Clearcall Solutions’ business doesn’t have much to do with aviation, but the company found Chandler’s Airpark to be the perfect place when it was looking for new space. In August the direct-sales and marketing company moved from Gilbert to the business corridor surrounding Chandler Municipal Airport. The company is leasing 36,000 square feet in Allred Airport Center II at Cooper and Germann roads. The 12-year-old company, which lists satellite-television provider Dish and home-security service ADT as its biggest clients, brought about 160 employees to the area and is looking to hire 100 more by the end of the year. The airpark was simply the best fit, says Tom Carr, Clearcall’s director of human resources and corporate compliance. “The city does such an outstanding job of growing its infrastructure,” Carr said. “It’s right in the heart of where our employee base is and also our target employee demographic. It’s accessible to the freeway. It’s got all the amenities that we need and the building we’re in is beautiful. It was the perfect storm, in a good way.” Those are the type of comments that Chandler officials love to hear as they work to position the 9-square-mile airport area as a prime employment hub. That area suffered during the Great Recession as new buildings were coming online just as the economy tanked. Nearly 500,000 square feet of office space was available there at the start of the recession. Now some of those formerly see-through buildings, as Chandler Economic Development Director Christine Mackay describes them, are starting to fill up. Reasons Clearcall Solutions relocated to the Airpark, including recent roadway improvements, mirror those that the city cites in marketing the area. “Airpark is so much fun (to market) because it has so much room to grow,” Mackay said. “It has an active rail line, a freeway, beautiful residential areas and so much land available.” Mackay adds that there is a workforce of 1.3 million people within 30 minutes of Cooper Road and the Santan Freeway, and that there are attractive residential neighborhoods in the area that are important to businesses considering relocating. The Airpark area, bounded by Arizona Avenue and Gilbert, Ocotillo and Pecos roads, is among five employment centers in Chandler. The others are Downtown, North Chandler, West Chandler and the Price Road Corridor. Chandler Municipal Airport is the center of the Airpark center. The airport is the site of several aviation-related businesses and has the potential to attract more. Since the facility came under the control of the Economic Development Department two years ago, the goal has been to transition the facility from a general-aviation airport to more of an executive airport. “We want that so those companies here in the Southeast Valley can easily fly their planes in, be picked up and go to their place of business or wherever they’re going for meetings and then come back to (the airport) and leave again,” Mackay said. “We’re not quite there yet. Part of that was the area only got a freeway as the economy turned down. It will take a few years to get to that point, but that’s our plan.” The airport also keeps residential development out of the area immediately surrounding it, which leaves land available for commercial use. The city predicts that by the time the area is fully built out, which is projected to be in about 2040, it will be home to 30,000 to 35,000 jobs and 28 million square feet of non-residential building space. Jobs like those that are coming with Clearcall Solutions speed that process. The company is advertising positions with annual compensation of $40,000 to $80,000 for inside sales representatives and $65,000 to more than $100,000 for sales-leadership positions. “We do have high expectations, Clearcall’s Carr said. “We’re real selective about who we bring on board, but we also want to recognize and reward performance. “It’s basically pay for performance. People have the ability to control their earnings and earn what they’re worth. But you can make a very respectable living doing this.” Such jobs often result in more employment for an area, Mackay says. “It’s not just the single job coming into the market, but the economic impact that job creates,” Mackay said. “For every traditional high-end office job, it potentially creates two to two-and-a-half new jobs in the market. It might be somebody at the restaurant or at a mall store, but it’s also the vendors and suppliers that support that company.” With more development on the horizon, the area could grow to be Chandler’s second-largest employment center after Price Road Corridor. “Chandler has long positioned the Airpark as a strategic employment corridor,” Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny stated. “I think we are just beginning to see the results of that work as businesses begin to rebound.”
Posted on: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 16:42:31 +0000
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