Dial Corp. goes big and green

SCOTTSDALE — Tough times in the economy are not slowing down one of America’s leading manufacturers of consumer products from continuing with its largest construction project ever.

The Dial Corporation, owned by Germany-based Henkel, is continuing to move forward with the opening of its new headquarters and research and development facility in Scottsdale.

The new building broke ground in December 2006 on a site located on the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and the Loop 101 freeway, just miles north of its current headquarters.

The 350,000-square-foot building will be 60 feet tall and sit on almost five acres of land. The bottom two floors will house Dial’s research and development center, and the top two floors will hold its headquarters.

The building will contain room for approximately 800 employees. They are set to move in in December.

Dial employees will have amenities including a full service cafeteria, fitness center, break areas, a new mother’s room and wireless Internet. There will also be a roof garden that will hold benches and tables, and an atrium with a grand staircase that will reach from the first floor to the fourth floor.

Dial declined to disclose the cost of the project.

“Combining all these functions into one building has posed some unique engineering challenges,” says Ron Deitrick, an architect for Phoenix-based Will Bruder + Partners who has been working on the building for the past two years. “Although there have been challenges with combining the two buildings, it is fantastic to be on a project like this and see it carried out all the way through from the drawings into reality.”

The environmentally friendly building is designed to increase productivity and efficiency. “We like to facilitate people mixing because it raises the quality of the work place,” Deitrick says.

So far, the project has impressed some workers. Dial purchasing analyst Jarod Polburn says, “Henkel bought us four years ago, and this is the biggest single investment that Henkel has made outside of their headquarters in Germany.”

Dial has called the valley home for over 30 years, and this will be the first time the research and development facility and headquarters will be under one roof.

“The consumer package goods industry is based on new product innovation and being able to come up with groundbreaking initiatives that work in the marketplace,” Polburn says. “I think that [when you have] everybody together under one roof they will be working more face-to-face and hand-to-hand whereas maybe they were not before.”

Still, there is some room for entertainment. The new headquarters will form the southern edge of a new construction project called One Scottsdale, a community full of fine dining, luxury shops, boutique hotels, and residential housing.

One Scottsdale is composed of nearly 120 acres of land and is projected to open fall 2009.

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