Special to 1808Delaware
This past week, JPMorgan Chase revealed its newly-renovated regional headquarters at 1111 Polaris Parkway, reinforcing its commitment to Ohio as one of the state’s largest private employers. The Polaris building is the firm’s largest with more than 12,000 employees who support the firm’s customers, clients and community partners around the world.
The four-story, 2 million-square-foot building was redesigned over the last six years to transform the 27-year-old facility into a sustainable, state-of-the-art workplace with smart technology, and flexible and collaborative spaces that can easily adapt to the future of work. The project had more than 300 local construction workers onsite each day from across 90 local vendors.
“The significant investments we’ve made at Polaris and our other Ohio facilities reaffirm JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to our employees, customers and the entire community that we are here for the long run. Our local real estate portfolio reflects the firm’s high standards for excellence,” said Corrine Burger, Columbus location leader for JPMorgan Chase. “I’m proud of our rich history in the state and our partnership with community members, government officials and our employees to strengthen the local economy and create opportunities for all people.”
Sustainable Design
With the firm’s longstanding commitment to sustainability, Polaris has led the charge in accelerating environmental solutions. The 27-year-old facility recently achieved LEED Gold Status from the U.S. Green Building Council by making a number of improvements to reduce its operational impact.
In recent years, nearly 7,700 solar modules were installed on the building’s rooftop and more than 32,000 solar panel carports were installed in the campus parking lots. Together, this work has helped Polaris be recognized as the second-largest solar installation in the world. The panels are able to meet 75% of the building’s electricity needs, making it one of the largest commercial offices to utilize renewable energy systems.
In addition to the solar installations, the workplace was renovated with state-of-the-art building technology and systems to ensure it operates efficiently, including:
- More than 17,000 LED lighting fixtures and 2,600 occupancy sensors – cutting the building’s lighting energy consumption in half.
- Intelligent lighting control systems to allow for automatic dimming for daylight harvesting and individual fixture lighting controls.
- Automatic faucets that save half a gallon of water per minute and automatic flushing that saves 1.6 gallons of water per minute.
The firm also recycled 80% of the building materials from the renovation, exceeding the 75% requirement of the leading green building standard.
Modern workplace focused on health, wellness and hospitality
The massive modernization project provides employees and clients with best-in-class hospitality and workplace experiences, featuring a brand new Private Bank client center, a large food hall, two restaurants, cafes, upgraded meeting rooms, collaboration spaces for community events and other amenities.
As part of JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to improving the quality, affordability and equity of health care for employees, the firm partnered with two innovative health care organizations – Vera Whole Health, now part of apree health, and Central Ohio Primary Care (COPC) – to launch three new on-site advanced primary care centers. Polaris is one of the three Columbus offices that now offer employees comprehensive access to a full suite of primary care services on-site, same day and next day medical appointments with providers and clinicians, and a dedicated support team to manage outside referrals and employees’ overall health.
This initiative is part of a collaboration led by Morgan Health, the firm’s business unit focused on identifying, investing in and scaling innovative new approaches to care delivery designed to improve health outcomes for employees. Morgan Health and JPMorgan Chase selected Columbus as a priority location for the team’s innovation efforts with the goal of expanding these services to additional employers in market as well.
Serving Ohio for more than 200 years
JPMorgan Chase has been powering Ohio’s economy for more than 200 years by serving our customers, clients and communities. The firm has more than 20,000 employees across the state including 12,000 employees working out of its Polaris campus and is currently hiring for more than 900 local job positions across all of its businesses and functions in Ohio.
The firm proudly supports more than 170,000 small businesses in the state; has invested $120 billion in credit and capital to support clients in the energy, retail and auto industries in the last five years; provides nearly $9 billion to higher education, healthcare, government and nonprofit clients and more. More information about JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to Ohio can be found in Jamie Dimon’s 2022 Annual Letter to Shareholders.
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