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A San Francisco-area transplant has chosen Eden Prairie as its new home.
Human resources software company Ascentis is taking over the fourth floor at Windsor Plaza, a 30,000-square-foot space that will be its main corporate office. Until recently, Ascentis’ headquarters has been located in the Bay Area city of San Mateo, CA, at a 1970s-era building at 155 Bovet Rd.
Windsor Plaza is a five-story, 130,000-square-foot, mixed-use building constructed in 2009, with retail on the ground floor and office space above. Retail tenants there include Kona Grill, the clothier Evereve, Massage Envy and a physical therapy clinic. Other large office tenants there include Virtual Radiologic and PepsiCo.
Construction of Ascentis’ new space at Windsor Plaza will top $1 million, according to the city of Eden Prairie. Ascentis describes it as light-filled and chic but homey, with motorized standing desks, a ping-pong table and plenty of comfortable sitting areas.
It is unclear when Ascentis will move in or what the new headquarters may mean for the existing office in San Mateo and two other company offices in Jacksonville, FL and Seattle, WA.
Executives at Ascentis could not be reached for comment, and the current leasing team at CBRE declined to discuss the matter on the grounds that they were not involved in the transaction.
Eden Prairie Building Official Kevin Schmieg said Greiner Construction of Minneapolis was the contractor. Work on the space concluded in late March.
According to a Monday news release, the move to Minneapolis-St. Paul was prompted by a new investor, Summit Partners, a growth equity firm with offices in London, Menlo Park and Boston. Summit Partners bought a large stake in the company in March 2017 and installed a new line-up of top executives, many of whom are Minnesota natives or have close ties to the region. Prime among them is Chief Executive Brian Provost, a Minneapolis-St. Paul tech executive with a resume that stretches back to the 1990s.
At the time, Ascentis announced that it would move its main office to the Twin Cities, but did not say precisely where.
Ascentis’ new office at Windsor Plaza will accommodate 85 employees in the immediate future, with enough space to bring the Eden Prairie headcount up to 190 in all. Currently, the company has 200 employees total, according to the release, but has embarked on a two-year effort to double its size, though the statement did not specify whether “size” referred to payroll, revenue or some other measure.
