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Priceline.com coming to town

Yankee Fan

By Yankee Fan
in Grand Rapids

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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The Press hard-copy tonight is reporting what I had heard rumored about, that Priceline is looking at the old Smiths Industries/Siemen's facility on Eastern Ave near the Steelcase complex. Siemen's (Rapistan Dematic) tore down part of that facility and retrofitted it for production for the United States Postal Service (I believe) back in the late 90's, until the program was canceled. It's been vacant off and on for a while now.

http://www.carwm.com/pubs/propertySearch.php

(MLS# 374752)

That's great news for that area that is starting to see some life breathed into in by Ashley Capital across the street.

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ericnmu Whistle-Stop

ericnmu

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There's still going to be an IT "high-tech" presence there, the 300 call center people would need upwards of 10-20 IT staff, and a few dozen managerial positions as well.

High tech jobs don't always mean engineers and programmers. Most phone systems today (especially call center phone systems) require quite a bit of knowledge to work with them properly.

We have remote call centers with over 300 people at each. There is 0 tech staff. We bring up a truck load of spare computers, and all traffic flows through a single VPN back to our datacenter.

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joeDowntown Metropolis

joeDowntown

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Regardless of tech vs. call center jobs,

A) I don't believe that there would zero IT jobs. Sure, there won't be 1 for every call center employees, but I'm sure there will be an IT support staff

B) I don't know what call center management to employee ratios are, but let's say it is 25 to 1. That still brings a decent number of higher paying jobs.

C) It's another example of GR shedding its past and moving toward a information based economy.

I don't know how this wouldn't be seen as a win for Grand Rapids. :)

Joe

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egrguy Burg

egrguy

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If the pitch could hook Priceline; it'd be nice to see if the area could build on it to snare additional jobs within the same field. A sort of call center cluster. Other corporate companies have call centers in the area like JC Penney, Farmers/Foremost Insurance.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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According to WOOD TV it looks like the deal is a go in Wyoming. Good job news!

*fish

Awesome! I also see they are starting to go public with job openings:

http://jobs.myspace.com/a/ms-jobs/list/q-H...onsulting+Group

Interestingly, they picked Grand Rapids because a large portion of the population can speak more than one language, particularly Asian languages.

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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With Little Vietnam a stone throws away, I'm not surprised. A lot of the Vietnamese that have come to Grand Rapids in the 80s-90s are with Kids that have been graduating from all the Southland schools since the 2000s. This should be a great job for those kids entering the job market. I wouldn't be surprised if they pick up on the large population of Bosnian folks out there.

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aowwt Whistle-Stop

aowwt

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I was just at the city of wyoming offices and they did post that Priceline.com needed some type of processing done or something I cant seem to remember. All I know is that they need the board approval. Given the board I think it will go through without a problem.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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With Little Vietnam a stone throws away, I'm not surprised. A lot of the Vietnamese that have come to Grand Rapids in the 80s-90s are with Kids that have been graduating from all the Southland schools since the 2000s. This should be a great job for those kids entering the job market. I wouldn't be surprised if they pick up on the large population of Bosnian folks out there.

Know anyone who speaks and writes Japanese fluently? (they need Japanese translaters apparently)

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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RapidGrowth has found a listing at Aquinas College saying they are looking for up to 350 bilingual or multi-lingual college students (actually, they don't have to be college students):

http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/timnews/prclne0807.aspx

http://themoose.aquinas.edu/?q=node/11559

Here's the 45,000 sf facility they are moving into (not my pic):

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/274157..._58a495d340.jpg

And a good synopsis of how it all went down, and the expansion plans, from The Press

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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I was watching WXMI news the other night and apparently they've already hired 40 people, who are being trained on Priceline's systems at GRCC. That seems pretty fast, to partner with GRCC, interview how many people to find 40 good candidates, do orientations, and start training. I'm guessing when the first announcement came out on this, the deal was already done.

Always makes me wonder what other deals are in the works that aren't public yet.

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Yankee Fan Hamlet

Yankee Fan

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I was watching WXMI news the other night and apparently they've already hired 40 people, who are being trained on Priceline's systems at GRCC. That seems pretty fast, to partner with GRCC, interview how many people to find 40 good candidates, do orientations, and start training. I'm guessing when the first announcement came out on this, the deal was already done.

Always makes me wonder what other deals are in the works that aren't public yet.

We've been working with Priceline for about 2 months on hiring folks. None of it has been very high level at this point; the most senior of positions have really been administrative team leads and supervisors.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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That would be outstanding if they did, I wonder what something like that could mean longterm.

More jobs, I would hope. May even be a lot more jobs, if they grow like they are talking. Apparently another nice perk of working at Booking.com is frequent trips to Amsterdam for training and meetings (I imagine mostly management level people).

Word on the street is that we might be hearing something soon on another call center opening up in town.

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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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More jobs, I would hope. May even be a lot more jobs, if they grow like they are talking. Apparently another nice perk of working at Booking.com is frequent trips to Amsterdam for training and meetings (I imagine mostly management level people).

Word on the street is that we might be hearing something soon on another call center opening up in town.

MiBiz is reporting that Priceline has now hired 73 people since opening, and plans to have about 300 within a year.

The article also says that according to the Right Place, several other call centers and IT firms have been inquiring about Grand Rapids.

http://www.mibiz.com/absolutenm/templates/...09&zoneid=3

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