Gruening Health and Wealth, a Medicare and retirement planning firm, has acquired a second Springfield building to support its ongoing growth.
Gruening purchased the 10,000-square-foot building at 2941 Greenbriar Drive for $1.47 million earlier this month, according to Sangamon County tax records. The company plans to relocate its 20-member local staff from its current building at 1124 Centre West Drive to take up about half of the space in the new building. Wells Fargo, the current tenant in the other half of the Greenbriar building, will continue to lease that space from Gruening.
However, CEO Chase Gruening said the company will not be selling the Centre West building. Instead, Gruening plans to host seminars there during the Medicare open enrollment period from October to early December. After that, the space will become a second location for the company’s expanding Springfield staff.
“We’re hiring, and we expect to fill that space back up with new agents and employees over the next six month,” Gruening said. He said the new hires will be a mixture of financial advisers and administrative staff.
The expansion will bring Gruening’s number of brick-and-mortar locations to five — two in Springfield and three in central Tennessee. The company has 50 employees and works with about 1,000 broker affiliates throughout the country, Greuning said.
A Sherman native and a former football coach for Williamsville High School, Gruening launched Gruening Health & Wealth in Springfield and ran the local operations for about five years. He moved to Tennessee after meeting his wife there and added offices in the Dickson, Tennessee, area.
“It has been really aggressive, fast growth,” Gruening said. “I feel like we have really good operations and systems in place to support that growth.”
He said the company will continue to look for opportunities to expand its presence in the Springfield market.
“That’s where I grew up,” Gruening said. “We want to be a major employer and supporter of Sangamon County.”