Southwest Power Pool opening new Little Rock HQ
Southwest Power Pool opening new $62M headquarters in Little Rock with plans for expansion
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Southwest Power Pool Inc. on Monday showed off to the public its new $62 million headquarters in Little Rock, a set of buildings filled with engineers and high-tech equipment that keeps the electric grid running in nine states.
The nonprofit is expanding with the move and plans to add 50 workers before the end of the year to the 550 employees it already has. Jobs at the headquarters pay an average of $85,500, far more than Little Rock's per-person average income of $29,229.
"This is a huge economic engine for the state of Arkansas," Gov. Mike Beebe told a crowd of more than 100 in the center's lobby, which features plenty of glass, steel, artwork and security cameras.
The operations center is in a separate building at the 20-acre campus and is constructed to withstand a tornado with winds up to 261 mph. Inside, workers monitor banks of wide computer monitors that display the intricacies of the electric grid, showing power demand, available electricity, prices and other information.
A room-length set of oversize monitors shows much of the same information, plus cable news and weather channels.
Southwest Power Pool, one of seven regional nonprofit power pools nationwide, has member utilities in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
Beebe noted that the firm explored what would be entailed to a move in each state before deciding to stay in Little Rock.
"It wasn't a slam dunk," Beebe said.
The state didn't pony up extra incentives, but the company had some existing tax credit incentives for creating new jobs under an agreement that runs through 2015.
SPP President and Chief Executive Officer Nick Brown said the process began in 2008 and required a number of steps, including land acquisition, having the land annexed into Little Rock and the zoning changed.
The headquarters is in the same area as data center recently opened by Little Rock-based Windstream Corp. The facilities have some similarities in security and in the vast amount of computer data that moves through.
The new headquarters combines three separate SPP offices into one campus, though its former operations center will stay open to serve as a backup.
"We've been around since 1941 and all throughout that time we've occupied leased space in any number of facilities across Little Rock," Brown said. "Being on one campus in buildings that are constructed specifically for our very unique needs is wonderful. Over the years we've shoe-horned people into buildings that were never designed with our needs in mind."
Brown said there are more than 500 electric generating plants within the grid SPP manages and that power from those plants is bought and sold among utilities within the pool.
"We move energy all round our nine-state footprint in the most reliable and efficient way we can. Most folks don't realize the bulk electric network is probably the single most complex machine on the face of the earth," Brown said.
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