Bell Bank has come a long way since its founding as State Bank of Fargo in 1966 and the newly opened $100 million Bell Bank Tower in downtown Fargo will serve as both the new company headquarters and a fitting monument to that progress.
The opening is the culmination of a three-year process. Bell Bank acquired the building, which was constructed in 1973 and most recently served as home to Bank of the West, in June 2021 and demolition began in February 2022.
The project is massive in scope. Almost everything besides the bones of the building is completely new and it took more than 100 companies, subcontractors, and vendors to bring the project to culmination. Staying true to their local roots, Bell Bank relied on 75% of that work to come from local companies and Olaf Anderson, another local company, led the project.
“The scope of the project is pretty unique for us and for Fargo,” Jeff Furstenau, Olaf Anderson CEO said. “One of the things that I’d say is the coolest part of this is that if you look out at all of the other big buildings downtown, those were built by big companies—Bell Bank stayed local. To me, that’s the most unique thing. The scope is also unique. They spent a lot of money on some really nice things.”
The new building will allow Bell Bank, which has about 900 employees in the metro area, to consolidate all of its non-branch location employees into three locations. 300 employees will be housed at the Bell Bank Tower. 200 employees will be in the Bell Insurance building at 15 Broadway N, and another 250 will be at their 13th Avenue location, which was serving as the company’s headquarters prior to the purchase of the Bell Bank tower.
Let’s take a tour of the building.
