Debt-collecting center
By Rod Thompson
boost for Big Island
Star-BulletinHILO -- When it's 1 p.m. in Hawaii, it's 7 p.m. in Pennsylvania, not a bad time to call folks back on the East Coast and ask them if they'd like to pay some of the money they owe.
Pennsylvania-based Penncro Associates held a "soft opening" yesterday for its new call center in downtown Hilo where polite, well-trained employees will soon start collecting on debts.
After conceiving of a Hawaii branch as recently as December, the company already has invested about $400,000 and is training about 20 of the 115 employees it expects to have by the year's end.
Every one of them is from the Big Island except for Hawaii operations Vice President Harvey Egna, born and raised on Oahu.
Penncro has two call centers just outside Philadelphia where some 200 employees are making such collection calls nationwide for banks and mortgage companies. One of their customers was a bank where Egna was an officer.
Egna liked the job Penncro did for his bank so much that he proposed that the company let him set up a branch in Hilo.
Egna would get to move home to Hawaii, and Penncro would get a location where employees could work during the day while calling people at home at night.
Why Hilo? The Big Island's weakness turned out to be its strength.
Penncro President Paul Crowley explained that Hilo has a lot of good, but unemployed people. "They have a very, very good work ethic. People (here) are eager to work and have a full-time job and succeed," he said.
The location they chose, the second floor of a BenFranklin Crafts building, is the site of a former supermarket.
Hawaii's reputation as a hard place to do business didn't stop Penncro. When the Legislature refused to vote "enterprise zone" tax breaks for the company this spring, the state administration granted the tax incentives administratively, said Paula Helfrich of the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board.
