Fiber Optics, Low Risk for Disasters Attracts Jobs to Alpharetta-Milton Area

Alpharetta's technology infrastructure makes the city attractive to industry, which has led to new jobs, according to local business officials.

Brandon Beach, president of the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce, said whether it's HP expanding to add 250 jobs, Philips Healthcare moving into town or ThyssenKrupp opening a new IT division with 110 high-tech jobs, all of it is because of the infrastructure.

"And what that lends itself to is it trickles down to our quality of life," Beach said. "People just want to live here."

Al Nash, who heads the chamber's Progress Partners, said they have found that the North Fulton area–and this drills down to Alpharetta and Milton–has "some of the most sophisticated fiber optics in the country that's encased in concrete."

Coupled with a tremendous power grid and very low risk of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, that makes the area very attractive to data center and IT decision makers, Nash said.

"That is why we have seen this big surge. We are kind of known as the data center capital of the southeast," he said.

More than 30 data centers are located in North Fulton. Of the jobs announced in the last 90 to 100 days, most of them are geared around the availability and use of fiber optics.

Nash said he went up in a helicopter a few weeks ago with leaders of a Brazilian soccer club who were looking for a place to open a youth training center with 18 soccer fields in the complex.

"It was amazing me to look down at these buildings that have been built as data centers," he said. "We've got some of the most interesting and crucial companies that have their data centers here."

Hewlett-Packard picked Alpharetta and nearby Suwanee for one of its six pairs of data centers to replace 32 centers across the country. Cox Communications has a data center in Alpharetta, T-5 is building a shared data center now in the city.

Alpharetta's Assistant City Administrator, James Drinkard, said the city has many of the top tech employers that are located in Metro Atlanta.

"Based on business license records, it appears that 4,599 jobs were created in Alpharetta during 2010, and an additional 1,193 jobs have been created year to date [in] 2011," Drinkard said.

 Nash said if all the job announcements since December 2010 were pulled, he expects the total number of jobs would be 1,500 or more. Drinkard's figures seem to bear that out, as business licenses lag behind announcements.

"We've got to be one of the top places in the country," Nash said.

Vesta announced it was opening a call center in Alpharetta on Dec. 21, 2010, with 300 jobs to be filled by the end of March, and as many as 450 potential positions at the facility.

ThyssenKrupp made its announcement just three weeks later about 110 high-tech jobs coming to Alpharetta as it creates a dedicated IT division.

The five hospitals within the market footprint also are adding to the job growth, Nash said. Children's Hospital, Emory Johns Creek, North Fulton Hospital, a level two trauma center, and the other facilities provide more than 5,100 beds in North Fulton. More than 5,100 physicians work in the area. And now Nash said the area is beginning to see medical device facilities opening in the area.

Progress Partners had determined there are five "silos" of industry in North Fulton: healthcare, mission critical, telcom, financial and insurance, and logistics. Nash said the top two industries are mission critical–the IT fields such as data centers, call centers and information centers–and health care.

A company based in France opened a swimming pool construction company in Roswell, just south of Alpharetta, telling Beach that some of the highest disposal income figures in the country are found in local Zip Codes, which is why they opened here. Rolls Royce plans a Kentucky Derby party in Milton for the same reason, Nash said.

"They've invited 250 to 300 of their top potential customers around Atlanta and the southeast to this party," he said.

Some recent job announcements include:

• T-5 is building a $75 million, 103,000 square foot, co-located data center near Ga. 400 in Alpharetta, employing 25 people. It is expected to be one of the five largest data centers in the area.
• Hewlett-Packard made Alpharetta its sales center for its graphics arts printing division, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported, adding a $7 million, 60,000 square foot training and demo center.
• ThyssenKrupp is locating its IT Shared Services operations in Alpharetta, investing $30 million and hiring 110 IT workers in a wholly-owned subsidiary serving North America.
• CSI Laboratories announced a $15 million expansion, leasing a 65,000 square foot building, tripling the company's presence in Alpharetta and adding 150 new employees by mid-2011.
• Vesta, an electronics payment process with telecommunications clients, announced it was relocating from Portland, Ore., to Alpharetta. The company planned to hire 300 workers by the end of March.