Home improvement retailer Lowe's Cos. is scoping out the Dallas area to locate a new technology hub.
The Dallas Regional Chamber confirmed Thursday that Dallas-Fort Worth is in the running and that it's working with the project team from Lowe's.
Lowe's chief information officer Seemantini Godbole, who came to Lowe's from Target six months ago, told the Charlotte Observer that Charlotte and Dallas are both under consideration and the decision would be made by the end of the summer.
The company is looking for a location near a commuter train, Godbole said.
Downtown Dallas real estate agents have been chattering for weeks that some kind of Lowe's office was in the works. Walmart and Sam's Club have opened technology hubs in Plano and Dallas in the past year.
Ride-sharing giant Uber is considering a site in Deep Ellum for an office that would employ several thousand people.
Lowe's CEO Marvin Ellison left Plano-based J.C. Penney a year ago to run the No. 2 home improvement retailer. He has extensive experience in the industry from his years at rival Home Depot.
After issues with Lowe's website last holiday season, particularly when it crashed over the Black Friday weekend, Ellison told analysts during an investor conference that the company plans to hire 2,000 software engineers and other IT professionals during the next five years.
Both states are growing their tech employment bases, but Texas has a bigger pool with almost 1 million tech workers, 982,988 vs. 354,166 in North Carolina, according to CompTIA, the computing industry's trade association.
Dallas-Fort Worth has 350,000 tech employees vs. 101,377 in Charlotte.
Dallas Regional Chamber senior vice president Mike Rosa said the chamber is working with Lowe's to "support and encourage selection of D-FW."
"Here, Lowe's would have access to the largest business-friendly tech and innovation hub in the United States, in addition to our many other regional assets," Rosa said in a statement. "We hope Lowe's chooses to grow, prosper and partner with us in D-FW."
Ellison knows both the Dallas real estate and local job markets.
Plus, Texas is Lowe's largest state with 143 stores, and physical locations are becoming key links in every retailer's online business, not only as mini fulfillment centers but also because customers have quickly adopted online buying and picking up their merchandise in stores. Lowe's operates 1,740 stores in the U.S., and its next largest state is Florida with 125 locations.
Ellison said he wants to modernize Lowe's digital capabilities as part of his overhaul of the company. Lowe's first-quarter results reported Wednesday fell short of estimates.
Since joining Lowe's last summer, Ellison has hired his own team at the top of the company and said he would close the Orchard Supply Hardware chain, which Lowe's bought in 2013 after it was spun off from Sears. He was also critical of the lack of localized merchandise in Lowe's stores to match the regions they're in.
It's not surprising that Ellison is making digital capabilities a priority. Penney's online operations suffered under Ellison, and he ended up firing his handpicked head of Penney's digital business. The company added hundreds of thousands of items on the website that were shipped directly from the manufacturers, including such items as faucets and bathtubs.
Penney CEO Jill Soltau said during a conference call to review first-quarter results Tuesday that hundreds of thousands of items have been removed from Penney's website. In February, she also reversed another Ellison decision to put major kitchen and laundry appliances in 600 Penney stores.
(Staff writer Melissa Repko contributed to this report.)
