Investment Strategies: Companies make moves to bolster local footprints

The decision by companies on whether to expand – be it workforce, product lines or physical presence, among other considerations – is one many face over the course of their time in business. For some, like longtime Springfield architectural firm Dake Wells Architecture Inc. and manufacturer Press Room Equipment LLC, the choice is simply the next logical chapter.

Co-founded in 2004 by Brandon Dake and Andrew Wells, the firm plans to move next year to what will be its fourth location. Dake and Wells originally began the company in Dake’s guest bedroom before moving a few months later to its first office location downtown on West Walnut Street. The firm relocated in 2017 to 134 Park Central Square, Ste. 300, where it has remained since. It opened a second office in Kansas City a year later.

The company’s planned new headquarters at 521 N. Boonville Ave. involves renovation of a 1946 building – a former International Harvester dealership – and will keep it downtown. The roughly 11,500-square-foot project involves renovating an existing 7,900-square-foot building by first demolishing two 840-square-foot additions and then constructing a new two-story, 3,500-square-foot addition.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a few years,” Wells says, adding the company bought the building in 2022. “We are all really excited about this project not just because it’s ours, but also because of where it is on Boonville. It’s like the last existing building there on that north end that hasn’t been renovated and brought back to life.”

Wells declined to disclose the firm’s planned investment in the project, for which DeWitt & Associates Inc. is serving as general contractor.

“We’ve begun a little bit of demolition with our contractor, and so things are starting to roll. It’s a little bit slow, to be honest,” he says, estimating a summer 2026 completion. “We’ve got some City Utilities work that needs to happen, and I think the recent storm kind of slowed that down a little bit.”

The new headquarters will boost the firm’s footprint by more than 50%. Wells says the company is using almost every square inch of its leased 7,500-square-foot space. It employs 38 companywide, including 12 in Kansas City.

“The big thing that this new space is going to give us is some additional meeting space,” he says, noting the firm’s use of video conferencing with its Kansas City office has grown. “We collaborate across projects sometimes. There are a lot of times now when those types of meetings don’t go really well in an open office environment.”

Staying downtown was a must for the company, Wells says.

“We’ve just always been committed to downtown,” he says, adding he and Dake are big believers that the strength of downtown is important to any city. “In a lot of ways, we’re just trying to do our small part to invest in downtown.”

The architecture firm’s action is in line with many participants in SBJ’s 2025 Economic Growth Survey. When considering their current office location, 40% of respondents replied they planned to expand in the market over the next five years. Another 42% in this year’s survey said they plan to maintain their location while 7% expect to add a location out of market. Only 2% expect to downsize over the five-year period.

However, some survey respondents also show increasing hesitation toward growing in the short term. Among growth strategies, 12% said they are not planning for growth in the next year, double the 6% who gave that answer in the prior year’s survey. 

Manufacturing space
Space is also at a premium for Press Room Equipment, which has called 807 N. Prince Lane home for the entirety of its nearly 35 years in business. That’s about to change later this year, as the company looks to move to a new facility in Partnership Industrial Center West.

The manufacturer of press feeding and coil handling equipment is investing $6.5 million to construct a nearly 32,000-square-foot building at PIC West Site H, which is located around 4735 W. Division St. Rich Kramer Construction Inc. is general contractor for the building, which was designed by R.E. Werner Architect LLC.

The new facility will be nearly 80% larger than the company’s 18,000-square-foot building, which accommodates a 24-person workforce, says General Manager Gary Moore.

The move is part of a multiphase growth plan for PRE by its ownership, Moundridge, Kansas-based The Bradbury Group, which purchased the manufacturer for undisclosed terms in late 2023 from EnSight Solutions, under the umbrella of Strafford-based manufacturing company Amprod LLC.

“When Bradbury purchased us, they did not want to buy the building with it, knowing that ultimately growth is the main reason why they bought us,” Moore says. “We were already kind of busting at the seams as it was at our current revenue rate. For us to double or triple over the next year to five years, it would be almost impossible to do it in our current facility.”

PRE’s 2024 revenue finished around $4.2 million and between $5.5 million-$6 million is projected for this year, according to past reporting.

Company officials refer to its move as Phase I, while a second phase calls for expanding the facility to 60,000 square feet within the next five years followed by additional growth to 90,000 square feet within eight years.

