The company is renovating cafes and workspaces at its sprawling campus on San Antonio's Northwest Side.
It’s like maintaining a house — if you live in a place with more square footage than the Pentagon . USAA is pouring millions into sprucing up its sprawling Northwest San Antonio headquarters campus. Dining areas, workspaces and meeting rooms are getting facelifts, both to refresh aging buildings and make it more appealing to employees called back to their offices after working remotely during the pandemic.
“You have to continue to maintain — just like your house, sooner or later you’ve got to upgrade the bathroom,” said Bob Whittle, the insurance and financial services company’s senior vice president and chief of staff. “It’s going to be a matter of time.” RELATED: USAA announces Juan C. Andrade will replace Wayne Peacock as CEO The company is spending about $39 million to add dining options and meeting rooms and update kitchen space, seating and lighting in a cafe in Building H, a complex at one end of its headquarters campus where member services representatives work. The renovation is one of USAA’s largest such projects, said spokesman Christian Bove, and is expected to be finished next year. But that’s not all. It is also reconfiguring other dining areas as well as office space within its headquarters to add modern cubicles, bright colors and more seating areas for employees to work or gather for meetings away from their desks. There are designated zones designed for taking breaks, with massage chairs and games such as foosball and ping pong. Began in 2017 The workspace renovations began in 2017 and are expected to be finished in 2031. It’s a lengthy project because USAA has to temporarily move employees to different parts of the campus while rehabilitating other areas, said Jill Flanigan, executive director with USAA’s corporate real estate team. Construction crews are primarily working at night to mitigate disruptions during the workday, she said. USAA spent about $87 million on various upgrades at its campus in 2023 and 2024, including about $62 million on workspace upgrades, according to filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Construction of USAA’s headquarters off of Fredericksburg Road began in 1971 and took five years to complete. When the $125 million, 1.7-million-square-foot campus was dedicated in 1976, then-CEO Robert McDermott called it “the brag with backbone.” USAA continued building, though, and Building H was completed in 2001. RELATED: USAA’s outgoing CEO, top execs receive big boosts in pay amid higher rates The main building, also known as the McDermott Building, totals 4.3 million gross square feet, about 3.9 million square feet of which is usable. The nearly 300-acre campus also encompasses USAA Federal Savings Bank’s facility, parking garages, data centers, sports fields, trails and a house that the company’s chief executives once lived in but that was later refashioned for board meetings. Along with cafes, the headquarters includes fitness centers, grab-and-go food options, a health clinic and pharmacy and nursing rooms. The Pentagon “This has more usable square footage than the Pentagon,” Whittle said, referring to the five-sided headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Virginia. With so much space and its daily use by thousands of employees, keeping up with maintenance and upgrades is a big project. Another impetus for the renovations is making the campus more attractive to employees, most of whom became accustomed to working remotely during the pandemic and now are required to be in the office four days a week, the retired Army major general said. On a recent Wednesday, about 12,000 employees had been on the headquarters campus. About 17,000 of USAA’s roughly 37,000-person total workforce are employed in the San Antonio area, with others based at the company’s offices in Phoenix, Charlotte, Tampa, Colorado Springs and elsewhere. “Retention is important,” Whittle said of the company’s reasons for spending millions on remodeling and upgrades. “We also want to be competitive to be able to hire really good employees.” One of San Antonio’s largest employers, USAA has more than 13 million customers made up of members of the military, veterans and their families. It has no affiliation with the U.S. government.
Northwest San Antonio Pentagon Texas Department Of Licensing And Regulation U.S. Department Of Defense Army Federal Savings Bank Bob Whittle Jill Flanigan Robert Mcdermott Christian Bove Wayne Peacock Juan C. Andrade San Antonio Mcdermott Building Fredericksburg Road Virginia U.S. Colorado Springs Tampa Charlotte Phoenix Northwest Side Building H
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