After several years of trying, the Kitsap Regional Economic Development Council landed a major call center when Nextel agreed to build a customer service facility here. Right on its heels, American Financial Services (AFS), a Seattle-based credit counseling agency, announced it would locate call center in downtown Bremerton as well. Now, the Gilmore Research Group will make it a trio when the firm opens in downtown Bremerton late September.

The company said it will initially hire 20 telephone interviewers and expects to ramp up to more than 70 people by the end of the year, including three supervisors and a manager. Pay starts at around $7 per hour, depending on experience, and can go up to $10.

Gilmore, which has offices on Eastlake Avenue in Seattle and in Portland, Ore., has signed a six year lease for the 6,000-square-foot building located at 524 Fourth Street. The building has been empty for two years and formerly housed PSNS engineers after being remodeled from retail space in the mid 1990s. The company expects to open there around Sept. 22.

The firm does research and telephone surveys for business, government and health-care organizations, primarily for segmentation, market assessment and customer profiling. It doesn’t do telemarketing.

Company officials said the firm selected Bremerton because of its Internet connectivity, proximity to Seattle, reasonably priced office space and higher unemployment rate.

Gilmore employs 55 in Seattle and 30 in Portland, including sales people, analysts, coders and payroll clerks. The Bremerton office will only do telephone interviewing.