About 60 of the American Institute of CPAs' employees have agreed to relocate from Jersey City, N.J., to Durham, N.C., in a cost savings move the institute announced in October.
The expectation was that roughly 20 percent of the AICPA's 400 affected staffers would make the move.
Spokeswoman Anne Sittman said that employees were asked to notify the institute of their plans in late January, and the figure relocating is closer to 15 percent. Sittman added that of the employees holding a director-level title or above, about half agreed to the move.
Last month, the AICPA signed a 15-year lease on a 100,000-square-foot, four-story building at a new corporate center on the outskirts of Durham at the intersection of N.C. 54 and Interstate 40. The institute will occupy the first of a planned six buildings in the park. The exterior of the building is already complete. Interior work will continue through the summer, until the institute begins moving in sometime in August.
Called the Palladian Corporate Center, the park has been competing mostly for tenants in nearby Chapel Hill, N.C.
According to financials presented at Fall Council, the move will come with a first-year loss of about $49 million, but should provide the AICPA with a net-present-value savings of approximately $100 million over the next 15 years -- including an estimated 25 percent labor savings.
The AICPA had investigated downtown Durham, where about $15 million in municipal improvements are planned or underway, but the available office space didn't meet the group's specifications.
Among the affected departments will be finance and accounting; professional publications; the Private Companies Practice Section; membership marketing; peer review and ethics; conferences, meetings and travel; service center operations; academic and career development; information technology; and human resources. About half of the institute's senior vice presidents and vice presidents, six or seven employees, will also be relocated.
The AICPA has started posting positions for the move on job board Monster.com. Financial and IT jobs came up frequently out of 17 or so posts, and some of those are for multiple positions, including one seeking financial reporting analysts. Other financial jobs include a controller, a treasury manager and two financial analysts. There were also six Oracle jobs, three technical managers and openings for two senior technical managers in the ethics areas posted.
