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The company is the dominant energy provider in Rhode Island, where it has 476,000 electricity customers and supplies power to residents and businesses in 38 of the state's 39 municipalities.
It is not clear how the consolidation will affect Rhode Island customers and employees.
At least some Rhode Island-based employees will be transferred out of state, although they may be replaced with employees now stationed in Massachusetts, company spokeswoman Jackie Barry said yesterday. No Rhode Island employees will be laid off, she said.
The company yesterday was unable to provide the number of Rhode Island employees it has; or which Rhode Island facilities would be affected.
The company's goal is to locate its employees closer to their managers and areas of responsibility, and to better integrate employees at facilities formerly operated by KeySpan Corp., New England Gas and other so-called legacy companies that have been acquired by National Grid in recent years.
"Hopefully it will be an improvement for customers," Barry said in an interview.
In a statement, National Grid, a British company headquartered in London, said it is transferring 1,700 employees into the new building, mostly from its offices in Waltham and Westborough, Mass. The new facility, in the Reservoir Woods East office park, is expected to open in 2009.
The Waltham facility, formerly a KeySpan office, has a staff of 500. It will be closed, as will the Westborough complex, where 900 employees work.
When the new regional headquarters opens, National Grid will occupy about 270,000 of the 300,000 square feet of office space, the company said. It is leasing the building from Boston-based Davis Marcus Partners.
The consolidation follows rapid growth of the utility. In October 2006, National Grid completed its $7.3-billion purchase of KeySpan, a provider of gas and electricity. The acquisition more than doubled National Grid's U.S. customer base.
"We have completed several mergers and have grown significantly since National Grid came to the U.S. in 2000," Tom King, the company's executive director of electricity distribution and generation, said in a statement. "It was time to look at our existing New England corporate facilities and determine if they still meet our needs today and whether they could support our continued growth."
The company is not closing the building it owns in Northborough. Instead, it will convert it into a "special-purpose facility" housing 24-hour call centers, dispatch operations and data management. The staff in Northborough is expected to decrease to 400 from 600 employees.
The utility will also continue to operate electricity and gas operations facilities throughout its service area to provide rapid response for repairs to electricity transmission lines, gas pipes and other infrastructure, Barry said.
National Grid provides electricity to 3.3 million customers in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York. The company sells natural gas to 3.4 million homes and businesses in those states.
National Grid says its new building, with a mostly glass exterior, will incorporate a range of environmentally sensitive technologies to assure energy efficiency.
To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com. Copyright (c) 2007, The Providence Journal, R.I. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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