Editor's note: This story has been updated with comments from an AT&T spokesman regarding the scope of the company's actions.

New London — About 75 AT&T call center employees working in downtown New London will be transferred to New Haven this summer, said a company spokesman on Wednesday.

The spokesman, Marty Richter, said he did not know whether this would leave AT&T's Washington Street building vacant.

"Some work is being consolidated from an office in New London into another AT&T office in New Haven, effective in mid-July," he said. He said that a central office next door will not close.

Southern New England Telephone Co., now a part of AT&T, demolished a First National grocery store on the site in 1957. Construction on the $1.5 million building, created to be the region's nerve center for direct long-distance dialing, began two years later, and it opened in June 1961. The landmark 83-foot microwave relay tower was added a few months later.

William Henderson, president of Local 1298 of the Communications Workers of America, said the move would leave a building vacant.

Henderson said the company has "had service representatives in New London since the beginning of SNET."

The union president also said he had been told that the company would be announcing layoffs today in other departments of AT&T.

Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio was out of town Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

k.catalfamo@theday.com