General Motors has picked a sprawling former UPS facility in Roswell for a technology development center that could bring upward of 1,000 new jobs to the region, three people with knowledge of the negotiations said on Thursday.
The company recently purchased the Innoplex facility from UPS after scouting metro Atlanta and several other East Coast cities for the site, the three said. GM plans to house of its four “information technology innovation centers” there.
The move is expected to be announced in early January, according to the three people, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
General Motors spokeswoman Juli Huston-Rough said the company would not comment on “rumor or speculation.”
UPS spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg confirmed late Thursday that the Sandy Springs company sold the property to General Motors at the end of last week. UPS bought it in the late 1990s and moved out about two years ago, Rosenberg said. The space was previously used for technology development work.
Others close to the deal told the AJC that if all goes as planned, the center will bring the type of high-paying jobs that Georgia officials has pined for as the state seeks to shift from a workforce heavy on agricultural and manufacturing jobs to one that focuses more on higher-paying research positions.
Georgia has struggled to rebound from the recession as robustly as its rivals. But recently there have been more encouraging economic signs. On Thursday, state officials announced the jobless rate fell in November to its lowest level in nearly four years.
It is expected to be one of the biggest deals in the region in the past year. Caterpillar said in February it was building a $200 million plant in Athens that would ultimately staff about 1,400 people. And Baxter International announced in April it was building a $1 billion pharmaceutical manufacturing facility that would create another 1,500 jobs.
The GM deal represents a different type of foray, as the state continues a shift toward what economic development officials call “knowledge-based” jobs.
In recent weeks, Porsche broke ground on its North American headquarters at a site near the airport; Panasonic opened a research center that could staff about 100 in Midtown; and AT&T said it was scouting Atlanta for a sought-after research hub that could spawn start-up companies.
It’s not immediately known how much GM intends to invest in the facility or what incentives the state offered to lure the company, if any.
The centers aim to bring more technology development under GM’s roof, as much of that work is now being done by other firms. GM has already announced the locations of two other innovation centers. The first center will be in Austin, Texas, with plans to hire 500 programmers and software specialists. And the carmaker said recently it will hire 1,500 IT workers at a center in Warren, Mich.
Details on the Atlanta jobs were not yet clear, but analysts said the GM jobs tend to be highly-paid employees that bring a surge of new tax revenue.
“These are well-paid jobs that would be a huge boost for the city,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. “And when one company opens an innovation center, other firms see that happening and may want to move here, too.”
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