PORT ST. LUCIE — Aegis Communications Group may be relocating its Treasure Coast business across town and adding 500 jobs to its local call-center workforce.

Nate Bray, president of real estate business development for Palm Beach Gardens-based Asset Specialists, said Tuesday his company leased 33,300-square-feet to Aegis over the weekend at the southeast corner of University and Peacock boulevards in St. Lucie West.

“This is 500 new jobs, that’s what they’re telling me,” Bray said. “They came in about four weeks ago and moved really fast on this. They love the county and love the workforce. They’re really excited about staying here.”

Officials with the Irving, Texas-based company could not be reached for comment and local officials with the company declined to comment.

Aegis employs about 400 at its location on U.S. 1, north of Jennings Road in Port St. Lucie, handling calls for companies such as Travelocity, Avis Rent A Car and Carnival Cruise Lines.

Larry Pelton, president of the Economic Development Council of St. Lucie County, on Tuesday announced that up to 500 people for call-center jobs would be hired by a company coming to the county, but declined to give further details.

The new location for Aegis would be across the street from Tradition Field and down the road from QVC Inc., Bray said.

Aegis is a privately owned company that provides outsourced telemarketing and customer care services through more than 30 facilities in the United States and India.

The addition of call-center jobs would not be the first for the Treasure Coast, which has long housed such employers.

In April, Oxford Management Services, a collection agency, received a $257,000 state grant from Workforce Florida Inc., that’s to put about 303 new workers mostly call center and accounts receivable management-related into a 22,500-square-foot facility in Fort Pierce.

In January, Liberty Medical Supply in Port St. Lucie announced it would add 800 new workers to the 1,500 it already has at its U.S. 1 facility.

QVC employs about 1,300 people.

Jim Turner

Tags: aegis, call center, jobs, qvc, St. Lucie West

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under Port St. Lucie, Tradition, Treasure Coast business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.