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David Hungate
Meridium Headquarters
A $5 million renovation transformed the former Mostly Sofas store into Meridium’s new global headquarters in downtown Roanoke.
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David Hungate
Meridium Building
Renovations to the 100-year-old, 44,000-square-foot building included many “green” aspects.
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David Hungate
Bonz Hart
“All businesses are interested in their survival,” Hart says. “And if I thought it was a threat to our survival to be in Roanoke, we’d certainly remedy that.”
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David Hungate
Meridium Headquarters
A $5 million renovation transformed the former Mostly Sofas store into Meridium’s new global headquarters in downtown Roanoke.
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David Hungate
Meridium Software Developers
Software developers work together inside Meridium’s new global headquarters.
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David Hungate
Nikhil Agrawal
Computer engineer Nikhil Agrawal chose Meridium over offers from companies in larger markets because of Roanoke’s lifestyle and close proximity to ski resorts.
Lured to buffet tables laden with crab cakes and oven-roasted corn dip, as bartenders poured Dewars scotch and Ty Ku sake, a Who’s Who of Roanoke leadership gathered on a sunny afternoon to salute the opening of an economic developer’s dream-come-true.
Yet the gleaming new Meridium Inc. office building in downtown Roanoke, a $5 million makeover of the former Mostly Sofas store, is in some ways a contradiction of the conventional strategy for locating a worldwide corporate headquarters.
Meridium’s center of the universe features big picture windows with views of the mountains and modest skyline that scream “You’re not in a metropolis.” Just the opposite.
In fact, Roanoke could have dropped easily off Bonz Hart’s roadmap for the future if he had yielded to the popular wisdom about where to put the braintrust of his burgeoning global software company.
After all, the established thinking went, such a business needs to be near its customers in big cities, minutes away from an airport with direct flights to other continents, and basking in the prestige of a major technology center like Silicon Valley or Boston. Moreover, small markets face challenges in recruiting talented young employees who crave the bright lights and career mobility.
To be sure, Meridium’s founder and president didn’t ignore such reasoning.
“All businesses are interested in their survival,” Hart says. “And if I thought it was a threat to our survival to be in Roanoke, we’d certainly remedy that.”
But Hart has learned the essentials of Global Headquarters 101 over the years from an invaluable group of sources: His young recruits. Meridium grew to its current Roanoke payroll of 130 largely by hiring people fresh out of college or for their starter jobs. Many of them are computer programmers and information technology specialists who provided the evidence and reasoning Hart needed to keep the flag of his international headquarters planted firmly in the Star City.
The value of such workers to Roanoke’s economy is measured in their earning and spending power. Meridium typically pays newly minted college graduates about $60,000 annually, or 50 percent more than the average Roanoke family. That translates into purchases of homes, goods and services that make “young professionals” a rallying cry for economic developers across the nation.
Nikhil Agrawal, a computer engineer born in India and educated at Ohio State, says he had job offers in three larger markets before accepting a bid from Meridium in Roanoke. Lifestyle is key in his being here.
“I’m a skier and Wintergreen resort is just two hours away. It’s nice and usually not crowded,” he says. And the 29-year-old Agrawal probably doesn’t fit the nightlife stereotype of his demographic group: he’s also an enthusiastic member of Roanoke’s Toastmasters Club.
Michael Bulla, a native of Ghana and computer engineer, left his former job in Raleigh for Meridium Roanoke partly so a shorter commute would let him spend more time with his growing young family. The 37-year-old now has three children.
Anthony Riebsomer, a 29-year-old technical consultant who lived most of his life in the Indianapolis area before coming to Meridium in 2010, says, “I really like this area. I’m used to a bigger city but there are plenty of good restaurants and lots of things to do.”
For all three of these young Meridium recruits, the company’s track record of job stability, steady growth and quality products helped offset the lure of bigger corporate names and markets. Says Agrawal: “I’m working with really good technologies here.”
Indeed, the company has been broadening its customer base lately. For most of its history, Meridium has focused on software that essentially detects mechanical and other problems at the production and storage facilities of oil and chemical companies. But recently Hart began broadening his product mix into computer programs that also patrol potential concerns for railroads – both passenger and freight – in Europe. Another new client that indicates diversification: the air force of a South American nation that Hart declines to identify.
