A Medical Device Daily

Stryker (Kalamazoo, Michigan) is planning to construct a new corporate headquarters on a site adjacent to its present headquarters facility in a leased building that has served as the orthopedics and medical products powerhouse's headquarters since 1990.

The new 75,000-square-foot structure will be built on a site next to the 35,000-square-foot building that presently houses Stryker's corporate offices. A story in the Thursday edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette said that the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners gave tentative approval earlier this week for the sale of six acres of county-owned land to the company, contingent on an acceptable appraisal and selling price.

The land, which is immediately east of the building that Stryker has leased as its headquarters since 1990, is currently a parking lot used by car-rental agencies at the nearby Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport.

The new headquarters building is expected to be ready for occupancy by the summer of 2006.

Patrick Anderson, vice president of strategy and communication for Stryker, told The Gazette that the company has outgrown its present headquarters, and that company officials opted to announce their plans as the current lease is expiring. “We needed to find a property that really matched our needs, and there were none that were available in the marketplace,“ Anderson said.

He said company executives and members of its board of directors had been discussing the need for a larger headquarters for at least two years. Prior to making the decision to build, Anderson said, executives discussed a possible move to northern New Jersey, location of Stryker Orthopaedics (Mahwah, New Jersey), the company's largest unit.

“It is somewhat challenging to bring prospective employees to Kalamazoo because a lot of people who have worked for Fortune 500 companies have lived in larger cities,“ Anderson said. “But we feel the support the city and county gives us is very positive, and we have a long-term heritage here.“

Stryker was founded in Kalamazoo in 1941 by Dr. Homer Stryker, an orthopedic surgeon.