SIOUX CITY, IA -
Sabre Industries will be adding nearly 200 new jobs as the company expands in Sioux City's Southbridge Business Park.
The question now: is Siouxland up to the task of filling those high tech positions?
When Sabre expands it'll be the first company to move into Southbridge.
The good thing about expanding locally is that it looks like Siouxland has the high tech workforce to fill most of those jobs.
Sabre Industries plans on building a $28 million multi-phase expansion in Sioux City's Southbridge Business Park.
"Products that they make are in demand and that demand is growing," says Sioux City Economic Development Director Marty Dougherty. "They are expanding because they've run out of space, basically, and they've got some new markets opening up, some new contracts."
Sabre makes cell phone towers and electric transmission towers.
This expansion will add nearly 200 new jobs at first with more on the way, more than doubling the company's work force.
Those new positions will be everything from builders to welders.
Positions that folks at Western Iowa Tech say Siouxland can fill.
"We work with area businesses like Sabre to understand what their needs are and develop the programs around their needs," says Martin Reimer, Dean of the Corporate College at Western Iowa Tech in Sioux City.
Those high tech industrial programs? The college has a ton of them that will fit right in with what Sabre's looking for.
"We have our high end welding that deals with the exotic metals that you would find at a business like Sabre," says Reimer. "We also have the engineering and the drafting courses, the modeling courses that they'll need to construct their towers as well."
Western Iowa Tech also works with companies on employee training, helping keep local workers up to date in high tech fields.
Construction on the new facility should begin sometime this spring and wrap up in October of 2012.
