Announced in December, the center was only able to hire about 40 people
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A mortgage-fulfillment call center in El Paso, Texas, has closed down before it was able to fulfill its mission of creating 699 jobs in the city, according to a report by the El Paso Times.
Launched in December, the center owned by Dallas-based Pacific Union Financial promised those jobs in exchange for almost $1.4 million in city, county, and state incentives. None of those incentives have been paid out to the company.
One of the laid-off employees told the publication that about 40 people were employed at the center at closure. No official employee count was available, according to the report.
Another of the laid-off employees told the publication that the closure was attributed to a “lot of hard decisions due to the (mortgage) market.” The 23-year-old, who started serving as a mortgage loan officer at the center in February, said they were notified of the closure at a meeting shortly after arriving at work.
Company officials did not immediately respond to the publication’s request for comment.
As an incentive for opening the facility in El Paso, the Texas Enterprise Fund had originally agreed to pay the company $1 million for job training. Tax incentives and cash grants worth $366,203 over a 10-year period were also promised by city and county officials.
The roles, which were supposed to include sales, customer service, loan analysts, loan-service officers, loan underwriters, credit analysts, and other positions, would have paid $23.32 per hour on average, equivalent to about $48,500 per year.
Pacific Union founder and CEO Evan Stone said in December that the call center would create 699 good-paying jobs over five years.
