Big Blue is coming to the land of black and gold.
Global technology company IBM announced Monday that it is opening a technology service delivery center in a Columbia office park that could create as many as 800 new jobs in central Missouri.
Gov. Jay Nixon and other state and local officials joined company leaders Monday afternoon for the announcement outside City Hall before hundreds of supporters crowded onto a closed city street and office workers watching overhead from second- and third-floor windows.
Nixon called the International Business Machines Corp. center — code-named “Project Tiger” after the University of Missouri mascot during the secret negotiations leading up to the move — “a home run for mid-Missouri and the entire Show-Me State.”
“There is no bigger name in the global information technology industry,” he said.
The state is offering IBM more than $28 million in tax credits and other economic incentives to come to Missouri, including $4.2 million toward job training. And the City Council is expected to approve a proposal Monday night to purchase for $3.2 million the abandoned office building in east Columbia where IBM will locate its center.
In turn, IBM will pay $1 in annual rent over 15 years while paying just 50 percent of the personal property taxes on its equipment.
Company officials said they plan to work closely with the university to cultivate partnerships and groom potential new hires. IBM senior vice president Tim Shaughnessy said the service center should be open by the fall with 100 new hires and fully staffed by 2012. He could not specify how many of the estimated 800 jobs would be local hires as opposed to current IBM employees who relocate to Missouri.
“We needed a site that had the right attitude,” he said. “We found that in Columbia.”
The technology services delivery center will be the company’s…