Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 29, 1993 TAG: 9305290051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BREWSTER, N.Y. LENGTH: Long
Transkrit, a business-forms printer, inspected 25 Southeastern sites and found the cost of living lower in the Roanoke Valley than in Brewster, its headquarters.
Housing in Roanoke is quite a bit lower, said Resnick, the company's president, and the cost of insurance and real estate taxes is significantly less.
Assessed values of real estate in Putnam County, N.Y., Transkrit's home, jumped 77 percent in the past decade. Roanoke's values rose about 62 percent in the period.
Transkrit, a $90 million company operating seven plants from New Hampshire to Arkansas, moved to a new two-story headquarters in Brewster nine years ago. That building is for sale, but 135 employees will continue a printing operation, probably in a smaller space in Brewster, Resnick said.
The Roanoke plant and headquarters are to open early in 1994 with about 170 employees - 125 have been offered transfers from Brewster and about 44 will be hired. Workers with office, computer and professional skills will be needed, Reskin said.
Site preparation started last week for the 110,000-square-foot building. The offices will have a brick and glass front,,and the factory at the rear will have metal panels. The plant is larger than initially announced.
Some of the new factory space in the Centre for Industry and Technology should be ready for training use this fall, Resnick said, and the move from New York should be completed early in 1994.
During planning for the Roanoke building, the company projected a second phase with another 70,000 square feet for manufacturing, doubling the factory space and adding jobs. But "we won't look at that until 1994," said Dennis King, manufacturing vice president.
If sales, the product mix and the company's cost-saving move are successful, Transkrit has room for expansion in its 17-acre tract located near Blue Hills Golf Course, King said.
The company is paying Roanoke about $255,000 for the 17 acres, two-thirds of the price per acre paid by a developer for the nearby Elizabeth Arden distribution center site. The city has applied for state industrial access funds for a road to the site.
The 125 Transkrit employees in Brewster are going through the tough process of deciding if they will accept the company's offer to move to Roanoke. Their decision is complicated by two factors - a reduction in pay for those who move and the possible elimination of their jobs if they don't.
Transkrit's pay scale in Roanoke will be tied to the local job market, Resnick said. "We're not coming in with New York rates. It wouldn't be fair to the people there."
Higher skilled workers such as pressmen will draw $12 to $13 an hour, competitive with existing rates, he said.
The pay "adjustment" is an important piece of the relocation. Combined with lower living costs and a favorable land purchase in the Centre for Industry and Technology, the company expects to reduce its expenses by as much as 17 percent.
The future of the jobs remaining in Brewster depends on the type of work, according to Mary Jane Scott, human resources vice president. "If you're the only person doing a job and you don't go [to Roanoke], you'll be replaced," she sid.
Production workers at Transkrit's plant will put in four 12-hour days a week in order to keep printing on a seven-day schedule. Overtime is built into the schedule, Resnick said.
The company is providing relocation assistance packages of several thousand dollars for each employee's Roanoke move. "We're trying to do the right thing for employees," he said.
About half of the 125 own their homes and they may have difficulty selling them in a "very tough market," he said. Overall, the company had "a very good response" from the 125 employees who came to inspect the Roanoke Valley's housing, schools and cultural attractions on recent weekend visits.\
"I think a high percentage of the 125 will move, but I don't know," Resnick said during an interview in second-floor office at Brewster. Both Resnick and Frank Neubauer, the company chairman, plan to move.
A secondary reason to move south, Resnick said, was to find a strategic position nearer to Southeastern markets. "Customers like being closer" to the business forms printer. The company required interstate highway accessibility because most of the forms are delivered by truck.
The company saw many good plant sites, he said, "but we tried to balance the quality of life and doing the right thing for all of the people."
The decision to move will be difficult because many are long-time employees who have spouses with jobs or their own business, children in school and family or financial commitments. Many commute from other communities in southeastern New York and Connecticut.
"Our people like it here. They're closer to the city and the country," Resnick said of the Harlem Valley area.
\ `Used to having land'
After an early Roanoke visit, Nancy Fry, company purchasing manager, tried to decide whether to move. "It's a nice city and the people are wonderful," she said, but "I'm so confused" because of her family ties and her husband's work.
Elaine Hendrickson, another office worker, visited Roanoke "looking for reasons not to go but I heard no bad things. . . . Everybody is impressed."
Scott, one of a management committee of nine, said she found "a very clean and family-oriented community" when she came to Roanoke. Most of the managers have decided to move, she said, but their spouses are having problems finding comparable jobs in Roanoke.
