New in Town: `Eternal Interest’
Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the September 4, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Bovis Expands At 821 Alexander
In an effort to concentrate more strongly on its health
care business, Bovis Lend Lease is creating a permanent headquarters
for its two-year-old pharmaceutical division at 821 Alexander Road,
the building it constructed for the Advance Group. Charles A. Bacon
is CEO of global markets at this site, which has about 21,000 square
feet, and Robert W. Thomsen is the partner in charge of the Princeton
office. Of the 250 tri-state employees, 75 are working from this office
now, and Bacon says he expects to add at least 100 more.
Bovis’s global projects include the $1 billion Wyeth BioPharma Campus
at a castle near Dublin, the restoration of Ellis Island, Atlanta
Olympics facilities, EuroDisney Land, and the new Ritz Carlton hotel
in Lower Manhattan. Health care projects totaled $540 million last
year and included work for Wyeth, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Schering-Plough,
Merck, and Glaxo Smith Kline. Having a central office to focus on
health care could help to replace the business that Bovis has lost
from telecommunications companies that have been hurt by the recession.
A $5 billion engineering and construction company with offices in
40 countries, Bovis has had a presence in Princeton since 1986. In
1994 the construction division, then called Lehrer McGovern Bovis,
moved from 1,600 square feet at Nassau Park to 100 Village Boulevard
in Forrestal Village. In 1999 the company was purchased by an Australian
company, Lend Lease, and it moved to Alexander Road last year.
Bovis Lend Lease Inc., 821 Alexander Road, Princeton08540. Charles A. Bacon, CEO. Robert W. Thomsen, senior vice president.609-951-0500; fax, 609-951-0038. Home page: www.bovislendlease.comTop Of PageStart-UpsIf you installed a washing machine on your second floor,would you spend $129 to protect the first floor from overflow damagecaused by a malfunctioning machine or splitting hose? Robert Collette,50, has tapped the European market to find and sell a device thatoffers this protection.Take off the washing machine hose from the faucet, screw on Collette’sHydroStopper device, and put a sensor on the floor. If the hose breaksor the washing machine overflows for whatever reason, the sensor activatesthe HydroStopper and closes the supply of the water.”This concept has been around in Europe for 10 to 12 years,”says Collette, who is an American citizen but grew up in Haarlem,the Netherlands. “Four years ago, when I went back to Holland,I looked for something to protect the laundry upstairs. Last yearI found the HydroStopper, and now I am importing and selling it inthe United States and Canada, through distributors and manufacturingreps who visit the plumbing supply houses and apartment complexes.Florida, Western Canada, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia are good territoriesso far.”Colette went to the Maritime Academy in the Netherlands and had acareer as a maritime engineer, first sailing for Shell Oil all overthe world, and then for the Holland America line, as the Chief Engineeron such ships as the Rotterdam, Veendam, and Volendam. The job isjust work, he says, though it could be considered glamorous becauseit involved hosting formal dinners. In fact, that is how he met hisfuture wife, on a Holland America line ship. “We sailed six monthstogether, and then I quit that kind of life.” He and his wifehave lived in Princeton for 12 years, and she gives art classes tohome schooled children.Washing machine hoses sold in the United States last only two to fouryears, says Collette, and after that you are living on borrowed time.”We are running a survey on our web page, and we find that 75percent of Americans don’t close the valves after they use the washingmachine. Yet the water pressure is continuously on the hose.”Damage from a leaking hose would not be so bad if you do your washin the basement, but think of the ruin that would result from a bigleak on the second floor. “If something happens, the damage ismind boggling,” he says. “State Farm pays out $150 milliona year on washing machine damage.”— Barbara FoxFlowStop Inc., Box 651, Rocky Hill 08553. RobertCollette, president. 609-683-4077; fax, 609-683-1293. Www.flowstopinc.comTop Of PageExpansionsDesignWrite Inc., 189 Wall Street, Princeton 08540.Mitch Leon, president. 609-924-1116; fax, 609-924-6648.Founded in 1993, this medical communications company had 33 workersin 1997 and has tripled its size in five years. Currently 100 employeesoccupy 16,000 feet in two floors at Research Park, the first floorat 189 Wall Street, and the second floor at 152 Wall Street. It offerseditorial, design, and marketing services.Geneva Pharmaceuticals (ADR), 506 Carnegie Center,Princeton 08540. John Sedor, CEO. 609-627-8500; fax, 609-627-8682.Home page: www.genevarx.comThis generic pharmaceutical company made its move from Morgan Laneto the Carnegie Center and has a new phone and fax. It is part ofNovartis.Top Of PageName ChangesThe Segal Company (Sibson Consulting), 600 AlexanderPark, Suite 208, Princeton 08540. Donald Gallo, senior vice principal.609-520-2700; fax, 609-520-0369. Www.segalco.com/sibsonThis consulting company had had three owners in 10 years, and aftermoving from the Carnegie Center to Alexander Park, it was sold againthis year. Now known as the Segal Company with Sibson