New York is known for its urban landscape, which takes up 11.6 percent of its land area, but that still leaves 88.4 percent. And for reasons ranging from daily quality of life to manageable schools to a general sense of security, people are scrutinizing the very real advantages of small towns that they may have once dismissed as quaint. Same goes for the companies they work for.
        "We have always felt that secondary markets offer higher returns on our investment than a major market," says Brad Cohen. "Many real estate investment companies have stayed away from these markets because they don't understand their strengths."
        Cortland, N.Y., locus of the state's newest Empire Zone, is seeing its corporate roster thrive as visibly and attractively as its trout streams. As Doug Potter, the president of Marathon Boat Group (maker of Grumman canoes), put it in a recent interview when talking about his former residences in Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore, "You can spend as much as 15 percent of your day time stuck in traffic there. Life has a slower pace here ... Our employees realize it would be hard to duplicate these things any place else."
        Contrary to most other counties in the state, Cortland County saw jobs increase by 2 percent last year. The newest business presence in the town of 49,000 is the Finger Lakes Business and Technology Park, a 10-lot development on 25 acres (10 ha.) that welcomed its first tenant in 2001, Photon Vision Systems, and its $4.6-million corporate headquarters. Located right on Interstate 81 and near major research resources at local SUNY- College at Cortland, Cornell University, SUNY-Binghamton and Syracuse, the park is ready to grow its own campus atmosphere. PVS, a designer of semiconductor sensor chips for imaging devices, will employ 75 people within three years.
        In keeping with its sporting image, Cortland has also welcomed the corporate headquarters of Impact Sports Equipment, which makes high-grade plastic equipment for a variety of sporting goods companies, including Rawlings. The company chose 70,000 sq. ft. (6,500 sq. m.) right on Main Street to assume its stance, and has come out swinging. The area is also home to facilities operated by Borg Warner Morse, Gutchess International, liquid filtration company Pall Trinity Micro, and the hospitality amenity production facility of Marietta Corp.
        "It's very good in Cortland now," says Paul Dusinberre, vice president of powder metal operations for Borg Warner Morse, which relocated the operation to Cortland from Ithaca last year. Employment at the plant, which supplies sprockets and timing system components to the main plant in Ithaca, has already grown from 120 to around 200.
        "The local community is very supportive of everything," he says. "They rolled out the red carpet all the way as far as we were concerned."
        The company has reached the $30-million sales plateau, but has no intention of staying there.
        "It was a growth issue," says Dusinberre of the expansion. "We did get some considerations from a tax standpoint, and in purchasing a building. We have pretty good relations with the union too."
        David Berger, president of filtration products manufacturer Pall Trinity Micro, has also seen the community come a long way in a short time.
        "Our company has been here 41 years," he says. "At this point I would say [the business climate] is excellent. The situation was not like that five years ago, but we started to engage all the business leaders here, and basically our goal is to be a catalyst for economic development. Together we are bringing Cortland to a very competitive stature in New York State and the country. Now we are working on enhancing the relationship with the Cortland County legislature. With them on board with us, we will be unstoppable."
        Schenectady is another town on the move in getting companies to stay put. Even when bankrupt Guilford Mills had to sell its Twin Rivers factory there and move operations to Mexico in an effort to restructure its business to automotive fabrics exclusively, the space was purchased and kept in operation by H. Greenblatt and Co., a fabric converter that serves the swimwear and intimate apparel market.
        Innovative plastics firm Cyclics is a new arrival, moving from incubator space at the University of Albany to a new $3-million headquarters at Riverside Technology Park.
        "Many of us had connections to the area," says Tim Ullman, director of environmental health and safety and facilities, "but certainly there were some incentives to stay in New York and relocate to that area. One is the Empire Zone, certainly a powerful incentive, and a series of loans from the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority. One of the truly good things New York is doing is the creation of these Empire Zones -- they are a tremendous financial incentive for companies."
        Ullman, whose firm employs around 30 people, notes the town's proximity to interstates, and the presence of other light industrial facilities.
        "In fact one of the laboratories we use to analyze our plastic is directly across the street," he says. "That's a minor factor, but that's the type of environment that is there."
        Ullman and colleagues hope such serendipity is available as the company rolls out its thermal plastics product, which is already being sold in developmental quantities to a variety of end users, from automotive parts to sporting goods. The firm has around two dozen developmental contracts, and its European headquarters recently expanded into new offices in Filderstadt, close to Stuttgart, Germany.
        Thus does the global outlook that once characterized only the Big Apple now extend to cities up and down the Hudson and across the Empire State. Drawn together by the worst of times, New York's private and public sector leaders are putting their shoulders to the wheel in typical New Yorker fashion, and the cohesive effort is showing the world their best.

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