Foot Locker quietly moves ahead with relocating HQ from NY to St. Pete

Heading into 2025, plans are in the works for Foot Locker, one of the biggest retail chains in the country, to move its corporate headquarters to St. Petersburg.

The announcement was made in August and came about three years after the company had secured nearly $500,000 in incentives from the city and Pinellas County.

About four months later, in mid-December, little is known publicly about Foot Locker’s plans for the area, though.

Among the lingering questions: when the move will occur; how many employees will move; and specifically where the headquarters will be located.

A spokesperson for the (for now) New York-based sportswear and footwear company writes in an email that “We don’t have any additional updates at this time, but we can share any news with you when it becomes available.”

That, the spokesperson writes, is likely coming in the second half of 2025. 

But just because the company — as well as city — is quiet, that doesn’t mean that things aren’t moving.

On Nov. 22, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch attended a reception with “our new friends at Foot Locker…welcoming their team to our city.”

Image via The Progress Report with Mayor Ken Welch

“Many of the Foot Locker staff members will be relocating to St. Pete soon, so it was nice to get to know them as they get acquainted with our city,” the mayor's office says in a Nov. 27 Progress Report, a weekly email update.

The email blast included a picture of Welch addressing a crowd of Foot Locker employees gathered in a ballroom.

And in a December earnings statement the company — in a footnote in a section on non-GAAP adjustments — reports $7 million in reorganization costs “primarily related to the announced closure and relocation.”

Foot Locker President and CEO Mary Dillon announced the company’s decision to relocate to St. Petersburg in an August quarterly earnings call. She said at the time that the move was part of an effort “to better support our strategic progress (and) increase team member collaboration, as well as ongoing expense discipline.”

Following the August earnings call, a spokesperson for the company told the Business Observer in an email that the relocation was part of a program called the Lace Up Plan “created to pursue ongoing expense discipline and advance the long-term operations and growth of the company.”

The program seems to be working. In the third quarter earnings statement released in December, Foot Locker says it opened 10 new stores and closed 24 others. During that time, it remodeled or relocated 20 stores and “refreshed” 167 stores to include its updated design.

The company says it has 2,450 stores in 26 countries and 214 licensed stores operating in the Middle East and Asia as of Nov. 2.

With $1.9 billion in sales for the third quarter, Foot Locker will join a roster of Fortune 500 companies already calling Pinellas home. That includes, Jabil and Raymond James in the city of St. Petersburg and TD Synnex in the city of Largo.

“I remain confident,” Dillon said in August when the relocation to St. Petersburg was first announced, “that we are taking the right actions to position the company for its next 50 years of profitable growth and create long-term shareholder value.”