Under Armour announced plans to redevelop its waterfront land in South Baltimore’s Port Covington as a global headquarters by 2025. Under Armour described the development as a “reimagine for a post-COVID environment” that will downsize its global corporate and Americas regional functions into one location with a hybrid office/home workplace model.

“Under Armour’s global headquarters at Port Covington will become the primary home to our Americas business and our core global functions,” said Patrik Frisk, CEO and president of Under Armour, in a statement. “The campus will represent the future of performance grounded in innovation that embodies the ethos we live, breathe and sweat as a team every single day. We are excited to continue our commitment to the City of Baltimore and provide an even better workspace for teammates, a new retail location and a best-in-class athletic facility, as we plan for the future of the brand.”

All 1,700 Baltimore-based employees will be consolidated into a five-story, 284,000-square-foot office building at its 50-acre Port Covington property located at 2601 Port Covington Drive. The company’s headquarters is currently at Tide Point in Locust Point. It also has a 170,000-square-foot office, Building 37, at its Port Covington property and leases space at the City Garage in Port Covington.

The envisioned campus will include an NCAA-regulation track and field facility, a multi-sport playing field and basketball courts to serve primarily as a testing ground for Under Armour’s product development and sports marketing. Seating will be available for 1,400 spectators. Managed by Under Armour, the athletic facility will be available to Under Armour employees and the Baltimore community through shared-use agreements and special events.

The transition to Port Covington will happen in three phases.

  • The first phase is for UA LightHouse, currently at City Garage, to relocate to Building 37 in mid-2022.
  • The second will be the construction of the track and field facility with a multi-sport playing field on land east of Building 37.
  • Under Armour will unveil detailed plans for its new office building in late 2021 or early 2022 with a targeted opening of the first quarter of 2024. With office spaces that are designed for collaboration to support more of a hybrid workplace mode, it will also have a 30,000-square-foot Under Armour store.

“In planning our new global headquarters, we utilized industry-leading commercial experts to consult on the campus’ design,” said Neil Jurgens, senior vice president of real estate at Under Armour, in a press release. “In line with one of our core values, Act Sustainably, the campus will include several sustainable and intelligent building design features that align with our commitment to environmental responsibility, including substantially lowering the company’s carbon footprint and energy usage, while contributing to the overall success of the greater Baltimore community.”

Under Armour first announced plans to build a new campus at the former Port Covington Shopping Center in 2016 when it acquired the 50-acre site. The latest plan is scaled down from its initial master plan that called for 4 million square feet of new buildings in part reflecting a shift to a hybrid home/office working model. A portion of the company’s workforce will work on campus regularly, a portion will work remotely and a portion will work in a hybrid model. The downsized headquarters plan also comes as Under Armour has focused on reducing its overhead to adjust to slower growth.

“The business has had its headwinds and struggles and that sort of thing, and we’ve worked through those,” Jurgens said during a virtual media briefing Monday, according to The Baltimore Sun. “Building on lessons learned … over the past 14 months as COVID-19 impacted all of us, we’ve looked at how we do our work and what does it mean to have a work-life integration that is the basis for our new workplace.”

Photo courtesy Under Armour