TD Ameritrade Breaks Ground on 475,000-SF Office Building in Omaha

July 22, 2010
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. is well on its way to creating a 600,000-square-foot corporate campus in Omaha, Neb., with the commencement of construction on a new 475,000-square-foot office tower.

TD Ameritrade currently leases an aggregate 125,000 square feet in three office structures at the site where the online stock trading and investment company’s new building will be erected. At completion, the corporate campus will occupy a total of 40 acres in the Old Mill area of west-central Omaha.

The new 12-story structure is being designed to meet LEED Platinum certification standards, which, if achieved, will make the new facility the second building in the state of Nebraska to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest LEED rating. “Being green is very important for the recruitment and retention of associates,” Kim Hillyer, TD Ameritrade’s Senior Manager for Communications and Public Affairs, told CPE. “It’s also good for the community, so we took the opportunity to make it better for employees and the community.”

Established in Omaha in 1975, TD Ameritrade began making plans to centralize its various offices in the area two years ago. “We had moved into one of the buildings we currently occupy in Old Mill in the fall of 2007 and in the fall of 2008, we started thinking about creating a campus environment,” Hillyer said.

TD Ameritrade didn’t immediately choose the Old Mill site. The company considered leasing more space at the location of their call center in a former shopping mall where a significant amount of money would have been required for upgrades and operations costs, and potentially building farther west in Omaha where there is more space for new construction.

“We looked at other options, but it made more sense to stay where we are,” she said. “It’s right in the middle of the city and just off the interstate and expressway. The original plan had been to lease the land for a build-to-suit that, but it worked out better for us to purchase the land and build ourselves.” TD Ameritrade demolished structures that occupied that site to pave the way for its new office tower. The company expects to complete construction in late spring of 2013.