Rainy weather over the past couple months has slowed construction, Moore says, adding it’s delayed an originally planned move in the fall.

“They’re telling us they’re pouring the concrete this week,” he says on July 8. “As we sit today, we’re about a month behind.”

Moore says project officials are saying PRE will receive the keys by early November, which will be followed by 30-40 days to move to the new facility.

While the company is planning to upscale its workforce by 10 employees next year, Moore says he anticipates several of them will be hired before the move.

“I would love to have them all done by late spring, early summer,” he says.

Although PRE has employee growth in mind over the next 12 months, some respondents in SBJ’s 2025 Economic Growth Survey were showing less confidence in growing workforce and expanding to new markets in the next year amid ongoing tariff talks and increasing costs of doing business. While 52% of respondents in last year’s survey said they would seek market expansion, that number dropped to 39% this year. Workforce growth this year dipped to 29% of respondents compared to 32% in last year’s survey.

Change in plans
While Dake Wells and Press Room Equipment still await their new, larger digs, Great Escape Beer Works LLC has completed its move to a new location in Republic. The 6021 W. U.S. Highway 60 site was originally planned as a second location for the brewery, but co-owner Jake Duensing says a mix of circumstances led the company to exit its previous and original home at the Quarry Town development in Galloway Village at 4022 S. Lone Pine Ave. It closed the Springfield location on May 22 and opened in Republic on June 6. The company purchased the Republic property, which includes a 11,000-square-foot building that contains a taproom, offices, kitchen and production space.

“It just really became a business decision as far as the lease wasn’t going to work out in a fashion that we felt would be in our best interest to pursue,” he says, declining to disclose lease terms in Galloway Village with Green Circle Projects LLC. “We were hoping to do both, but you get to negotiating things and sometimes it just doesn’t work for one or both parties.”

Construction began in April 2024 at the former Burk Bridge Co. property on the north side of Highway 60, south of the James River Freeway interchange. Great Escape owns the 6.3-acre site and the two buildings on-site. The second building located behind the taproom is intended for a 16,000-square-foot production facility as part of a currently unscheduled Phase II for the property.

“We were so crammed at our other spot, and we had a lot of bottlenecks in the production side of the business that it was going to be hard to overcome without a different facility,” Duensing says of its former 3,000-square-foot brewery.

The food menu – offered for the first time at Great Escape – primarily focuses on pizza, although sandwiches and salads also are being sold.

“We’ll start incorporating the rest of our menu over the next week or two,” he says.

The taproom occupies roughly 5,000 square feet of the new building and the company’s brewing operations were moved late last year to Republic. In the interim, the company was selling its supply of beer from existing stock while brewing operations were on pause. However, once open in Republic, the company has relied on selling guest beers as it worked to get its in-house brewing back online.

Restarting brewing and distribution has not been without challenges, Duensing says.

“We ended up with some mechanical issues on our chiller, and then when we got ready to start brewing, we had a mechanical issue on our brewhouse,” he says. “The silver lining on all that was I got to spend more time in the kitchen, which I think allowed me to direct exactly how we wanted the food to come out. It was maybe not for the better, but it certainly provided us that time to focus on the aspects of the business that we had never really done before.”

While declining to disclose repair costs, Duensing says it was “in the several thousands,” adding that time was a greater issue as it pushed back the company’s original plans for brewing and distribution to retail locations and restaurants. He estimated the company is at least two months behind on brewing plans, adding the brewery as of July 9 is finally starting to sell its own beers to customers at the brewery.

“That’s probably the biggest disappointment on my end is not being able to provide beer for our distribution partners in the bars and restaurants that we had serviced before,” he says. “Everything else is kind of a headache. It becomes more of a guilt feeling because you’re holding up other people’s business as well, not just your own.”

Still, with the beer now starting to flow once again, Duensing says he expects capacity to eventually double at its new location. At Quarry Town, the brewery was able to produce 1,750 barrels a year if running at full capacity. The canning equipment at its old location could run up to eight cans a minute. With its new equipment, that number will jump to around 64 cans a minute.

“That’s going to really help us for our packaging,” he says. “That was kind of one of our bottlenecks there was just being able to get enough packaged product out due to the confines of our setup over there.”