When it opened in a former pipe mill in McKeesport 11 years ago, the DISH Network call center provided hope to the struggling former steel town that its brownfield sites were fertile ground for development.

But yesterday, a day after the company reported a 12.4 percent decline in third quarter profit from a year ago, DISH announced it was closing the 600-employee call center in March. The announcement dealt a serious blow to a community already saddled with an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent.

The center employs a large majority of the 850 people currently working at the Industrial Center of McKeesport, the city's main industrial park.

In a statement, DISH said the McKeesport center "does not meet our business needs."

Though the company says it has seen a recent gain in subscribers, its been fighting an uphill battle in gaining new customers, as around 90 percent of households use pay-TV and the company is competing with industry leaders Comcast and Verizon as well as the Internet for market share.

When it opened 11 years ago, the company, then operating under EchoStar Satellite Co., was gaining 3,500 new customers a day and was expected to surpass other pay-TV providers in the cable industry.

At the same time, the company has waged an expensive court battle with TiVo over patent infringement.

Additionally, the company said in its third quarter earnings report that the economy is hampering growth, as is the fact that the company recently ended its relationship with AT&T, which contributed up to 17 percent of new subscribers over the past several years.

In its third quarter earnings report, the company said it was dissatisfied with its own customer service and was planning on making investments in its customer service division, but added it was also looking to cut inefficiencies.

A company official said yesterday that the company's dozen other call centers scattered across the country could absorb McKeesport's call volume.

McKeesport City Administrator Dennis Pittman added that the company had told city officials that it had trouble recruiting employees and that it never met its goal of employing 1,600 people in the facility. Part of the problem was finding bilingual employees who could serve the company's international customers.

Mr. Pittman said he was shocked by the announcement because the company was recruiting prospects at a county job fair just two months ago.

He and other public officials were especially disappointed in the announcement because the project to rehabilitate the building the call center occupies received substantial backing from federal, state, county and local sources.

"We were stakeholders. We wanted this company here," Mr. Pittman said.

At the outset, McKeesport spent $1 million to build a parking lot and improve access roads into the Industrial Center of McKeesport, where the facility currently sits.

And EchoStar, DISH Network's former parent company, received a $2.5 million low-interest loan through the county to buy equipment. The Regional Industrial Development Corporation, which owns the Industrial Center of McKeesport, also received low-interest government loans to renovate the former pipe mill.

More recently, the county committed $12 million of state and federal transportation funds to build a flyover ramp into the industrial park, which is separated from the rest of the city by an active rail line, so that employees there would have better access to their workplace.

The county's director of economic development, Dennis Davin, said he hoped he could sway the company to change their mind about leaving.

"Given all the investment that we've made ... this is a big disappointment," he said. "We're not going to just sit back and let this happen ... we're going to do anything we can to encourage them to change their mind."

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