Mercedes-Benz USA held a grand opening of its new headquarters in Sandy Springs Thursday, more than three years after it first announced it would relocate its North American headquarters from New Jersey.
Two of the main concerns since the announcement has been increased traffic and affordable housing in the area.
“We’re going to have about 1,000 people working here in this building in our new home office,” said CEO Dietmar Exler. “I don’t know where they all going to live but I would assume north side of the city, but we’re excited to be part of the Sandy Springs community.”
The 200,000 square foot glass building cost more than $93 million. Construction began in September 2016.
The company expects to house 1,000 employees at its new building. Many of those employees will be moving from Montvale, New Jersey and its temporary headquarters in Dunwoody.
Mercedes-Benz USA corporate headquarters in Sandy Springs. (Paul Abell/Abell Images for Mercedes-Benz USA)
Lab1886
The company also announced it would build a new technology incubator in metro Atlanta that would be separate from its corporate headquarters.
“More autonomy to go after promising ideas wherever they come from internally and externally, little bit of a venture capital fund-like set-up that has the advantage of whenever they need help from anybody at Daimler: expertise, resources, know-how, whatever, we are there for them to call on,” Exler said.
The company has incubators in three other cities: Stuttgart and Berlin in Germany, and Beijing in China.
The metro Atlanta incubator will be the first independent facility in the U.S. The first people to work on the project in the U.S. were housed at a research and development office in Sunnyvale, California.
