THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 28, 1995 TAG: 9510280324
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Using the company's slogans to emphasize his points, Gov. George F. Allen announced Friday that MCI Communications Corp. will open a customer service center that will employ 1,000 by the end of 1996 with an annual payroll of $20 million.
``Newport News is getting some new `friends and family,' '' Allen said. ``MCI is locating one of its largest mass market sales and service centers right here.''
MCI attributed the new center to strong consumer demand for its Friends and Family long-distance program and its expanded Friends and Family Connections, which offers e-mail, paging and calling card services.
Washington-based MCI, which boasts annual revenue of $13 billion, will occupy a former 75,000-square-foot Lowe's store in Sherwood Shopping Center on Warwick Boulevard. It will open for business by January.
Mike Cerone, MCI's director of mass market sales and services, said the company expects to add 300 more jobs shortly after it reaches its target of 1,000.
MCI will begin hiring Dec. 15. Information about the application process, including a toll-free phone number, will be released next week, Cerone said.
Newport News lured MCI - in part - with $450,000 from the governor's Opportunity Virginia Fund. The money will be used to improve streets, parking and other infrastructure at the site. Newport News' industrial development authority will kick in $500,000 in rent credit if MCI employs 1,000 people by the end of 1996, said planning and development director Paul Miller.
The development authority will lease the building from its owner, Earle W. Kazis Associates in New York City, and is borrowing $4.6 million to make improvements. MCI, in turn, will sublease the site from the development authority.
Entry-level employees will be mostly sales and service representatives placing and taking calls. They can expect to make between $6.50 and $7.50 an hour - from $13,520 to $15,600 a year - plus an incentive and benefit package, Cerone said.
About 850 positions will be sales and service representatives, said Tim Luft, the Newport News center director. The rest of the Newport News facility will be staffed by managers and supervisors.
Supervisors can expect to earn between $18,000 to $40,000 in base salary, compared with management positions that range between $28,000 and $60,000, Luft said.
MCI signed a 10-year lease on the former Lowe's building, with the option to terminate it after five years, Cerone said. He tried to reassure people about the short lease by saying, ``We're committed here for 10 years.''
MCI hopes to use the facility to expand into other services outside its core telecommunications business. The company expects half its revenues to come from sources other than phone services by 2000, Cerone said. MCI has 17 percent of the long-distance phone market, he said.
When asked why MCI is expanding its operations in Newport News after announcing job cuts elsewhere earlier this year, Cerone said, ``MCI reorganized, and with reorganization comes consolidation and movement to other cities.
``It doesn't preclude us from taking market share.''
MCI employs more than 4,000 people in Northern Virginia. It cut 3,000 jobs over the summer, because of a major reorganization of its Washington-based headquarters. by CNB