Roanoke/New River Valley Big Deal: Banking on Roanoke

When Roanoke County economic development officials pitched Wells Fargo on expanding its customer support center operation in the county, they emphasized how well they’d taken care of the nation’s fourth-largest bank previously and how they would continue to do so.

The pitch worked. Now the bank’s $87 million expansion will be the largest commercial office investment in the county’s history, making the San Francisco-based banking company the county’s largest employer, surpassing the local public school system, which has around 2,500 employees.

“One of the things that I emphasized was, ‘We really took good care of you before you said you wanted to grow, and we will continue to take great care of you as you expand, and here’s how we can demonstrate that,’” says Roanoke County Administrator Richard Caywood, citing past efforts such as transportation improvements to serve the company and neighboring businesses.

The expansion will modernize the bank’s 436,685-square-foot customer support center on Plantation Road, allowing room for about 1,100 jobs to be added to the bank’s local workforce of more than 1,650 current employees over the next four years. (As of early February, Wells Fargo had not released information about when hiring would begin.) Construction will commence in March and will be conducted in three phases, to be completed by the end of 2025.

John Hull, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, says the regional economic development organi-
zation worked collaboratively with Roanoke County and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to land the project.

Roanoke was identified through a site consultant and stands as the largest office capital investment project and the most substantial single project in Virginia for 2023, Hull says, tied only with Amazon.com’s project in Virginia Beach. (See related story, Page 23).

“It’s encouraging to see an office project of this size, this number of jobs [and] its level of investment,” he adds, “particularly in the post-pandemic environment, where there’s a lot of question about the future course of office tenancy.”

Caywood says the Wells Fargo announcement was crucial for Roanoke County because the banking customer support center on Plantation Road was already the largest site where county residents went to work every day. The site was originally operated by Dominion Bankshares, which was acquired in 1993 by First Union, which in turn was later bought by Wachovia and Wells Fargo.

“There’s a lot of changes in the national banking industry with a lot of consolidation, so it was critical for us to keep that [center], and the only way to do that was through that expansion and reinvestment occurring,” he says.

Brian Corde of Atlas Insight, the site selection consultant for the project, predicts in a blog post on the Roanoke Regional Partnership’s website that the Roanoke market will continue to be appealing for talent attraction. He says the region will continue to see growth, adding that it has “great outdoor activity, great weather and a stable political environment, a reasonable one … [and] a good tax structure. Most importantly, you have places where people can actually live for reasonable amounts of money.”

Based on an economic impact analysis, Hull projects the Wells Fargo expansion will have a $322 million annual economic impact once the project is fully operational in 2025, with positive effects on housing demand and the health care and restaurant industries. The infusion of jobs will have a ripple effect throughout the local economy, he adds.

“When you think of what a household spends and how they spend their money, every one of those consumer sectors will be impacted in a positive way,” Hull says.

The expansion also helps the region not just by adding 1,100 jobs but by retaining Wells Fargo’s 1,650 existing staff members, Caywood says. “It’s a big deal for us,” he says. “There’s nothing but universal excitement about this project in the community.”