And more:
SAN DIEGO COUNTY
2010 Events Reported for 1st Time Here Today: 3
Adio Footwear, moved its HQ from Solana Beach to its parent company AL&S’ New York City offices. It isn’t known how many jobs are involved. According to the company, “The economic landscape is ever changing and Adio needs to protect its authentic action sports heritage to evolve with the times. To be able to continue producing authentic quality products and also offer aggressive marketing programs for strategic retail partners, Adio has elected to relocate its global headquarters to the parent company’s NYC office. The distribution strategy will still include core stores, specialty retailers and the family shoe channel.” See the Transworld Business Nov. 29, 2010. story: “Adio Cuts Skate Team; Moves Offices To NYC.” (CLO and RELO-OS)
Biogen Idec will close its cancer therapy research program in San Diego as part of a restructuring that will eliminate 325 local jobs by early 2011. Seven years ago about 1,000 people worked for the company in the San Diego area. The San Diego Union Tribune reported, “The Cambridge, Mass., drug company’s exit from San Diego represents a psychological blow to the region. . . . About 25 percent of the people working at the Nobel Campus will be offered jobs at other Biogen Idec locations . . . The rest will be laid off. While the restructuring announced Wednesday will eliminate 650 jobs from Biogen Idec, or 13 percent of the company’s 4,275 employees worldwide, the biggest hit will be felt in San Diego.” (Emphasis added.) All of the company’s U.S. activities will be consolidated at sites in Massachusetts and North Carolina. See the Union Tribune Nov. 3, 2010, story “Biogen Idec shutting down San Diego campus.” (CLO and RELO-OS)
PETCO Animal Supplies Inc., HQ’d in San Diego, will expand its headquarters to San Antonio, Texas in 2011 and complete the transition by 2014. The San Antonio Express-News reported: “Petco will open its Satellite Support Center with about 100 employees, including several top executives . . . Between 40 and 80 employees are expected to move [from San Diego]. The jobs will pay an average of about $57,700 a year. Ten percent of the jobs will pay $80,000 or more. . . . Petco started its site-selection process in January with a list 37 possible expansion sites around the country, including the San Diego area. See Nov. 22, 2010, story “Petco plans to add 400 jobs in S.A.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the project will create 400 jobs and generate an estimated $17 million in capital investment in his statement “Gov. Perry Announces TEF Investment Bringing 400 Jobs to San Antonio.” (CD-OSG and RELO-OS)
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SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY
2010 Events Reported for 1st Time Here Today: 1
Valley Towing Products in Lodi will shut down in January and 64 employees will lose their jobs. Work will move to a plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, owned by parent company Revstone Industries LLC of Lexington, Ky., and to Dallas, Texas. The company has made parts of trailers and towing systems in Lodi since 1947. Both the plant in Mexico and the Dallas warehouse are new and represent part of the privately held company’s expansion plans. See the Central Valley Business Times Dec. 3, 2010, story, “Manufacturing plant in Lodi to be closed.” (CLO and RELO-OS)
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SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY
2010 Events Reported for 1st Time Here Today: 1
Retail Anywhere, HQ’d in Atascadero, Calif., opened a new office for its Customer Support and Implementation departments in North Las Vegas, Nevada. A company statement said the new office will accommodate its need for a larger staging facility and support an increased staff of help-desk support. Branden Jenkins, Retail Anywhere’s CEO, said. “We chose the Las Vegas area because of its talented labor pool and for its abundant options of direct flights, easing the commute for our implementation teams as well as for customers coming on-site for training.” See the company’s news release, “Retail Anywhere Opens New Office in Las Vegas.” (CD-OSG)
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SAN MATEO COUNTY
2010 Events Reported for 1st Time Here Today: 1
Pain Therapeutics Inc., a San Mateo-based drug development company, said in an Oct. 29, 2010 SEC filing that “We intend to relocate our permanent headquarters, including actual direction, control, and coordination of our operations, from San Mateo, California to Austin, Texas between now and the end of 2011.” According to the Austin American Statesman, Pain Therapeutics has about 30 employees and plans to hire 50 to 100 people in R&D roles over the next three years. The paper quoted CEO Remi Barbier as saying “he wanted to find a location that was both pro-business and strong in the technology sector. He said he considered cities such as Seattle and Boston before deciding on Austin. . . . ‘We’re a business, and we look for business-friendly states and business-friendly environments, and we think Texas is one of the most pro-business in the country,’ Barbier said. ‘At the next level, we’re a medical research company and we think that Austin, Texas, is an up-and-coming cluster for biotech and biomedical research, and we’d like to participate in that.’” See the Oct. 29 story “Drug development firm moving headquarters to Austin; Pain Therapeutics, citing business-friendly environment, bringing offices from California.” (CLO and RELO-OS)
