GoDaddy to shift 130 jobs to downtown Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS - Competition among cities in the Cedar Rapids metro area for employers and jobs turned into a bit of a clash of incentive offers in 2010 as Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha battled to land new jobs that Internet firm GoDaddy was bringing here.

GoDaddy's national profile, promoted by an ad campaign that featured racecar driver Danica Patrick in the company's green colors, didn't hurt in turning a contest over jobs into a dispute.

In the end, Bob Parsons, GoDaddy's founder, brought the new jobs to the very Hiawatha building where he once ran a computer software business, Parsons Technology.

Five years later, Cedar Rapids is getting a little payback - however temporary it may be.

GoDaddy on Thursday said it will move 130 employees of the 630 employees at its Hiawatha location to the Armstrong Centre in downtown Cedar Rapids in August to allow the firm to update its Hiawatha facility. The renovation could take a year, said Elizabeth Driscoll, the firm's vice president for public relations.

'We selected the Armstrong Centre because of its proximity to amenities, such as food and activities,” Driscoll said.

The plan, thought, is to return all the employees to the Hiawatha facility.

'We're all looking forward to a new rocking GoDaddy home in Hiawatha when the remodel wraps up next year,” she said.

On Thursday, Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said the city's parking system likely will provide GoDaddy with some reduction in the cost of downtown parking.

Sometimes, he said, one-year stays can turn into longer ones if a firm sees how much their employees like working and enjoying downtown.

Back in 2010, Hiawatha city officials accused Corbett of 'submarine” tactics when he tried to lure GoDaddy to downtown Cedar Rapids and away from a deal that Hiawatha already thought it had with the company.

'Back then, when I tried to get GoDaddy to move downtown, there was very little activity in the downtown,” Corbett said on Thursday. 'Although GoDaddy didn't expand there, it (our attempt) sent the message we were serious about being open for business. Today the downtown is booming and it is one of the reasons GoDaddy is setting up operation in Armstrong building.”

Corbett said what got lost in the back-and-forth in 2010 was that GoDaddy already had a smaller presence in the metro area, in Cedar Rapids, before it announced its expansion plans and then moved to Hiawatha.

'We've got to rebuild our downtown,” Corbett said then, with the downtown and the city still in the early stages of recovery from the 2008 flood. 'And there isn't any regional expert around that says that the No. 1 city in the metro area can die and everybody else will be OK.”

GoDaddy is a Web host provider and registrar of Internet domain names.