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Melaleuca building $50 million headquarters in Idaho Falls
[December 12, 2012]

Melaleuca building $50 million headquarters in Idaho Falls


Dec 12, 2012 (The Idaho Statesman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Melaleuca, the Idaho Falls wellness-products company, has started to build a 371,000-square-foot home office building the company estimates will cost $50 million.



The building will house all of Melaleuca's international and domestic operations except for manufacturing and distribution. It will be the latest addition to Melaleuca's 195-acre campus off I-15 on St. John's Road in Idaho Falls. The complex will cover 43 acres of the 195-acre campus. A distribution center is already on the site. Manufacturing operations will follow in coming years, the company said.

Melaleuca expects the headquarters building to be ready by spring 2014. It will include a day care center for employees with children, an employee workout gym, an employee restaurant and an employee concierge service center.


Melaleuca said it will pay cash for the work.

"My father taught me to always stay out of debt," CEO Frank VanderSloot said. "We don't buy or build anything until we can afford to pay cash for it. As a company, we've been frugal in our business decisions. We've been fortunate to be able to operate without any debt. We own all of our facilities and manufacturing plants along with our equipment, computers and furniture. We feel that that protects us from any financial problems in the future." The company said it outgrew its current home office long ago. Many Melaleuca operations are scattered among various buildings in Idaho Falls and Rexburg. The new complex will allow Melaleuca to bring all of those operations into one place.

The operations include marketing, human resources, business development, IT development, data processing, web development, regional management, finance, accounting, administration, research and development, video studios, an event center and a 500-person call center.

The 17,000-square-foot event center will be Southeast Idaho's largest event center and will be available for use by the public and other companies. It will accommodate meetings for 900 people and will be available for other companies to use for corporate events.

Over its 27-year history, Melaleuca has bought and remodeled vacant buildings throughout Idaho Falls and Rexburg. In Idaho Falls, those buildings included an old S&H Green Stamp Building on Broadway, a former Penney's store, the old Weyerhaeuser building and the former Ziggy's Hardware store. Melaleuca also took over the city's former sewer and water building. In Rexburg, the company took over a former Broulim's grocery store and the old Diet Center building.

The general contractor is Bateman-Hall from Idaho Falls, and the civil engineer is Harper-Leavitt Engineering from Idaho Falls. HKS Architects from Salt Lake City is the project architect.

Melaleuca developed, manufactures and markets health, home cleaning, pharmaceutical and personal-care products.

___ (c)2012 The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) Visit The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) at www.idahostatesman.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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