Vanguard Chooses Center City Satellite Office

Yet another business has chosen Center City as a new home. The downtown core of Philadelphia is one of the city’s hottest locations for real estate, as proven by the fact that a mutual fund company is opening an “innovation center” there. Vanguard’s headquarters are enormous and based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The new location, situated at 2300 Chestnut Street, will occupy just two floors of the historic building. At first, just twenty employees will staff the location.

Vanguard will open its satellite office on Chestnut Street in the second quarter.

Vanguard is expecting that the move-in will be complete by the second quarters. In terms of long-term goals, they are thinking that they will eventually have about one hundred employees – and maybe even some external partners – working in the innovation center. The company is jumping on the current bandwagon trend of businesses chosing older buildings with character rather than sleek 80s- and 90s-vintage skyscraper space as their homes.

What do we know about the building where Vanguard will make its second home? Well, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, “Known as the Philadelphia Design Building, the 100,000-square-foot historic structure has been marketed by JLL as creative office space. Among its tenants are Saxbys Coffee, which has its headquarters in the building, Lauletta Birnbaum, a New Jersey law firm that has a satellite office, as well as Running Press.”

The building has going for it access to some of Philadelphia’s leading educational hubs, including Drexel University and UPenn, the latter of whom Vanguard aims to work with. For employees’ convenience, it is also close to 30th Street Station.

According to Vanguard spokesperson Arianna Sherlock, the company has been eyeballing Center City as the location for a satellite office since about November. What made the Chestnut Street location a winner? An open floor plan, big windows to let in plenty of light, and location, location, location.