WINNER
City of Westlake
PROJECT: Expansion of Hyland Software
A blessing and a curse.
Westlake had been home to fast-growing software darling Hyland Software since 1991, when it purchased 73,000 square feet of space on Clemens Road to house its operations.
But recently, the company’s ballooning revenue and, therefore, its expanding staff caused it to consider moving out of the city to expand.
Hyland, which makes OnBase, a proprietary electronic document management system, realized a serious need to expand in 2008 and didn’t have the space to do it around its headquarters on Clemens.
“We had to go somewhere for sure — expand where we were, or move,” says Rick Kirk, director of operations at Hyland, which has annual revenue near $150 million. “We were out of space.”
Hyland considered other regional locations, but it wanted to stay in Westlake, Kirk says.
Westlake considered ways to satisfy Hyland’s space needs in the area around the office park, including the idea of providing land owned by the city, says Chris Bauer, economic development manager for the city of Westlake.
“There isn’t a lot of land over there,” Bauer says. “We were faced with the possibility that if the company could not find land, they could have left. And we were very nervous about that.”
With assistance from Westlake, Hyland struck a deal with Nordson Corp., a manufacturer of high-tech tools that apply industrial coatings and adhesives, which has its world headquarters down the road from Hyland in the same office park.
Hyland purchased Nordson’s headquarters campus along with 17 acres for about $7.5 million at the end of 2008. Nordson retained about 5 acres.
The city of Westlake made concessions to make sure the deal went smoothly, including providing Hyland with a job-creation grant for companies that create 50 new jobs or $2 million in payroll. The money was used for the cost of expansion. Additionally, the city was actively involved in negotiations and parcel splitting.
As soon as the deal between Hyland and Nordson was struck, the city of Westlake went to work to retain Nordson in the area.
The city granted Nordson a 15-year, 50 percent tax abatement to build its new
$5 million, 28,000-square-foot office building next to its former location.
Clearly, this is a town in which both companies feel at home. This is Hyland’s second large expansion. In 2006, a 60,000-square-foot building was completed, but company executives never stopped scouting possibilities for further expansion, Kirk says.
Hyland and Nordson kept in close contact because of their proximity in the office park. “If we do work [on our property], we have to alert our neighbors about work we do,” Kirk says. At some point, Hyland initiated conversation about buying Nordson’s property. The discussions got serious in 2008 shortly before the purchase, Kirk says.
Hyland renovated the first floor of its new building and, in November 2009, moved about 120 employees into the space. Nordson remains on the second floor of the building, leasing space from Hyland while it constructs a new location of its own.
The new Nordson headquarters will retain about 50 jobs in the city.
Once Nordson completely moves into its new headquarters in 2011, the former Nordson building will house about 370 Hyland employees, Kirk says.
FINALIST
City of Orrville
PROJECT: Retention and expansion of Orrvillon
Orrville had a problem: American Weather Seal built a 192,000-square-foot facility right before the bottom of the housing market fell through and the company went bankrupt. Now it was empty. But it was also an opportunity.
When New Jersey-based Holtec, an aluminum manufacturer and fabricator, wanted to consolidate its Ohio offices in Mount Eaton and Campbell, an employee at the Mount Eaton campus said there was a location available in Orrville. The company investigated and, after eight months of discussions with the city, ended up in the American Weatherseal building.
Holtec, now called Orrvillon in its Ohio operations, was attracted by the relatively new space. The city is giving Orrvillon the remaining original tax abatement on the building — another 13 years, as well as a 15-year tax abatement on another 80,000-square-foot building the company is building nearby.
FINALIST
City of Medina
PROJECT: Expansion of Sandridge Food Corporation
Planned over four years as part of strategy to focus on high-end food manufacturing and distribution instead of commodities, Sandridge Foods built a 26,500-square-foot, $7 million finished goods warehouse in 2008. So far the facility has created between 20 and 35 people. The city of Medina gave the company 15-year tax abatement for the construction.
Sandridge Foods recently opened the doors to its second expansion, a food-processing facility that houses a high-pressure processing machine that pressurizes foods, especially chicken, pasta and tuna salads, to destroy bacteria and reduce the preservatives necessary for food packaging.
The facility already has resulted in 25 new jobs, pushing the company over 400 total employees. “These changes have been substantial for us,” says Sandridge, whose father founded the company in 1965.