TAMPA, Fla. — The Water Street district continues to grow.
“This street was literally nothing a few years ago,” said ReliaQuest employee Melissa Ingraham.
Now Water Street in downtown Tampa consists of about 9 million square feet of new residential, hospitality, education, retail, and commercial spaces, including ReliaQuest.
“Reliaquest being here really here at Water Street really validates what we were looking for in the way of a large-scale tenant coming to Water Street but it’s also the site that they’re in, which is technology. Having a homegrown company like ReliaQuest has been incredible for our development and all the growth that we’re seeing within Water Street,” said David Bevirt, Executive Vice President of Corporate Leasing and Strategy at Strategic Property Partners.
ReliaQuest, a cyber security company, just opened its global headquarters in the Water Street District.
It’s the area’s first corporate anchor, taking up seven floors of one of the new buildings, with Google-like offices, 500 Tampa-based employees and 1,000 employees globally.
“It’s been really cool to watch us evolve and grow and also spread out to different cities, different countries,” said ReliaQuest employee Jon-Kyle Smith.
“They’re one of the top cyber security companies in the world, so to have them as our headquarter tenant here is a big deal for us in the validation in Water Street and what we’re doing,” said Bevirt.
Company leaders said Water Street was their top choice for a headquarter location.
“The secret has been out for a long time. Tampa is a great place to be. We love our part in helping people understand that you can grow large, global, multi-million dollar companies from zero to here and cutting edge cyber security arenas with a great talent base of our universities,” said Brian Murphy, Founder and CEO of ReliaQuest.
Employees told ABC Action News that being a part of this growing district has its benefits.
“Just the energy, honestly. You know, every day we walk from the parking garage, we’re just kind of taking it all in and just enjoying the atmosphere,” said Ingraham.
“Anything you need from groceries or just picking something up on the go really quick, it’s right there. Having a whole bunch of different restaurants that just opened up,” said Smith.
“It’s great to be in Water Street, the energy, the optionality. I mean, it’s just the first time in growing ReliaQuest over 16 years, it’s crazy to walk out the front door of your office and you see as many residential people living here and working here that you do kind of corporate tenants,” said Murphy.
“This is exactly what we were hoping for. When you walk the streets right now, you see so many people, whether it’s game night or a concert night. But during the day, it’s exactly what we were looking for,” said Bevirt.
Water Street developers believe ReliaQuest will attract more tech firms to the area and bring in top talent from across the country as they continue working on plans for phase two of the downtown mixed-use development.
“Things are in the works. We’re just working on stabilizing phase one, which we’re almost completed with, and then we’ll look toward the future,” said Bevirt.
