UPDATE: Asurion bringing 500 jobs to downtown

UPDATE: Mayor Karl Dean and Asurion CEO Sean McKinless held a joint press conference Thursday morning in SoBro's Ragland Building announcing that the company plans to bring jobs to downtown.

Asurion will lease the 92,000-square-foot building. Housed there will be what were described as 500 hi-tech professionals. According to McKinless, these positions will include positions such as management and coders, among others. The Grassmere-based company will both migrate some positions from the company's other offices in town as well as bring in new positions as well. Asked about the breakdown between migrations and new hires, McKinless told reporters that plans were still being formulated.

The expansion comes following a 2010 announcement when Asurion unveiled a five-year plan to keep the company's headquarters in Nashville as well as add 500 jobs over the, at the time, next five years. According to McKinless, the company is trending ahead of that projection, having already added 200 jobs since the announcement.

"We are excited to have found a space solution and environment that is reflective of Asurion culture," McKinless said. "The revitalization of the SoBro area certainly creates a desirable, creative location for our technology products associates."

As to the culture remark, McKinless said that one of the factors that made the Ragland Building so attractive is the fact that it is LEED Gold certified, a point Dean stressed in his remarks as well.

Asurion hopes to have workers occupying the space by this fall.

 

As originally posted:

Mayor Karl Dean and Sean McKinless, senior vice president of global operations at Asurion Corp., have scheduled an “expansion announcement” for 10 a.m. on Thursday at SoBro’s Ragland Building.

The Ragland Building is located at Second Avenue South and Korean Veteran Boulevard. A major renovation of the building, which rises five stories and contains about 92,000 square feet, was completed in 2010. 

Asurion, world’s largest provider of wireless handset insurance and wireless roadside assistance programs, had 2010 profits of $100 million on revenues of $4 billion and early this year paid its private-equity owners a $1 billion dividend [2]. The company has its international headquarters in Grassmere, its North American headquarters in Kansas City and offices in California, Georgia, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia as well as various foreign countries.

The company has in recent years added hundreds of local jobs [3] and been one of Nashville's more prominent economic development success stories. But it also has had to resolve a number of legal cases and faced complaints [4] from a number of its customers.