Forrestal Incubees — Two Years Later
Corrections or additions?
These articles edited by Barbara Fox were prepared for the October
8, 2003 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Factories Closing
Two of Central Jersey’s oldest manufacturing facilities
— Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Products facility on Route 1 in
North Brunswick and Coca Cola’s Minute Maid bottling plant in
Hightstown
— may shut down. At risk are more than 750 jobs, adding to the
more than 67,000 manufacturing jobs that have left the state in the
last three years.
The most recent announcement came Friday, October 3, when Coca Cola
announced that after more than 37 years a juice packaging plant on
Mercer Street will close, eliminating about 275 jobs. The production
line will shut down in mid-November, but the product distribution
center will stay open for a few months. Coca Cola is offering
severance.
The first warning came in January, when Coca Cola said it would
integrate
the Minute Maid and the food service and hospitality division into
Coca Cola North America. In March 1,000 people were laid off and the
integration began. So far, only the Hightstown plant has been labeled
redundant. Production will be handled by other facilities in North
America, says Ray Crockett, a spokesperson.
Politicians are rallying to persuade Coca Cola to change its mind,
but meanwhile the state labor department has promised to deploy its
rapid-response team to help displaced workers apply for unemployment
compensation, find new jobs, and learn about retraining programs.
"We will try to contact other employers to help them look for
other opportunities," says Crockett. "We know this is a
difficult
period for both the employees and the community."
Johnson & Johnson’s news is not yet so dire, because the reduction
is not definite. J&J is saying only that it might close the
consumer products production lines at Route 1 and Aaron Road in North
Brunswick. In jeopardy are the jobs of 490 union employees who make
Band-Aid brand bandages and J&J baby products, including shampoos
and lotion. Approximately 600 other workers at that site would not
be affected, says Mark Monsour, J&J spokesperson.
"J&J Consumer Products Company is seriously considering ceasing
manufacturing at that facility," says Monsour, "but a final
decision will not be made until after a thorough review. A decision
will be made in mid November." "If the decision is to cease
manufacturing, the plant would be closed by the end of 2004."
The company notified the employees as required by a labor contract
with the union. Monsour says it is premature to speculate where the
jobs would go. J&J could move the work to other company-owned
manufacturing
sites around the world or outsource the production.
Known as the eastern surgical dressing plant, the facility opened
in 1957 and was expanded in 1965 and 1974. The 600 unaffected
employees
work for J&J’s implantable device firm, DePuy; the J&J sales and
logistics
company, which provides a single point of contact for all the
products,
and E-J&J, a business development firm that focuses on new web-enabled
healthcare business models. J&J could be expected to try to lease
the empty space, since it already has two outside tenants at the site
— American Express and GAF, a roofing company.
Headquartered in New Brunswick, J&J has more than 200 different
companies
and employs about 3,800 people in Central New Jersey. The Grandview
Road offices of J&J Consumer Products would not be affected.
1 and Aaron Road, North Brunswick 08902-9498. 732-422-5000; fax,
732-422-5514.
351, Hightstown 08520. Alan Vanderneut, plant manager. 609-448-5100;
fax, 609-448-0377. Home page: www.minutemaid.com
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Corigin Middleware
Eladio Alvarez says his company, Corigin Inc., has a
faster, cheaper way for programmers to extract data from mainframes
and export it to PCs or open system computers. "Today 70 percent
of the world’s data sits on mainframes," he says. "It is very
hard and expensive to get access to that data. It used to take 10
hours to get data from a mainframe to a PC, now we take two hours.
People can save millions of dollars."
Alvarez has moved the U.S. headquarters of the Israel-based company
from Saddle Brook to 100 Overlook. The firm is a one-year-old wholly
owned subsidiary of Corigin Ltd. Offering a way to extend the life
of legacy databases, its middleware technology delivers secure,
high-speed
data, while reducing data center operational costs. This mainframe
data acceleration software is particularly appropriate for financial
service, utility, and data communications companies.
A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Alvarez graduated from Simon Bolivar
in 1977 and also has a master’s degree from that university. He has
worked for Oracle, Sterling Software, IBM, and Ask Jeeves, and he
has built software divisions with revenues from $20 to $180 million.
He has lived in the Princeton area for 21 years and has the title
of president of Corigin’s North American operations.
Alvarez turned to his office manager at Corigin, Margaret Sproehnle,
for help in finding space for Corigin. Sproehnle was his executive
assistant 20 years ago, when he came to the United States in 1982
to work at Applied Data Research. She enlisted Jon Brush of Hilton
Realty to locate Corigin at Regus, a shared office company at 100
Overlook, and negotiate for the firm’s next location.
