 |
 |
To be published Monday, February 12, 2001 Medtronic's new headquarters coming to life Terry Fiedler / Star Tribune The first-phase of Medtronic's new headquarters campus is being completed with the kind of speed that market observers have come to expect from Minnesota's most highly valued public company. Senior executives moved into their new offices Jan. 26, just 18 months after the company broke ground at the northwest corner of Interstate Hwy. 694 and State Hwy. 65. In all, about 650 employees already have moved to the Fridley campus from various Twin Cities sites. By June, the 24-acre, five-building first phase is expected to be done and 920 people will have relocated to the facilities, which encompass about 450,000 square feet. "In construction, they talk about fast track," said Rodger McCombs, the Medtronic vice president who supervises facilities. "This is flash track." The price tag for the first of the three phases is $114 million. Twin Cities-based McGough Construction is the general contractor. Medtronic projects that about 3,000 employees ultimately could work at the 42-acre site, in up to a dozen buildings, with the project's total cost at $250 million. Medtronic will get tax-increment financing through 2011 with an estimated net present value of $21 million. The property, the former site of a drive-in theater, was acquired in 1986 by the city of Fridley for industrial development. With the recent moves to the unfinished campus, many Medtronic employees now are doing business amid a concert of nail-guns. When the Medtronic board met for the first time at the new facility Jan. 18, it was a semi-casual affair -- hardhats were required to get to the meeting site. McCombs said he would have preferred to have moved everyone after the entire building was completed, but space demands forced a staged move. The urgency has everything to do with Medtronic's recent growth. Annual sales at the medical technology company have jumped from $2.5 billion to nearly $6 billion in the space of a few years. Its employment in Minnesota is 6,000 people, up from 3,600 in 1997. Medtronic's total work force is 25,500 people and the company has said previously it could have upward of 8,000 employees in Minnesota by 2003. The heady growth has sent Medtronic's stock value up nearly 300 percent since 1997 to more than $60 billion. "We view ourselves as a Minnesota company," said Glen Nelson, the company's vice chairman. "We are still growing rapidly in Minnesota. The culture of the company is here." Continued growth is imperative, Nelson added, so decisions can be made by an independent, Minnesota-based Medtronic, "not a company on the East Coast or West Coast." Employment increases in areas dealing with products such as pacemakers and defibrillators and in neurological devices that deliver drugs or electrical stimulation to address chronic pain and symptoms of diseases such as Parkinson's caused a domino effect that led to the construction of the headquarters. In November, 450 employees of neurological businesses moved to a new 140,000-square-foot building on the campus from nearby leased facilities in Columbia Heights and from Medtronic's 800,000 square-foot Rice Creek campus, the old headquarters site that is 1½ miles north of the new headquarters. About 200 senior management and financial personnel have moved from Rice Creek to the new headquarters building this year, and a total of 350 employees are expect to occupy it by April. A big reason the company moved into the new campus space as it was completed was that Rice Creek campus facilities had to be retrofitted to the needs of the pacemaker and defibrillator personnel who will take that space. About 250 of those employees had been in leased space in Shoreview. Medtronic will continue to lease about 40 percent of the 100,000 square feet it had in that Shoreview facility. Besides the neurological and the world headquarters buildings, other completed structures on the new campus include the 50,000 square-foot commons building that includes a cafeteria, mailroom and 5,000 square-foot fitness center, and an 1,100-car parking ramp. To be completed by June are a 40,000 square-foot education and training center for visiting physicians -- it will house 50 Medtronic employees -- and a 80,000 square-foot research center with 70 employees. All of the buildings are connected by ground-level, glassed-in walkways. In September, Medtronic expects to open a 10,500 square-foot day care center on a four-acre parcel. The center is expected to serve about 110 employees' children from infants to preschoolers. Terry Fiedler can be contacted at [log in to unmask] © Copyright 2001 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=83532098