By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 24, 2021 | In development circles, a recent announcement out of Peachtree Corners was a blockbuster! It will bring benefits to all of Gwinnett County for years, as high technology will be hitting unprecedented new heights in Gwinnett.
The announcement was that a firm already employing 150 in Peachtree Corners, Intuitive Surgical, would have a major expansion here to eventually employ 1,200 persons. That would include expanding into six buildings, with the total investment of over $500 million.
The key product of the company is the da Vinci Surgical System, a state-of-the-art machine which enables surgeons to do complex operations using a minimally invasive approach. Last year alone, more than 1.2 million procedures were done with this technology in hospitals and health care facilities. There are nearly 6,000 da Vinci surgical systems now in use worldwide.
The company makes robotic-assisted surgical systems. Their plans call for having classes at their offices in their buildings in Peachtree Corners to attract doctors from all around the world who would spend days at a time here learning how to become proficient on this most-modern and delicate robotic surgical system. That means that these out-of-town doctors would need to be housed and fed while spending their instructional time locally. Think of the impact this would make on local hotels and restaurants!
You can begin to understand how much impact this can have. The Georgia Department of Economic Development said the announcement of the expansion is among the largest announced projects in Georgia in 2021 and one of the largest investments in Gwinnett County’s 200 year history. The facilities needed for this project will take up at least 750,000 square feet. It won’t be completed all at once, but in phases, with construction anticipated being completed by 2024.
Wow! Don’t you know other area promoters are envious that Peachtree Corners landed such a major company with this overall large impact!
Currently Intuitive Surgical has about 150 employees in Gwinnett. These are highly-skilled workers with an average salary of $130,000. The Gwinnett location is the company’s U.S. regional headquarters. While publicly the company has said it would eventually employ 1,200 people in Gwinnett, word on the street is that the total figure will probably be more like at least 1,500. Many of these new employees will come from distant places, needing to find new homes in this immediate area.
Altogether, it’s expected that 6,000 surgeons annually will come to Gwinnett for training on these machines, staying 1-2 weeks, and needing 16,000 hotel room nights. It’s estimated they’ll spend $150 per day on food, travel, etc. when in the area. The overall impact is expected to be $4.9 million in revenue for local establishments.
The project of Intuitive Surgical will be built on 17.5 acres, and employ approximately 2,000 in construction related jobs.
Intuitive Surgical’s global headquarters is in Sunnyvale, Calif., where it has manufacturing, advanced research and training facilities. The firm employs over 5,500 people currently. It has customer service representatives throughout the world. It was founded in 1995 and is a pioneer in robotic-assisted surgery. It is publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ISRG. Its stock price on Thursday was $1,049 per share.
All of Gwinnett will benefit from Intuitive Surgical expanding here. Welcome!
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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