WICHITA, KS—The Opus Group recently began construction on a new headquarters for Cargill's North America protein business. The developer plans to complete construction of the 190,000-square-foot office building in October 2018. It's far too early to tell, but the project could be a sign that the wave of new office construction, which so far has mostly been concentrated in core cities like Chicago, could soon arrive in secondary and tertiary markets like Wichita.
“The last few years, the office construction market has been pretty quiet,” Tim Callahan, senior project manager, Opus Design Build, LLC, tells GlobeSt.com. The Minneapolis-based Opus has been quite busy, however, in many metro areas. There has been, for example, an especially robust demand for new luxury apartments. “But the office sector has been slower to come back.” When it comes to offices in smaller cities, “we've done several projects in the past few years, but nothing compared to what the market was like 15 years ago.”
The Wichita project shares a lot of qualities with much of the most-popular class A office spaces in core cities. It's located in a historic neighborhood of converted brick warehouses, always a plus for today's office workers, and will help revive this portion of the downtown. Furthermore, the design by HOK will fit into the Old Town area's style and personality, says Callahan.
And the interior will also encourage employee collaboration and feature amenities such as an immersive technology center, presentation kitchen, sensory center kitchen and testing booths on the first floor and a third-floor balcony and employee café space. The headquarters will have room for up to 950 employees and include an 800-car parking garage for Cargill's employees during work hours and for public use for events in Old Town and the nearby arena.
“Our new headquarters reflects our enthusiasm and optimism for the future growth of our protein business, as well as our focus on meeting both our customers' needs and providing an engaging, modern, esthetically compelling work environment for our Wichita team,” says Brian Sikes, Cargill Protein president.
Opus' previous experience working with Cargill includes the development, design and construction of the company's 920,000-square-foot, three-building, class A corporate campus in MN. Opus Design Build, LLC is the construction manager in collaboration with Key Construction for this project.
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
