Cardinal growth covers spectrum
BHC-designed company headquarters gets so big, it needs color coding, and it might grow more
March 23, 2009
Inside the new building that's been added to Cardinal Health's headquarters campus, there are red rooms, orange rooms, dark-aqua rooms, light-aqua rooms, and large, yellow floating credenzas.
The hues weren't designed simply to brighten things up. The color coding will help hundreds of Cardinal employees navigate the 250,000-square-foot space, which opens in April as a hub for the company's medical-products distribution business.
It also will help Cardinal, the largest publicly traded company in Ohio, assimilate employees from across central Ohio, and to stretch out.
Cardinal's $50 million, four-story addition expands the corporate campus to more than 600,000 square feet. It will be able to accommodate 2,650 employees, including 950 in the addition.
"We want (employees) to use the entire building as their work area," said Marino Colatruglio, vice president of real estate and workplace services. "It will encourage collaboration and creativity."
Initially, about 500 will move into the new space. They're mostly from Cardinal's medical-products supply-chain business based near Chicago, said spokesman Troy Kirkpatrick. When they do, they'll encounter a modern interpretation of the corporate office, as designed by Bird Houk Collaborative.
The color coding will help workers identify where they are in the building and give them a sense of place, said Gary Sebach, managing partner for Bird Houk. That's important because it's an open work space, with floors of more than 60,000 square feet.
For example, major conference rooms are tinted deep red, and some hallways are painted Cardinal's corporate red. Orange designates main circulation paths, and dark- and light-aqua colors define medium- and small-conference areas.
Two shades of gray in the carpeting help guide employees and make the space seem smaller.
"Alternating the colors helps break down the sense of length," Sebach said. "It doesn't feel as linear."
Cardinal's also going for the green: The addition will be the first LEED-certified building in Dublin, said Dana McDaniel, the city's economic-development director. The acronym stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
A new plumbing system will save 1 million gallons of water per year compared with traditional methods, said Jim Albertson, project director with Danis Building Construction Co. He said the building is 20 percent more energy-efficient than state building codes require.
Other energy-saving construction features include sourcing 40 percent of materials from within 500 miles and recycling 70 percent of the construction waste. A Cincinnati company, for example, was hired to grind drywall scraps to recycle the gypsum content.
Linking the two buildings is a wide, enclosed walkway that's more than a walkway. The steel-and-glass cavern is large enough to contain two conference rooms and four alcoves where small groups can gather.
Outside the passageway is a large patio with lots of seating and a grill to encourage group get-togethers. The galleria leads to a cafeteria that seats 400 or can accommodate double that number for group announcements. Information can be disseminated via 62 television screens scattered throughout the building.
"The idea was to create a space where employees can connect and meet," Colatruglio said. "It's a destination point that gives a sense of the outdoors."
Democracy is at work inside the building: In the interest of openness, only senior vice presidents and their bosses have offices. These spaces are the same size, but it's hard to tell exactly how large they are because the walls are angled.
The building also includes:
• A 12,000-square-foot fitness facility with two group-exercise rooms.
• Belt-driven elevators, which save energy.
• A 420-square-foot glass wall hanging inside the main entrance that bears the Cardinal logo.
More expansion could be in Cardinal's future. The company is working on a deal with the Ohio Department of Development, Dublin and the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority to improve a 28-acre parcel that Cardinal owns near its headquarters.
Cardinal would sell the parcel to the finance authority, which would agree to hold title to the land for 10 years and lease it back to Cardinal. The company would receive a $4 million, low-interest loan from the state to help defray the cost of its building addition, and Dublin would provide infrastructure to the 28-acre site.
"They would have everything they need to expand here," said Jean Carter Ryan, executive director of the finance authority.
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