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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Thornburg chairman gives a tour of the troubled mortgage company's new campus
By Raam Wong
Journal Staff Writer
From the outside, the new Thornburg corporate headquarters on the outskirts of Santa Fe blends in with its hillside, with muted browns and low-key reds.
But inside, the office complex pops with color — blazing purple carpets, electric yellow walls and bubble-gum pink ceilings with skylights in psychedelic shapes.
The cheerful interior visible on a tour Friday is tempered somewhat by the recent troubles of Thornburg Mortgage, one of the independent Thornburg companies housed in the building. This month, the mortgage company laid off 130 employees and announced it was going out of business.
"Bittersweet it is," companies chairman Garrett Thornburg said as he showed local media around.
Most of the desks on the mortgage side of the building are empty now — the handful of employees who remain are winding down operations. Though the company specialized in making "jumbo" loans to relatively wealthy borrowers, Thornburg was ensnared in the mortgage meltdown.
"The tsunami got us," said Thornburg, who co-founded the Santa Fe-based mortgage operation in 1993. Thornburg said that, unlike banks, there was no government bailout for mortgage companies.
"It's terrible," he said. "We built a great business."
They also built an eye-popping headquarters.
On Friday, a few dozen traders were at work at Thornburg Investment Management, which is still going strong. Looking down from a balcony at the seemingly mellow trading floor framed by a two-story wall of windows, it's incredible to think $50 billion worth of transactions happen here annually.
The trading floor is visible behind Garrett Thornburg whenever he appears on television to yak with the talking heads on CNBC financial shows.
What viewers are actually seeing, however, is Thornburg sitting in the headquarters' television studio in front of a big screen showing a recording of the trading floor. Helpful hints hang on the studio walls: "Speak louder than normal," "Lean forward 15 degrees toward the camera."
The 100,000-square-foot complex off N.M. 599 was a bit too forward-leaning for many neighbors, who went to court to oppose it, saying the building's large scale did not fit well with the surrounding residential area of expensive homes. The delay increased the cost of the campus and forced Thornburg to look to the city for industrial revenue bonds for financing.
Garrett Thornburg said city zoning laws played a role in the design of the building: "We couldn't do a big box, which is actually a blessing in disguise."
About 200 people now work in the complex, divided into three interconnected sections that cascade down the hill.
Thornburg expects the campus to receive a "Gold" certification under the national LEED green building rating system. The ecofriendly complex features include a 50,000-gallon runoff-collection cistern and indicator lights that tell employees when it's best to open windows.
Computer software was used to design windows that take advantage of the sun as it moves through the sky. Deep overhangs cover recessed windows on the south side, while aluminum angled "fins" are positioned on the east and west sides.
The features keep the hot sun out and bring natural light in, as they did even during Friday's snowstorm.
Gazing out one of the large windows framing the snowy terrain, Thornburg said that, in many pueblo cultures, spring snowfall represents fertility and growth. "I'd like to have that again," he said.
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