Garrett Piklapp crosses his fingers when he says Fareway plans to move into its new headquarters in Johnston in September.

The president of the longtime Boone grocery store chain recently gave the Business Record a tour of the company’s new headquarters at 8800 N.W. 62nd Ave. in Johnston, in the former Iowa Bankers Association building.

Fareway purchased the building from the Graham Group Inc. last year for $3.65 million. Renovations began after Jan. 1, and Piklapp said the target is for work to be completed and for staff to move in during September. The cost of those improvements is estimated at around $5 million, he said.

“As the world sits today, we’re all fighting lead times on projects and certain things, steel is one of them, furniture is one of them,” Piklapp said. “There are contractors working on top of contractors in here to get done.

“Assuming everything goes as planned, September is the target,” he said, crossing his fingers.

Before then, much work remains. Interior walls are framed in steel. Floors and ceilings are exposed, revealing cables and wires.

During the tour, Piklapp showed where offices will go, where cubicle space for individual work will be located, where conference rooms are being built, and where open space for collaboration are planned.

From the second floor, one can see where a big hole has been opened up in the concrete floor to make way for a yet-to-be-built staircase that will lead to what Piklapp called the Fuel Station on the first floor, an area that will resemble a cafeteria that will also have a production kitchen and an area for product testing and meal prep. There will be more collaborative workspace, and a landing or platform area that can be the focal point for employee events and gatherings.

Bret Wiltse, executive vice president of merchandising, said the area will be intentional in how it is designed.

“From a fuel station you would think like a cafeteria, but intentional how the seating is going to function and how the actual work functions … that you’ll be able to come in here and pull up a chair and work in the hustle and bustle of the energy, but can work independently, but there will be tables where you can collaborate,” he said.

An outdoor space covered by a canopy with seating and a gas grill is also planned.

Piklapp said employee feedback indicated they wanted the opportunity to have the energy of working together, rather than adding amenities.

“We wanted to accomplish that,” he said. “We contemplated an exercise facility and at this time, based on the feedback we heard from people because we’re good about being flexible with their schedules, they’d rather do that on their time and come here to do this, and figure that piece out outside of here.”

There are also plans to redirect a staircase in the entryway. On an adjacent two-story wall, a display will show the grocer’s history.

When it’s done, the building will be laid out in wings, with about 35 offices, eight to 10 conference rooms, and 80 to 90 workstations, including shared workspace.

Fareway opened its first store in Boone in 1938. Today, the company has more than 130 stores and more than 12,000 employees in seven states.

In 2012, Fareway bought an old 16,000-square-foot bank building in downtown Boone and moved 25 offices from its distribution center on the east side of the town.

More people were gradually moved to the downtown location, nearly doubling the number of people who worked there.

“‘We were packed in there like sardines,” Piklapp said.

He said the company was considering its long-term plans for office space and began looking in Central Iowa for a new location for its headquarters.

“There was one universal thought,” Piklapp said. “Can we get everybody back together, get a number of departments back together in close proximity to Boone, which has a special place in our heart?”

“Two-thirds of the workers from the office live in Story or Polk county, we knew the geographic center of our footprint looked very different in 2023 than what it did in 2012,” he said.

The move to Johnston increases Fareway’s office space nearly threefold, allowing all teams of the company to come together under roof, rather than being spread among different places in different buildings in different areas of Boone, he said.

Piklapp said the number of office employees who indicated they would move to the Johnston office since it was announced has doubled in recent months to approximately 140 because of the opportunity for collaboration the new office will offer.

Piklapp said the move comes on the backdrop of Fareway’s ongoing commitment to Boone.

The offices in the old bank building will be “backfilled” with other employees. It is maintaining its 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center, where it employs 650 people.

“We have warehouse automation projects planned, we have a construction team there, we have engineering there and maintenance there,” Piklapp said. “We have a number of big philanthropic projects that we’re talking with the city about. We have tens of millions in projects planned in Boone for the distribution center.”

He said Fareway’s warehouse and distribution center and the teams that work out of those facilities plan to call Boone home “for as long as we can see.”

The strength and ability of Fareway to give back to Boone is dependent on the success of the company, Piklapp said.

“If we don’t continue to grow our retail presence, if we don’t continue to grow our vertical integration projects, if we don’t continue to grow how we compete and we don’t continue to be successful, then we can’t continue to expand and invest and use or build or expand upon the 1.3 million square feet we have in Boone,” he said.

The move to Johnston is a critical domino in Fareway’s growth plans, Piklapp said.

“But this is just the first domino,” he said. “The backfill of the current space [in downtown Boone] will be the next domino and then the renovation of the warehouse, distribution center and office space will be the next domino and there are lots of dominos that need to fall and we’re excited for all those things to happen.”