(Atlantic) Southwest Iowa Planning Council (SWIPCO) is celebrating the completion of an addition to their main office in Atlantic. SWIPCO and Southwest Iowa Transit Agency continue to grow, providing more services and working on more projects than ever that benefit the residents of Southwest Iowa. This growth caused SWIPCO to outgrow the previous office space. An area designed for seven employees was housing 17 workers. To remedy that problem a 60’x30’ addition was planned onto the east side of the building and has now been completed.
The space is an open office area that now houses planning and housing team members along with communications and safety coordinators. During construction many of these individuals were working out of a temporary, rented office space nearby.
SWIPCO Executive Director John McCurdy described the value of the new space, “We’ve needed to expand our office space in Atlantic for a long time and had the first concept plans actually drawn up in 2017. Pre-Covid we had already turned our conference room into workspace for several employees. Covid taught us a lot about how we function, both that we could be more flexible with remote work options but also that we need in person, onsite capacity to serve our clients. This addition enables us to make the best use of the space we have here and will be flexible for future
changes and keep our operations on one site in Atlantic. We also added an additional women’s restroom, which may not sound like a big thing but with 22 female employees at this location was very much a priority!”
Reorganization of office space will also allow for more functionality of previous spaces. The conference room will once again be able to be utilized for Policy Council and other meetings after being used for office space for over five years.
Construction was completed by Building Crafts Inc. of Red Oak and began in early 2023. The much anticipated completion will help SWIPCO continue to support the whole region for the long term. In total SWIPCO employs over 100 people, with about 30 in the office in Atlantic.
SWIPCO celebrated the new space with the SWIPCO Policy Council at their meeting on March 28th.
