Kennesaw Lures HQ, 400 Jobs from Rome, Ga.

ATLANTA (Feb. 24, 2010) - CCH Small Firm Services, a Wolters Kluwer company, has signed a 130,000-square-foot lease at Chastain Meadows and will move its headquarters to the Kennesaw business park starting this summer.

This is great news for Cobb County but a blow for Rome, Ga., current home of CCH Small Firms Services, which provides tax and accounting software, research and training. Some 400 people will be moved from Rome, and in all, 600 employees will relocate to Kennesaw from Rome and other locations from Florida to Maine.  Best part about this is that no one will lose their jobs, and those who relocate will look for new homes and provide a little boost to the local housing market.

Check out Hometown Headlines' story about the impact to Rome.

Here's the official announcement, which the company just released.

(KENNESAW, Ga., Feb. 24, 2010) – CCH Small Firm Services (SFS), a Wolters Kluwer business, is pleased to announce that it will open a new headquarters facility in Kennesaw, Georgia, in the third quarter of 2010. SFS provides tax and accounting software, research and training to more than 45,000 small firms throughout the United States and Puerto Rico (www.cchsfs.com).

The first employees will move to the new facility in the summer of 2010, with complete transition of the company’s currently dispersed operations to be completed in 2012.  SFS now has more than 600 full-time employees working in Kennesaw and Rome, Georgia; Ft. Pierce, Florida; and Caribou, Maine.

All positions at these sites are transitioning to the new location. No positions are being eliminated as a result of the move to the new headquarters.

“The creation of our new headquarters will provide a world-class environment for our employees and will enable us to operate as a more integrated organization, bringing us together as one team to serve customers better than ever,” said SFS President Jeff Gramlich. 

 The facility, being built out to SFS specifications, will include state-of-the-art information technology and will house the primary SFS Electronic Filing Center, which last year transmitted nearly 20 million federal and state tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service and state revenue agencies. There will also be a new television studio equipped with high-definition equipment, the company’s shipping and fulfillment operations and employee food, recreation and fitness facilities.

The new headquarters and centralized operations will be located in 130,000 square feet of existing space in the Chastain Meadows office park located off Chastain Road just east of Interstate 575. The facility is located about 35 minutes from Hartsfield Jackson International Airport and about 25 minutes from downtown Atlanta.

“Our goal is to be both the professional’s first choice for tax and accounting software, and the employer of choice for talented people who want to be part of a dynamic and cohesive team and work for an exciting and growing company,” said Gramlich. “The creation of our new, centralized headquarters is an important step to ensure SFS delivers on both commitments.”