Signal to St. Pete: high-paying jobs transmitted here

Tampa Bay Business Journal - September 29, 2006
by Jane Meinhardt, Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG -- A fledgling wireless carrier company created and run by industry veterans has big expansion plans for St. Petersburg.

Tower Cloud LLC considered California and Illinois as possible locations for expansion before settling on Florida and St. Petersburg as its base.

The company plans to create 50 high-paying jobs and currently has 10 employees. A Tower Cloud employee's average wage will be nearly $66,000, double Pinellas County's average wage of $33,698.

Local and state economic development agencies courted the company and coordinated incentives to entice the firm to create its base in the area.

"This is a significant business for our market and the technology environment here," said Teresa Brydon, St. Petersburg Economic Development business expansion and recruitment manager. "They have a technical skill set that now can be based here. They could have gone anywhere, but this was a company that we actively pursued to keep here."

Tower Cloud is a wireless access and infrastructure support provider incorporated in Florida in May.

Using a hybrid fiber and microwave design, the company provides fiber and wireless transport services to wireless carriers. The system's architecture connects cellular towers to a carrier's mobile switching center, increasing transmission capabilities.

Some investors and executives of St. Petersburg-based Progress Telecom LLC, a subsidiary of Progress Energy (NYSE: PGN), launched Tower Cloud after Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT) acquired the subsidiary for $137 million early this year.

Ronald Mudry, Tower Cloud's CEO, was Progress Telecom's CEO and has two decades of experience in the telecom industry. The company's executive team includes other former Progress Telecom employees.

In June, Tower Cloud completed a $2.5 million round of seed financing with investors that included company managers and the partners of Odyssey Telecorp in Palo Alto, Calif.

The company's decision to expand in St. Petersburg was based on incentives offered, what Mudry described as "a very large pool of skilled employees" in the area and the quality of life he believes is conducive to attracting and retaining employees. "The credits available for new employees really made a lot of sense and were an important element in the decision to stay and expand in St. Petersburg," Mudry said.

Tower Cloud is using the state's Qualified Target Industry incentive program, said Stacey Swank, business development manager for Pinellas County Economic Development.

The incentive program targets certain businesses and encourages quality job growth by providing a tax refund for each job created. The company qualified for a tax refund of $250,000, based on producing 50 jobs at 200 percent of the county's average wage.

The incentive is based on performance and will not be paid if the jobs are not created within the specified time frame of two years, according to Swank. The $250,000 incentive will be split between the three governmental entities with the city and county each paying 10 percent, or $25,000. The state will pay $200,000.

Tower Cloud currently is subleasing space in downtown St. Petersburg from Level 3 but is looking at a possible site for its headquarters in the Gandy area, Mudry said.

The company is in the process of finalizing lease negotiation for 10,000 square feet of commercial space that will include offices and a small warehouse, he said, declining to identify the location because negotiations are not complete.

Tower Cloud intends to capitalize on the increased need for service to relieve networks overloaded by voice, data and video transmissions.

"We are targeting the entire Southeast market and will expand beyond that over time," Mudry said. "Florida is our first market, and North Carolina will be our second one."

He declined to discuss the company's projected revenue or other financial details.

Tower Cloud initially will own some portions of its fiber network and lease other portions, Mudry said.

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