Coast Capital head office coming to City Centre
'Unconventional' design set to grace city skyline in 2015
The headquarters of Coast Capital Savings will move to City Centre by the end of 2015. About 700 employees from the credit union's current head office in Guildford and administration office in Central City will relocate to the nine-storey building.
Photograph by: submitted , for Surrey NOW
Surrey's City Centre will soon be the home of Coast Capital Savings' new head office, set to become part of downtown's skyline in late 2015.
B.C.'s second largest credit union will take up roughly 70 per cent of a 180,000square-foot, nine-storey headquarters on the south side of the King George SkyTrain station. The building will be named "Help Headquarters" in alignment with Coast Capital's mission to provide simple financial help to customers.
An estimated 70 per cent of the staff at Coast Capital's Guildford and Central City offices live south of the Fraser River, which was key in the decision to move the production to City Centre. All 700-plus employees in those two offices will move to the new building upon completion.
"Right now, we have applied for rezoning the property and a development permit on the specific Coast Capital building," said Dan Turner, executive vice president of PCI Developments Corp., the company that will construct the headquarters. "We would hope to have all permits in place by next summer."
Turner added that the first phase of the project will cost about $100 million and the overall construction will take an estimated two years.
Speaking to the importance of the building to Surrey's infrastructure, Mayor Dianne Watts said in a statement, "Coast Capital Savings is an important partner for the City of Surrey, helping us create employment and build a stronger city."
The architecture, conceptualized by the Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, is similar to that of other highrises in City Centre: the walls are angled and a top corner of the building is slanted, though Jamieson maintains the offices will be structurally sound. The building will be gold-certified on the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system, which evaluates the overall operations and performance of buildings on a 100-point scale.
"(The design) is a little bit unconventional, but that is the intent of Coast Capital," said Herb Jamieson, Coast Capital's vice president of branching, locations strategy and facilities. "We want it to be innovative, progressive and have this unconventional design, while at the same time, not getting too far off-track."
The building will also house a daycare, rooftop lunchroom, fitness facility and corporate university.
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