InfoCision to add jobs, move to former Troutman's store

Already employing 240 workers, the teleservice company plans to hire 140 more.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA BUREAU
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- The former Troutman's department store building will get a much needed face-lift to house an expanding business.
InfoCision announced Tuesday it was moving its New Castle operation from the Cascade Galleria on Jefferson Street to the three-story former department store building just a few blocks away on East Washington Street. It hopes to be in the building by December. This move will allow the company to hire an additional 140 people, said Steve Brubaker, InfoCision vice president.
InfoCision is a privately held teleservice company with 28 call centers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The company already employs 240 people in New Castle.
Brubaker said the company will immediately start hiring for some positions including the telemarketers, which InfoCision calls communicators, and support staff. Communicators with experience can start at up to 12 per hour, he said.
"We're bringing in more clients than we ever had before," Brubaker said of the need for expansion. The company has both outbound and inbound call centers in New Castle.
He said the move in New Castle was attractive because it will allow the company to install a fitness center for employees and an area where a physician will be available to employees at set times each week.
Reason for move
Brubaker said these initiatives are an effort to keep health-care costs down for the company. Its 14,000-square-foot facility in the Cascade Galleria was too small for these amenities.
Among the other amenities the building will offer is a day-care center operated by the New Castle Transit Authority. The authority is working on a deal to became a 20 percent shareholder in the building with developers Tom George and Bob Bruce, said Leonard Lastoria, transit authority director.
The transit authority has applied for 800,000 in federal funds to help pay for the project, Lastoria said.
Plans call for the transit authority to operate a day-care center on the first floor to service InfoCision workers and transit riders. The day care isn't expected to go into operation until 2008.
George and Bruce will receive 500,000 in state grants to help with the building's renovation. Located at the corner of East Washington Street and Croton Avenue, the former Troutman's Department Store went out of business in the early 1980s, and the building has sat vacant since with boarded-up windows.
Mayor Wayne Alexander said the bridge in front of the building, which crosses the Neshannock Creek, will be refurbished by the state in a project set to begin Monday.
He noted that whole side of the Neshannock Creek is undergoing changes.
Other changes
The transit authority recently opened a new transfer station across from the Troutman building and an old cinema across the street is set for demolition, he said.
"By late September, early October that whole area will be revitalized," Alexander said.
Lastoria said they will likely create more parking on the spot where the cinema is now located.
George, the developer, said InfoCision will take about 2,600 square feet on the third floor and 2,000 square feet on the second floor of the building, which has been renamed Pier One.
George said he expects more money to come from the state in the form of loans to help with renovations.
Jack Machek, regional director for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, said if the 500,000 state grant and private bank funding are not sufficient for the renovations, the state will consider giving the developers a supplemental loan.
cioffi@vindy.com