news-record.com

American Express, which already has a significant presence in the Triad, has chosen to grow here.

The credit card and financial services giant is expected to announce that it will build a new $400 million data-services facility in eastern Guilford County.

Guilford beat out Des Moines, Iowa, which also was vying for the super-sized computer data storage and preservation operation. The company opened a call center in Greensboro in 1985 that today employs 2,000. “This is a big deal. A big deal,” Pat Danahy, president and CEO of the Greensboro Partnership, told the News & Record Thursday.

He wasn’t exaggerating. The Amex expansion will create 150 precious jobs for the struggling area economy when it opens by 2012.

It will increase the local tax base. It will likely build on the company’s long and impressive record of charitable giving and community engagement.

And, refreshingly, it will do all of those things without the benefit of one solitary penny in publicly financed local incentives — from the city or the county.

This, in an era in which such bonuses are considered foregone conclusions — not because companies have to have them (honestly, most don’t), but because they can have them. And because dueling governments feel compelled to offer them, especially in today’s job-starved economy.

The city of Greensboro alone had considered offering the company the richest incentives package in city history. The deal reportedly would have been worth between $5 million and $7 million, with most of it going toward road and water and sewer upgrades. Guilford County, meanwhile, was expected to contribute as much as an additional $6 million in sweeteners, swelling the total package to possibly $13 million.

American Express very well could have negotiated a hard line for those bonuses — and possibly even more. But it apparently decided to judge the Triad strictly on its merits — namely its climate, culture, suitable sites, education system, location and quality of life.

One of the new buildings likely will go up in the Rock Creek Center industrial park off of Interstate 40/85, the other on nearby land owned by Greensboro developer Roy Carroll. The main building will comprise 350,000 square feet, the second one 150,000 square feet.

The coup speaks well of the considerable assets of this area, and the collective efforts of business leaders and corporate recruiters. It also confirms that American Express, which already knows the Triad very well, has liked what it has seen here over the years.