Fortune 500 Ferguson Takes 50,570 Square Feet at Gasworx, Filling Ybor's New Office Building Before It Opens

Ferguson, the Fortune 500 plumbing, HVAC and waterworks distributor with $31.3 billion in annual sales, will open a corporate office at the Gasworx development in Ybor City, taking 50,570 square feet and beginning operations there in April 2027. The lease fills the six-story office and retail building's remaining office space before construction is even finished, which means Ybor's biggest redevelopment now has two corporate anchors sending hundreds of workers into the district every weekday, on streets Tampa families already walk on weekends.

The building, about 110,000 square feet with retail on the ground floor, is scheduled for completion in December. Grow Financial Federal Credit Union had already committed to the other half. Between the two, the office space is gone.

What Ferguson is putting here

Executive leadership roles and other business functions are among the first operations expected to move in. The Tampa office will also work as a training, development and onboarding hub for a company that employs roughly 35,000 people across more than 1,700 locations in North America.

CEO Kevin Murphy said the company chose Tampa for its accessibility and connections to Ferguson locations in all 50 states and every Canadian province, pointing to Tampa International Airport and the mix of uses planned around the office. Ferguson joined the S&P 500 on Aug. 5.

The company has not said how many people will work out of the Tampa office, which executive positions are moving, or how many of the jobs will be new local hires rather than relocations. According to news reports, Ferguson has said roughly 25 to 50 associates will relocate to Tampa from various parts of the country starting in 2027. Ferguson stays headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, where its corporate office employs more than 800 people.

The building itself

It sits in the Barrio Latino Historic District, designed by S9 Architecture with Smallwood as architect of record and built by Moss, which topped the structure out last fall. Plans include a rooftop deck, outdoor terraces, and a lobby café and bar that opens directly onto the retail and dining marketplace Gasworx is building around it.

That marketplace matters more than the rooftop does. Ground-floor restaurants and shops in a district like this live or die on daytime traffic, and until now Ybor's weekday customer base has been thin compared to its Friday night one. Two full floors of office tenants change that math.

Where this fits in a 50-acre project

Gasworx covers roughly 50 acres between Ybor City and downtown Tampa, developed by KETTLER, Tampa developer Darryl Shaw and PPF Real Estate. The plan calls for thousands of residences, office and retail space, public gathering areas, pedestrian improvements and a new TECO Line Streetcar stop serving the district.

The residential side is further along than most people driving past realize. Three apartment buildings carry names pulled from Ybor's history: The Stevedore, for the dockworkers who ran the early port; The Luisa, for Luisa Capetillo, the only recorded female lector in Ybor's cigar factories; and Olivette, for the steamship that once ran between Tampa and Havana. The names were chosen in consultation with the Tampa Bay History Center. Current phases are expected to deliver more than 900 residences and 55,000 square feet of retail.

For residents, the near-term change is traffic and construction on the streets around Fourth Avenue and, eventually, a walkable connection between the historic core and downtown that does not require a car.

What happens next

Construction on the office building continues through the fall, with completion set for December. Grow Financial's move-in follows the handover. Ferguson's target for being operational is April 2027, which gives the company most of a year to build out its floors. Olivette, the last of the three named residential buildings, is scheduled for summer 2027.

No opening date has been announced for the new streetcar stop.

Keep up with Gasworx and the rest of what's changing in Ybor at Tampa Community Website, and follow us on Facebook for daily updates. Got a take on what two corporate tenants will do to the neighborhood? Join the conversation in our Community Forum.

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Header photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)