Rochester Rolls

Snow and Kodak. Those used to be the free associations people had when they heard the word "Rochester." Each is still part of the landscape, but diminished by warmer climatic patterns and the cold digital universe, respectively.
        However, economic diversity and a hive of engineering and optics talent have freed the community from rigid stereotypes. Today's Rochester could be equally identified by associations with back office operations and fuel cell development. And the metro's various and overlapping economic development efforts could best be summarized by the slogan of one of its private-sector members, the Rump Group: "Apathy Is Not An Option."
        Among that group's complaints is the area's high property tax rate (third-highest local rate in the country) and high spending and deficits on the part of city and county governments. Talk of government consolidation is in the air, but mere functional consolidation will suit corporate interests.
        Native son Tom Richards, a lawyer and former chairman and CEO of Rochester Gas & Electric parent RGS Energy Group, now serves as the chair of Greater Rochester Enterprise, one of several economic development agencies in the area (and also a subject of consolidation talk).
        "When I came back here after law school and serving in the Navy at the end of the 1960s, the economy was assigned to Kodak," he says. Now, as in many industrial cities, that model is no longer relevant. "We've had to come to grips with that as a community," he says.
        When Site Selection interviewed Kodak's director of corporate real estate in 1992, the company's holdings included not only its 1.8-million-sq.-ft. (167,220-sq.-m.) headquarters complex, but some 97 million sq. ft. (9 million sq. m.) of space in 64 countries occupied by 130,000 employees, with 71 million sq. ft. (6.6 million sq. m.) in the U.S. Rochester residents filled approximately 30,000 positions overall. After 7,000 cuts in 2002 and up to 9,000 more announced in July 2003, Rochester's count soon could be as low as 19,000. Richards points out that the gradual and generous nature of the job losses there has been a blessing and a curse.
        "Rochester was spared the shock treatment that some places got," he says, but because of that relatively benign process, aggressive economic development efforts were slow to get going.
        The newest push for the area is in establishing itself as a center for fuel cell excellence, backed by research facilities already in place for such companies as General Motors, Delphi Automotive, Hydrogenics and Harris RF Communications. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and The University of Rochester also boast significant fuel cell research and development expenditures. A recent Deloitte and Touche Fantus report found the Rochester Region ranks 3rd among benchmark locations in both engineering and fuel cell-related R&D occupations.
        RIT continues to be a mainstay of area work force education. In the fall of 2003, RIT awarded Rochester-based design firm Sear-Brown the contract to build its new $12-million, 46,000-sq.-ft. (4,273-sq.-m.) Center for Biotechnology Education and Training. With more than 38,000 people employed in the printing, imaging and optics industries, Rochester claims more than 50 percent of the entire state's work force in those sectors, giving credence to Richards' assertion that the city "was high-tech before people knew what high-tech was."
        One company getting to know Rochester is Geico, which is considering the city (as well as several other New York cities) for a sales and service center that could employ as many as 2,000 people. In October 2003, the state assembly passed a law aimed squarely at the potential Geico location, allowing insurance agents licensed in other states to work in New York. While that decision was pending at press time, several other companies have already made the Rochester move.
        Maryland-based Current Communications Services, which manufactures power line communications equipment is investing more than $2 million and planning to employ 400 people at a new operation in Henrietta, after nixing sites in its home state and Ohio. And local start-up Integrated Nano-Technologies (INT) is investing $15 million in a facility that will employ some 105 people in the manufacture of a biosensor device that has only been an R&D prototype until now.
        Finally, as part of a consolidation move that will sae the company $12 million a year and see plants close in South Carolina and Massachusetts, New York­based Corning is bringing 70 new jobs to two plants in the Rochester area.