Consulting inparentheses, it has 15 people who offer help in organizational effectiveness,human resources, and compensation setting.In 1992 Sibson & Company did a management buyout from its parent company,Johnson & Higgins. In 1998 it was acquired by Boston-based Nextera,which had a total of 600 consultants at that time.In 2001 it moved from 19,000 square feet at 504 Carnegie Center to24,000 feet on two floors in the right half of the new Alexander Parkbuilding. It innovatively furnished the space to de-emphasize theactual offices (small, equally sized) and emphasize collaborativemeeting spaces. Of particular note was an internal staircase thatconnected floors two and three on the right half of the building.Six months later, in January 2002, Nextera decided to focus on focusedeconometrics and sold this division to the Segal Company. Just 15people remain in this office, and the third floor has been subletto Mathematica.Segal is a 60-year old human resources and employee benefits consultingfirm that works in the areas of pension actuarial, employee benefitsdesign, and employee communication. “It wanted to move into morecustomized consulting work, such as our human resource strategy consulting,”says Donald Gallo, senior vice principal, “and it had been buildingits own unit when it decided to move more aggressively.” Gallo’sdivision focuses on executive performance pay, sales effectiveness,and organization change.Fair Isaac & Company, 2540 Route 130, Suite 124,Cranbury 08512. David Pedersen, vice president operations. 609-409-0909;fax, 609-409-2946. Www.fairisaac.comA developer of software for wireless telecommunications carriers hasbeen sold, along with its parent company HNC, to Fair Isaac & Company.HNC was based in San Diego, and Fair Isaac has its headquarters inthe Twin Cities, Minnesota. The company was founded in 1986 as Systems/Link.The sale was announced in April and was made final in early August.The firm offers high end analytics and decision management softwarefor the telecom, financial, and insurance industries. Among its productsthat help wireless carriers track call detail records and deal withcellular fraud are Roamex, an international, real-time roamer dataexchange network; FraudTec, a real-time fraud profiling system witha graphical user interface; and SwitchLink, a real-time switch datacollector with a billing feed.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesAssociated University Presses, 2010 Eastpark Boulevard,Cranbury 08512. Julien Yoseloff, owner. 609-655-4770; fax, 609-655-8366.E-mail: aup440@aol.comWww.aupresses.comAssociated University Presses (AUP) moved from 440 Forsgate Driveto 3,000 square feet at Eastpark Boulevard to accommodate the landlord’sneed for expansion. Also known as Rosemont Publishing, it is the publishingcompany for small and university presses. Among them are presses forFairleigh Dickinson, Bucknell, Lehigh, and Susquehanna universities.The company was founded in the 1940s by the father of current ownerJulien Yoseloff. Thomas Yoseloff had been director of the Universityof Pennsylvania Press. Though he started out publishing trade books,the business migrated to academic publishing. Julien’s brother —who has a PhD in math from Princeton — is CEO of ShuffleMaster,a shuffling machine and game company in Las Vegas. His sister, TamarLindsay, lives in London where she works in the publishing businessand is a successful poet.Julien Yoseloff graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962,did graduate work at Rutgers, and has taken various printing courses.With a staff of eight, including three editors plus an army of freelancersfrom all over the country to do the line editing, Yoseloff publishes130 books a year. “Selections are made by editorial boards ateach of the universities,” he says, “and we do everythingelse.”AUP publishes some poetry but no fiction. Some of its reference books,such as Shakespeare studies and French bibliographies, are accessiblethrough such online databases as Ebsco and Proquest. To join the ranksof freelance editors, agrees Yoseloff, brush up on the proofreadingsymbols page from the Chicago Manual of Style and schedule an appointmentto take the copy editing test.Armkel Credit Department, 2 Research Way, Princeton08540-6628.The former Carter Wallace credit department has completed its moveto Church & Dwight headquarters on North Harrison Street.Aspen Technology Inc. (AZPN), 2000 Lenox Drive,Suite 201, Lawrenceville 08648. Peter Caro, sales director. 609-895-8501;fax, 609-895-8540. Home page: www.aspentech.comThe 25-person sales office of this software firm moved from CrossroadsCorporate Center and has a new phone and fax. Based in Cambridge,Massachusetts, it does optimization, modeling, and advanced controlsoftware for life sciences, specialty chemical, and air separationcompanies.Brogan Tennyson Group, 83 Stults Road, Dayton 08810.William T. Quinn, president. 