NOVEMBER 2005
Fruitful Activity (cover)
Capital in the Capital
Righting the Ship
A River Runs Against It
Budgeting for Bio and for Business
Military Sites Display Corporate Might
A Stream Runs
Through It
Monroe County Sees Double
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UPSTATE NEW YORK SPOTLIGHT
Monroe County Sees Double
Up to 200 jobs will be created in Rochester, N.Y., as a result of a June 9 announcement by Bausch & Lomb that it would nearly double its R&D center in the city with a $35-million investment.
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| ON A CLEAR DAY, YOU CAN SEE ... well, maybe not forever, but the 150-year partnership between Bausch & Lomb and Rochester is only growing stronger with the company's latest R&D investment. |
Five days later, one of the conditions of that investment was met, as the Rochester City Council voted to include a 22-acre (9-hectare) portion of the Optics Center campus in the City of Rochester Empire Zone, an action that, when approved by Empire State Development, will allow Bausch & Lomb to apply for various tax incentives through the Empire Zone program.
Meanwhile contact lens maker Coopervision said June 17 that it would invest $8 million in equipment and hire 225 people for a distribution center in nearby Henrietta that it will lease after a developer invests $12 million to construct it. The site won out over a California location.
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Both projects could receive sales tax exemptions worth approximately $1.3 million. But they're not all that's unfolding in the county. Scannell Properties is working on a $9.1-million DC for FedEx Ground, also in Henrietta, and Unisys Corp. is creating jobs too.
The targeted completion date for Bausch & Lomb is early 2007. Plans call for a 75,000-sq.-ft. (6,968-sq.-m.), two-story building, with room for a 25,000-sq.-ft. (2,323-sq.-m.) addition. Approximately $25 million of the total investment will be spent on construction, with the balance going toward renovations, equipment and machinery.
"One of the deciding factors to expand our worldwide R&D center here in Rochester was the outstanding assistance from New York State, Rochester Gas & Electric, the City of Rochester, Monroe County and facilitated by Greater Rochester Enterprise," said Ronald L. Zarrella, Bausch & Lomb chairman and CEO since November 2001.
