TAMPA — IBM didn’t have to turn to its Deep Blue supercomputer to find the answer for this site location decision. It really wasn’t that complicated.
“The Tampa Bay Area has been a long-time focus IBM. We have many clients in this area and more than 1,300 employees involved in the community,” said Dwayne Ingram, vice president of IBM Global Services Travel and Transportation and IBM’s senior location executive in Tampa.
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Recently named one of the Top Seven Intelligent Communities in the World by the World Teleport Association, the Tampa-Orlando corridor along Interstate 4 in Central Florida serves as a breeding ground of corporate facilities for high-tech companies like IBM.
Tampa ranks fifth out of the top 20 cities for high-tech employment in the Southeast. Tampa ranks as the No. 1 cybercity in Florida, employing more than 43,000 high-tech workers, and rates as the 27th largest cybercity in America.
Early this year, International Business Machines Corp. reaffirmed its commitment to Tampa by moving 1,300 employees into a brand-new, $32.5 million building on Rocky Point Drive just off the Courtney Campbell Causeway that connects Tampa and Clearwater.
Developed by Highwoods Properties, a real estate investment trust based in Raleigh, N.C., the 210,000-sq.-ft. (19,530-sq.-m.) facility serves as the Florida corporate headquarters for IBM Global Services, the largest division of the Armonk, N.Y.-based company.
Northbrook, Ill.-based Grubb & Ellis Co. represented IBM in its 164,000-sq.-ft. (15,252-sq.-m.) lease transaction at Harborview Plaza.
“Approximately 80 percent of (our workers) in Tampa are employees of IBM Global Services,” added Ingram. “These employees include competencies in industry management and technology consulting, business continuity and recovery, outsourcing and help-desk operations, and applications and technical support.”
Corporate personnel involved in the site location decision included executives from IBM’s Real Estate and Site Operations, Security and the Tampa senior leadership team of the company.
At the time the deal was announced in 2001, IBM spokesman Sean Tetpon said, “IBM Tampa is spread in different sites, and so we’re consolidating our teams so that our business units are going to collaborate more effectively.”
The move upgrades the company’s local facilities, giving IBM workers access to new equipment and technology they didn’t have at their other five locations scattered around Tampa.
IBM Global Services occupies most of the seven-story Highwoods building. The company uses the second through sixth floors and half of the ground floor, leaving about 45,000 sq. ft. (4,185 sq. m.) for other tenants.
IBM liked the Rocky Point site because it provides easy access to Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties and offers ample parking in an attached garage. Before the building opened, a Highwoods executive said the facility would command lease rates of $24 to $27 per square foot.
The facility is constructed of architecturally finished precast panels and high-performance glass and offers on-site maintenance, cafeteria, fitness center, credit union and ATM. The building features a state-of-the-art energy management system and provides quick access to I-75, I-4 and the Veterans Expressway.
The consolidation in Tampa also ties into IBM’s larger global strategy of reducing its overall investment in real estate and manufacturing plants and increasing delivery of consulting services. IBM’s services business rakes in revenues of $35 billion a year, making it the world’s largest.
