Cramped for office space at its global headquarters in Purchase, MasterCard Worldwide Inc. in early 2014 will begin an approximately $11.4 million renovations project at its two Westchester office buildings as the credit card giant prepares to add 270 jobs to its 1,425-employee workforce in the county.
MasterCard officials presented the company”™s five-year workforce expansion plan Thursday to the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency board. The board approved an estimated $1.29 million in sales tax exemptions on the company”™s construction purchases and furniture, fixtures and equipment costs during the renovation project next year.
MasterCard also will receive $10 million in Excelsior tax credits from the state over 10 years for the 270 jobs to be created in Westchester and an additional 122 jobs in New York City when MasterCard opens a new mobile e-commerce technology lab there, said a spokesman for Empire State Development in Albany.
Barbara Rooney, MasterCard”™s senior business leader for real estate and facilities management, said the company has outgrown its 475,000-square-foot space at 2000 Purchase St., the I.M Pei-designed building that MasterCard acquired from IBM Corp. in 1995. The company also leases 107,000 square feet of office space at 100 Manhattanville Road in Purchase.
With the financial incentives approved by the state and county, MasterCard on Jan. 1 will lease an additional 14,000 square feet of space in the Manhattanville Road building and extend its lease there to 2025. Rooney said 56,000 square feet of space will be renovated there to accommodate additional employees.
“We”™re ready to swing hammers in January,” she said.
The company also plans to renovate about one-third of its headquarters space on its 47-acre Purchase Road campus.
MasterCard in its IDA application said the renovations and expansion project amounts to an estimated $39 million capital investment in Westchester over six years. The 270 new jobs will pay annual wages averaging $151,000. The company also will increase its research and development expenditures in New York to approximately $10 million yearly by 2018.
County Executive Robert P. Astorino at the IDA meeting called MasterCard”™s decision to retain and add jobs in Purchase “a happy day for Westchester” and thanked the company for its continued presence here.
Astorino spoke of his dismay and disbelief at finding that county departments used Visa cards for official business when he first took office nearly four years ago. He ordered an immediate switch to MasterCard plastic.
