The $260 million headquarters for NCR, the software company that is moving from Duluth to the Georgia Tech area, is the first step in a grander plan to create a “Silicon Valley of the East,” CEO Bill Nuti said Monday.
In an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nuti said creating a hub for about 4,000 technology workers in Atlanta is a “bold, ambitious” move, but that he is committed to ways to help keep more graduates — and their high-paying jobs — local. Nuti said about half of Georgia Tech’s engineering graduates leave the state for jobs in northern California, Boston, Austin, Seattle and elsewhere.
“We have a big problem in Georgia, and we want to help solve it,” Nuti said. “We lose them, we lose their intellectual capital, we lose their tax dollars. We lose everything.”
Nuti said NCR’s planned Midtown headquarters could be the start of series of tech companies that locate in Atlanta.
Within five years, he expects another major tech company to put its headquarters in Midtown. Nuti also said he is “actively advocating” with other CEOs for the establishment of nearby innovation labs.
“We think we can convince other companies in technology to join us,” he said.
NCR’s own offices will have the high-tech feel of headquarters like Google, Nuti said. He said the company wants to build its new campus with a storefront setting with glass walls where Tech students passing by can see engineers at work.
“We want students to say, ‘I want to work there,’” Nuti said. “Our campus will be a recruitment engine.”
The offices in Duluth are “a little bit too old-world,” said Andrea Ledford, NCR’s senior vice president of corporate services. She said the company had a hard time recruiting Georgia Tech graduates and others when faced with stuffy offices and metro Atlanta traffic.
NCR is known for cash registers and ATMs, but over the past decade the company has become more of a software and services firm.
Atlanta’s economic development arm recently approved $314 million in bonds for the Midtown project that would be backed by NCR. The bonds also come with property tax breaks. The total value of local incentives is expected to be about $16 million.
NCR received an incentive package valued up to $109 million when it decided in 2009 to move from Dayton, Ohio, to Georgia, with the promise of more than 2,000 new jobs.
About the Author
