Charter for Business Support

Charters Communications is seeking support for the Texas Enterprise Zone to expand San Antonio.

Charter Communications Inc., a telecommunication company, intends to open a new customers and services centre in San Antonio and significantly increase its staff. Bexar County is helping her get a Texas Enterprise Zone that would lower her state VAT. Charter in turn intends to spend more than $9 million on the new Silicon Drive facility in the Northwest Centre, which will employ approximately 750 people, 455 of whom will be net recruiters.

Nearly 190 of the projected employment for the San Antonio downtown area - 113 of them new - would cost an avarage $49,000 or more a year. According to Charter Vice President Vicky Schjenken, the 750 employees are to be transferred to the new Silicon Drive Centre within the next two years in a note to be sent to local civil servants provided by the shire.

Mr David Marquez, Bexar District Chief Economical Officer for Business Developments, said there are many incentives to help Charter get support for the business zone. Charter, which has 12,000 employees in Texas - 2,700 of them in San Antonio - is not looking for funding from the Shire beyond its appointment as state, Marquez said.

With state approval, the charter can charge up to $470,000 in state VAT refund over a five-year period in return for 188 skilled positions - or approximately $2,500 per skilled position. In 2016, the business purchased the Time Warner Cable team, staff and clientèle. This year, the firm attempted to recruit 200 staff at its One51 office in Westover Hills after transferring staff from a former call centre near San Antonio International Airport.

Under the Spectrum trademark, Charter distributes online and wire TV services. Since acquiring Time Warner, the organization has brought its call centre employees back to the USA. Inheriting a call centre in Harlingen, Texas, it has identified McAllen and Denver near by as option locations for the new call-centre.

Mr Marquez said that an agreement with the Charter would provide a higher level of employment to a San Antonio industry that could benefit from an economical boost. "This is the essence of the business zone, to ensure that it hires individuals from parts of the communities where advancement opportunities are a much sought-after outcome," he said.

The Charter Communications officers did not react immediately to the commentary on this item. Mr Marquez proposed that the Charter might have received more funding in the past than it is currently striving for. Since then, much has evolved, to include call centres that over the years have moved to hybrids such as what Hulu LLC is developing in the northwest of San Antonio.

Ernst & Young LLP is also making investments in the same area of the town near the University of Texas at San Antonio and the South Texas Medical Center as the surgical center clusters continue to grow. District officers are expecting to continue the dialog with Charter as the business moves forward with its planned growth.

A number of these debates will focus on the maintenance of what San Antonio already has in terms of the obligations of the company's employees.