Technology solutions provider PCM of Segundo, California, announced in June that it would locate a 220-employee sales center in Rio Rancho to serve the West Coast. PCM CEO Frank Khulusi had met with the governor and a development team in California and ultimately said the state’s improved business environment and growing workforce was a “game-changer” in expanding operations there. Fidelity Investments, which opened a 216,000-square-foot regional office in 2008, recently expanded its workforce to 1,125 employees.
Atlanta-based Rural Sourcing announced in 2015 it would expand operations to Albuquerque with 125 jobs in software development and support operations. CEO Monty Hamilton says that after evaluating a dozen cities in eight states, they found Albuquerque had a fair amount of “underleveraged and underutilized” talent with a low cost of living that offered competitive advantages for their clients. Rural Sourcing, which outsources IT jobs domestically, works for such clients as Coca-Cola, J.Crew, Georgia-Pacific and Pfizer.
Hamilton says the new presence of Facebook in the region is already “putting it on the map” with national companies and chief executives. “There’s a growing immersion in technology that is going to be super cool in the next five or 10 years. I think it could be creating another Austin out of it,” says Hamilton.
RECENT DEVELOPMENT DEALS IN THE SOUTHWEST
TEXAS 855,000-squarefoot ecommerce fulfillment center in San Marcos (Amazon); relocation of tech firm headquarters to San Antonio (Easyexpunctions.com); development of new financial services center in San Antonio (GM Financial).
NEW MEXICO $250 million state-of-the-art data center in Los Lunas (Facebook); 29,000-square-foot, 220-employee sales center in Rio Rancho (PCM); 45 new high-tech jobs in communications technology in Las Cruces (X2nSat).
ARIZONA 271,000-squarefoot regional office expansion with 2,220 additional jobs over the next five years (McKesson Corporation); relocation of $3.5 billion manufacturer headquarters to Phoenix (Carlisle Companies); expansion of financial services operation center with 1,000 employees (Northern Trust).
OKLAHOMA $80 million, 300,000-square-foot. manufacturing facility (Boeing); 125,000-squarefoot oil and gas global research facility (GE); soft
ware company headquarters with additional 423 jobs in two years (Paycom Software).
ARKANSAS $20 million manufacturing facility (Suzhou Tianyuan Garments Company); $230 million steel mill (Nucor); $1.3 billion paper goods manufacturing plant (Shandong Sun Paper Company).