Call centre to move in to ex-Target site, add 500 jobs

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This article was published 18/01/2018 (2855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg-based call centre has leased 55,000 square feet of space in the former Target store on St. James Street and will fill it with 500 new positions.

24-7 Intouch, is moving into the eastern end of the building that will soon house a combined Winners/HomeSense store.

It will be the 15th facility for the international call centre operation, and its fourth location in Winnipeg. The company, owned by brothers Greg and Jeff Fettes, also has call centres on Waverley Street and Taylor Avenue, along with its global headquarters downtown.

“Winnipeg is our home, and we are very excited to be a part of the growing business community at Polo Park,” said CEO Greg Fettes, in a prepared statement.

The addition of a call centre and its 500 employees will mean added foot traffic in the area. Peter Havens, general manager of CF Polo Park shopping centre, said, “It’s like adding a whole floor of people in an office tower.”

The imminent arrival of paying tenants in the former Target store will be good news for the city, which was banking on property tax revenue from that property — the site of the old Winnipeg Stadium — to help pay off about $75 million it provided to the Winnipeg Football Club for the $200-million Investors Group Field.

Adding commercial tenants with retail is a growing trend in what used to be traditional retail developments.

“Mixed-use space is quite complimentary for retail,” Havens said. “It drives the need for restaurants and other services in the area that support that.”

Justin Zarnowski, an official with Shindico Realty, the leasing agent for the building, said it will allow them to focus attention on further development of the eight-acre Plaza at Polo Park site.

“We’re very excited about this,” said Zarnowski. “We have always envisioned the site to have a mixture of uses. That is where the world is going for retail. This is a big employment story as much as anything. There are now 500 customers for all our other retail users.”

There’s still 40,000 square feet of space left to lease in the former Target store, but Zarnowski said there’s more interest in the rest of the space now that two tenants are lined up.

“The momentum is really big now,” he said. “We have had preliminary discussion with national tenants (regarding additional development on the site), but our focus was to get the Target building leased first.”

Construction has started on the call centre, which is scheduled to be completed by mid-2018. Earlier this month, a spokeswoman for the Canadian division of TJX Companies Inc., the company that owns the Winners, HomeSense and Marshalls chains, said they would make an announcement about its new store closer to its opening date.

24-7 Intouch may be the largest Winnipeg company nobody knows about. Its website suggests it has 10,000 employees, and it has call centres around the world, including in Manila, Guatemala City, Jamaica and six in the U.S.

The company has been around for about 18 years. It became an early favourite providing specialized customer contact service for e-commerce companies. Company material suggests an upbeat corporate culture with an emphasis on caring for its customers. Last fall, it announced its intentions to invest in artificial intelligence to create new technology jobs in Manitoba.

In July, 24-7 Intouch was awarded the 2017 Elite Contact Centre Outsourcing Award, presented by Technology Marketing Corp. It has been on various lists as one of the largest and most effective call centre companies in the world.

But the company and its officials are not well known in Winnipeg. Even though there is a large customer contact centre industry in the city — with about 19,000 workers — 24-7 Intouch is not a member of the Manitoba Customer Contact Association.

Bruce Rose, executive director of that association, said the news about 24-7 Intouch building a new centre in the city is part of a broader growth dynamic for the sector. He said a prominent company in Eastern Canada is looking for as many as 200 home agents, and Minneapolis-based Skybridge Americas is looking to expand its sizable Winnipeg operation.

“There’s lots of good news happening in call centre industry in Manitoba these day,” Rose said.

Target stores operated in Canada for less than two years, costing the company more than $5 billion and disrupting the lives of 17,000 employees.

The distinctly designed location near Polo Park — the two-storey building has parking on the first floor — was maybe one of the biggest blunders of the 133-store debacle.

It was only occupied for a few months before the company announced in January 2015 that it was leaving the Canadian market.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca