RICHARDSON, TX-Cloud computing company VCE has chosen the city’s internationally known Telecom Corridor for its world headquarters. The company, which was formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, received a $2.45-million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund and will create 434 high-paying jobs with an average salary of $125,000.
VCE currently occupies about 16,000 square feet of temporary space in Dallas and also has offices in Boston, where EMC is headquartered, and Silicon Valley, where Cisco is based. The company evaluated all three metro areas as a potential headquarters location before choosing Richardson, according to Grace Trent, a spokesperson for VCE. In particular, the company found the Metroplex fertile ground for recruitment and hiring given the number of universities and colleges in Texas.
Trent tells GlobeSt.com that both Cisco and EMC have offices in the Metroplex that could have accommodated VCE’s current operations. “They had some space for us, but we are growing so quickly, we wanted our own space and borrowing a corner from them wasn’t going to cut it,” she says, adding that the company already employs 130 North Texans. “Our current space is overflowing--we have four or five people in each office.”
VCE signed a seven-plus year lease for 87,000 square feet at Collins Crossing, a class A office building located at 1500 N. Greenville Ave. The company wasn’t interested in establishing its headquarters in the popular Uptown area of Dallas or Las Colinas, according to Greg Langston, managing principal of CresaPartners’ Dallas office.
“They really wanted to be north of 635 because of recruiting,” Langston explains. “A lot of people they could hire already live in the suburbs there--people who might have worked for one of the other big tech companies like Nortel or EDS at one time.”
Langston represented VCE in lease negotiations, along with Susan Blair, senior vice president, and Bret Hefton, vice president, also with CresaPartners. Reid Caldwell, principal with Transwestern, and Chris Hipps, managing director with Transwestern, negotiated the lease on behalf of the owner.
The 298,766-square-foot Collins Crossing, owned by Franklin Street Properties, was one of three options that VCE considered as part of its headquarters search, Langston tells GlobeSt.com. “The building offered second generation space that was a better fit than the other alternatives,” he notes, adding that VCE will backfill a portion of space formerly occupied by Tektronix.
The majority of the space is already built-out to specifications that work perfectly for VCE, Trent says. The company will begin moving into its new space this weekend, she adds.
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