Nexstar picks Research Park for operations center
Company to move into McLeodUSA building, add more employees
St. Charles County Business Record
By Mike Trask
Nexstar Financial Corp. has started work on opening its second national operations center in an 80,000-square-foot building in the Missouri Research Park in St. Charles County. Nexstar is subleasing the facility from McLeodUSA, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based telecommunications company.
Nexstar provides outsourced client-branded mortgage services to banks, credit unions and diversified financial services companies. The Research Park location will house the company’s network technology locations and national loan operations, in addition to certain customer care groups. Nexstar said it would maintain its corporate headquarters and existing national operations center, staffed by the remaining customer care groups, at its current offices in Creve Coeur.
Founded in 1999, Nexstar said expected growth prompted it to look for another facility. The company currently has approximately 400 employees nationwide, with more than 300 of them in the St. Louis area. Company officials said that given the projected growth of the mortgage outsourcing business, Nexstar plans to grow to 1,000 employees nationally within the next few years.
“Over the past two years, our business has experienced significant growth,” Rick Thornberry, the company’s president and chief executive officer, said in a written statement.
“We have signed several outsourcing clients this year, and our 2003 loan volume is projected to increase by more than 200 percent over 2002. The new facility positions us to manage our growth now and in the future and will provide an excellent working environment for our employees,” he said.
Jerry Halbrook, Nexstar’s chief operating officer, said the company certainly has benefited from low interest rates that during the past couple of years have prompted a spurt in home-loan applications and mortgage refinancing. But, he said, “The majority of growth is coming from additional clients.”
Nexstar already is moving employees into the McLeod building. By Memorial Day, up to as many as 200 employees could be located there, Halbrook said.
McLeod still has some employees who probably will continue working in the building for the next couple of months, he added, “Between now and the end of June, we could both be in the building for a brief period of time.”
Halbrook said Nexstar considered a number of locations throughout the country, including New York and Denver, before deciding on the McLeod building. David A. Leezer, director of business development for the Economic Development Center of St. Charles County, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Nexstar looked at the many layoffs that have occurred at WorldCom (now MCI), American Airlines and other companies with operations here, and decided that a qualified work force was readily available. Halbrook agreed, “that was certainly an issue” during the company’s discussions about where to locate the center.
Leezer said he has been told Nexstar plans to add some 650 new workers in the next few years, with half of those employees working in St. Charles County and the other half working in Creve Coeur. “I think you’ll see (the growth occur) faster in St. Charles County than in St. Louis County,” he said.
This is one time when St. Charles can’t be accused of stealing jobs from St. Louis, Leezer said. “It’s a win-win situation” for both counties, he added.
Chris Fox, a broker for Cushman & Wakefield, helped represent Nexstar in the transaction. Fox said the building’s technology attracted Nexstar to the McLeod building. Finding 80,000 square feet of vacant space is not difficult in this market, but finding space with fiber optic lines and other high-tech infrastructure was appealing to Nexstar, he said. “They just have to bring their equipment in” and connect it, Fox said.
Back in 2001, McLeod announced that it would consolidate operations, said Bryce Nemitz, a spokesman for the telecommunications provider. Most of the people who worked in the Research Park have been relocated to other facilities. Mostly sales personnel remain there, and they don’t need that much space, Nemitz said.
Leezer said it’s not surprising that McLeod is pulling up stakes at the Research Park. “If you take a look at that industry, they got hit like everybody else,” he said.
McLeod’s difficulty is Nexstar’s good fortune. Specific terms of the deal were not released but those close to the deal said Nexstar is getting the space for considerably less that what it would have just a couple of years ago.
“I would say that’s probably true,” Halbrook said.
