Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Spirit Airlines to invest $250M in new HQ, move 1,000 workers
Spirit Airlines will invest $250 million in a new Dania Beach corporate headquarters, moving 1,000 employees from Miramar, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance announced Thursday.
The discount airline said it would add 225 jobs at its new Dania Beach campus by 2022, with an annual average salary of $79,000. The new jobs will be an expansion of all types of jobs at Spirit, the airline said.
Spirit was also considering a site in Dallas, Texas, as a possible location for its new headquarters, according to the Alliance, the county’s economic development group.
In an interview Thursday, Spirit Airlines president and CEO Ted Christie said Spirit has spent two years looking for a new headquarters site around the country before deciding to stay with Broward.
He said Dania Pointe’s proximity to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport and being closer to the Fort Lauderdale metro talent were selling points.
“What gets airline people geeked about being part of an airline is seeing airplanes every day,” he said.
Bob Swindell, president of the Alliance, the county’s economic development group, said the Broward County Commission in September approved $2.25 million in a state and local incentives package for Spirit, for capital investment and confirmed job creation. The state signed off on the incentives Wednesday night, he said.
Dania Beach also recently snagged JetBlue’s Travel Products subsidiary at the Design Center of the America.
Spirit, which has been headquartered in South Florida for more than 20 years, submitted site plans to Dania Beach to build a campus up to 500,000 square feet at Dania Pointe, a mixed-use development with more than one million square feet of retail space.
One factor is that Dania Beach is closer to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport than Spirit’s current headquarters in Miramar.
Spirit employs a total of 4,000 employees in South Florida, including pilots and other employees who live here, and the 1,000 who are currently working at its Miramar headquarters.
Swindell said Spirit’s new headquarters will have more visibility from I-95 and the airport, and include corporate housing and an international training center for pilots.
“The Dania Pointe development is really a perfect fit. Pilots can stay in corporate housing, and can walk to restaurants and retail,” Swindell said. The development also will include multi-family residential, retail and other corporate offices.
The new headquarters is expected to have a total economic benefit of $14.78 million for Dania Beach and Broward County, according to the county’s Office of Economic and Small Business Development, which recommended approval of incentives for the project.
In September, Spirit announced new, roomier seats and senior manage
ment signed a public pledge to upgrade the airline’s customer service.
Christie said Spirit also has struck an agreement to add high-speed Wi-Fi on its flights in response to customer demand.
For its new headquarters, Spirit has entered into an agreement with Kimco Realty, the owner and principal developer of Dania Pointe, to secure the land, according to the Alliance.
Gensler will be the lead architectural firm, and Jones Lang LaSalle was selected as the project adviser.
Swindell said the Alliance would work with city officials in Miramar to help fill office space to be vacated by Spirit.
Miramar Assistant City Manager Shaun Gayle, who acts as spokeswoman for the city, couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday about losing Spirit’s headquarters to Dania Beach.
Spirit is one of the busiest airlines at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, operating 135 Airbus jetliners.