CACI, a global national security contractor, joined Port San Antonio’s increasingly high-tech list of tenants on the sprawling 1,900-acre campus.
CACI International held a grand opening ceremony Friday at the Port’s Project Tech facility, which opened last year and was designed with a growing Port San Antonio clientele in mind: cybersecurity and other IT firms.
“I recall back when this was just a vision; it was a concept,” said Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, president and CEO of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. “I and so many others here were out in D.C. shopping the concept of a spec facility. And really it was so much more than that. After hearing Jim [Perschbach, Port San Antonio’s president and CEO] talk about it, you realized that we weren’t shopping a facility, we were shopping a vision. And that vision is coming to life.”
The 90,000-square-foot facility has welcomed a number of national security and computing-related organizations since opening its doors last year, beginning with Lockheed Martin, one of the largest defense contractors in the world.
CACI acquired Project Tech tenant LGS Innovations earlier this year for $750 million, bringing dozens of LGS employees over to the company, including CEO Kevin Kelly.
“This new facility is going to help us expand our presence here in the San Antonio region,” said Kelly, now president of CACI’s national security and innovative solutions sector. “Prior to our acquisition by CACI my company, LGS Innovations, started to grow our footprint here. And that’s really where all of this started. We saw the need to create a partnership … with San Antonio.”
In February, Bexar County and the City of San Antonio awarded LGS up to $230,000 in economic development incentives for its San Antonio expansion. LGS had planned to bring at least 46 high-wage, high-skill jobs to San Antonio, and CACI plans to honor that commitment, Kelly said.
CACI has nearly 300 workers in the San Antonio area, the company said. The organization supports the missions of the 24th Air Force, also known as Air Forces Cyber, and the National Security Agency’s Texas Cryptologic Center located near the Port.
San Antonio’s various military installations and national security assets were among the biggest reasons CACI decided to grow its presence in San Antonio, said Kevin McNeill, the company’s senior vice president.
“San Antonio is Military City USA,” McNeill said. “It’s also one of the major main cyber hubs in the United States. So when you think of cyber, there are really two places to think about: D.C. metro and San Antonio. And we’re really proud to be here to help achieve the goal of creating that ecosystem of cybersecurity professionals.”
San Antonio is second only to the nation’s capital in its concentration of cybersecurity professionals, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
McNeill said it’s CACI’s goal to create jobs in the region specifically for service members transitioning out of the Air Force who wish to stay in San Antonio.
Port San Antonio, which decades ago was transformed from an Air Force base to an industrial hub, has seen job growth of more than 2,300 positions in the past 18 months, said Perschbach, who has been at the helm of the Port during that timespan.
The Arlington, Virginia-based CACI is publicly traded and employs more than 22,000 people worldwide.
