Crews reach summit with new credit union headquarters

Listen to this article

If the team working on a project can mesh, that’s usually a strong sign that it will be a success.

The 190,000-square-foot Summit Credit Union Headquarters, completed in February 2019 in Madison, presents no exception to that rule. Designed by Strang Inc., of Madison, to LEED Silver standards and built by the general contractor J.H. Findorff & Son, the six-story office building is designed to have little effect on its surrounding environment. Perhaps that is fitting, given the manner in which the project came together.

“Really, at the time when we were building, it was a pre-COVID world,” said Kim Sponem, CEO of Summit Credit Union. “It’s a place where people spend so much time at work, and we wanted to make it as productive and enjoyable as possible and lower people’s stress levels in any way that we could.”

With accommodations that include a green-roof patio, plenty of outdoor space, room for fitness equipment and meditation, an employee cafeteria and even a Zen room, it hardly resembles a standard office building.

“We have fun spaces in the building on different floors created with different themes,” Sponem said. “People love the building. I think people will, post-COVID, enjoy some kind of combination of things. We’ve already had people asking to use the workout facility and things like that. It’s a nice, de-stressing building.”

On the contractor side, this was also the case.

“It was a successful project for everybody involved,” said Ben Hager, Findorff senior project manager. “And a lot of it goes to the team that was involved. Even as early as design, the owner had a really good owner’s rep, and that just set up and really served the project well.”

The finished product, however, is an example of what an office building can be when the users’ needs are pushed to the forefront.

“They really designed it to make it a user-friendly and employee-friendly building,” Tanner Davis, Findorff project manager, said.

Its features include car-charging stations, a green roof, rainwater-harvesting system and generous amounts of daylighting in the building interior. It’s a place where people actually want to be and enjoy staying.

“On the air quality side, four of six floors have an access system, where the entire floor sat on a pedestal and all the air was run under the flooring,” Davis said. “It also allows them to rearrange the HVAC without rearranging the ceilings.”