Establishing a New HQ

In January, 155 AG Financial Solutions employees across two sites – including a team working from a downtown basement office – converged on new headquarters in Chesterfield Village.

Officials say the move was eight years in the making. “After reconfiguring our cubicles about two dozen times, the schematic looked like a maze,” AG Financial Chief Loan Officer Josh Bartlotti said of the former Boonville Avenue headquarters. “That’s not exactly conducive to employee morale, efficiency or growth.”

Bartlotti said the $10 million, 60,000-square-foot new digs – overlooking the Kansas Expressway and James River Freeway crossroads – could easily handle a 15 percent increase in staff.

AG Financial joins SRC Holdings Corp., Family Pharmacy and Andy’s Frozen Custard in the quest to shake up their headquarters operation in the last four months.

Consolidation is king
Family Pharmacy founder Lynn Morris said his company decided to consolidate three office spaces. Employees began moving into its new administrative home April 5 in Ozark, and Morris said staff should be fully in place this week at 4101 N. Highway NN.

Family Pharmacy, Morris said, is merging staff from three rented spaces in Ozark and Nixa, including its former 6,000-square-foot headquarters.

“We’ve needed a new headquarters for several years,” Morris said. “We had outgrown the space and needed to hire a few new employees to help manage the company and didn’t have space for them.”

He said last year the company bought a foreclosed property with 17,000 square feet that it has been renovating the last nine months.

The company also will begin building a new warehouse on site later this year. Morris said he hopes the 15,500-square-foot warehouse would replace two leased spaces by the end of the year. He said warehouse plans include the ability to add 7,500 square feet.

Another move in motion is Andy’s Frozen Custard.

Todd Arth, director of marketing for Andy’s Frozen Custard, said the company will begin moving out of its 440 S. Campbell Ave. corporate office this week.

Arth said the new site at 338 Boonville Ave., though it is roughly the same size, offers individual office spaces and room to grow beyond its current administrative staff of seven. He described the Campbell location as “open” and “noisy.”

The Boonville building – owned and built in 2009 for $500,000 by the McQueary Bros. Drug family under Macquarrie Clan LLC, according to city and county public records – was most recently leased by boutique retailer Apple Empire Couture.

In December, SRC Holdings moved into 12,000 square feet at 531 S. Union Ave., and a 5,000-square-foot conference center addition is under way with a mid-May completion date, according to SRC Chief Financial Officer Dennis Sheppard.

“We consolidated in this facility,” Sheppard said, adding that roughly 18 executive staff members now work in the headquarters in Cherry Street Industrial Park, compared to roughly 10 to 12 in the previous corporate office, a modest and aging structure on East Division Street. “We had leased the building we were in for about 15 years, and it had served our purposes well. During that time, we had added people to our corporate staff that we placed around town in some of our other facilities and, quite frankly, it was kind of unwieldy. We needed to get everyone under one location.”

SRC Holdings comprises 23 companies and produces annual revenues of around $400 million, according to SBJ archives.

Property investments
SRC Holdings CEO Jack Stack said in November the move is part of the company’s 10-year plan to invest $40 million into its operations. The total cost of the building purchase, renovation and expansion of the new headquarters is roughly $1.5 million, Stack said.

For Family Pharmacy, Morris said the chain of 24 retail pharmacies has spent more than $500,000 to date, and it plans to invest between $1.5 million and $3 million on the entire project.

Buying a foreclosed property, Morris said, saved money compared to wholly new construction, and when the project is complete, loan payments would be less than the five properties it has been leasing.

“For us, it is a great location. We needed to have an area where trucks could get in and out,” he added. “We’re just five minutes away from the square in Ozark, but it almost feels like we’re out in the country. This has really worked out well.”  

At 3900 S. Overland Ave., AG Financial’s three-story structure features a 30-foot water feature in the shape of a cross in the lobby and a break area with four flat-screen televisions.

In recent years, the company’s administrative personnel had been spread across three offices, including one in Branson and one in south Springfield. The situation put some employees in the basement on Boonville Avenue.

The financial services arm of Assemblies of God USA selected the south-side Chesterfield Village for its quick access to James River Freeway for management staff and any outside customers coming into the headquarters, Bartlotti said.

“It’s where the majority of our employees reside. In Springfield, we draw from a large bandwidth of cities and towns, and some people are driving 30- to 40-minute commutes,” he said, adding that the 8.5-acre site allows plenty of room for parking, and the utility and technology capabilities of the developed community at Chesterfield were attractive, too.

The firm has a client base of roughly 38,000 people and works on behalf of ministers, church groups and nonchurch clients with products including insurance, retirement plans and investments.[[In-content Ad]]