MORGANTOWN — Talks with Leidos were going on for a few years before plans came together for the Fortune 500 company to build in Monongalia County.
Leidos, a technologies company specializing in services ranging from civil defense to business support, is constructing a new facility at the WestRidge Business Park, along Interstate 79 between Westover and Granville.
This facility is expected to be a start of a new, expanded relationship with north-central West Virginia and the $1 billion corporation, which, according to WestRidge Business Development Director Holly Childs, has been in discussions for a few years.
“We were aware that they were growing like crazy, and so we’ve just been talking about where they can grow and what they can do next and have had these conversations for a long time now,” Childs said on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “The opportunity, especially with our growth at WestRidge, came to work together and so we’re really happy that that’s the way it’s turned out.”
Childs said this has been on the radar for a few years. Now, Leidos will consolidate its two Morgantown locations into a new 30,000-square-foot center that could employee between 170 and 250 people.
The focus is to hire up to 80 percent of the company’s employees within the Mountain State.
“We want to keep our talented folks inside the state,” said Drew Formica, Leidos site director and a West Virginian. “We often suffer from ‘brain drain’ as (WVU) President Gee would refer to it in this state, and we’d like to keep our talents within the Mountain State.
According to Formica, it was not a difficult decision for Leidos to set up a new facility in north-central West Virginia and in particular Monongalia County. Headquartered in Reston, Va., the new facility is about three-and-a-half hours from the company’s base, making this location ideal.
This, along with the friendly business environment created by the business park, helped make the decision easier.
“The nice thing about north-central West Virginia, in my opinion, is really its accessibility,” Formica said. “Our company is located in the national capital region, so it’s just a three-hour drive over the mountains, which makes us close enough to get higher up here when needed.”
Leidos has been involved in multiple projects in the region, including, a $364 million contract with Morgantown’s National Energy Technology Laboratory and a $100 million project with the National Oceanic and Atmosphereic Administration set to be focused in Marion County.
“If companies like Leidos can come, and they can have access to very talented software engineers, computer science, electircal engineers, folks coming out of WVU, I think it’s a win-win for the region,” Childs said.
The facility is expected to be up and running by the end of 2019.
By Joe Nelson
Twitter @WVMetroNews
Staff@WVMetroNews.com
