Southwest Power Pool to open $62 million facility

The Southwest Power Pool moves into its new West Little Rock building Friday. It'll allow workers to come together under one roof instead of three. The non-profit is also expanding by adding high paying jobs.

Friday, employees will each get three crates to move into the new headquarters off of Chenal Parkway.

They need fifty new co-workers to join them to make an average of 83-thousand dollars a year, and you can land a job straight out of school.

Work at the Southwest Power Pool, and you get to enjoy a cafeteria where your family is encouraged to join you.

"Even down here in the common areas, we're trying to give people as much natural light as possible and encourage people to come down and get together," says employee Derek Wingfield.

There are also eleven beverage areas, low cubicle walls and art.

"We commissioned art from artists from throughout the central Arkansas community," adds Wingfield during a tour.

Everything is built with the environment in mind.

On the fourth floor, everyone has a spectacular view from their cubicles. You can also check out the roof, which has vegetation on it to collect rain water to use in the building.

But what do the nearly six-hundred people who work here even do?

"These are just air traffic controllers out here controlling electrons through miles and miles and miles of infrastructure," says Governor Mike Beebe.

Simply put, SPP takes electricity from nine states and distributes it to more than six-million households, and it's expanding by adding fifty high-paying positions over the next year.

"Certainly college degrees for probably 98-percent of all of the positions that we have. Engineering, IT, accounting, legal," says SPP CEO Nick Brown.

The governor hopes the expansion helps bring more companies offering similar salaries to Arkansas.

"It sends a message that high tech, highly educated, highly paid employees are welcomed and doing well in Arkansas. So, that tends to have a bleed over affect for other people making those kinds of decisions," says Beebe.

Southwest Power Pool works directly with colleges in our area to recruit students before they have the chance to move out of state.

The non-profit has 134 cameras outside and inside the building. FOX16 was only allowed to shoot video inside the office building, not the operations center that can withstand tornadoes, because of security protocol.