The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America built a new three-story, 281,680 square-foot corporate headquarters facility in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

Attracting new businesses to the Lehigh Valley tends to get bigger headlines, but with nearly 70 percent of all Lehigh Valley job growth from the last five years coming from existing companies, it is equally crucial to help ensure those already here are growing and thriving.

And there was no bigger business retention success story last year than Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.

One of the nation’s largest mutual life insurers, Guardian completed a new three-story, 281,680 square-foot corporate headquarters facility in Hanover Township, Northampton County, housing more than 1,700 employees in total.

Guardian was among the featured projects highlighted in a video produced by the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC) for its 2017 Annual Meeting. It can be seen below:

In the two-minute video, LVEDC President and CEO Cunningham explains why the Guardian project was “an incredible development for the Lehigh Valley.”

“What it says is a major national company wants to be here here with its top-level executives, and is willing to make a statement about consolidating facilities and building anew,” Cunningham said.

Guardian is one of 15 companies in the Lehigh Valley with 1,000 or more employees. The new headquarters at 6255 Sterner’s Way consolidated Guardian’s previous regional headquarters that was spread across three buildings in Bethlehem and one in Allentown.

In the LVEDC video, Stu Shaw, Chief Actuary at Guardian and a member of the LVEDC Board of Directors, said the company expanded from its Manhattan home office in the early 1980s because it was seeking lower costs for some of its functions.

“It’s just been a great location for us,” Shaw said. “(It provides) easy proximity to get into our home office in New York, but a good workforce here that we’ve really been able to build over the years.”

The H-shaped office complex was designed to enhance work/life integration for employees, increase the ability to work collaboratively, and place all offices in the center of the building to maximize natural daylight and external views.

The video was developed by ASR Media at PBS39, which also prepared featured LVEDC project videos about Tyber Medical and Michelman Steel Enterprises. Those videos can be found on the LVEDC YouTube Channel, and will be released on the LVEDC blog in upcoming weeks.