Bangor Savings Bank has opened the first building at its new waterfront headquarters.
The five-story, 31,500-square-foot administrative and wealth management division of the bank at 24 Hamlin Way opened its doors to customers July 20.
“The building is all we anticipated, and then some,” President and CEO Bob Montgomery-Rice said Tuesday from his third-floor corner office overlooking the Penobscot River. He declined to reveal the total cost for the multimillion-dollar campus, but said the project is “pretty much on budget.” The estimated value of the completed campus is about $35 million.
The project marks one of the most substantial Bangor waterfront developments in decades, and comes after the city invested millions over the past 10 years to revitalize the area.
The new building features modestly sized offices, a variety of open gathering spaces and large conference rooms, all of which have large-paned windows and glass doors designed to fog instantly for privacy.
The 24 Hamlin Way building is part of the bank’s 4.6-acre corporate headquarters that, once finished, will accommodate 500 employees, 75 of whom will work in the building that opened this month. Montgomery-Rice said he expects the campus to hit employee capacity in its first three to five years of operation.
The second, larger building at 11 Hamlin Way — a five-story 117,000-square-foot operations center for 280 employees that’s still under construction — will house the information technology, human resources, risk management and accounting departments, along with the bank’s call and training centers. It will also have a cafe, gym and rooftop deck for employees. A 400-vehicle parking garage will connect to the five-story operations center. In the evenings and during special events, the garage will open for public use.
Modeled with pedestrians in mind, the almost five-acre campus has been designed to blend into the open space around it. “We didn’t just want this to be a corporate office park, we wanted it to feel like a part of the community,” Montgomery-Rice said.
The public is encouraged to use the campus’ green space freely, as well as the bike racks during events at the adjacent Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion, he added.
Marketed as a way to alleviate a shortage of space in its 99 Franklin St. headquarters, and Maine Avenue and State Street branches, Bangor Savings purchased the waterfront parcel in January 2017 with the intention of moving its then 370 employees to one centralized location.
The bank has since contracted or sold all three buildings. The sale of 19 Maine Ave. to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services is the only public transaction at this point, Montgomery-Rice said. The new campus is expected to be complete by the end of February.
Bangor Savings Bank operates almost 60 branches across Maine and New Hampshire. In the spring, the bank completed a $45 million merger with Granite Bank in New Hampshire, pushing its assets to almost $4 billion.
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