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SANTA CLARA COUNTY
2010 Events Reported for 1st Time Here Today: 9
Adobe Systems of San Jose is expanding big-time in Lehi, Utah. Business Facilities reports that it will build a 230,000-square-foot tech campus and bring up to 1,000 jobs to the area over the next 20 years. The campus will be built on a 38-acre undeveloped site west of Traverse Mountain and be similar to Adobe’s corporate offices in San Jose with a skywalk between multilevel LEED certified buildings. The facility is “expected to bring in more than $134 million in taxes over the next 20 years, the move could bring in as much as $1.6 billion in wages paid over that time. Salaries will be 200 percent of the local average.” See the Oct. 1, 2010 story: “Adobe Picks Lehi as Site of Tech Campus.” (CD-OSG)
Alvarion will move its North American headquarters from Sunnyvale to Montgomery County, Maryland. One reason for the selection was the “quality of public education,” according to the company. According to the Montgomery Gazette, the company will move some employees from California and also intends to create 25 new jobs by 2013. Alvarion just signed about $80 million in deals to bring wireless broadband to rural parts of Canada and Italy and some have called the company a world leader in providing 4G networks. See the Nov. 1, 2010 story “Schools key factor in Alvarion move to Montgomery.” (CLO and RELO-OS)
Barracuda Networks, an IT security firm HQ’d in Campbell, Calif., is undertaking a major expansion of its R&D center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2010. In the two years since it created the facility, it has grown from 8 employees to about 100 workers. The company is going to great lengths to hire still more people, with AnnArbor.com reporting that a company recruiter flies in a charter aircraft to communities as far away as Houghton in Michigan’s upper peninsula. Such a trip is part of its “brisk hiring plan” for the Ann Arbor office, which is 542 miles away. The company said, “We’re actually, for the first time, looking outside the greater Detroit and Ann Arbor region, just because we have so many slots to fill.” Barracuda’s growth illustrates the economic potential of the IT security sector for the Ann Arbor region and the University of Michigan’s computer science engineering program. See the AnnArbor.com Oct. 17, 2010, story, “IT security growth at Barracuda Networks, Arbor Networks illuminates opportunity for Ann Arbor.” One estimate is that Barracuda would invest $2.55 million in Ann Arbor, according to mlive.com, Sept. 28, 2008, story “Barracuda Networks, ICON Creative Technologies to add nearly 250 jobs in Ann Arbor.” (CD-OSG)
Facebook, based in Palo Alto, is investing $450 million in a data center near Forest City, North Carolina, which will open in 2012. According to PC Magazine, “The data center, located about 60 miles outside of Charlotte, will employ more than 250 construction and mechanical workers during the 18-month construction process and 35 to 45 full-time and contract workers once it opens. . . . Facebook said its data center will be one of the most energy efficient data centers in the U.S. via innovative cooling and power management technologies.. . . North Carolina is home to several high-tech data centers. Apple is set to open one in Maiden, NC “any day now,” according to local officials. Google also has a $600 million data center in Lenoir, NC. In February, IBM announced that it would build a new, $362 million data center at its Research Triangle Park campus.”See the Nov. 11, 2010, story “Facebook Building $450M North Carolina Data Center.” The Associated Press observed that “One of the most important factors is relatively inexpensive power, important for facilities that can use as much electricity as a city of 50,000. Another is the climate: extremes of cold and heat are a challenge for facilities with huge amounts of sensitive electronic equipment. The climate around Rutherford County is so consistent that the local community college is called Isothermal Community College, for a meteorological term meaning identical or even temperatures.” See the Nov. 11, 2010, story “Facebook Picks Site for Data Center.” Note: The development is in addition to four other Facebook-sponsored out-of-California events. Note: All these companies save a fortune by avoiding California utility costs, which will only worsen beginning in 2011 with California’s new environmental regulations set to kick in. (CD-OSG)
GlobalFoundries, HQ’d in Milpitas, Calif., will create many jobs in Saratoga County, New York, where the Albany Times Union reports that the company “has been building its $4.6 billion chip factory, or “chip fab,” in the town of Malta for the past 12 months [and the cost could reach] as high as $5 billion if GlobalFoundries goes ahead with an expansion of the facility.” Known as Fab 8, it has sparked Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., and ASML of the Netherlands t hire engineers to work in Malta. The paper continued: “GlobalFoundries is also currently advertising about 150 jobs in Malta as it prepares to start installing tools at the facility and begin manufacturing. The fab is expected to start full-scale manufacturing by early 2013, with full-time employment expected to be roughly 1,400.” The companies like to be located near the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. See more in the Dec. 3, 2010 story “Sign of fab jobs to come.” See photos & sketches and other information about this massive project here. (CD-OSG)
