NCR plant lifts Columbus spirits

Columbus is hearing cash registers sing with the news that NCR will bring a manufacturing plant and 870 jobs to the mostly military and industrial city.

“We have a lot of growth here in Columbus,” said Chris McCoy, general manager of Peachtree Mall in Columbus. “We’re excited about this move.”

NCR, maker of registers, self-checkouts, ATMs and airline check-in kiosks, announced Tuesday it will open a new ATM plant in Columbus, in addition to moving its headquarters from Ohio to Gwinnett County.

For Columbus, it’s believed to be one of the largest growth announcements in nearly three decades from a company not born in the west Georgia city. Pratt & Whitney was the last such company, announcing a major facility in 1982.

To help seal the deal, Columbus pledged to buy a former Panasonic battery plant and build a second, smaller building, both of which NCR will lease. That drew fire from some Ohio politicians when NCR’s press release said Columbus would use federal stimulus funds. One congressman argued it means Ohioans could pay interest on federal money spent to help take jobs from the state. Another called it “dirty.”

Columbus Mayor Jim Wetherington said the city has committed $8 million from its own coffers, as well as $1.5 million in state funding, on the buildings. It hopes to get $5 million in stimulus funds that it would use to offset the expense, but it doesn’t have that money yet, he told the Dayton Daily News.

NCR spokesman Jeff Dudash noted that the work to be done in Columbus is currently done by a Columbia, S.C., company that NCR contracts with.

Wetherington said he understands people in Ohio are upset. “But you know, they announced they were moving, they were looking for sites and our development authority jumped on it,” he said. He said Columbus competed with a number of cities, including Savannah and one in Tennessee, for the plant selection, and he believes the project is a valid use of stimulus money.

“We think this project certainly applies to what President [Barack] Obama said,” Wetherington said. “He wants projects that are ready to go.”

In any case, Columbus expects the NCR facility, which will open this December, to generate $2 million in annual sales tax revenue. It will also add to the city’s corporate A-list, highlighted by locally based insurer Aflac, Synovus Financial and payments processor TSYS.

“This move by NCR puts our city a little bit more on the map in terms of opportunity for investments,” said Aflac Chairman and Chief Executive Dan Amos. “We’ve got all the right things in our community —- it’s a great place to live, only 1 1/2 hours from an international airport in Atlanta and we have easy traffic.”

Neither Columbus nor its top companies have been immune from the recession, with Synovus in particular feeling the pain of the banking slump, but its unemployment rate is on the low side for Georgia cities. It was 8.3 percent in April, vs. 9.1 percent statewide.

Aflac plans to add 2,000 new employees over the next three years. Later this year, Kia will open its plant in West Point, about 40 miles north. An expansion at Fort Benning, a major Army installation, will bring an additional 25,000 to 30,000 military employees and their families to Columbus.

The region has added more than $3 billion in new capital investment and 20,000 new jobs during the last 10 years, according to the Valley Partnership, a regional economic partnership set up to attract investments to the area.

“This is pretty exciting for west Georgia when you add the impact of Kia, the Aflac expansion not long ago and the new people moving into Fort Benning,” said Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. “This is just one more great expansion for them.”

At full capacity, the new NCR plant will have an annual payroll of more than $35 million, according to Wetherington.

NCR already is hiring for positions in engineering, materials management, quality assurance, finance and direct labor. Jobs are listed on the NCR Web site and the Georgia Department of Labor Web site. A job fair is planned for June 13 in Columbus, at which NCR hopes to fill 88 production positions. Separately, the company will be looking for 26 professional positions, including engineering and management slots, and 88 material handlers and assemblers, according to the Web site.

Average pay for jobs at the plant will be $40,000, NCR officials said.

Dayton Daily News staff writer Jessica Wehrman contributed to this article.