Capital One Charges Ahead

Bill Yontz is a man on the go. The vice president of corporate real estate at Capital One Services Inc. travels so much that his office, with its few papers, pictures and neatly stacked magazines, barely looks used. In fact, he is in the giant credit card issuer's Richmond, Va., office less than three days a month. For most of the past year, Yontz has been traveling to make sure the company's new campuses are being developed as planned, as well as visiting Capital One's numerous offices and call centers worldwide to check that operations are running smoothly.

Capital One has some big projects in the works. It is in the process of building its 14-story headquarters in Northern Virginia. The credit card entity's professional staffers were previously scattered across five buildings in the area, and the company felt the need for a more centralized location. The 533,000-square-foot office tower, located at Interstate 495 and Route 123, is expected to cost about $180 million when the finishing touches are added later this year. Capital One will begin occupying the space in the fourth quarter.

In addition, the firm is putting up a massive nine-building campus on 318 acres in Richmond. Upon completion, which could take as long as five years, the 1.5 million-square-foot new digs will house about 6,000 employees. Capital One began moving staffers into the first completed building in late February. The price tag for the project, which includes development costs and internal expenses like furniture and information technology, will near $350 million.

The banking concern is also adding a 250,000-square-foot operations center and professional staff building in Nottingham, England. The new space, which will support Capital One's U.K. business and serve as the backbone for its expansion into Europe, is connected to a renovated industrial building the company already occupies. Likewise, Capital One finished a five-building, 600,000-square-foot call center campus, home to its Hispanic market group, in Tampa last year.

The firm, which currently occupies about 5 million square feet worldwide, also has space in Dallas, Seattle, Paris and Toronto. Most of that is office space for its professionals, as well as locations for its credit card operations. The company leases 60 percent of its holdings, while the remaining portion is owned.

"We have a strong philosophy in our organization that we do not want to get into anything that looks or smells like investing in real estate or being developers," explained Yontz. "We think that really diverts our attention from serving Capital One." He added that the company, like many large firms, prefers to keep real estate off of its balance sheet, often taking control of properties through synthetic leases, a strategy he continues to feel comfortable pursuing.

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