WOCCU to Move in With Filene

The World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) plans to move seven miles across town into part of the downtown Madison, Wis., building housing the Filene Research Institute by summer’s end, the groups announced Thursday.

WOCCU has been housed at the CUNA Mutual Group campus on the west side of Madison since the campus opened in 1979. It will be moving about six or seven employees into the Lyric building at 1010 E. Washington Ave., where Filene has been located since 2017.

The COVID-19 pandemic led WOCCU staff to work remotely, “causing the organization to rethink what it needed in an office,” according to a news release from the groups.

Meanwhile, Filene offices had also become underutilized before the pandemic, and its leaders began exploring sub-leasing part of its space to other local credit union organizations to broaden its network. Its staff there has fallen from about 30 before the pandemic to about 14 or 15 now.

Patsy Stewart, Filene’s chief finance and operations officer, said WOCCU’s presence will be a welcome benefit in many ways.

“The in-person ‘accidental collisions’ Filene has experienced among staff and with others across the credit union system have been invaluable to advancing ideas and creating new opportunities,” Stewart said. “With WOCCU in our office, we can continue to expand our credit union network and proactively enable those crucial connections.”

Paul Treinen, EVP of WOCCU, said it sought to move somewhere that could accommodate its staff and that of the Worldwide Foundation for Credit Unions, Global Women’s Leadership Network and WYCUP, with flexibility in terms of the physical office space and more opportunities for collaboration.

“We are extremely excited about the opportunities now available to WOCCU for further collaboration with Filene by sharing space with them in their Madison office,” Treinen said. “Filene has always been a great partner with World Council over the course of our history and I have no doubt that will only grow in the coming years with this move.”

Credit union organizations have a long history of flocking together in Madison.

CUNA, founded in 1934, and CUNA Mutual Group (founded in 1935 as the CUNA Mutual Society) then shared offices on the city’s east side along with CUNA Credit Union, also founded in 1935. They moved once, and then again in 1950 to CUNA’s Filene House at 1617 Sherman Ave. — named for Edward Filene, founder of the credit union movement in the United States. President Harry Truman attended the dedication of CUNA’s new office.

When WOCCU was founded in 1971, its offices were also in the Filene House.

CUNA Mutual had moved out of the Filene House to its Mineral Point Road location in 1960 as its insurance and financial services businesses expanded.

CUNA Mutual bought more land by its office on Mineral Point Road, and developed the Credit Union Center Campus in the late 1970s. It included the much-expanded CUNA Mutual building and an adjacent new building. CUNA and WOCCU moved from the Filene House into the new building in 1979. The National Credit Union Foundation later became another tenant.

The campus also included underground parking, a network of underground tunnels connecting the buildings and a “futuristic looking cafeteria building, or International Commons, a distinctive circular structure with a glittering band of gold-tinted windows encircling the top,” according to a 2002 CU Times article.

By 2002, the campus had garnered the nickname of the “magic kingdom.” It was home to 2,600 CUNA Mutual employees, 200 CUNA employees and 40 WOCCU employees. There were also a “handful” with the Filene Research Institute, founded there in 1989, and CUNA Credit Union.

Filene moved out in 2012 to an office about five miles east at 612 West Main St. in Madison. It moved from there about 1.5 miles northeast to lease 8,601 square feet at the Lyric in 2017.

CUNA Credit Union had become Summit Credit Union by 2008. It moved its home office to Rimrock Road in 2006, and then to its present home in Cottage Grove in 2019. It had $4.9 billion in assets and 227,353 members as of March 31.

The cafeteria was torn down several years ago and a new building erected on its spot. The second building housing CUNA, WOCCU and the National Credit Union Foundation is set to be torn down next year.

CUNA, which has offices there and in Washington, D.C., has declined to comment on its plans for its new location in Madison.

The National Credit Union Foundation, the charitable arm of the U.S. credit union movement, has agreed to leave by year’s end.

André Parraway, chief financial and operations officer of the National Credit Union Foundation, said it has 12 full-time, permanent employees spread across seven states in four time zones at its Madison headquarters, its Washington satellite office and remotely.

In Madison, the foundation has “three desks, two offices and some storage.”

Parraway said the foundation has maintained offices in both Madison and Washington, D.C., “while seeking to be as flexible as possible with our employees’ working locations.”

“The pandemic afforded us the opportunity to re-evaluate our office needs and in 2021, we reduced our Madison footprint considerably,” Parraway said. “We are on track to vacate our Madison offices in line with our rental agreement by the end of 2022 but, as yet no decision has been made on whether we secure new premises.”

CUNA Mutual’s original 1960s building on the campus will be replaced this fall.

Spokesman Barclay Pollak said CUNA Mutual now has 4,100 employees, including about 1,750 employees working in and around Madison. “Obviously, the number of folks working remotely has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic started.”

“CUNA Mutual is in the process of reimagining what its workplace of the future looks like, similar to many businesses across the nation,” Pollak said. “That likely includes fewer employees in-person on our campus, flexible ways to accommodate our employees and possibly a smaller overall footprint.”