Citizens to reshuffle Rhode Island workforce for new Johnston campus

AN ARTIST'S RENDERING shows what Citizens Financial Group's new office campus in Johnston will look like when completed. / COURTESY CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP

PROVIDENCE – Citizens Financial Group Inc. is on schedule to open its new office complex in Johnston next month and to start moving between 3,000 and 3,200 employees to work there, Citizens executives said Friday.

“After the ribbon-cutting [ceremony], we’ll start moving people in right away in phases,” Citizens Chairman and CEO Bruce Van Saun told the Providence Business News. “The buildings should be fully occupied by early November.”

It will be one of the largest worker relocations in recent history in Rhode Island.

The largest Rhode Island-based bank with more than $155 billion in assets, Citizens has about 5,200 employees statewide. With the opening of the new campus, Citizens will reorganize much of its entire workforce in Rhode Island.

- Advertisement -

“We’re going to reshuffle the whole state,” said Mike Knipper, the company’s executive vice president of property and procurement.

Citizens financed the Johnston project, which started two years ago and will cost about $275 million. The company’s corporate headquarters will remain in downtown Providence.

Most of the Citizens employees going to Johnston – about 2,600 people – will be moved from the company’s leased offices in Cranston, which will be completely vacated.

Others will be relocated from the company’s smaller leased offices in Smithfield, which also will be completely vacated, as well as from the company’s own offices in East Providence – a facility that Citizens is in the process of selling.

In addition, some employees destined for Johnston will come from a number of other Citizens locations.

The Johnston campus will feature four connected buildings. Two will have “traditional” office space and a third will serve as a call center for customer service and related work, Knipper said.

The campus also will have a fourth “amenities” building containing a cafeteria, a fitness center, a wellness center providing some medical services, a recruiting center and a “technology bar” providing technical advice for the workforce, Knipper said.

In addition, there will be a parking garage and parking lots totaling 2,600 spaces, he said.

With 420,000 square feet of office space, the development will cover about 60 acres of the 123-acre site.

The open land will include a baseball field and soccer fields; tennis, basketball, and beach volleyball courts; and a walking trail. The facilities will be available to local sports teams and the public.

Several hundred people are expected to attend the Aug. 14 ribbon-cutting ceremony, which may feature a marching band, among other festivities.

“It seems like not that long ago when we broke ground,” Van Saun said.

Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@pbn.com.

No posts to display