Responding to the call that has drawn companies like Google to downtown Chicago and Detroit, Mayfield Village-based Progressive Corp. (NYSE: PGR) has leased a small office space in Cleveland's Warehouse District for a new team to find new opportunities.

The company announced Wednesday, Nov. 1, that it is forming a 40-person team to find profitable growth opportunities, and that it will be housed separately from its existing corporate campus in the east suburbs, primarily near its headquarters in Mayfield Village.

To that end, the company has leased about 9,000 square feet at The Worthington Building, 800-824 W. St. Clair Ave. and plans to occupy the new suite in April or May of 2019.

Andrew Quigg, Progressive's chief strategy officer, will head the team.

"Leasing office space in downtown Cleveland will provide this small and specialized team the flexibility and freedom to innovate products and explore new opportunities to meet our customers' changing needs," Quigg said in a prepared statement. "The city of Cleveland is as vibrant as it's been in years, and we can't wait to tap into that energy. By being away from the day-to-day work of our main offices, this team will have the autonomy to concentrate on future business initiatives that we can invest in to accelerate our growth in the future."

The company said it looked at several locations for space before settling on downtown. It noted that it will continue to operate, and is expanding, its suburban operations.

The Worthington Building is owned by Sixty North, a Lansing, Mich.-based real estate firm. It was built in 1890 as part of the Worthington Co.'s Cleveland hardware supply operations. Real estate developer Jeffrey Jacobs updated it to contemporary office space in 1993 and later sold it.

The building is home on its first floor to Cleveland Chop and houses the headquarters of PIRHL Inc., a real estate developer and owner of affordable and low-income housing. It also previously housed Howard Hanna's Northeast Ohio headquarters, which relocated to the suburbs.

Over the years, Progressive has been in the vanguard of Northeast Ohio growth companies, expanding from high-risk auto insurance to multiple lines of specialty and home insurance. Insiders at the outfit consider it a technology company. Establishing such a unit downtown would help legitimize that rep with a new generation of business and tech types.

Downtown Cleveland Alliance, the nonprofit that markets and oversees downtown security and maintenance matters, often touts it as a location for attracting talent.