By Ian Ross
One way or another, residents in the Tri-Towns will know by early September whether the area has secured its first major inbound call centre.
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John Gauvreau |
"I'm very optimistic at this stage that it's all going to come together," says John Gauvreau, project developer for the Tri-Town strategic and economic development unit, of his almost daily negotiations with executives from Toronto-based Watts Communication Inc. to establish a 350-job customer-service centre. "I feel more confident than I've ever felt."
Gauvreau, who is looking for a 10-year commitment from Watts to allow the municipality to buy an existing commercial property in Dymond Township, was scheduled to meet with representatives from Watts in late August at their Toronto headquarters, and "bring some closure to this issue."
He expects the company will make a decision in the first week of September.
If successful, the company would be looking to set up a temporary facility to be operational by the third week of October employing 30 to 40 people to start, before eventually moving into a $10-million facility and ramping up to 350 positions by June 2003.
The Tri-Towns, along with an unnamed community in Western Canada, appear to have been the front-runners in a bidding process to attract the development.
Watts was seeking between 1,000 and 1,500 applications to fill about 350 positions before they would consider establishing a centre in the Timiskaming region.
The region responded to a public call for applications with more than 1,600 resumes flooding into the development agency from the Tri-Towns, Latchford, Temagami, Kirkland Lake and some from southwestern and eastern Ontario, former northerners wanting to return, says Gauvreau.
Company interest in the Timiskaming region remains high with Watts' representatives having visited the Tri-Towns three times in four months, including a visit by company president Colin Taylor who toured prospective sites.
Over the past six months, Watts Communication Inc. of Toronto, which bills itself as one of North America's largest direct marketing firms, has landed three major accounts to provide customer-relations services, including contracts with Best Buy Inc. and Covad Communications, a leading California national broadband service provider.
"They're in dire need of us, they're splitting at the seams," says Gauvreau.
From meetings between Watts' representatives and various government agencies, it has been determined that funding partners would prefer to see an existing building renovated rather than construct a new facility.
Tri-Towns and Watts officials are eyeing an undisclosed location in Dymond Township, declared surplus property by the Ontario Realty Corp., to accommodate a 40,000-square-foot centre. An architect has been hired to appraise the property, which is estimated to cost $3 million to $3.5 million, before the communities of Dymond, New Liskeard and Haileybury purchase the site and lease out the property to Watts.
"It's well documented that other communities like Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, North Bay, Thunder Bay have gotten a good chunk subsidized by the province and the federal governments," says Gauvreau. "We're hoping to tap into heritage fund for 60 to 70 per cent of that."
