Transit Advertising: At Age 57, a Start-Up
Name Change: Veritas to Vectramed
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the December 6,
2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Faithful & Gould — Chartered Surveyors
Land developers and owners often have good reason to
fret about costs and schedules: Can a hotel be built at a particular
spot within the nine-month deadline? Is the contractor working as
cost effectively as possible, they ask. In Great Britain, when
developers
question these aspects of construction, they call in a Chartered
Surveyor
with a “CS” degree.
If that term seems unusual, that’s because most Chartered Surveyors
are trained in Britain. Chartered Surveyors — who know
construction
technology, law, economics, construction management — have been
working in England for 500 years. Only just recently have they been
imported to work in North America.
One British company, Faithful & Gould, has set up a regional
headquarters
at 100 Canal Pointe. Founded in 1947, the firm has 120 workers in
North America and 1,600 worldwide. To lease its 4,000 square foot
space, it was represented by Warren Searles of Colliers Houston. Ten
people work here now but more are being added.
“We provide a service that embraces several different
functions,”
says Chris J. Taylor, the senior operations director. “We have
individuals knowledgeable across the broad sphere of commercial
management.
We promote ourselves on the basis that the cost savings will more
than likely pay for our services due to reduced construction costs,
adherence to schedule improvement, and improved efficiency.”
“We are attorneys with accounting and contractual knowledge who
can go in and shake the tree on the owners’ behalf,” says Jeff
Gendler, business development manager. “For real estate assets,
we are cost consultants, program consultants, and contract
consultants.
As the middleman between the owner and the contractor, we sit in the
construction company’s trailer.”
Taylor denies that his firm has any direct competition. His actual
competition might come from the construction division of a Big Five
accounting firm such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the construction
management
division of an architectural firm such as Hillier, or a similar
division
at an engineering firm, such as URS O’Brien Kreitzberg on Scotch Road.
“There is a propensity in the market at the moment to go down
the route of One Stop Shop,” says Taylor. “Our message rather
is that what we do is all we do. We stay true to our mission about
high quality service. In the current market where there is a shortage
of adequately skilled people we can prosper.”
A native of northeast England, where his father was a freelance
graphic
designer and his mother a civil servant and store owner, he took
business
training at the University of North Umbria, has a diploma in quantity
surveying from Reading University, and attended law school at the
University of Teeside. At 40, he is married and has four children,
one in college.
He came to Minneapolis in 1993 to help Faithful & Gould fulfill a
contract for Pillsbury, then a British company. The company’s second
American opportunity came in 1996 when it began working with the oil
industry in Houston. Merck joined Faithful & Gould’s client list
because
its UK-division was using similar services. “Our first real
contact
with them,” says Taylor, “was on a project where we provided
support in three locations — New Jersey, UK, and Singapore, and
we springboarded off that project to provide additional service.”
Active on the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, he and another
director have opened an American branch and intend to approach a
number
of colleges to encourage them to add this specialty to the curriculum.
“It is a broad brush profession that allows you do a number of
things and travel a lot.”
One difference between the UK and America, he says, is that most
Americans
in the construction business are positioned to be highly specialized.
“We come in if there is a high level concern about a possibly
unrealistic schedule — or as an independent auditor.”
Taylor tries to explain why the profession of Chartered Surveyor had
a late start in America. After all, even as far back as the Great
Fire of London in the late 1600s, when Londoners were making a big
push to rebuild their churches, Chartered Surveyors were brought in
to keep the jobs within budget.
“In my experience the UK and other places have always been more
cost conscious than in America because of the shortage of money. More
clients in America now want greater value for their capital
expenditures,”
says Taylor. “Previously businesses haven’t been benchmarked on
competition in country competition and overseas competition. As global
economy spreads, more comparisons are being made between operations
in various parts of the world. That makes everyone more conscious
of what things cost.”
— Barbara Fox
Faithful & Gould Inc., 100 Canal Pointe Boulevard,Suite 212, Princeton 08540. Chris J. Taylor, senior operationsdirector.609-514-0900; fax, 609-514-9888. Home page: www.fgould.com.Top Of PageTransit Advertising: At Age 57, a Start-UpStephen E. Loewenthal has opened his own transitadvertisingcompany at Research Park, a David versus Goliath operation, withLoewenthalplaying David. Transit advertising includes advertisements in buses,on the sides of buses, in bus shelters, on the walls of trainstations,and on kiosks.”Our main business is outside the state of New Jersey. We go afterthe smaller transit advertising authorities,” says Loewenthal.His current “David-sized” clients include the transit systemsfor Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan; Attleboro, Massachusetts;Margate, Florida; Wilmington, North Carolina; Florence, SouthCarolina,and TriRail, in Miami Beach.He started the company two years ago in a home office, after beingvice president and general manager of a Pennsylvania-based outdoorand transit advertising agency company, T&C Media. He has threerepresentativeswho are on salary plus commission, and he brokers the production ofthe advertisements. “I found it to be a big profit center,”he says. “We work with graphic artists and quote printing prices.We find big printers out of state for less than the local merchants.And we don’t need huge volume for a buy of from 3 to 20 buses.”One of his specialties is “wrapping,” covering an entire buswith see-through material for about $2,000 