Wawa doubling its headquarters (Update)
Wawa Inc. is doubling the size of its headquarters complex, at the former estate of the founding Wood family, Red Roof, in Chester Heights, Pa.
(Adds comments from Wawa) After workers started pouring concrete last spring, crews have been hanging iron this summer in the woods south of U.S. 1 in Chester Heights, west of Media, where Wawa Inc. is more than doubling the size of its headquarters complex, around the gray stone house Wawa calls Red Roof.
The 200,000-sq. ft. addition, including a test kitchen, innovation-and-design center, parking, plus renovations to existing space, lets Wawa "expand and innovate" to support more than 730 stores in the mid-Atlantic region and Florida, and add "special features that showcase our history and culture," said Michelle Walsh, Wawa's Director of Retail Implementation. "
The headquarters sits at the heart of properties developed and still partly occupied by members of Wawa's founding Wood family, across the highway from Wawa's more than 100-year-old dairy, trucking and warehouse center, which processes more than 23 million gallons of milk a year.
"They are bringing everybody to the campus. It will be large enough for 900 people," says Terry Jacobs, a partner in JacobsWyper Architects in Center City. The firm has worked with Wawa since 1984, when cofounder Jacobs helped the consulting firm Touche Ross design Wawa's computer building. "We made it look like a carriage house," to go with the estate theme, he said.
By that time, Wawa had already expanded beyond the original Quaker-sober, gray-stone, two-story-plus-dormers Red Roof house to add three one-story structures about the size of Wawa stores, "hipped roofs and all," Jacobs says. "Wawa wanted to expand underground, but it was too expensive. So we renovated that space and did a master plan," adding a 50,000-square-foot modern addition in 1999.
Through the 2000s, as Wawa became a major gasoline retailer, doubled its store network, and began laying plans for Florida expansion, Wawa added support staff in rented space, up the hill at the former Franklin Mint. In 2012, "we started looking at how to renovate these facilities, and their expansion needs. We looked at the master plan. They said, 'Let's bring everyone back to Wawa,' " Jacobs recalled.
The problem: how to fit everything around Red Roof, keeping it as the corporate symbol? Wood family members no longer run Wawa day-to-day operations, but they remain major owners, alongside the company's employee stock-ownership program and current and former managers.
Photo: JacobsWyper Architects
Jacobs said CEO Chris Gheysens, past CEO Richard Wood and the Wawa facilities team sweated the details: "Chris set the tone. Dick Wood had a big impact." Nothing higher than the Red Roof house, they emphasized.
The site is 29 acres, but much of the ground is steep. "Last time we expanded to the right as you face the house. Now we are adding on the left, so the house becomes the center again. Offices to the left and the right," Jacobs said. There will be three stories of offices, on the top floor the test kitchen and innovation center.
Red Roof is no longer the entrance but has regained the central status at the campus. It will be in part a museum exhibiting artifacts from early Wawa and other Wood family enterprises.
They added parking for 420 cars. For transit riders, Septa says it will extend the Media-Elwyn train line (via 30th Street and University City) to the planned Wawa station south of the property by 2020. Planners in neighboring Chester County hope Septa will eventually rebuild commuter service to West Chester.