Time Warner expands in Charlotte

Gov. Bev Perdue today joined executives from Time Warner Cable Inc., the second largest cable operator in the U.S., in Charlotte to announce that the company will expand its operations and build a national data center on its Charlotte campus.

The company plans to create 225 jobs over the next three years with a $101 million capital investment in Charlotte. The project was made possible in part by a state grant from the Job Development Investment Grant program.

“Time Warner Cable looked around the country, and they chose North Carolina,” Gov. Perdue said. “Time Warner Cable is a devoted corporate citizen in Charlotte and North Carolina, and company leaders continue to bring jobs to our state because they realize that the investments we make in education produce the skilled, creative and capable employees they need.”

TWC serves more than 14 million customers mainly in North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, Ohio, southern California and Texas.

TWC owns 33 acres of land at the Charlotte Corporate Campus located on Crescent Executive Drive. The grant will result in construction of two additional buildings, an office building with more than 100,000 square feet of office space, and a national data center. This project will also see the expansion of the current parking deck.

TWC currently employs more than 5,000 people in North Carolina.

While individual wages for the 225 jobs will vary by job function, the overall average for the new jobs will be $61,044 a year, not including benefits. The Mecklenburg County average annual wage is $51,584.

A two-story Data Center will be one of just two National Data Centers for Time Warner Cable nationwide. The 178,000 square foot facility will include 1,600 racks of technical equipment and a 12,000 foot floating floor to offer maximum cooling efficiency. The building offers a virtual cloud environment, allowing for quicker deployment of TWC’s core products of video, high speed data, voice and commercial services by having storage and network elements in a shared environment. The latest IP technology to be housed in the building will give Time Warner Cable the flexibility to continue to focus on its goal of delivering any content to any device, anywhere at any time. In addition, the building is strategically designed to double in equipment size to accommodate future growth. It is expected to be finished by the end of 2012.

“The National Data Center allows TWC to focus on delivering services for customers with greater effectiveness and reliability and with less cost and environmental impact,” says Jim Ludington, executive vice president of national network operations and engineering, Time Warner Cable. "Opening a data center in Charlotte underscores our commitment to provide the best mix of technology necessary to service our customers."

The second building is a four-story and 103,500 square foot facility with an estimated completion date of 2013. As part of this project, the current parking deck will be expanded.

To help facilitate this expansion, the state Economic Investment Committee today voted to award a Job Development Investment Grant to TWC. JDIGs are awarded only to new and expanding businesses and industrial projects whose benefits exceed the costs to the state and which would not be undertaken in North Carolina without the grant.

Under the terms of the JDIG, the company is eligible to receive a grant equal to 60 percent of the state personal income withholding taxes derived from the creation of new jobs for each of the nine years in which the company meets annual performance targets. If TWC meets the targets called for under the agreement, the JDIG could yield $2.9 million in maximum benefits for the company.

Other partners that assisted with this project include: the N.C. Department of Commerce, N.C. Community Colleges, city of Charlotte and the Charlotte Chamber.