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Just a few hours after AOL announced it was cutting 900 jobs and vacating its Albuquerque home on Jefferson Street Northeast, Gary Tonjes got an e-mail inquiry from a consultant he'd met last week.

"What they want to know is, is the building right now on the market? Has the lease expired? When is the lease expiring? What about the work stations, do they stay?" Tonjes, president of Albuquerque Economic Development, said Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless officials - themselves in the middle of a search for 400 customer service workers - were contacting AOL's human resources division inquiring about recruiting the company's workers.

"I believe they are planning some job fairs," Jenny Weaver, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, said of AOL. "If they do have those, we will definitely want to be there."

While news of the layoffs was certainly bad for the more than 900 workers at AOL's call center at 6301 Jefferson St. N.E., call center experts and regional economic development officials say the Albuquerque call center market is vibrant enough to absorb the losses.

"It's always a blow when you lose jobs," said Larry Waldman, senior economist at the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research. "But on the other hand, there are plenty of other jobs."

AOL employees were told of the layoffs Wednesday morning, then given the day off. They will continue to work for AOL through Dec. 15, after which they will be offered a severance package that provides a combination of salary and benefits, said Nicholas Graham, AOL's vice president of corporate communications. He did not disclose details of the package.

The cuts are part of a restructuring plan the Dulles, Va. company announced in August, in which AOL said as many as 5,000 employees would be laid off within six months - a quarter of its global work force, now about 19,000.

As the news erupted, city economic development officials used the layoffs to send a signal to prospective new companies that there's a building and an experienced work force available.

Tonjes, whose group works to recruit new businesses to the city, contacted several prospective companies with details of AOL's departure, as well as the availability of its leased Jefferson Street office.

Tonjes declined to identify the companies interested in Albuquerque but said "multiple" firms had the city on a short list of one or two possible cities to host jobs like technical support, customer service, accounting and other "back office operations."

David L. Butler, president of the Call Center Research Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi and executive director of the National Association of Call Centers, said the loss of AOL could actually help draw companies.

"If anything, what's happened is one of these centers shutting down actually makes the city much more attractive to another one coming in," Butler said. "It actually does free up those 900 jobs to be reabsorbed by other companies. It could be new companies coming in or existing companies wanting to expand."

The job market appears prosperous for customer service call center workers in Albuquerque, which already has a call center work force of around 12,500.

Fred Mondragon, the city's director of economic development, said an announcement is expected soon on one company already in Albuquerque that is adding 200 similar jobs. He declined to identify the company.

In all, Mondragon said about eight call centers already in Albuquerque are hiring. They include companies like T-Mobile, Gap and CitiCards.

Verizon Wireless is working to hire 400 customer service call center workers by the end of the year as it moves to a new, $20 million facility at 7000 Central Ave. S.W. The company has hired 300 technical support workers since January with plans to hire 200 more by the end of the year. In total, the new facility will hold 1,400.

Lockheed Martin, on a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has hired 200 call center workers for a Downtown facility set to open in December where people can call to check their immigration status. Lockheed spokesman Joe Wagovich said that number could double over the next year.

Ann John is president of the New Mexico Call Center Alliance, a network of regional call centers. She said the local call center community has always found a way to absorb laid off call center workers.

"As we have done in the past, the organizations will rally behind AOL," John said. "We'll do what we need to do to find homes for their talented folks."

Gov. Bill Richardson also pledged his support Wednesday, saying he was "confident that New Mexico's strong economy will be able to absorb these workers quickly."

The state Department of Labor is planning a job fair for the displaced AOL workers, as well as implementing a "rapid response" program to expedite access to assistance, training and other job programs.

AOL has maintained a call center in Albuquerque for about a decade, Graham said. The Albuquerque facility was one of AOL's first customer call centers and remains its second-largest, falling just behind a call center in Oklahoma City that will remain open, Graham said.

In total, AOL announced 1,400 job cuts in the United States on Wednesday. A call center in Tucson will also see about 400 job cuts, while a call center that employs 400 in Ogden, Utah, will be sold to another company, he said.

The reduction in customer service workers comes as AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., transitions away from charging customers for high-speed Internet, e-mail and other services and into an advertising-driven Web services company.

Customers who have been maintaining their AOL subscription just to keep their AOL.com e-mail address, for example, now receive that service online for free.

The Albuquerque call center employees worked with subscribers to answer questions on high-speed Internet connections, billing issues, registration to the service and other areas of technical support, Graham said.

With the company moving away from its subscriber-driven service, the need for customer service workers has minimized.

Tonjes, though, said AOL's departure means more than just job losses. The company was an advocate for Albuquerque as a home for corporate customer relations centers, he said.

"They (AOL) have helped us a great deal to attract other employers to the marketplace, not only in their presence, but in their participation to convince others that followed them that this was an excellent place where they could find talented workers," Tonjes said.

Graham emphasized that the departure from Albuquerque is strictly due to AOL's change in business model. It has nothing to do with the viability of the local market or other economic factors.

"I can't emphasize enough how pleased we have been with the business environment in the Albuquerque region that has provided us with a great pool of talent," Graham said. "This doesn't have anything to do with conditions in the state or the Albuquerque region. We believe other companies will find it a great place to do business."