609-409-1200; fax, 609-409-0922.The building that housed this advertising agency, at 2661 Route 130,had an electrical fire and burned to the ground in July. The agencyis now at 83 Stults Road, subleasing from the Herman warehouse.”We had offsite backup for most of our work,” says WilliamQuinn, founder of the 10-year-old firm, “but we lost a lot ofpaper files with samples of our old work.” The seven people inthe firm worked from their homes until the new quarters were found.Quinn graduated from Rutgers College in New Brunswick (Class of 1977)and spun this company off from another advertising firm, W.T. Quinn,in 1993. Brogan Tennyson’s clients include the Mall at Short Hills,the World Financial Center, North Park Center in Dallas, the TaubmanCompany. It has 2,000 square feet here plus an office in Atlanta.Business Management International Inc. (BMI), 2540Route 130 South, Suite 101, Cranbury 08512. Wendy Gold, vice president.609-655-3998; fax, 609-655-5882. Home page: www.bmiusa.comThe consulting firm moved from 101 Interchange Plaza to Route 130South. It is an E-commerce/business computer consultant and solutionprovider, integrating PC and UNIX-based accounting software, and ithas eight offices.The Gale Company, 2 Village Boulevard, Second Floor,Princeton 08540. Greg Lezynski, vice president, leasing. 609-419-1551;fax, 609-799-0245. Home page: www.thegalecompany.comWhen the name changed from Gale and Wentworth to the Gale Company,and owner Stan Gale made a decision go national, the resulting reorganizationsent about 10 people from offices at 4390 Route 1 to the corporateheadquarters in Florham Park.Five people went to a small office at 1 Independent Way, and six peoplein the real estate and investment office for the Princeton area movedto space that adjoins the property management group at 2 Village Boulevard.The company owns most of Princeton Forrestal Village.Top Of PageNew in Town: `Eternal Interest’Don’t just focus on rates of return on your investments,says Louis F. Rendemonti, who earlier this summer moved hisfinancial services firm from Osprey, Florida, to Alexander Road. Insteadlook at the internal, external, and eternal rates:Internal interest is what everyone thinks of, the rateof return on CDs, bank accounts, and mutual fund shares.External interest represents the hidden costs and feesor taxes that the investment may create, such as capital gains taxor even the brokers’ fees that the mutual funds pay.Eternal interest rates refer to what happens at death— inheritance or estate tax, on the downside, or death benefitson the plus side.Rendemonti belongs to a North Jersey economic college calledLeap Systems, which has trademarked financial engineering systemsand symposia (www.leapsystems.com). With 2,000 agents around the company,it is endorsed by the Wharton School.”Typical financial planning has made many 401ks into 201ks becauseof the decline in the market. People don’t have to take risk to getmarketable return,” he says. “We make a dollar work harder.”Rendemonti has returned his seven-year-old financial planning businessto where it started, in Princeton. He had moved it to Florida butfound his word-of-mouth clientele was growing more quickly up north.”I kept getting referral after referral and found myself commuting.Finally we decided `Why don’t we just move back.’” Now he subletsspace at 600 Alexander Road from the Guardian company.A native of Point Pleasant Beach, where his father owned AutoValetcarwash, he is a graduate of Villanova, Class of 1983, and has CLUand CHFC certificates from the American College in Bryn Mawr. He andhis wife, Darlene, have children ages 8, 11, and 15.”A lot of the insurance products we use are fixed-income orientedwhere the dividend is still eight percent. Most of our client moneyis in that,” says Rendemonti. “I was laughed at when the stockmarket was at 20 and 30 percent, but my clients did very well lastyear.”Rendemonti Financial Services, 600 Alexander Road,Third Floor, Princeton 08540. Louis F. Rendemonti. 609-720-5186; fax,609-452-0838. Home page: www.rendemonti.comTop Of PageDownsizingChildren’s Discovery Center, 4250 Route 1 North,Monmouth Junction 08852. Ava Silverman, center director. 732-329-6644;fax, 732-329-3515.This daycare center, formerly called Early Advantage, has closed.Happy World Day Care center, a sister company in East Windsor, isanswering this phone number.Top Of PageLeaving TownCP Packaging, 1075 Cranbury South River Road, Suite5, Jamesburg 08831. Rick O’Connell, vice president/general manager.609-655-4880; fax, 609-655-5718. Home page: www.cppackaging.comThis office of the 30-year-old firm closed, and the equipment hasbeen moved from 22,000 square feet at 1075 Cranbury South River Roadin Jamesburg to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Fifty people worked heredoing unit dose packaging for the pharmaceutical industry — tubes,contract packaging, and machinery.eComServer Inc. (SLT), 53 Knightsbridge Road, Piscataway08854. Lazbart Oseni, vice president. 732-584-5410; fax, 732-584-5500.Www.ecomserver.comThe three-year-old technology firm has moved from Princeton ExecutiveCenter at 4301 Route 1 South to Piscataway and has a new phone andfax. It was purchased by a publicly traded firm, Silverline Technologies,in February and is now working as a wholly-owned subsidiary from Silverline’sheadquarters in what used to be an enclave of IBM. About 40 peoplemade the move, and there is an offshore office in Hyderabad, India.The firm offers E-commerce solutions and consulting services, software,and system applications.Fuji Chemical, 7B Marlen Drive, Robbinsville 08691.Www.fujichemusa.comFuji Chemical Industries has moved out of its Robbinsville plant.The telephone and fax have been disconnected and calls are not beingforwarded. This company produced high performance ingredients usedin food, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and personal care. Productsincluded grape seed extracts, tocotrierols powders and oils, and astaxanthinextract.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