She said some Transkrit employees may be able to afford their first house in the Roanoke Valley because "they couldn't in their wildest dreams own a home in Brewster."
Boone & Co. has been providing information and showing houses for the New York visitors. Sue Gottwald, relocation manager for Boone, has been providing stacks of information for the potential Roanoke Valley residents. She said 50 Transkrit employees made the Roanoke inspection in May and 35 came in April.
From Gottwald's comparison of housing prices, a $100,000 home in the Roanoke Valley would be worth at least $150,000 or perhaps $175,000 in southeastern New York state. She does not expect to get the moving decisions until late summer.
But Transkrit personnel may have to go to Bedford or Botetourt counties to find homes they want, Scott said, because "our folks are used to having land. A typical home here [at Brewster] has an acre of land."
To help the decision-making, Scott has accumulated stacks of information about life in the Roanoke Valley, on display for employees in a "Roanoke Resource Center."
Brewster, one of many commuter communities outside New York City, is an old village of 1,548, comfortably located among small lakes and rolling hills in the Town of Southeast in an area tucked between Westchester County, N.Y., and Fairfield County, Conn., two of the wealthiest counties in the nation.
About 800 Brewster-area commuters catch the morning train for a 50-mile ride to New York jobs and at least 50 are on a waiting list for parking space near the station.
Putnam County residents are sensitive about the loss of the Transkrit headquarters. When news of the planned move spread around Brewster, county officials formed a task force that offered a package of incentives to keep Transkrit.
They talked of a reduced tax structure, a saving on waste-removal costs and collective purchasing through the New York State Electric and Gas Co. But all of the offers amounted to less than 10 percent of the saving promised by a move to Roanoke, said Tony Catalono, administrative vice president of Transkrit.
Robert Bondi, Putnam County executive, worried about the loss of the company. He told the Reporter Dispatch in White Plains, N.Y., that Transkrit "is such an important company . . . a major employer in the county and a very large corporate entity in terms of sales volume."
"We woke them up [and] they made a valiant attempt," Catalono said, but "this area [Brewster] is not as competitive as Roanoke in comparative cost structure."
Bondi has led the task force in planning how to retain other industries that may seek lower-cost homes in other states.
Doug Scolpino, Brewster member of the county Board of Supervisors, said the town of Southeast once was the fastest growing in the region but "taxes are killing us. . . . Everything here is expensive."
\ Jobs are elsewhere
Opinions about the high cost of living in Brewster are easy to find. A bartender at Kelties Tavern, across from Transkrit, said, "This is a hard-pressed area. Jobs are someplace else."
Transkrit, a custom maker of specialty mailers and tax forms, uses laser printing and focuses on creating innovative products, Resnick said. Much of its business is with Fortune 500 companies, through distributors like Dominion Graphics in Roanoke County.
The New York company serves as a warehouse for the distributor market, said Roger Jefferson, president of Dominion Graphics and a new member of Transkrit's customer council. Relocating to the Southeast region "will allow them to be more competitive . . . to cut delivery time" to regional customers, he said.
Transkrit is the largest manufacturer of mailer forms in the nation by far and it ranks sixth in sales among the companies selling through distributors, according to Business Forms, Labels and Systems magazine. Bill Drinnan of the magazine said its products are in a growth mode.
Peter Colaianni, executive vice president of National Business Forms Association, said Transkrit is "a very progressive company."
Resnick was pleased with the advance work of Bob Gibson of the state Economic Development Department and Beth Doughty, executive director of the Economic Development Partnership of Roanoke Valley, when the company was looking for a plant site. Both did exceptional jobs, he said.
Doughty's office gave "prompt attention" to requests for information and was honest. That's important, he said, "because they didn't want us to be surprised."
The company has plants in Fort Smith, Ark.; Sparks, Nev.; Lincolnwood, Ill., and Miami, in addition to Brewster. Label Art, a subsidiary, has plants in Wilton, N.H., and Fort Smith.
In the past year, Transkrit acquired a manufacturer of mailers on the West Coast and a mailer company in Ohio. Both were integrated into existing operations, Resnick said.
The company was founded in New York City in 1938 by Fred and Richard Neubauer. Frank Neubauer, the chairman. is Fred's son. Maclean Hunter, a Canadian company, owns 90 percent of Transkrit.
\ Sunday: In 1988, Economic developers in Winston-Salem, N.C., bought and prepared an industrial site even though they had no prospects. Their gamble paid off - and cost the New River Valley an industrial plum.
Keywords:
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by CNB