Progressive Corp. puts five buildings up for sale in eastern suburbs

Insurance giant Progressive Corp. (NYSE: PGR) is looking to sell five buildings, totaling almost 300,000 square feet of office, industrial and flex space in the eastern suburbs.

The listings appeared in the CoStar real estate database on Friday, Aug. 12, without any prices. Progressive is marketing the buildings as vacant properties.

The Fortune 500 company, based in Mayfield Village, is one of the region’s largest employers, with a sprawling campus along I-271. The company invited workers back to the office in late March, two years into the pandemic, but made returning voluntary.

A Progressive spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the listings and the company’s real estate strategy. In April, though, a spokeswoman said Progressive was still assessing the landscape.

“We are always evaluating our real estate footprint and will continue to make the best decisions in the interest of optimizing our portfolio,” she wrote in an email.

The properties earmarked for sale are 6055 Parkland Blvd., a 104,221-square-foot office building in Mayfield Heights; 624, 625 and 650 Alpha Drive in Highland Heights; and 651 Beta Drive, a former service center in Mayfield Village. Progressive has owned most of them for decades.

The company also plans to put 56.5 acres up for sale in Mayfield Village, according to a document distributed to real estate brokers. The company acquired that property, at 520 SOM Center Road, in 2006 for a third corporate campus that never materialized.

Michael Gatto, a broker who handled Progressive’s real estate work in the 1990s, said the Highland Heights properties should see strong interest from prospective buyers. Built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they’re warehouses or industrial-to-office conversions.

“That’s very desirable space as long as the market continues to be strong,” said Gatto, president of the Gatto Group Inc. tenant-representation firm in Willoughby Hills.