ELIZABETHTOWN — An economic development project jointly pursued by Elizabethtown and Bladen County has been awarded to Manning, South Carolina.
Provalus, the information technology support company not announced but upon which a hastily called job fair was centered, is creating 105 new jobs in the Clarendon County community of about 4,100. Manning is off Interstate 95, roughly 95 miles due west of Myrtle Beach and about 50 miles south of Florence.
Chuck Heustess, economic development director for Bladen County, told the Bladen Journal on Thursday that the company had made the announcement. He also stressed the importance of the bid to bring Provalus to a proposed development near the Curtis L. Brown Jr. Field.
“We learned a lot from this,” Heustess said. “A lot of times you’re a year, 18 months or even two years away learning if your bid was successful.”
Provalus is tapping the market for U.S. companies that are outsourcing jobs overseas. It is a solution to a variety of information technology and related needs for companies, from call center type work to cyber security to software development. Provalus is able to train a large number of its employees, regardless of their educational background.
Heustess said the proposal would have built a building to suit Provalus. The plan also included developing housing and some amount of recreational element in the same area.
That Elizabethtown made the final three in Provalus’ selection process, Heustess said, was somewhat remarkable in itself. The company has a pattern for seeking communities with vacant downtown space.
Elizabethtown, unlike many towns its size in both North and South Carolina, touts a vibrant downtown.
Boards for both Elizabethtown and the county have been in closed sessions discussing the matter over the last two months or more. On Oct. 23, Bladen Community College announced it would host a job fair the following Tuesday for the purpose of attracting workers for an unnamed national information technology organization. The skill sets listed were help desk and service desk; network engineers; systems engineers; cyber security; software development; and software quality assurance.
Provalus was seeking workers with an academic minimum of a high school diploma or general equivalency, and said it would be “nice to have solid computer skills and curiosity for information technology.”
Heustess said the job fair drew about 250, a number he called extremely important and positive in the quest to land Provalus. That Friday, on Nov. 1, the Town Council of Elizabethtown and county commissioners met with several key business leaders and Bladen Community College representation in a closed session of about one hour, 45 minutes.
Published reports say the new facility in Manning is the third to open in two years for the company. It will expand the company’s domestic services for business process outsourcing, information technology outsourcing and support.
The other two sites are in rural Alabama and southeast Texas, with a combined total of 500 jobs hired or soon to be hired.
On its website, Provalus says it is “elevating under-served communities by providing technology, business and support positions to untapped talent in the U.S. Our services provide companies the dependable, quality and practical services they need … straight from the heart of America.”
