How WEX stepped in to make room for the Roux Institute

Photo / Noah Van Allen In Portland's East End, 100 Fore St. will have office space and parking for WEX Inc. and the Roux Institute.

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By Peter Van Allen

Northeastern University’s plans to open a technology education site in Portland — the Roux Institute — coincided with WEX Inc.’s abundance of new office space.

The Roux Institute has sublet 20,000 square feet, or one floor, at 100 Fore St., a new building that is expected to be completed in early fall. The institute expects to move in this fall.

WEX (NYSE: WEX) originally planned to have two floors in 100 Fore St., but for at least four years it will occupy one floor, or 20,000 square feet. The building is on the backside of WEX’s two-year-old headquarters at 1 Hancock St.

“We had been meeting with Roux Institute, they were talking about the desire to have a temporary space until they figured out long term space. We had taken more space than we needed in the short term — we wanted long-term space. We posed to them that this could be a good solution,” Melissa Smith, CEO and chair at WEX, told Mainebiz. “We wanted to help them anyway. We saw it has a benefit to be that close to the work we’re doing.”

The Roux Institute is being launched with a donation of $100 million from the Roux Family Foundation, which was established by tech entrepreneur and Lewiston native David Roux and his wife, Barbara. The institute is intended to be an innovation hub, David Roux has said, specializing in digital and life sciences, ideally feeding students into Maine’s workforce. Its corporate partners include WEX, Tilson, IDEXX Laboratories, L.L. Bean Inc., Bangor Savings Bank and five others.

At 100 Fore St., Roux’s lease will be four years, and will allow it to get established before finding longer-term space. For WEX, which has scaled back expansion plans during the pandemic, it will allow more time to absorb the space.

WEX, which is Maine’s third-largest publicly traded company by revenues, offers payment services and solutions for a range of companies. It has 1,291 employees in Maine and 4,898 total at 30 offices worldwide. Up to 250 will move into 100 Fore St.
WEX has about 400 employees in its headquarters building and others at the former headquarters in South Portland.

Plans are still being finalized for a $50 million operations center at the Downs in Scarborough. Smith said the design is still evolving, as the company takes into consideration the need for social distancing and a large number of remote workers. Most of WEX’s workforce are expected to work remotely at least through this year, Smith said.

“The groundbreaking may be delayed as we finalize designs,” she said. “Employees want more flexibility. Working from home has created the need for more flexibility. We’re now restructuring design,” though WEX still hopes to move in by 2022.

It’s still being determined how many employees will work in the Scarborough offices, though she said part of the plan was to allow employees commuting from south of Portland to use that as their base rather than coming into the Portland headquarters. WEX plans to occupy 100 Fore St. by the first half of 2021.

“We’re letting people come in on a phased approach,” Smith said.

How many people end up working remotely for an indefinite period depends on the schools and how working parents juggle childcare.

“Plans could change,” Smith said. “We want to create as much flexibility as possible. People are productive working remotely. It’s a very different environment.”

Some employees are more willing to go back into the office environment than others and WEX is still fine-tuning the best practices, such as when face coverings would be required.