$50 MILLION DEVELOPMENT PLANNED FOR MUELLER
Building in bustling area will be new home for 650 employees.
Texas Mutual Insurance Co. is moving its headquarters to Mueller, bringing 650 workers to the bustling mixed-use development just north of downtown Austin.
Construction on the firm’s fourstory, 270,000-square-foot headquarters began this week. Filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation indicate the project will cost in excess of $50 million.
When it opens in mid-2018, the building will house employees currently working at two separate Austin-area offices.
There will also be room to accommodate future growth, Texas Mutual president and CEO Rich Gergasko said.
“The driving force behind this is we’ve been growing our workforce,” Gergasko told the American-Statesman. “We looked at five different locations, but we kept coming back to Mueller. They’re creating a healthy environment to work and live, and I think that’s a great thing.”
Texas Mutual is the largest writer of workers’ compensation insurance in Texas, with almost 40 percent of the Texas market. It was created in 1991 by the Texas Legislature.
Lawmakers created the insurer — initially called the Texas Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fund — because Texas employers couldn’t find anyone to write policies covering their employees injured on the job. In 2001, it was converted into a mutual insurance company.
The Mueller site that Texas Mutual selected — along Aldrich Street between Philomena and Garcia streets — is only about a mile from the building at 6210 E. U.S. 290 where most Texas Mutual employees currently work, Gergasko said. The rest are housed off Capital of Texas Highway (Loop 360) near RM 2222 in North Austin.
At Mueller, Texas Mutual will be one of the development’s largest employers, joining Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas and the Seton Healthcare Family administrative offices.
“We’re honored Texas Mutual has become the latest large employer to choose Mueller for its headquarters,” said Greg Weaver,