Compeer Financial (Formerly AgStar)
Various Locations | Commercial
Overview
ISG has worked with Compeer Finanical on a number of its facilities, including an reconfiguration of its headquarters facility.
Opportunity
Compeer Financial wanted to continue its growth by adding new employees, which required more space than it previously had available.
Solution
As a dominant provider of financial services to rural America, Compeer Financial’s corporate headquarters has experienced significant growth and recent expansions have nearly doubled the size of the original building. ISG, which designed the original building and past expansions, worked closely with Compeer Financial staff to meet the latest operational and space needs and accommodate 50 additional employees. Instead of another physical expansion, designers reconfigured space to provide a more open, collaborative work environment with new work stations, small formal and informal meeting areas, and larger group and teleconferencing facilities.
Transformation of the existing work place environment eliminated the traditional 8x8-foot workstation cubes and permanent office areas and replaced them with smaller, more efficient, work stations for resident employees and touch-down places for traveling employees that don’t have a permanent office space. Both configurations include tabletop work areas and lounge seating for work while sitting or standing and eliminated the corridor concept to focus on more collaborative groupings.
Providing access to daylight from all workstations from windows at two opposite ends of the building was accomplished with furniture placement and the use of translucent space dividers. To overcome acoustic challenges with the open concept, designers gave special attention to the placement of seating arrangements to reduce noise and intrusive conversations and utilized a white noise system to improve acoustic privacy.
Over the past 15+ years ISG has provided design services for multiple other Compeer Financial Regional Headquarters located in Blue Earth, Apple Valley and Waite Park, Minnesota, and in Baldwin and Rice Lake, Wisconsin.