Moving day for Banfield approaches

Bingo came to work in high spirits last week. No doubt he’s heard his company is moving to a pretty swell new headquarters in Vancouver, and a lot of his needs were considered. This is the world’s largest veterinary practice, after all, and Bingo is a black Lab mix.

“We’re very excited,” said Vincent Bradley, Bingo’s owner and the CEO of Banfield Pet Hospital.

Banfield moves into its new corporate digs in east Vancouver starting Monday, bringing 650 employees and, yes, more than 175 of their dogs across the river from Portland to a cutting-edge campus with a three-level dog ramp, a dog park, abundant open and enclosed gathering spaces and no offices.

“It’s a fantastic, open environment with the Pacific Northwest prominently featured,” Bradley said.

The growth of the company, which has 925 pet hospitals across nearly every state employing 16,000 people, precipitated the move. There will be even more employees and more locations by the end of the year, keeping the big new headquarters off of Mill Plain Boulevard buzzing.

Banfield’s presence adds another jewel to the corporate crown of the Columbia Tech Center, which has become a magnet for an increasingly diverse blend of industries. James Baxter, Banfield’s senior manager for the development, said there was nowhere else that really fit the company’s needs.

“Vancouver trumped Portland,” he said.

The first Banfield Pet Hospital opened in 1955 in Northeast Portland, near the Banfield Freeway (Interstate 84) and across the street from where the old corporate headquarters stands. Today it’s part of candy giant Mars Inc. and handles more than 8 million pet visits per year.

“Within veterinary medicine we are a general practice,” Bradley said. “The real hallmark of our practice is wellness and preventive care. We’re working with dogs and cats through their whole life.”

“There are still millions of dogs and cats not getting the veterinary care they need,” said Bradley, who added his hospitals work on “removing barriers” to that care.

With that kind of growth in mind and a full office near Portland’s Northeast 82nd Avenue, the time had come to find a new home, which was revealed to be Vancouver in April 2014.

“We were at a crossroads,” Bradley said.

For some of Banfield’s associates, as the company calls its employees, the move means they’ll have fewer roads to cross.

“I’m really excited to be able to work in the community and state I live in, and to be part of the growth on the east side,” said Vancouver resident Dave Schindler, Banfield’s director of asset protection. He added that more employees at the Tech Center means more customers to grow the cluster of retailers and services in the area.

Fellow Vancouverite Sandra Berberian has been with Banfield for almost 21 years, making that dreaded bistate drive for a job she loves.

“I believe in what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve,” said the senior program manager on learning and development. “The quality of pet care has greatly increased, and I’ve had personal opportunities to grow within the company.”

Plus, Berberian said she can better tend to her school-age children’s busy schedules, something Ari Zabell is looking forward to as well.

“It will be nice to be closer to them,” said Zabell, director of client experience and advocacy.

Not every Portland-based employee is going to make the move, Bradley said. But the rate of those staying behind to look for other employment — maybe 5 percent of employees — is much lower than other companies that have relocated near or far.

“Change is very stressful; the initial gut response is usually no,” Zabell said. “But we get to move over to this great new building — and it’s in a nice, easy, safe community.”

Banfield has been in Vancouver since 1994, when it opened its first of four pet hospitals here. The company was just starting to expand back then, needing a central team of just 25 people.

Today’s support staff of 650 includes an in-house call center, finance and human resources, management and tech support and every other moving part needed to run a 925-hospital machine. The staff will be spread among a 206,000-square-foot, color-coded and wood-infused modern office meant to encourage togetherness at every corner.

“We’re here to serve our hospitals,” said Bradley, who joined Banfield from the human health care sector in 2011 and was named CEO and president in February 2015.

Last year there were more than 40 new hospitals added, and the company wants to add that number or more again this year.

Vancouver will be at the center of that growth, and the city gets a share in the company’s success as well, whether it be at Banfield’s rentable, high-tech community rooms or at the dog park, which is available to the public once their canines go through an evaluation. (It’s a pet hospital, after all.)

Bradley said the community reception has been “exemplary,” and the new Banfield Foundation will help add to the company’s “amplification” of its own community outreach.

And for those employees hesitant about where they’re headed, Berberian said: “They’ll be pleasantly surprised.”