Verona-based medical records giant Epic Systems Corp. appears to be preparing to again expand its headquarters campus in an effort to accommodate another 1,200 employees in the coming years.
The company filed a wetland disturbance permit application with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently, seeking to fill or relocate more than 2 acres of wetlands.
The filing says Epic expects to hire up to 1,200 additional employees in “the next few years” and would need additional office space to accommodate the growth. Epic currently has around 10,000 employees globally, including 8,500 at the Verona headquarters. Last year, the company hired 2,083 people from 10 different countries and 47 states, including 805 from Wisconsin, the filing says.
Epic’s headquarters, located 11 miles south of Madison, has grown steadily and substantially since 2001. The company has built five campuses on the site with roughly 350-person buildings that the company says “are ideal for team efficiency.”
The company, however, paused construction of new offices last year as the number of facilities finally caught up to its growth, Xconomy reported in July 2018. The report did quote company executives suggesting expansion would start up again this year.
The DNR documents do not specify exactly how big or how many buildings would be in the new campus and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Epic’s preferred location for the new development is on the northeast end of its headquarters campus, directly north of its Storybook area. While the location does impact some wetlands, other locations considered on the site would have offered limited connectivity, cut into the rural and agricultural aesthetic the company is trying to maintain or have been limited by an existing geothermal heating and cooling system, according to its submission to the DNR.
The company considered implementing on-site wetland mitigation but decided instead to purchase mitigation bank credits. Epic is also proposing an on-site wetland restoration and enhancement program to bolster other wetlands on the headquarters campus. The project would include replacing invasive and weedy vegetation with native Wisconsin plants.
