Darden Restaurants Unveils $152M Headquarters

An Orange County Fortune 500 Company has unveiled its new headquarters. The state and county offered Darden Restaurants incentives to rebuild in the county. In exchange the company promised new jobs.

Right now only critical positions are being filled but the goal is to fill their brand new building with at least 500 new employees by 2013. They hope that will spur growth in this part of south Orange County.

Darden owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Season's 52, Bahama Breeze, The Capital Grille and Longhorn Steakhouse. The company already employs 1,200 people at its corporate headquarters. But when Darden agreed to build the $152 million building in Orlando it promised at least 500 new employees would be working out of the new headquarters building by 2013. In exchange, the state offered $2 million in incentives. Orange County added another $500,000 thousand to that.

But first Darden has to have 191 new employees by December 31st. So far, there are only about 100.

"Will you meet the deadline in December to hire 191 new employees?" Eyewitness News reporter Daralene Jones asked Darden CEO Clarence Otis.

"We're not sure. When we initially talked to the county and state and talked about growth I don't think anyone anticipated the depth of downturn we would experience. So we are a little bit behind and fully expect to continue to grow and I think the state and county know that," Otis said.

Darden does anticipate when it starts to hire some of those employees they will build and buy homes and other retailers will also start to build.