that its president and CEO, Rex Tibbens, would step down, and be replaced by William Cobb, its board chair and the former CEO of Kansas City-based H&R Block. And in June, the company named former H&R Block exec Kathy Collins its SVP and chief marketing officer, and Rocket Mortgage exec Jessica Fields its VP and chief sales officer.
