Verizon Wireless has signed a lease to establish a new Southwest regional headquarters in Chandler, the company said Friday.
The move will provide additional space for sales, administration, human resources and other functions for a region that covers Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, Las Vegas and El Paso, Texas, said Verizon spokeswoman Jenny Weaver.
“This is a direct relationship to our growth,” she said. “The Southwest is an important region for us.”
The company’s current southwest headquarters is at 6955 W. Morelos Place in Chandler, where the company also operates a customer service call center.
The headquarters will move to an existing office building at 7155 W. Detroit, which is about a mile away, in the fall after remodeling.
Space that is freed up at the Morelos site will become available for future expansion of the customer service center, Weaver said.
As the company continues to add customers, it expects to hire more employees in Chandler, but the company doesn’t have any specific hiring goals, she said.
New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone, added more than 7.7 million new customers nationally in 2006.
The company employs about 1,500 people in Chandler and about 2,000 in Arizona. A couple of hundred employees will move to the new headquarters, Weaver said.
The wireless company decided to keep the regional headquarters in Chandler to remain close to the customer service center and because of the quality of life in the area, she said.
“There are a lot of synergies having the sales and customer service teams close together,” she said, adding “Chandler has been a wonderful market for us. It has a great quality of life and a great talent pool.”
The company is continuing to upgrade its network in Arizona, investing $120 million in its wireless infrastructure in Arizona last year.
Also, the company has installed new state-of-the-art workstations for its customer service employees to save space and energy, Weaver said.
