THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 1, 1996 TAG: 9602010328
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Bernard C. Harris Publishing Co., which already has significant operations in Norfolk, has picked Newport News as the site for a customer center for its telemarketing division.
Harris Select Communications, a division of Harris Publishing that provides telemarketing services to Fortune 500 companies, will invest $2.7 million and hire 250 people initially for the new operation, according to the Virginia Peninsula Economic Development Council. The company expects to employ 700 more people within its first 12 to 18 months.
``If we grow the center out the way we think it can, the potential is there for substantially more investment,'' said CEO and President William Harris.
This latest announcement, which will be made by Newport News officials today, highlights continuous growth in Hampton Roads for the privately owned White Plains, N.Y.-based firm.
Last year, Harris Publishing added to its Harris Select staff in Norfolk to service a telemarketing contract it had won from a Fortune 100 company. Harris also had moved its computer operations group and most of its information systems operation to Norfolk from New York in previous years. The consolidation and expansion have left the company cramped for space.
``We're cheek to jowl already'' in the company's Koger Center offices, Harris said. About 500 people work for Harris Select in Koger Center, but it's not certain whether they will move to the Newport News office.
More than 1,200 people - a combination of employees working for the core publishing business and about 500 people in the telemarketing division - work in Harris' Norfolk office, where it publishes yearbooks and directories for high schools, colleges, fraternities and additional groups. Other offices are located in Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; and Albuquerque, N.M., in addition to its New York headquarters.
The Newport News facility will open in mid-March. Renovation already has started on 27,000 square feet of the 40,000-square-foot facility that Harris will occupy in the Newmarket South Shopping Center, near Mercury Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue.
A new automated computer network, designed to assist its overall telemarketing system, will be located at the facility. It signals a generation change in the company's current computer system and could be implemented throughout the firm if its prototype is successful.
Newport News competed against 24 other locations in four to five states, said Peninsula development council President Julius A. ``Bud'' Denton, who started working with Harris Select last August. In the end, the Peninsula beat Corpus Christi, Texas, as the location for the telemarketing division.
``What attracted us to Hampton Roads in the first place were the same reasons we chose to locate here,'' said Harris, citing the quality of labor, lifestyle, employee work ethic and cost of living. The state will provide work-force training for Harris Select employees through the Virginia Department of Economic Development. by CNB