Ohioans question NCR move
Officials were unaware the company was considering moving its Worldwide Customer Services operations to Georgia.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
DAYTON — For more than 120 years, Dayton has been home to NCR Corp. So some local leaders were caught off guard by the Fortune 500 company's plans to create 900-plus jobs in Georgia. They ask if Ohio could have competed for NCR's planned investment of $15 million in operations in Peachtree City and Duluth, Ga.
On Tuesday, Oct. 28, NCR said it will move the headquarters of its Worldwide Customers Services operations to Georgia, creating 916 jobs there in the next 26 months. Up to 50 of those jobs will come from Dayton, NCR said.
"It looks like they were not in touch with NCR and probably other companies," said Robert Premus, a Wright State University economics professor, said of Ohio development officials. "It always seems that we learn about these things after the fact."
Jon Husted, Ohio House speaker, expressed disappointment in the announcement, and called on Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher — who also heads Ohio's development department — to join him in meeting with NCR's leaders.
"This community has been very good to NCR for more than a century," Husted said. "We want to have a future with NCR, and we want them to be successful."
The Georgia news comes nearly a year after NCR announced in late 2007 that the company has leased the 35th floor of 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan for executive offices.
Bill Nuti, NCR chief executive since August 2005, lives in New York. Lorraine Russell, an NCR spokeswoman, said Nuti has offices in Dayton — as well as Manhattan and London — and visits the Gem City "fairly regularly." She declined to quantify how regularly.
Russell said Ohio development leaders did not offer NCR incentives to expand its Worldwide Customer Service operations in Ohio, and NCR did not make overtures to Ohio, either. The business benefits of "co-locating" with an existing parts warehouse in Georgia could not be ignored, she said.
"That's a huge parts inventory building with a massive amount of it unused," Russell said.
Bob Grevey, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Development, said NCR did not approach Ohio about the project and said his department did not know about the project. He said Fisher is open to "sitting down at the table" with NCR leaders.
Edward Hill, a Cleveland State University development professor, doesn't see the move as a missed opportunity. NCR has legitimate business reasons for moving its services center to Georgia, he said.
Another plus for Georgia that Ohio didn't have: the nearby Atlanta International Airport, giving NCR extensive air reach nearby, Hill suggested. "It's a business decision, and there was nothing for Dayton to respond to," he said.
Moving to Georgia
NCR Corp.'s Worldwide Customer Services Division works in support of NCR's self-service, payment and store automation products. The division is headed by Christine Wallace, senior vice president, Worldwide Customer Services.
Source: NCR
