With 60 years of home-building experience on its side, Regency Homes has quietly been moonlighting on the commercial side of the development business for about 15 years, developing more than 1.5 million square feet of commercial space. In March, the company announced it was expanding its operations to include commercial real estate development as it launched Regency Commercial Services LLC. One month later, Regency broke ground on one of its first “official” commercial projects – its own corporate headquarters.

Last week, Regency officials said construction of the company’s 95,000-square-foot corporate offices at 6600 Westown Parkway in West Des Moines, slated to open March 1, 2004, is on schedule and businesses are soliciting the company’s commercial services. Already, it is developing a 40,000-square-feet flex space in Grimes and is slated to work on projects in Waukee. Jamie Myers, vice president of Regency Homes and president of Regency Commercial Services, said the company wanted to assure its commercial customers they would get the same level of quality service its residential customers receive.

“We don’t want to put anyone down, but after years of hiring contractors, we expect something higher of ourselves, so we sought out the best people in the industry to create our own team,” he said. “We wanted our projects to be better for ourselves and our investors. We thought others would be interested in that level of service and teamwork, too.”

Regency Commercial Services offers full-service commercial contracting management, including pre-construction, building maintenance, estimates, design-build, value engineering, development and general contracting. The company employs 14 workers, including four officers.

Regency officials expect the company’s first-year volume in Greater Des Moines to be as high as $17 million. But Myers said with the amount of projects in the offing, the company likely will exceed that amount.

“There’s no question we’ll exceed that,” he said. “We want to meet the needs of many buyers, not just one select market.”

Ward Phifer, vice president of operations for Regency Commercial Services, said the company is staffed to handle a variety of design-build projects, from small retail shops and medical clinics to larger industrial projects. He said he expects the company to grow responsibly, while attracting discerning customers.

“We’ve got the support staff to grow, but we want to do that at a conservative pace,” Phifer said. “We’ll be selective about what we do.”

Phifer said name recognition helps to build a customer base, but he also wants to dispel any notion that the company only works on Regency projects.

“It’s a tight-knit market based on relationships and a lot of out-of-town companies don’t have those relationships that we have,” he said. “But we don’t want people to have the perception that we work solely for Regency.”

When Regency moves its operations to its new headquarters, it will occupy about 60,000 square feet, leaving 30,000 square feet of Class A office space for lease. Buyers Realty will be the listing agents for the additional space. Regency Homes will be the first home builder in Iowa to include a design center in its corporate headquarters, allowing customers to chose from a wide variety of finishes and style preferences. Myers said the office will also offer financial services and other amenities that will provide “one-stop shopping” for customers.

“We’ll have a whole new level of synergy in delivering our services to customers,” Myers said. “There’s lots of things we can learn from one another, and we can improve our efficiency by having everybody under one roof.”

One of the benefits of a consolidated office, Myers said, is the cost-effectiveness of ordering shared materials at bulk rates at lower prices. “Even though the businesses are different, they share some common materials,” he said. “This should allow us to negotiate better deals. It’s a minute detail, but those details make a difference in our productivity.

“It’s very unique,” he said. “I don’t think a building like this has been duplicated in the Midwest, other than Chicago or Denver.”