COUDERSPORT – Several potential employers are interested in
taking over the customer centers that Time Warner Cable will shut
down in Coudersport today, putting approximately 535 people out of
work.
Since that company announced it was pulling out of town,
community leaders have been scrambling to find other employers to
step in. While they are tight-lipped on details, local officials
confirm that they have made some promising contacts over the past
few weeks.
“We have been in touch with six separate, qualified companies to
discuss prospective start-ups in Coudersport,” said John Wright,
executive director of the Potter County Redevelopment Authority.
“Several have toured and another is scheduled to visit early this
week.
“We do not yet have any written offers or contracts,” Wright
added. “However, they’ve expressed interest in Coudersport and
we’re working diligently to bring one or more to fruition.”
One of the firms is a contractor handling customer service calls
for two major U.S. cable companies. The displaced Time Warner
employees would be a natural fit, based on their experience locally
with that company’s Advanced Products Customer Center and the Sales
& Marketing Advanced Retention Team.
More than 40 employees from those two groups have agreed to
relocate to one of Time Warner’s centralized customer centers.
However, upwards of 500 face joblessness in a labor market that is
already tight.
They were unwilling to relocate, many of them skeptical that the
jobs would pay them enough to support themselves or their families.
Instead, they’re rolling the dice, hoping that the community’s
recruitment efforts will bear fruit. Until new employers can be
landed, they’ll try to get by on modest severance checks and up to
a half-year of unemployment compensation benefits from the
state.
Earlier this month, a consulting firm, Renaissance Partners, was
brought in to coordinate the fast-tracked effort to recruit
employers.
“We need the expertise and we need the connections,”
Redevelopment Authority Chairman Doug Morley said, in explaining
the Renaissance decision. “We only have one chance to get it
right.”
Time Warner will keep about 75 information technology and
engineering employees at its modern Data Center.
Fate of the other Time Warner-owned buildings, including the
former Coudersport Elementary School on North Main Street, remains
uncertain.
About 100 Adelphia employees, mostly in accounting and tax
divisions, have held on to jobs with the Adelphia estate. That
number could be cut in half by the end of March, depending on the
outcome of the Adelphia’s bankruptcy case. With headquarters in the
massive Operations Center on South Main Street, which opened in
2001, is owned by the Adelphia estate.
Its future is also unclear.
Time Warner’s departure writes one of the final chapters of the
Adelphia saga in Coudersport, which started with its founding in
1953 as one of the nation’s first TV cable companies.
Industry pioneer John Rigas and his sons built Adelphia into one
of the nation’s largest cable TV companies, keeping corporate
headquarters in their hometown of Coudersport and at one time
employing upwards of 2,000 people in the town.
In 2002, revelations of accounting irregularities led investors
to abandon Adelphia, causing the company to plunge into Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection and forcing John Rigas and two of his sons to
resign. An interim management team stabilized Adelphia and moved
its corporate headquarters to Denver, eliminating dozens of
managerial jobs in Coudersport.
Last summer, the bankruptcy court approved the company’s sale to
Comcast and Time Warner for approximately $17 billion. The
Coudersport properties were acquired by Time Warner, which
dispatched about 200 employees in August.
In announcing today’s shutdown in December, Time Warner said the
two customer centers didn’t fit into the company’s national
operating model.
