Council of Churches of the Ozarks Inc.

The design team behind Council of Churches of the Ozarks Inc.’s new headquarters was tasked with repurposing a building to consolidate the nonprofit’s operations.

CCO, founded in 1969, relocated in February to 3055 E. Division St., a former SRC Holdings Corp. facility near U.S. Highway 65. With the move, CCO’s nine core outreach services, including the Crosslines food pantry and Ambassadors for Children foster care outreach, relocated from five facilities in town, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

“The pandemic gave us a great baseline to relook at everything,” CCO CEO Jaimie Trussell told SBJ in February.

Emily Biagioni-Paulette, project manager at Paragon Architecture LLC, led the design team.

Reminiscing about the project months later, Biagioni-Paulette said fitting CCO’s various services into a single, existing building was the key challenge. The process started by interviewing CCO leaders about their work processes before a deep dive into what was possible at the former SRC building.

“It’s kind of like a puzzle,” Biagioni-Paulette said. “We took all those bits and pieces and tried to combine them all.”

Design team officials say a “bright, airy and open” headquarters was created for CCO even in areas without natural light or windows. Design officials worked around a building that had myriad previous infills and renovations, along with narrow corridors, small rooms and unfinished warehouse space.

The team additionally used words from CCO’s mission statement, including inspire, empower, lead and support, to help create wayfinding points and reminders of the importance of the nonprofit’s work throughout the building.

Biagioni-Paulette said she’s proud of the many newly created spaces in the building, citing an example of the waiting room area that had been a dark corner of a warehouse.

“Knowing what that looked like before we started makes that so much more rewarding,” she said.