The retailer is also subleasing a five-story office building from Citigroup, where it will establish a customer service center of excellence, also on Carver Road.
“We’ll end up filling that entire building,” Dailey said.
Hopes are to open the offices “as soon as possible” where it will bring together under one roof: recruiting activities for stores nationwide; a rapidly growing digital team that develops the mobile application, Kroger.com and other branded websites, as well as digital coupons; and pharmacy customer service, including a call center, Dailey said.
The digital team “is a critical team to expanding those options for our customers” for how they want to interact with us, Dailey said. “This new facility will allow us to continue to grow.”
Already, Kroger owns seven facilities in Blue Ash including the distribution center, he said. Other business units such as research and development are also located in the city.
There will be minimal employee transfers from other Blue Ash facilities to the new office opening to house the center of excellence, he said.
But while Kroger expects to create the net new 649 jobs in Blue Ash in the coming years due to growth in distribution and office jobs, an additional 100 jobs will relocate from a Hamilton call center facility at Vora Technology Park to the new building, he said.
All Hamilton employees — which includes about 20 Kroger staffers and about 80 contract workers — have been offered the same jobs in Blue Ash, he said, where they’ll be more integrated with the company’s larger customer care team.
“Because the locations are only 30 miles apart, our hope is that all associates and contractors will choose to continue working with Kroger. We’ll transition associates to the Blue Ash location over the next couple of months,” he said.
The announcement comes after the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved Monday a 65 percent, 10-year Jobs Creation Tax Credit.
“Kroger continues to innovate and invest to grow our business, and we are pleased to be able to do both in Ohio,” said Mike Schlotman, Kroger’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, in a written statement. “The most exciting thing about being a growing company is that as Kroger expands, so do the opportunities for our associates. We created nearly 25,000 new jobs last year, including 600 here in the Cincinnati area.”
“Our investments in Blue Ash will create more jobs and opportunity and help us take even better care of our customers,” Schlotman said.
Cincinnati-based Kroger operates grocery stores, gas stations and convenience stores across a 34-state footprint. Presently Kroger employs 400,000 full- and part-time employees nationwide.
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