Call center to employ 1,000

Blanco touts news as evidence La. is the place to be for business

By KEVIN BLANCHARD
Acadiana bureau,  Aug 8, 2006
 

 
Advocate staff photo by BRYAN TUCK
NuComm International CEO Réal Bergevin announces his firm’s plans to open a call center in Lafayette. With him for the announcement Monday in Lafayette are, from left, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Lafayette Economic Development Authority CEO Gregg Gothreaux and state Economic Development Secretary Michael Olivier.
LAFAYETTE — A Canadian company announced Monday that it is bringing to an underused Lafayette shopping mall a call center that will employ 1,000 people.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the center is a “great feather in our cap” for a state looking to aggressively attract business in the aftermath of hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

“One more time we’ve proven that Louisiana is indeed moving forward,” Blanco said at the announcement Monday in Lafayette. “Let the word go out that Louisiana’s back — and this is the place to be for business.”

NuComm International is making Lafayette its 14th and largest customer contact center. NuComm plans to open in September in the old Service Merchandise space at Northgate Mall, which has been working to fill vacancies in the past few years.

NuComm CEO and founder Réal Bergevin said the company plans to hire 1,000 people at first, with an eye toward expansion if things go well.

The company looked at more than 200 communities before settling on Lafayette, Bergevin said.

The area’s economy and good work force were deciding factors, as well as state and local economic development officials who, Bergevin said, “grabbed us by the nose” to make Lafayette’s case.

The company is also getting $2 million in incentives to use toward the $3.5 million in capital improvements that will be needed to ready its building — $1 million from the Lafayette Economic Development Authority and $1 million from the state Department of Economic Development’s Rapid Response Fund.

Bergevin said he is also excited about the technological developments in Lafayette — including the city’s municipal telecommunications project, the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise and the state’s connection to the National Lambda Rail, which enables a large bandwidth connection to the rest of the world.

NuComm provides companies technical and service support, customer care, billing and data management.
The company held a job fair in Lafayette to gauge the skill level of the work force. The company will be hiring the first of its workers at a job fair to be Wednesday through Saturday at the Louisiana Technical College campus on Bertrand Drive.
Blanco said it’s important that many of the people NuComm hires will be high school graduates, the unemployed or the underemployed.

The company is participating in the state’s Quality Jobs program, which allows state help in job training in exchange for jobs with competitive pay and benefits.

“Anybody who wants the state’s money has to provide quality jobs and good pay with benefits,” Blanco said.
City-Parish President Joey Durel said the opportunities for good jobs with benefits is “substantial stuff,” that changes lives.
In addition, the new call center will have an impact not only on north Lafayette but on all of Acadiana, as employees are likely to come from throughout the region, Durel said.

The call center’s location near the intersection of interstates 10 and 49 will make it easier for employees to get to and from work, and having 1,000 more people working in the Northgate Mall should help those shops and restaurants in the area, Durel said.

State Secretary of Economic Development Michael Olivier said parts of the state undamaged by the hurricanes, such as Lafayette, will have to “carry the economic football” for the whole of Louisiana for awhile.

LEDA CEO and President Greg Gothreaux said that Lafayette’s unemployment reached an all-time low in April, at 2.7 percent.

Over the past five years, Lafayette accounted for 40 percent of the net new jobs created in the state, Gothreaux said.
Economic developers with the state are working on 72 projects right now — 18 would be expansions of businesses already in state — at a value of $5 billion that would create 15,000 jobs, Olivier said.

LEDA Board Chairman Walter Guillory said he is excited by the announcement, but said he is picturing a future visit to the call center once it has started operations, providing jobs that improve people’s quality of life.

“I think that’s going to be the true blessing,” Guillory said.


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Story originally published in The Advocate