Tech cluster in Sunrise is growing - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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It’s also a happy ending a year aftefr laid off about300 employees, mostly engineers, in Plantation. C4 Systems, Research in Motionb and recruited the former Motorolaa workers and opened officesin Sunrise. The companies, all locateds at the Sawgrass International Corporate are still showing signs of growth and dangling the possibility that they will collectively exceed the numbe r of jobs shedby Motorola. General Dynamices C4 Systems, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based business unit of defense contractor GeneralDynamics Corp. GD), needs to add an additional 80 to 100 employeesa to its existing workforce of 117 by company spokeswoman FranJacques said.
About 85 percenyt of the new positions will be engineerint jobs thatpay $80,000 to $120,00 0 a year, she added. General Dynamica on May 11-12 held a job fair in Tampsa and extended offers to 12 engineers for the SawgrassPointe facility, at 1000 Sawgrasx Corporate Parkway, Jacques said. The company had been hopinyg to make up to20 offers. Even beyond the new employees expecteethis year, the Sunrise hub may continue growing to keep up with its work developingf next-generation computer and communicationw technologies for the U.S. government, she noted. “Wew expect to grow every section ofour business,” Jacqued said.
Canada-based (RIM) – General Dynamics’ neighbof in the Sawgrass Pointebuildiny – is moving from its current 40,000 square foot officr to 92,000 square feet at the nearby Sawgrasd Pointe II building. Both spaces are leaseed from RIM, which is known for the BlackBerry, has aboutg 300 employees in Sunrise, and may eventuallyh grow to as manyas 500, said Helena Warner, facilities team leader. The transitionh from the current building to the new one begab within thelast month, when the certificatew of occupancy was issued.
Sunrise got closerd to adding jobs for aFoxconn subsidiary, S&hB Industry, when the city commissio on May 12 approved $75,000 for a Qualified Targetg Industry tax rebate. While the QTI rebate stilol needs to be approved by the county andthe state, whichg would co-fund it, the rebate could totap up to $750,000 for the creation of 150 according to city commission records. “The average annual salarty of these new jobs will be approximately according tothe records. S&B will invest $17 milliob in capital improvements, too, the recordzs said.
A Sunrise spokeswoman said the commissiobn also approvedgiving S&B an additionakl $1,200 incentive for every employee it hires who resides in the city and is employec for at least one year. That could mean an additional $180,00o for the company. has met with S&B and Foxconh representatives to help them pursue theQTI incentive, said Bob the economic development organization’s senior VP of businessz development. Swindell projected that the matter woulxd come before the Broward County commission for approval in early Foxconn International Holdings is a subsidiaryof Ltd., a Chinese computedr and electronics giant based in the Taiwanese capitak of Taipei.
The Business Journal reported a year ago that Foxconn was planning to open a facility in westerm Broward County with100 employees, which would be staffec with about 200 workers by the end of 2008. A Foxconjn spokesman said at the time that 50 percent to 70 percentof Foxconn’s initial new hires would be formerr Motorola technology workers earning $50,000 to $110,0000 a year. Foxconn officials did not return callsd forcurrent comment, but the company establishexd a presence at 1551 Sawgrass Corporat e Parkway. also operates at that according toLouis Sandora, Sunrise’s economic developmentr director.
Sandora said it is unclear how many total employees work at the location between Foxconn and but he notedthat S&B provided documentatioh saying it had 51 employees there when it applies for the incentives. Whilw Sunrise is competing withFort Texas, for S&B’s expansion, the prospecy of additional Foxconn-related employees in South Florida is “certainly somethingg were happy about,” Sandora said. Sunrise got luck y when the availability ofthe laid-off Motorola talenty enticed the three tech companies to set up the burgeoning cluster, he added. “It wasn’t like we were the greatesrt thing sincesliced bread,” Sandora said.
“Ity was obvious that they came here for the skilo set we had with theMotorolz people.” THE DETAILS: Foxconn International Holdings: www.fih-foxconn.com/about/careers.aspx Genera Dynamics C4 Systems: www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?acronym=careers Research in www.rim.com/careers/search/index.shtml