Lockton has broken ground on a new headquarters in Leawood — a project backed by $125 million in tax incentives, according to KSHB 41 Kansas City, which reported the news Wednesday, May 28.
Lockton is one of the largest privately held insurance brokerages in the country, and the Leawood project marks a major commitment to keeping its operations in the Kansas City metro area rather than across the state line in Missouri, where the company has long been based.
The $125 million in tax incentives is a substantial public investment. Whether that package came from the state of Kansas, Johnson County, the city of Leawood, or some combination of the three hasn’t been spelled out in available reports. The full terms — including any job-retention or job-creation requirements tied to the incentive agreement — weren’t immediately clear.
Leawood sits in Johnson County, one of the wealthier suburbs in the Kansas City metro. It’s competed aggressively for corporate relocations and expansions for years, and landing a company of Lockton’s size is the kind of deal local economic development offices pursue for a long time before a shovel ever hits the ground.
Still, $125 million in public incentives for a single private company will draw scrutiny. Deals of that size typically require legislative or city council approval, and watchdog groups in Kansas have pushed back on large corporate subsidy packages before — arguing the return on investment rarely matches the projections used to sell the deal to lawmakers.
Lockton hasn’t said publicly how many employees it plans to place at the Leawood campus, when the building is expected to open, or how large the facility will be. A timeline for construction completion wasn’t available as of the report’s publication.
Reporting by KSHB 41 Kansas City. Read the original report.
