Under Armour plots city expansion

Under Armour Inc., one of Baltimore's fastest-growing companies, plans to nearly double its local labor force within the next four years as part of a massive expansion near its Tide Point headquarters in South Baltimore.

The publicly traded sports apparel firm is expected to grow from 450 employees to about 800 and lease about 140,000 square feet at 1450 Beason St. from its Tide Point landlord, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse Inc., according to documents obtained by the Baltimore Business Journal.

The Baltimore developer plans to spend about $14 million to renovate Overflo Public Warehouse Inc.'s property near the extension of Key Highway in the city's Locust Point neighborhood, according to documents filed Nov. 26 with Baltimore City's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals.

The expansion would give Under Armour, one of the sporting goods industry's strongest brands, about 140,000 square feet of additional office, warehouse and retail space, including a planned 7,000-square-foot factory outlet store geared primarily for its employees, according to the city's zoning documents.

It also would be one of the largest corporate expansions to take place in Baltimore within the past five years and would be another coup for Struever Bros., which recently teamed with H&S Properties Development Corp. to sign financial giant Morgan Stanley to 130,000 square feet at the planned Harbor Point development.

Struever Bros. Senior Development Director Amy Bonitz Palmer told members of the Locust Point Civic Association Dec. 5 that the developer has a contract to buy the land from Overflo for an undisclosed price. The property is assessed at $4.1 million, according to state tax data.

Palmer said Under Armour hopes to move into its new space by April to meet its rapid growth. Under Armour would lease the property for a six-year term, she said.

The warehouse space has enough room for 345 desks, expected to be filled during the next three or four years. Palmer also said the move is viewed as an interim step for Under Armour, which is in the process of forming a long-range plan to build a larger campus for itself in Baltimore.

"They are a very fast-growing company, and they need expansion space from us over the next nine months to meet their expansion goals as a company," Palmer said.

Under Armour ranked fifth on the Baltimore Business Journal's 2007 List of fastest-growing public companies in the region based upon year-over-year revenue growth. It ranked 17th among the region's largest publicly held companies, with revenue of about $431 million in fiscal 2006.

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source: bizjournals.com