CASE STUDIES OF LOCAL COMPANIES TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EXISTING MANUFACTURING SPACES:
Linuo also chose to take advantage of an attractive but empty location. Earlier this year, they bought the former IBM site in East Fishkill, NY. They plan to invest $100M in the 900,000 sqft site to redevelop it in a multiphase project. The site was attractive because they were a foreign company looking for a “campus-like setting which would also be their US Headquarters”[iii] according to Vincent Cozzolino, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Consortium, who helped convince Linuo choose the IBM location.
Perhaps the best example is Edac Technologies, who originally planned to relocate to an old GE Industrial Solutions facility where they would have to invest $3.8M above the purchase price. Instead, Edac seized an opportunity to moveinto an existing state-of-the-art location, Pratt & Whitney’s manufacturing facility in Cheshire. Although they had already purchased the first facility, Edac could not ignore the benefits of the P&W facility and decided to change course.Edac’s president and CEO, Dominick A. Pagano summarized the benefits of the new facility. “Sited on 50-acre campus, the significantly larger Cheshire facility is already equipped with the advanced manufacturing infrastructure to support our type of operations and projected future growth. As a result, the total cost of the Cheshire facility will be well below the combined purchase price and capital improvement/expansion budget for Plainville.”[iv]Their decision to move into a different, new facility, while initially more expensive, will actually save Edac money thanks to the existing infrastructure and equipment in the Cheshire facility.
To fully calculate the potential costs of relocating to a new facility or purchasing an existing facility, it is important to work with an engineering firm. An experience engineer can help the client understand how factors like existing utility infrastructure and equipment can greatly impact the bottom.