Construction in Bellmont Partners office

Bellmont Partners 3.0 (or is it 4?): Office Evolution

A flex­i­ble work envi­ron­ment has been a hall­mark of Bell­mont Part­ners’ cul­ture since its incep­tion. When it came time to plan out our upcom­ing office space refresh, we spent more time than ever deter­min­ing just how to adapt it to best fit our team and agency cul­ture. To do that, we also took a trip down mem­o­ry lane to revis­it each incar­na­tion of BP’s office space.

Work­ing From Home 24/7

Back in the very ear­ly days, we were WFH all the time – espe­cial­ly since we didn’t have a tra­di­tion­al office. If our sched­ule per­mit­ted, we could even dip for an after­noon and catch a movie. Our fam­i­lies thought we had some space-age jobs. They couldn’t quite under­stand what we did or how we did it, and our abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue to sup­port our­selves – while also answer­ing their calls any time of the day – nev­er ceased to amaze them. We heard “If that was me, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from just watch­ing Oprah all day” more than once. We had a hand­ful of small, nim­ble clients who nev­er even won­dered why our care­ful­ly sketched pro­pos­als had mys­te­ri­ous “qui­et peri­ods” built into them in Decem­ber 2006 and April 2010 (right around the time each of our chil­dren were born). Bless our first part­ner, Shel­li Lis­sick, and our cur­rent VP, Kath­leen Hen­nessy, for cov­er­ing for us dur­ing those times.

The One-Room Work­out Stu­dio in Pri­or Lake

Our part­ner, Mau­reen Cahill, was with anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion in 2011 and would reg­u­lar­ly tap us to lend an extra hand on some of her projects. Come get an office space, she told us. It’ll be fun, she told us. Cut to us push­ing a squirm­ing infant around in a stroller as we toured all the emp­ty office spaces in her build­ing. She was right: the now-vacant work­out stu­dio was the best. We hit Ikea, grabbed some desks and book­cas­es and were off to the races.

Bell­mont Part­ners Opts for Cake

After three light­ning-fast years in the work­out stu­dio (and absolute­ly zero pounds lost), our team had grown to nine full-time staff with absolute­ly nowhere to sit — except on top of each oth­er. We were tak­ing con­fer­ence calls in our cars because the one-room space offered no pri­va­cy what­so­ev­er. It was fun while it last­ed – but over­hear­ing everyone’s calls wasn’t viable long-term and the com­mute to Pri­or Lake wasn’t ide­al for the far-flung mem­bers of our grow­ing team. We set sail for the wel­com­ing shores of Edina.

Break Free to the Oth­er Side

After three-plus years in our expan­sive new digs in Edin­bor­ough Cor­po­rate Cen­ter, our land­lord approached us about annex­ing a small, recent­ly vacat­ed space next door. While we didn’t tru­ly need it at the time, the promise of a rebuild that would make it pos­si­ble for us to cre­ate more office spaces – not to men­tion add a bet­ter fridge – was too good to pass up. We reshuf­fled our team of 12 into new spaces just after Min­neapo­lis host­ed the Super Bowl for what will sure­ly be the only time in history.

Mod­ern-Day Living

And now – we made it to 2024! Bell­mont Part­ners will be turn­ing 28 this August, with a team of 28. After 10 years in our cur­rent space (give or take, with all of us work­ing back at home dur­ing the pan­dem­ic), it was time for an epic refresh. This time, we assem­bled a crack team of aes­thet­i­cal­ly inclined co-work­ers to review all the fin­ish options, weigh in on how we can use our space bet­ter and give extra thought to what kind of new tech­nol­o­gy and ameni­ties could work best. We brought in a tal­ent­ed con­sul­tant to help man­age the whole process so that we can con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing top-notch client ser­vice to agency projects dur­ing con­struc­tion. We’ve sur­veyed the team about how they work best and are con­sid­er­ing everyone’s spe­cif­ic needs as we fine-tune a new lay­out. We tapped acces­si­bil­i­ty spe­cial­ists for advice about how to ensure that our space is wel­com­ing to peo­ple of all abil­i­ties. Here’s a sneak peek at the work-in-progress. Stay tuned for an HGTV-style reveal lat­er this spring!

Leave a Reply

Categories