Still, what Riebsomer calls “The Job Thing” gave him pause before committing to Roanoke. That’s because there’s no critical mass here in the software industry, meaning few alternative employment opportunities if his Meridium position ended. One way Hart is combating that concern is by creating a track record of job security at Meridium, where the company recently celebrated the work of 45 employees who have been there for at least 10 years.
Hart acknowledges that lack of employment opportunities for spouses and significant others can be a recruiting problem too. In Riebsomer’s case, his girlfriend is an apartment complex manager for a national company that owns property here and elsewhere. Still, the lack of job growth in other fields – with the exception of health care led by local payroll giants Carilion Clinic and LewisGale – is an occasional hiring hurdle that Meridium can’t do much about.
But Hart says the only employees or job candidates who are candid enough to tell him they have a problem with Roanoke are usually young singles. “I can’t do much about that other than set up a dating service,” he jokes.
That drawback is offset in part by Roanoke’s other quality-of-life assets, with which Hart seeks to position the city in contrast to larger markets. “It’s a great place to raise a family,” he says.
Of course that argument can be made in some form for major population centers too, because they have more amenities to offer.
“We certainly lost people to big cities,” he says, “but we drew them away too because they get tired of the cost of living and they also get tired of when they have an idea to go for a hike or to a park, a thousand others have the same idea too.”
He estimates “rural Virginia being an issue” occurs about 20 percent of the time in employee recruiting.
Being in a relatively obscure location has proven even less a problem for Hart in landing and retaining big-name customers in the oil and chemical industries whose businesses are centered in the likes of Houston, Dallas and Dubai. True, they don’t know Roanoke, but he has discovered they don’t have to in this Virtual New World.
Besides, Hart has found, Roanoke is a relatively efficient travel destination for his clients, 175 of whom visited for the opening of Meridium’s new headquarters in May. Among them: PetroChina, Kuwait National Petroleum Co. and Sasol Petroleum from New Zealand. Hart says he lined up rooms and meeting space at Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center at a cost far below what he would have paid in a major market.
True, the paucity of direct flights from major markets to Roanoke Regional Airport hampers some dealings, but Hart minimizes that negative by opening regional offices near clients and potential customers. Meridium has nearly as many employees elsewhere as it does in Roanoke, including 30 in Houston, 30 in Dubai and 40 located in various parts of Europe and Asia.
“I always thought we were going to be worldwide,” says Hart.
That expansion is accompanying considerable growth by Meridium in Roanoke, where Hart added 40 employees in the first five months of 2011.
Thus Meridium is becoming something of a model for Roanoke as a desirable corporate location at a time when its only Fortune 500 company, Advance Auto Parts, has been moving some headquarters workers to Minneapolis, a center of the retail industry.
But Hart, 56, who grew up in Altavista and graduated from Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., (and whose first name, Bonz, is actually a nickname for his given moniker, Bonsall, a Scotch-Irish surname that’s part of his family history), has found personal and corporate comfort in the Roanoke area. He started Meridum in a home office above his garage in Goodview in 1993. By 1994, he had landed such customers as Mobile Oil and opened his first office in downtown Roanoke in a rented suite at the Liberty Trust Building. Two years later he moved to larger space at the Wachovia Tower.
Meridium’s first overseas office opened in Dubai, U.A.E., in 2004, followed by operations in Australia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Germany and Malta.
But all roads for Hart’s troops and business allies lead to Roanoke. He punctuates Meridium’s corporate personality with the new headquarters and its picture-window views of small-town Americana. In doing so he has turned on its head the argument that a global company must be based in a big city.
“I think the question is, ‘What’s the purpose of a headquarters building?’” says Hart. “You have people coming here from all over the world and why to Roanoke? To answer that question, you need a building that shows off the answers: the mountains, the beautiful downtown and the lifestyle.”
Bonz Hart Timeline
- 1955 Born in New York City.
- 1973 Graduated from Altavista High School.
- 1977 Graduated from Messiah College, Grantham, Pa.
- 1993 Started Meridium Inc. a software company, in an office above his garage at home in Goodview.
- 1993 Started working with first customers: Mobil Oil and Alcoa.
- 1994 Opened first downtown Roanoke
office in rented suite of Liberty Trust Building.
- 1996 Moved headquarters to 11th floor of the Wachovia Tower.
- 1996 Opened second office in Houston.
- 2004 Opened first international office in Dubai, U.A.E followed by offices in Australia, Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Germany and Malta.
- 2011 Opened new global headquarters in Roanoke after $5 million in acquisition and renovation costs.