The National Rifle Association has been looking to move its physical headquarters from Fairfax, Virginia to Texas. WFAA reported the following last month:
National Rifle Association sets sights on Richardson office towers for headquarters relocation
In its hunt to relocate its headquarters from Virginia to Texas, the National Rifle Association has scoped out office space in Richardson that State Farm Insurance is trying to unload.
The NRA’s headquarters is currently in Fairfax, Virginia. The gun rights organization is searching for 200,000 to 300,000 square feet of office space to house its new headquarters, said Dallas-Fort Worth commercial real estate veteran Steve Triolet, senior vice president of Research and Market Forecasting Operations for Partners Real Estate.
“They’ve toured the State Farm facility in Richardson,” said Triolet, who is based in Dallas. “They’ve got it down to a shorter list where they have physically inspected properties. That doesn’t mean that they will ultimately land in Richardson or Dallas-Fort Worth. They could go somewhere else in Texas.”
The travails of the NRA are well-known and extensively reported. The corruption allegations, the New York AG’s investigation and lawsuit have hit the NRA’s finances and membership hard. Their relocation comes in the middle of this turmoil.
“Texas heads the list” for the NRA’s potential headquarters relocation, an association spokesman told CoStar in an email, according to the June 20 article.
Triolet said he thinks DFW is the frontrunner to land the NRA headquarters, followed by Houston, then San Antonio.
Illinois-based State Farm has four high-rise office towers in the large CityLine development at President George Bush Turnpike and Plano Road in Richardson and is looking ideally to sublease one or two of them to a single tenant per building, Triolet said. The buildings total more than 2 million square feet, and all four are about the same size.
“They don’t want to carve them up,” Triolet said. “They’re looking for a user to take one or potentially more than one of those properties. That’s hard to find.”
The location appears to be a good fit for the NRA, and it may be a win-win for both parties involved in the potential transaction.
Triolet said that State Farm employees occupy less than half of the total space in the four Richardson towers on an average day.
“They could easily get rid of two buildings if they wanted to and they can find a taker,” he said.
Texas is a good location for the NRA because of the depth and breadth of its ties:
The NRA has strong ties to Texas and its membership concentration in the state. The association will hold its 2024 annual meeting in Dallas next May and held its 2022 annual meeting in Houston.
But opposition to the move has already begun. Besides this histrionic “No NRA HQ in Richardson” letter published in The Dallas Morning News, the Second Amendment-hating Moms Demand Action are going to oppose the First Amendment rights of the NRA to move to Richardson, Texas and peacefully conduct their daily affairs. The Everytown website has this event listed:
TX-North Texas-Richardson City Council Meeting
Richardson Police Department-Municipal Room
200 N Greenville Ave
Richardson, TX 75081
When:
Monday, July 10, 5:30 PM
Join us at the Richardson City Council meeting to peacefully oppose the NRA relocating its headquarters to Richardson, Texas. The meeting begins at 6 PM, so please arrive by 5:30 PM. Wear orange or your red Moms Demand Action shirt. To sign up to give public comment, please visit tinyurl.com/RichardsonComment by 5 PM Monday, July 10, and select “VISITOR SECTION” during the registration process. PLEASE DO NOT GIVE PUBLIC COMMENT OR SPEAK TO MEDIA ON BEHALF OF MOMS DEMAND ACTION OR IN A MOMS DEMAND ACTION SHIRT WITHOUT PRIOR APPROVAL.
To what end does opposing the NRA’s move to Texas help with “preventing gun violence” as the Bill of Rights-hating Moms Demand are doing? This is yet another tactic of harassment aimed at blocking the right of the NRA to go about its business.
If you’re a gun owner and a resident of the city of Richardson, Texas, or live in the area, please make it a point to visit the City Council meeting today. Alternatively, if you know someone who is a resident of Richardson, please forward this note to them and urge them to show up and testify in front of the City Council. If you are unable to attend in person, please consider submitting an online public comment.
Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing the move to San Antonio but there would be a ton of resistance from the current mayor and most of the city council, never mind the boost it would provide to our local economy. IIRC we had a chance to host the annual meeting a few years back and the mayor flatly refused to even consider it in any shape size or fashion.
My question for the hierarchy of the organization is, what happens to the property in Fairfax if the HQ move occurs? Specifically the National Firearms Museum and the several ranges also on the property. I suspect that moving all of the infrastructure would put a big dent in Wayne’s suit budget 🙁