The Buildings Site

Reserve National set to shine in new office building in Oklahoma City

When Reserve National Insurance Co. decided to jump out of the way of a booming neighbor near NW 63 and Grand Boulevard, it didn't jump far ' but it jumped high

In two weeks, the 53-year-old company lands in its new high-finish office home on Britton Road east of Broadway Extension. The shiny midrise building is a head turner.

"It demonstrates strength. It was designed from the inside out to sort of have the same feel as this building," Scott Snider, senior vice president, said Friday in space Reserve National has occupied at 6100 NW Grand Blvd. since 1975 and owned until 2006, when Chesapeake Energy Corp. bought it.

The rambling complex on Grand is nondescript. But anyone who steps into the lobby will feel what Snider was talking about.

The 41-year-old building, especially with a move in the works for three years, is a little rough around the seams. But its grandness, accented with some of company founder John S. Gammill's Western art still adorning the walls, is still sensed.

Reserve National wanted to transfer some of that to the new place, President Orin L. Crossley said. Company leaders, he said, were impressed with Fisher Hall, Edmond's biggest and highest-finish office building, completed in 2006 by Turner & Co. So they called on developer Derek Turner.

Reserve National had 14 acres on Britton and sold five acres to Turner's MidAmerica Reserve Building LLC. Turner developed the property. Wynn Construction built the three-story, 51,000-square-foot office building, designed, like Fisher Hall, by Bockus Payne & Associates.

Architect Bruce Bockus said the building was designed to look like it "belongs in Oklahoma" with its "great overhang" ' the roofline projections ' and "timeless good taste." The architecture fits the "Oklahoma vernacular," Bockus said.

Reserve National, a health insurance company founded in 1956, has been owned by Chicago-based Unitrin Inc. since 1998, four years after the founder died. It employs 160 in Oklahoma City, 220 nationwide, and has 240 agents in 32 states.

The company processes applications, payments, claims and markets itself, outsourcing almost nothing ' although the print shop will close and anything not digitized will be jobbed out after the move.

"For 53 years, we've followed Mr. Gammill's approach, which was 'Let's do it in-house,'" Crossley said.

Any qualms the founder would have over seeing the print shop go might be soothed by this: The Britton Road property is platted for other office buildings on land retained by Reserve National.

When Gammill bought the Grand Boulevard site and moved from 418 NW 5, the company got Alberta's Tea Room, the Junior League, Honeywell Computer Systems and others as tenants. With extra acreage on Britton, Gammill's legacy could be a landlord again