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Capital One's
colorful funky new campus
by
Paula C. Squires
Virginia
Business
March 2003
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Capital
One West Creek Campus
$400 million corporate expansion
Capital One Financial Corp.
Goochland County
The exterior of Capital One Financial Corp.'s new offices
would look like any other boxy office building, except
for one quirky detail: the bricks don't match. One half
of the building is done in a lighter shade of brick
than the other. What's on the inside isn't conventional,
either. With an eye towards building a collaborative
operating culture, the company is erecting open and
colorful workspaces — outfitted with large-screen
televisions and galley-style kitchens — to help
recruit and retain the 6,000 employees expected to work
at the new 1.5-million square-foot campus.
So
far, Capital One has finished three of nine planned
buildings in a park-like, woodsy setting. A gazebo made
from trees felled during construction sits just outside
Building One. Nearby are walking trails and basketball
courts. Nature's palette pales in comparison to the
building's interiors where whole sections are done in
bright hues of red and yellow. It's easy to find the
conference rooms: just go to the blue section and look
for rooms named after bodies of water. If employees
feel stressed, there are rocking chairs in quiet nooks
or video games. "I think we did a good job of translating
our corporate values into spatial concepts," says
Larry Ebert, Capital One's vice president of corporate
real estate.
The
West Creek campus represents $400 million of the $700
million expansion announced by Capital One in 2000,
altogether the biggest corporate expansion in the state's
history. The next biggest chunk went for construction
of a new global headquarters at Tyson's Corner in McLean.
Consolidation of its operations in Northern Virginia
and two other campuses in metro Richmond will add another
2,000 jobs. The sheer scope of the West Creek project
presented complex traffic, environmental and infrastructure
issues. "It was the most complex real estate transaction
I've been involved in my career," says real estate
broker Jane Ferrara, managing director of Advantis Real
Estates Services Co. in Richmond.
Negotiations
included everything from a 17-mile extension of state
Route 288 — which required General Assembly approval
— to the installation of utilities, helped along
by millions in state and local incentives. Capital One,
the fifth-largest credit card issuer in the country,
attacked the project with the same information-based
strategy it uses to gain new customers: it developed
a sophisticated database to analyze and develop the
site. Nothing was left to chance — weather balloons
were used to determine building height and how they'd
blend in with the surrounding pines.
The
Goochland campus is a major coup for Virginia's economic
development. Cap One looked at many sites, narrowing
its selection to Tampa, a parcel in Henrico County close
to Staples Mill Road and I-95 and West Creek. Goochland
won because it's close to Capital One's existing operations
in Henrico's Innsbrook corporate park. Plus, the county
agreed to match a $3 million state grant and kicked
in another $4.4 million in local incentives to help
with the installation of water and sewer. "This
is a great project for Goochland County," says
Greg Reid, the county's director of economic development,
one that's expected to generate $3 million a year in
new tax revenues for the county once the campus is complete.
,
After Capital One decided on a 316-acre site at West
Creek, it put together a team of brokers, engineers,
environmental consultants and other land-use planners.
Serving as quarterback was Ryan Lorey, the company's
real estate transaction manager. The single largest
challenge in putting together the deal, he says, was
resolving the traffic issue. How could 6,000 employees
get to and from work? Capital One worked with the Virginia
Department of Transportation to devise a flyover to
the campus, preventing traffic tie-ups on Route 288.
Also
high on the company's list was preserving the site's
natural beauty. The office buildings cluster around
a meadow, leaving intact hills, ravines and streams.
Stephen Thomas, senior vice president of VHB Inc., an
engineering firm in Glen Allen, says Capital One "insisted
on making the roadways and buildings sit in the land
rather than impose the buildings on the land,"
thus saving many trees. It's corporate expansion was
an easy pick for the judges who were wowed by its enormous
potential impact: a total of 8,000 jobs and as much
as $1 billion annually in contributions to the state
economy by the time operations are fully expanded.
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