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"We outgrew our space and had no place to go but north," said Chris Stanley, branch manager.

The project, which adds 1,650 square feet to the building, includes four new offices, a larger conference room, more storage space, and a larger vault. The credit union presently has 3,000 square feet with three offices and a four-foot deep vault.

The new vault, which has already been installed, is 12-feet deep. It will provide more room for people accessing their safe deposit boxes.

The addition is expected to be completed in early December.

Besides expanding its office space, the credit union is also expanding its membership area. People who live, work, worship, attend school, or shop in the western two-thirds of Stearns County and all of Todd County are now eligible to be credit union members.

Membership was limited to people in the Albany, Grey Eagle, Melrose, and Paynesville, school districts.

The credit union currently has more than 24,000 members. The expansion gives the credit union potential for a lot of new members, Stanley said. The new membership rules went into effect June 15. The Central Minnesota Federal Credit Union opened a branch in Paynesville in 1993. The pageantry of the Nobel Prizes might not be as dazzling as the Academy Awards, but for academics to even rival Hollywood in pizzazz says something.