per month plus $8,000 toproduce the wrap that lasts up to two years. Two of the biggestcategoriesfor “wraps” are automobile dealers and local dotcoms, suchas search engines. Compared to a single ad for $200, “it’s a realstandout,” says Loewenthal. “The truth is, it’s difficultto sell the inside of the bus. Except for employment agencies,there aren’t a lot of advertisers who target the bus rider.”Loewenthal went to evening school at Brooklyn College and iscelebratinghis 36th wedding anniversary this month; his wife, Rona, works atPrinceton Orthopedic Associates, and they have two children.”I have recreated myself a number of times,” says the57-year-oldentrepreneur. “I was in the apparel business in operations formany many years, but it was such a tough business, I realizedthat I wasn’t having fun any more. I quit and went into real estateto get selling experience, and I was very successful very quickly.People had been telling me I should get into sales my whole life.That success really launched me.”When he answered an ad in the New York Times for T&C Media, he wasoffered the vice president’s position. “All my life experiencecame together at one position. For the owner, I doubled the size ofthe company. Then I thought, if I could do it for him, why not doit for myself?”Princeton Media Inc. (PMI), 258 Wall Street,Princeton08540. Stephen E. Loewenthal, president and CEO. 609-683-8300; fax,609-683-9669. Home page: www.princetonmedia.com.Top Of PageName Change: Veritas to VectramedVectramed Inc., 100 Village Boulevard, Princeton08540. James Pachence, president. 609-466-8712; fax, 609-720-0703.Home page: www.vectramed.com.James Pachence moved his biotech R&D company from shared office spaceat HQ to another address within Forrestal Village. He changed thename of the company from Veritas Medical Technologies to VectramedInc. and also set up a website, www.vectramed.com. He is sharing withRick Maloy’s company, InsureHiTech, until he can get his own space.The other five employees of Vectramed are working in labs at theUniversityof Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.”Vectra” means directional, and the name change to”Vectramed”reflects a new focus for the company, Pachence says. “Thetechnologywe have been developing is site directed drug delivery as opposedto oral delivery or sustained drug release. It is directed to thesite of the disease itself.”Some of Pachence’s previous work had been in the sustained drugreleasefield (U.S. 1, January 14, 1998). He grew up in coal mining countryin Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where his father and his brothers “hada number of different companies. He has an undergraduate degree (Classof 1974) and a PhD in biophysics, both from Penn. After a stint asassociate professor at Columbia Presbyterian, Pachence worked witha small company, Helitrex, in Princeton, which later became AmericanBiomaterials. Then he helped put together Medi-Matrix, which thenbecame Integra Life Sciences. He left that firm in 1994.Top Of PageStock NewsDataram Corp. (DTM), 186 Princeton-Hightstown Road,Windsor Business Park, Box 7528, Princeton 08543-7528. Robert V.Tarantino,president and CEO. 609-799-0071; fax, 609-936-1369.Dataram is shipping a product that doubles memory bandwidth over thecurrent product while reducing power consumption. The new Double DataRate (DDR) chip architecture manages to use both edges of the memoryclock for sending and receiving data. The products are DDR SDRAM DIMMmodules with capacities of 128MB and 256 MB.Medarex (MEDX), 707 State Road, Princeton Gateway,Suite 206, Princeton 08540. Donald L. Drakeman, president.609-430-2880;fax, 609-430-2850. Home page: www.medarex.com.Data on a new Phase II clinical trial seems to indicate that a newtherapy can treat a common autoimmune disease, IdiopathicThrombocytopeniaPurpura. This therapy, a humanized monoclonal antibody, results froman alliance between Medarex and Aventis Behring. About 100,000 peoplein the U.S. suffer from ITP, a condition where white blood cellsdestroyplatelets. Up to one-third of these patients may not react to currenttreatments, but if the platelet deficiency leads to bleeding orhemorrhage,ITP can be life threatening.Top Of PageManagement MovesPrinceton Family Y.M.C.A., Paul Robeson Place,Princeton 08540. Richard F. Smith, CEO. 609-497-9622; fax,609-497-9031.Richard F. Smith, the new CEO of the Princeton YMCA, was most recentlythe head of the Northeast Family YMCA in Pennsylvania, where hefinisheda $590,000 capital campaign and built a $1.4 million pool complex.He also worked for YMCAs in Connecticut and Oregon. He has a degreein commercial recreation from the University of Utah and lives inMorrisville, Pennsylvania, with his wife; they have three children.Smith succeeds Cecilia York, who will remain as chief financialofficer.John Jorgensen, the previous CEO, retired in September.Residence at Forsgate, 319 Forsgate Drive,Jamesburg08831. Nancy Renehan, administrator. 732-656-1000; fax, 732-656-0081.Nancy Renehan is the new director of the Residence at Forsgate, anassisted living facility with 125 apartments. Formerly known as KapsonSenior Quarters, this three-story 70,000-foot facility is managedby Hal and Bud Peskin, developers of Monroe Village, and is adjacentto Forsgate Country Club. Renehan has been administrator of the Arborsin Spring Lake Heights and director of human resources at a hospicein Linden.Top Of PageLeaving TownAlpha Microsystems/Support Works, 2525 Route 130,Cranbury Plaza, Building C, Cranbury 08512. Thomas Palmisano,647-9755.714-957-8500. Www.alphamicro.com.This hardware and software support center has closed and calls arebeing taken from the California office. It offered telephone supportfor diagnosis of unbranded products for hardware and softwareproblems.Kelly Temporary Services, 1 Oxford Valley, Suite512, Langhorne 19047. 215-702-9101; fax, 215-702-9110.The national temporary agency closed an office at 600 Alexander Roadand calls are being taken from Langhorne.Top Of PageDeathsDaniel S. Ninatoski, 62, on November 18. He was a salesmanwith Morris Maple & Son Co. on Nassau Street.William J. Garry, 88, on November 30. He was the boatingcolumnist for the Times of Trenton.Kathleen Gail Miller, 58, on December 4. She was seniorassessing clerk for Lawrence Township.J. Kenneth Dorey, 79, on December 4. He had been abusinessanalyst and auditor with Western Electric and AT&T.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
