CarMax Inc., the retailer of used (er, make that “pre-owned”) cars, was a national leader in 2005 when it built a LEED-certified headquarters building in the West Creek office park in Goochland County west of Richmond. Now, a decade later, the company is leasing space in the historic Lady Byrd Hat building downtown.
The 26,000-foot facility will house between 80 and 120 employees working in the digital, marketing and information-technology departments. “Team members have the opportunity to work in a unique environment similar to a startup, but backed by the support of a large, established company,” said Shamim Mohammad, CarMax chief information officer. “We are looking for a variety of experience levels to develop best-in-class platforms and advance our website, mobile apps and associate platforms.”
Why downtown? It’s where the young IT workers want to be. The company hopes that exposed brick, hardwood floors and location on the Canal Walk of the Lady Byrd Hat building will be cool enough to attract the techies, spokesperson Catherine Gryp told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
CarMax is hardly turning its back on its suburban campus. In expansion mode, the company is hiring another 80 positions at its headquarters location as well. But the expansion to downtown a sure sign that the many suburban-based businesses in the Richmond region no longer defer automatically to the suburban option. Downtown Richmond is more competitive than it has been in decades, and the same probably holds true for other traditional downtowns across Virginia.
–JAB
