N.C.-based Drake Software bringing 40 jobs to Antioch
A Franklin, N.C.-based tax software company plans by the end of May to open a Nashville office that initially will employ 40 people.
Drake Software has begun advertising for positions such as computer programmers, tax analysts and call-center workers for the office. It will be located at the nearly 75,000-square-foot building in Antioch that once housed production studios of the former Shop at Home TV network.
The office will be the first outside of North Carolina for Drake Software, which employs 450 people at three offices in the Smoky Mountains area of its home state.
"We support clients all over the country, so having a call center in the Central time zone helps us support customers on the West Coast," said Phil Drake, CEO of Drake Software.
Drake also is a partner in Drake Capital LLC, the real estate acquisition and investment firm that just acquired for $3.2 million the Antioch building at 5401 Crossings Blvd., which has sat vacant for roughly six years. Remodeling work expected to cost up to $200,000 is underway, he said.
"The building was a great buy and gives us plenty of space to expand," Drake said, adding Drake Software could add more jobs at that location as the company grows.
The new jobs are the latest positive news for The Crossings area in Antioch, which is adding hundreds of workers with recent openings of new support centers for hospital giant HCA and cellphone insurer Asurion.
"It's great to have another business in the community, creating more jobs," said Ben Freeland, a car dealer and major property owner in that area.
Drake Software writes tax software mostly for accountants and offers as a service transmitting tax returns to the IRS and state revenue departments. During the just-ended tax season, the company processed about 13 million federal income tax returns and about 9 million state returns for client accountants.
In addition to Shop at Home's TV production studios, the building Drake Capital bought and where Drake Software will locate also had housed the network's distribution center and some offices.
Broker Stan Snipes of Sperry Van Ness | Investec Realty Services represented Knoxville-based seller Jewelry Television, which closed Shop at Home six years ago because the shopping network it had bought two years earlier from The E.W. Scripps Co. wasn't meeting sales expectations.
Freeland owns the adjacent 41,000-square-foot former Shop at Home headquarters building, which also had housed the network's information technology department and served as a bank branch and mortgage processing center for INSouth Bank. INSouth's Chairman J.D. Clinton was also once the chairman of Shop at Home.
Reach Getahn Ward at 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @Getahn.