CBL headquarters is located next to Hamilton Place mall.CBL & Associates Properties Inc. is hiring about 50 people in Chattanooga as the company reinvents how it meets the operational needs of its 148 malls, shopping centers and other properties.
Chattanooga-based CBL plans to hire operations analysts, paralegals and people with backgrounds in accounting, billing and collections, insurance underwriting, and budgeting and forecasting, said Mike Harrison, its senior vice president of strategic and technology initiatives.
"We'll become more efficient in how to run the business and standardize processes," Harrison said about CBL, which is one of the nation's largest shopping center developers and operators.
Currently, some CBL employees who perform these tasks are located at regional offices or at its far-flung portfolio of properties which range from California to Florida. Their work will be brought into the company's Chattanooga headquarters.
Some of those CBL workers will be asked to relocate or offered other jobs in the company, Harrison said.
Dan Summerlin, CBL's director of corporate relations, said the large majority of the added workforce in Chattanooga will be new hires. He said CBL currently employs about 275 people in Chattanooga and 800 companywide.
Plans are to remake space inside of the company's corporate headquarters buildings near its flagship Hamilton Place mall. Some of that space became available when hotel developer Vision Hospitality Group built its new downtown headquarters and shifted to those offices earlier this year.
Harrison said CBL will invest heavily in new technology to accommodate the operational changes. He said the company has picked "a leading edge software vendor."
"We've got to have great capabilities to deliver sophisticated reporting," Harrison said. "We'll be implementing this in the next 12 months with the transition."
He didn't put a price tag on the technology investment, but termed it "equivalent to a redevelopment of a mall."
"We're investing in ourselves and our company," Harrison said.
He said top CBL officials such as Chief Executive Stephen Lebovitz and Executive Vice President Michael Lebovitz pushed for the operational initiative.
Plans are to bring on about 20 people by the end of 2014 and the remainder next year, Harrison said. The company also will create a full-scale training facility, he said.
Harrison said some of CBL's industry peers have such centralized operations components, but the company will place its unique stamp on the effort.
"We'll be playing a different game than our peers and be out front," he said.
Earlier this year, CBL announced plans to sell 21 of its shopping malls, about a quarter of those nationwide holdings, in an effort to upgrade its remaining properties and boost the company's income.
CBL said then it wants to divest the properties within 36 months, though neither Hamilton Place nor Northgate Mall were a part of the slate.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.