Year brought changes in area’s economic climate
By MICHAEL ANICH/The Leader-HeraldEditor's note: Today, The Leader-Herald begins a series of stories looking back at the major local news developments of 2008. Today's topic: the local economy.
With several businesses closing or cutting back operations in 2008, it mostly was a grim economic year for the area, although notable exceptions were the start up of the Fage USA yogurt facility in Johnstown and the opening of the new Target store in Amsterdam.
Major business and economic-development news this year included the following:
The Fulton County Economic Development Corp. announced May 29 that the Callaway Golf Co. manufacturing plant at the Crossroads Industrial Park on Route 29 in Gloversville was closing. The golf-ball manufacturing plant shut down a few weeks later, and the company planned to move the operation to China.
Shortly after that announcement, the state Department of Labor announced it would assist the 118 Callaway employees who lost their jobs. The state said it would provide them with assistance in a number of areas, including skills training, career counseling, filing for unemployment benefits and finding employees work that matches the skills they have.
As of late November, 50 of the 118 ex-Callaway workers had found new jobs through the local Workforce Solutions office.
Refrigerator parts manufacturer Hussmann Corp., which employed about 90 full-time workers at its plant outside Gloversville, announced Dec. 4 it will close by June and transfer production to Mexico. The facility, located off Route 30A near the FJ&G Rail Trail in the town of Johnstown, has been producing refrigerator parts for more than 50 years. About 75 of the plant's full-time employees are hourly employees.
The Missouri-based Hussmann Corp. is owned by international conglomerate Ingersoll Rand.
Three Fulton County drugstores closed their doors in 2008.
In mid-January, the CVS/pharmacy store at 40 W. Main St. in Johnstown closed. All its prescriptions were transferred to the CVS/pharmacy store on Route 30A in Gloversville.
Also in January, the Rite Aid store at the Johnstown Mall closed. Store officials told people to fill their prescriptions at the nearby Rite Aid at 147 N. Comrie Ave.
Gloversville lost its last independent drugstore in July, when Del Negro Pharmacy owner and pharmacist Tom Wojciechowski sold the business to Rite Aid.
"It's the end of an era," said Wojciechowski, who had worked at the 47 S. Main St. drugstore for 36 years and owned it for 20.
Ponderosa Restaurant, a popular buffet-style eatery on Route 30A in Johnstown for at least three-decades, closed its doors Nov. 23.
Gary Scazone, manager of the Amsterdam Ponderosa, said the decision to close the Johnstown Ponderosa was made on the corporate level at Ponderosa Steakhouse headquarters in Plano, Tex. He said the Johnstown Ponderosa was not doing as well saleswise compared to other Ponderosas and the corporation decided to regroup around its franchisees. Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Steakhouse are a chain of buffet/steakhouse restaurants. They are two of the most franchised subsidiaries of Metromedia Restaurant Group.
Fulton Computer Co. and Fulton Book Co. owner Dave Gibson closed the shops on North Main Street in Gloversville May 2. The computer store had been a downtown fixture for 11 years. Gibson told the media that "basically, our expenses exceeded our revenues."
He said the companies had a bad Christmas 2007 season. He said his problems actually could be traced back nearly eight years when several employees stole inventory and his business suffered a $45,000 loss.
The new Hero/Beech-Nut manufacturing plant and headquarters - located at the Florida Business Park in Montgomery County - broke ground May 21. Construction started on the 550,000-square-foot, $124 million baby-food factory off Route 5S. The company announced at the groundbreaking that it planned to retain more than 350 jobs from Canajoharie and 15 from the Fort Plain facility and move them to the new plant, which also planned to create 135 new jobs.
By fall, Hero/Beech-Nut President and CEO Christoph Rudolf said the company planned to open the facility in October 2009.
The village of Canajoharie said in July it planned to take legal action against the Montgomery County Industrial Development Agency over the Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp.'s plan to consolidate its operations in the town of Florida. The village decided to hire an attorney, Lewis B. Oliver of Albany, to conduct an Article 78 action against the IDA. But in the fall, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Felix Catena dismissed the case, feeling the Article 78 was filed too late and Canajoharie was not an affected jurisdiction by the move to Florida.
In April, the new $80 million Fage USA yogurt plant at the Johnstown Industrial Park started up. The 110,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at the industrial park off Route 30A had broken ground in September 2006 after almost two years of planning by the EDC. The company initially said it planned to hire 80 to 100 employees, but EDC Executive Vice President Jeff Bray said in May that employment at Fage was expected to double by that time in 2009.
Fage USA - a subsidiary of the largest dairy producer in Greece - makes Total brand yogurt.
The new Target store on Route 30 in Amsterdam opened Oct. 7 to much fanfare. Located across from the Sanford Farm Shopping Center, the new store offers a broad range of goods, including clothing, housewares, electronics, gardening supplies, pet accessories and groceries. The store has an on-site pharmacy and photo processing area, an inhouse Food Avenue eatery, a Pizza Hut Express and a Starbucks Coffee Shop.
Pearl Leather Finishers at the Glove Cities Industrial Park announced April 1 it wanted to build a 15,000-square-foot addition and hire 40 more people for its growing auto seat cover business. The company confirmed by the end of the year the project was done, and Pearl was doing good business with solvent Ford Motor Co.
Richardson Brands in Canajoharie announced Aug. 7 it planned to expand and triple the size of its workforce. The firm said it was acquiring other candy and condiment makers and bring about 250 more workers to the village.
Arrow Leather Finishing - one of the businesses destroyed in the massive April 24 fire that destroyed a block on West State Street in Johnstown - said in April it planned to rebuild. The majority of the jobs were due to be shifted to the Carville-National Leather Corp. in Johnstown.
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ConcernedCitizenNy
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12-30-08 12:12 PM
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Concerning Callaway... Some of the previous workers are choosing to further their education, some are just plain choosing to not work (know from talking to them) and other are having a hard time getting someone to hire them who can meet their salary requirements. My husband got a new job (no thanks to the workforce solutions needed because they did not help)... I hope the rest of the former Callaway have better luck with WFS then my husband did.
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Discobulous
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12-26-08 8:07 PM
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What! End nepotism? Fire my Uncle Moe? Furlough my cousin Algernon? Radical thinking!!
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Patriot1
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12-26-08 1:39 PM
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The EDC will continue to be non-productive unless two actions are taken: 1. Remove the fat, patronage and nepotism from local governments 2. Convince Albany that unfunded mandates have already partially destroyed the economies of many of the upstate counties.
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TheArchitect
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12-26-08 11:12 AM
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These highlights of the economic viability of Fulton County should trigger either the firing of the members of the Fulton County EDC and/or the end to the EDC completely. If grades were being kept, an "F" would be too high of a grade to measure EDC's accomplishments. If there are no jobs, and the jobs that are here are leaving, then the future for Fulton County is very poor. Remember, the EDC is the entity that is supposed to be working on economic development. They have and continue to fail miserably.
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