News
Billings loses out on customer service center
Billings is out of the running for a customer service center that would have brought hundreds of service jobs to the community.
Joe McClure, executive director of the Big Sky Economic Development Authority, described the expansion-minded business as a Fortune 100 company involved in telecommunications. McClure said he has been dealing with a site selection firm from Texas, not with the client.
By TOM HOWARD
Of The Gazette Staff
McClure would not say what company had been looking at Billings.
McClure said he was told that Billings made the "short list" of communities vying for the center, but the client instead selected Augusta, Maine. Economic development officials in Maine didn’t respond to a phone message on Friday.
McClure said representatives of the site-selection firm visited Billings last summer. Big Sky EDA put together an incentive package that would have amounted to $7 million over 17 years.
To qualify for the package of state and local tax incentives, the company would have to build an 80,000-square-foot call center that would employ 650 people making a minimum of $19,420 a year, plus benefits, according to McClure.
Two years ago, Billings finished out of the running for a call center built by Dell Computer.
Last spring, Bresnan Communications agreed to locate a network communications center at 19th Street West and Monad Road that would bring more than 100 new jobs to Yellowstone County. Bresnan’s new operations center is near completion.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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