Last night I was honoured to be part of the celebrations to mark the opening of our newest and largest global office in the city where it all began for Xero more than 11 years ago – Wellington.
I was fortunate enough to be in good company alongside our Founder and Chief Executive Rod Drury, Finance Minister and MP for Wellington Central Hon Grant Robertson and Wellington Mayor Justin Lester, along with key partners and stakeholders who have been an integral part of our journey to where we are today.
Myself, Wellington Mayor Justin Lester, Rod Drury and Finance Minister Grant Robertson
The reimagined 6,718 square metre office on the corner of Wellington’s Taranaki and Wakefield Streets is now home to all of our Wellington based staff who are focussed on powering the Xero global small business platform for more than 1.2 million subscribers around the world.
The new office brings together more than 650 staff under one roof, who were previously spread across three Wellington locations.
We worked closely with leading property developer, The Wellington Company, as well as architects, engineers and designers to restore and modernise the iconic Wellington space and respect its original two-storey 1920s heritage.
The building was once home to Manthel Motors and used as a World War II storehouse before being converted to offices in 1990. The team overseeing the building project were able to retain the two level heritage façade and constructed five brand-new storeys within, with a new façade for the top three. The heritage façade is attached to the new structure, which achieves 100 percent of the new building standard for earthquakes.
The result, a unique vertical campus and world class facility spread over five levels with an internal atrium staircase connecting the floors – this is the real heart of the building. The office fosters modern agile working, global collaboration through online tools and allows room for future growth.
A really cool feature is the timber feature wall in the atrium staircase. The timber was from the floor from the original building that was sent away and cleaned up. Tongue and groove paneling on the third level is also recycled roofing timber.
The entire layout design centered around this feature in the hope that it would improve the sense of connection among the teams and we are delighted with the result.
We were also fortunate to have our beautiful new building blessed by Peter Jackson and his mother June who belong to Taranaki Iwi and Te Atiawa.
Congrats! A long way from Old Bank Arcade days 🙂 Well done all.