By the end of this month, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage employees will begin moving into the Mountain Meadows Building at its sprawling West Des Moines campus, more than two years after company officials sealed a multimillion-dollar incentive package with the city of West Des Moines for the $250 million construction project.

The new office complex will replace space the company has leased throughout Greater Des Moines. The four-building, 960,000-square-complex, which company officials say will be completely finished by next fall, will be connected with walking paths and feature cascading ponds and open green spaces.

The first building “won’t be 100 percent complete,” when employees begin moving in Oct. 28, said Cheryl Howard, senior vice president for corporate real estate and facilities services. “We will still be doing some finish work on wallpaper, painting and carpet. We’re right on the original schedule.”

Wells Fargo must achieve a number of key milestones to fully reap the $55.4 million in incentives from West Des Moines and the state of Iowa. In return, the company has estimated it will pump more than $37 million into the local economy each year, counting the payroll from 1,000 new jobs and an estimated $4.2 million annual property tax payment.

Within the next two years, at least 1,650 full-time-equivalent employees must be working at the campus for the company to qualify for the first of two $2.5 million property tax rebates from the city of West Des Moines. If the company reaches the agreed-upon 3,300-employee level by Jan. 1, 2010, it will receive the second rebate.

As part of its agreement for the $10 million it has already received from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage pledged that at least 1,000 of those 3,300 employees will be new hires. It also promised it would hire an additional 1,000 new employees for its new downtown building for Wells Fargo Financial within the next four years.

Spokeswoman Debora Blume said the company’s Home and Consumer Finance Group has hired more than 900 new employees since July 2003, with the positions split between Wells Fargo Financial, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Wells Fargo Consumer Credit Group.

The state will provide another $13 million toward the West Des Moines project in the form of job training funds and sales tax rebates on construction materials.

The city of West Des Moines’ share, in addition to the property tax rebates, includes $27.4 million to extend roads, water and sewer lines to the campus. The city financed $19.25 million of those infrastructure costs through general obligation bonds, which will be repaid from a portion of the property taxes through a tax increment financing district on the property. The city will be reimbursed for $9.9 million of its costs through a U.S. Department of Transportation grant.

Once some remaining signal and concrete work is completed, the city’s actual infrastructure cost “will be very close or right on that ($27.4 million) number,” said City Clerk Jody Smith.