Pat Ferrier

patferrier@coloradoan.com

Hiring is underway for Comcast's new call center on Harmony Road that will open in mid-March and eventually bring more than 600 new jobs to the city.

To date, the cable and internet service provider has hired 48 workers divided between management and call center representatives for the 80,000-square-feet of unused space in the Hewlett-Packard campus in southeast Fort Collins, Comcast spokeswoman Leslie Oliver said.

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Training begins Monday for the first class of new reps with two other classes of 30 beginning in mid March.

All the call center representatives, which Comcast calls front line agents, are new hires from Fort Collins and surrounding areas, Oliver said.

The call center, announced a year ago, will deal with repair calls to its video service, internet and phone lines, she said. It will also handle billing inquiries and some retention issues.

Comcast will ramp up its hiring through this year and into 2018 in order to meet the threshold of 600-plus new jobs it guaranteed as part of a deal for $8.1 million in tax incentives from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Under conditions set by the COEDIT office, Comcast must create and maintain 635 full-time jobs that pay the average wage in Larimer County, or at least $44,421, for at least one full year before it can collect on tax credits. That gives Comcast plenty of incentive to ramp up quickly in Fort Collins. The tax credits will be available over eight years as long as Comcast meets the job and wage requirements.

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Comcast plans to have 50 supervisor-level jobs by the end of the year, but Oliver didn't know how many total employees would be in place by Jan. 1. Steven Kroeger, most recently the site director at the Comcast repair call center in Lynwood, Washington, has been transferred to run the Fort Collins operation.

Comcast has a cable franchise agreement with the city of Fort Collins, which is currently studying the feasibility of establishing its own broadband service. The addition of 600 new jobs to the 50 Comcast already employs in Fort Collins will make it one of the largest private employers in the city.

Those 600 jobs will help create another 2,400 jobs through a four-to-one multiplier effect, according to the Governor's Office of Information Technology. For every technology job, four additional jobs are created, including more lawyers, doctors, restaurant workers, dry cleaners and others who help provide community services.

Interested?

To apply for a job at Comcast, visit jobs.comcast.com.