Investment firm to add facility, jobs in Springs

James Paton, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 29, 2006 at midnight

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Investment management company T. Rowe Price plans to double the size of its Colorado Springs campus with a new $55 million facility and add hundreds of jobs to meet an increased appetite for its funds.

The firm employs more than 500 call-center workers at the site. That number should rise steadily in coming years, said spokesman Brian Lewbart.

The new 145,000-square-foot property could accommodate 650 workers, bringing the total capacity at the two buildings to nearly 1,400, the Baltimore-based company said on Wednesday. The sprawling office space one day potentially could be home to 2,000 employees, it said.

The campus is a T. Rowe Price service center where employees field inquiries from mutual fund customers and 401(k) retirement plan participants. Others handle relationships with corporate clients.

Construction is set to begin this fall and to finish by the end of 2007.

Mike Kazmierski, head of the economic development group in Colorado Springs, called T. Rowe Price's expansion plans "excellent news" and thanked the company for the "renewed commitment."

However, business leaders have reason to be skeptical when a company uses the word capacity in talking about future growth.

Several years ago, another industry player, Invesco Funds Group, unveiled plans to spend $50 million on a 28-acre campus in the Denver Tech Center, a site that could one day accommodate 2,000 workers.

It never lived up to the hype.

Invesco fell on hard times as it watched its assets under management tumble amid the bear market of late 2000, 2001 and 2002 and its reputation take a hit after it was targeted in an investigation into improper trading in the fund sector.

Invesco Funds eventually was folded into sibling firm AIM Investments of Houston. AIM recently had 200 to 300 employees at the Tech Center campus.

T. Rowe Price has a rock-solid reputation, and its assets have climbed to $293 billion from less than $150 billion in the late 1990s when it moved into the Colorado Springs office. The money manager also trusts it has a business that is diversified enough to provide shelter from a downturn and to allow for continued growth, Lewbart said.

While companies such as Denver's Janus Capital Group, Invesco Funds and Boston-based Putnam Investments drew the ire of regulators and subsequently sustained huge withdrawals, T. Rowe Price has avoided scandal - and raked in billions of dollars from investors.

It's good news for the Springs, which has seen call center jobs disappear. Bank of America in April told workers at three of its call centers, including one in Colorado Springs with 670 workers, that its offices would close by the end of the year.

patonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2544

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