After more than a year of planning and construction, the opening of the new Osprey Packs headquarters in Cortez is within sight, facilities manager Lisa Bunker said on Wednesday.
Construction on the roughly 28,000-square-foot building at 800 N. Park St. started in September, and project supervisor Jack Stuart said he expects it to be finished by late August. The “Osprey Base Camp” will have enough space to accommodate 120 employees, although only 90 plan to move their offices there this year. Bunker estimates the project will cost about $7.5 million by the time it’s done.
The main purpose of the new building, Bunker said, is to celebrate the company and brand Cortez as its official world headquarters. Behind the building will be an amphitheater with two winglike trellises sweeping its sides, designed to look like the Osprey logo from above. Bunker said she and company leadership hope to host concerts and other public events in this area once it’s finished. Inside the building, 13 antique Singer sewing machines will be part of a display documenting the company’s history, and the break room and conference room will be relocated to a sleek second-floor area called “the Nest.”
The building will include a showroom and offices for the company’s marketing, design, human resources, customer service, administration and other departments. Bunker said many of the offices will have an open layout with comfortable chairs and large design spaces.
“We’re really trying to build collaboration spaces,” she said. “From my point of view, creative thinking and problem solving rarely happens over a conference room table.”
Even though the building is located in one of Cortez’s busiest traffic areas, the design calls for trees and shrubbery to be planted around it to obscure workers’ view of the street, and Stuart said some raised banks around the back of the building will help block some of the traffic noise.
Bunker said she believes the new building will be “something to be proud of” for the entire company.
Only about eight to 10 employees will remain in Osprey’s current headquarters, which will get a remodel so it can become the new warranty and repair shop for the company.
In charge of the construction project is Jaynes Corp., the same company building the new Montezuma County Combined Courthouse across Park Street. That project is expected to be complete in August. Other Jaynes projects in Montezuma County include the Cortez Recreation Center and the Dolores State Bank.
The exterior of the Base Camp is almost complete, although some walls still need to be finished on the outside. Right now, most of the construction work is focused on interior flooring, drywall and other finishing touches, Bunker said. Stuart said he expects work on the parking lot and courtyards to begin just after the Fourth of July.
“We’ve got another tough couple of months ahead of us, to get it ready for the Osprey folks,” he said.
Still, Osprey employees have already started packing furniture, display items and office supplies at their current headquarters. A date hasn’t been set for the building’s grand opening, but Bunker said she expects it will be sometime in September.