Qwest taps Cache for new call center

NORTH LOGAN — A former home improvement center soon will be improved to become home to a 574-job call center.

Qwest Communications International Inc., along with various public officials, announced Tuesday that a former Anderson Lumber store on Main Street will be converted to a customer sales and service center for the Denver-based company and will be fully staffed by mid-August.

Jerry Fenn, Qwest president for Utah, said the company put customer call centers in Iowa and South Dakota the past two years and could have placed a third anywhere, particularly anywhere in the company's 14-state local-service area.

But Utah has pro-business programs and policies. "And Cache Valley, we think, is a particularly great place for us to locate this facility because it has one of the most technically advanced and savvy work forces and a highly educated work force and a dependable work force," Fenn told the crowd of more than 200 jammed into the North Logan City Library for the announcement.

A "powerful incentive" for putting the work in Utah, he acknowledged, was a tax-rebate incentive of up to $2.5 million from the state that helped "make that decision easier for us to come here."

Qwest also will receive space at Bridgerland Applied Technology College, without lease payments, for recruiting employees. North Logan will waive various permit and impact fees and rebate a portion of personal property taxes. Local and state incentives total about $3.1 million, Fenn said.

When the center's employment reaches its peak in mid-August, Qwest will have about 3,000 workers in Utah. Fenn noted that even the lowest-paying jobs at the center will nonetheless pay 135 percent of the county median.

"We're confident that the Cache Valley is an area where we'll find a well-educated, highly motivated work force that will find our salary and benefits attractive," said Paula Kruger, Qwest's executive vice president for mass markets.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said the center could have been located anywhere. "And here we are, sitting right here — not in Salt Lake, not in Salt Lake County, not in Utah County, not in Weber or Davis, but beyond," Huntsman said. "This is representative of what's happening in what today is the fifth-fastest-growing state in America."

The governor said the call center will "prepare lots of our young people for what their life will offer later on," adding that many may start at the center and many may make a career there.