InCube Labs, HQ’d in San Jose, will launch an Innovation Center in San Antonio, Texas, and will also launch five life science companies in that city over the next five years. InCube Labs is a Silicon Valley-based life sciences research laboratory. It’s chairman and CEO, Mir Imran, has founded more than 20 companies, holds more than 200 patents, and with partners also manages a venture fund, InCube Ventures. It’s expected that InCube will create at least 50 jobs within the business incubator with salaries ranging from $50,000 to over $200,000. The city expects that over ten years, InCube companies will create approximately 400 jobs and will spend about $100 million. InCube actively develops start-up companies, guiding them through scientific and technical development, clinical trials, and early-stage commercialization. “With San Antonio’s research institutions, city officials and our partners in the business community, San Antonio has a solid foundation to become a preeminent center for life sciences innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Imran. See the City of San Antonio press release, June 10, 2010, “InCube Labs to Create San Antonio Innovation Center.” Also: the three related companies are, according to the San Antonio Express-News, “Corhythm Inc. with the heart failure device, Neurolink Inc. with the epilepsy device and Fe3 Medical Inc. with the iron patch.” See the Sept. 28, 2010 story “3 firms coming to InCube in S.A..” (It seems fair to count these four companies as one relocation considering the joint ownership and their relatively small scale at this time.) (CD-OSG)
Intel, HQ’d in Santa Clara, will spend up to $8 billion to support future technology advancements and manufacturing in Arizona and Oregon. The investments will support the creation of 6,000-8,000 construction jobs and 800-1,000 permanent high-tech jobs. Included will be a new development fab in Oregon, as well as upgrades to four existing fabs to manufacture the next-generation 22-nanometer (nm) process technology. See the company’s Oct. 19, 2010, news release “Intel Announces Multi-Billion-Dollar Investment in Next-Generation Manufacturing in U.S.” The Oregonian reported: “Though Intel’s headquarters are in California’s Silicon Valley, the company’s largest and most sophisticated operations are in Washington County. Intel employs 15,000 in the state, more than any other business, and those workers’ payroll and benefits totaled $1.8 billion last year.” See OregonLive.com Oct. 20, 2010 story, “Intel confirms it’ll invest billions in Hillsboro plants.” NOTE: Not included in these listing are Intel’s expansions in China and Vietnam, which more clearly appear to be geared to market developments in Asia and therefore are placed in “Part II: Examples of Companies Excluded From California Disinvestment Event Listings.” (CD-OSG)
ShoreTel Inc., based in Sunnyvale, which sells Internet-protocol business phone systems, opened a 90-person facility in August in Austin, Texas. The Austin American Statesman reported that “The company employs more than 90 people locally, and officials expect that number to double over the next two years.” See the Aug. 18, 2010 story “As California tech firms get cozy in Austin, city woos more” (through NewsBank). The Austin Business Journal reported that “the new jobs will fall in engineering, customer service call center, training and development departments.” See “ShoreTel hiring 150 in Austin.” A company news release quoted the company’s CEO, John W. Combs, as saying: “The beauty of the ShoreTel system is that it lets us have offices anywhere, while ensuring close collaboration among our teams. We looked at a number of locations outside of California, and Austin exceeded our expectations in many criteria, including work ethic, quality of education, local vibrancy and talent pool. We’re excited about joining the Austin community and welcoming more Austinites to the ShoreTel team.” See “ShoreTel Expands Operations with New Office Facilities in Austin, Texas.” (CD-OSG)
SunPower Corp., a “green” company, HQ’d in San Jose, will create a new U.S. operations center in Austin, Texas, creating 450 jobs and generating an estimated $10 million in capital investment. The new facility will house marketing, legal, finance and accounting functions. SunPower Corp. designs, manufactures and delivers solar technology worldwide for residential, commercial and utility-scale power plant customers. SunPower CEO Tom Werner said: “Texas has great potential to become a significant solar market. If policies creating a stable solar market across Texas are enacted, this commitment by SunPower could be the start of significantly more investment and job creation in the state by the rapidly growing solar industry.” See the news release: “Gov. Perry Announces TEF Investment Bringing 450 Jobs to Austin.” (CD-OSG)
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