Main frame computers carry 70 percent of the world’s data, says
Alvarez.
Every Fortune 3000 company in the world has a main frame, and there
are more than 15,000 in the United States. "One reason why main
frames are so prevalent is that these companies have been in business
for a long long time," he says.
Alvarez notes that because running a main frame is much more expensive
than working on open systems, most IT departments favor doing
programming
on PCs, Unix, or Linux. But how to get access to the data? The largest
players in the software industry (IBM, EMC, and Hitachi) and such
smaller middleware providers as Boston-based Informatica use the
method
of extracting the data from the mainframe itself.
Alone among its competitors, Corigin retrieves data from the data
storage controller, the box outside the mainframe that corresponds
to the hard drive of the PC.
Corigin has an exclusive worldwide patent on this method, developed
by Michael Rothschild, and its business plan calls for it to market
its own products and also form partnerships. Current partners are
Hitachi Data Systems and Information Builders. Corigin also supports
all mainframe architectures.
"Our software provides access to the data on the mainframe. Any
programmer can get access to that data. They don’t need to know
anything
about the main frame," says Alvarez. Using system architecture,
the software can be used in Intel-based, Unix-based, or Linux-based
systems. "All new development can happen on the open side of the
house."
Corigin is a private company with stock held by the employees two
venture capital firms — Vertex Venture Capital, an Israel-based
fund, and Genesis Partners. It was founded under the name NewFrame
by Tsvi Misinai, who had previously founded Sapiens (Nasdaq: SPNS).
Officially launched in 2002 as an independent software vendor, Corigin
Inc. has a very aggressive growth plan. Alvarez, the first employee,
arrived in June. With six employees now, 10 or 12 employees by spring,
he expects to quadruple his business in 2004 and again in 2005.
— Barbara Fox
Princeton 08540. Eladio Alvarez, president of North American
operations.
609-375-2440; fax, 609-375-2740. Www.corigin.com
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Elder Guardianship & the Law
After working for the Office of the Public Guardian
for Elderly Adults of New Jersey, Nina Weiss and Anthony Serra
established
a private practice specializing in guardianship issues.
The state office, Weiss explains, is "the guardian of last resort
for people who have no family or friends." Referred to the office
by the courts, these individuals are often suffering from dementia,
and are often deemed no longer capable of handling their finances
or of making sound healthcare decisions.
Sharing a similar philosophy, Weiss and Serra decided to set up a
practice around these issues. "We worked well together. We’re
both very rights oriented," says Weiss. "We try to preserve
the autonomy of the individual."
The cases in which Weiss and her partner are involved most often
involve
a hand off of the rights most people take for granted. The right to
withdraw money from a bank account, for example, or to choose where
to live. When there is a question of whether a person is able to make
competent decisions on these and other issues, courts can be called
on to rule on competency. In those cases, a guardian is appointed
to protect the rights of the person whose competency is in question.
While much of their work revolves around the competency of seniors,
Weiss and Serra also get involved in guardianship issues involving
children, or with young people who are not able to function well in
every adult task. Parents of an individual with a disability, for
example, are no longer automatically considered by the courts to be
their child’s guardian.
Weiss, who earned her J.D. from Fordham in 1995, and Serra, who earned
his J.D. from Seton Hall in 1988, represent both individuals and
families
caught up in what are nearly always wrenching decisions.
"There is a push in New Jersey for limited guardianship,"
says Weiss. This trend goes along with her own views on how elderly
people should be able to live their lives. "Guardianship should
be crafted around the needs of the person," she says. Maybe, she
gives as an example, an elderly person needs help with his checkbook,
but is making his own decision on whether or not to enter a nursing
home. All rights should not be taken away if it is not necessary.
In old age, the tables turn, and children often think they know what
is best for their parents. But the parents don’t always agree. When
that is the case, the family can end up in court, or perhaps in
mediation,
which sees as a growing trend.
— Kathleen McGinn Spring
Montgomery
Knoll, Box 8017, Princeton 08543-8017. 609-924-4818; fax,
609-924-4480.
E-mail: serraweiss@worldnet.att.net.
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Barrier Expands
Barrier Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that
has doubled in size in six months, moved from shared office space
at Regus in 100 Overlook to 600 College Road. It has 29 people at
this 11,000-square foot office (part of Cytogen’s former space) and
the phone and fax are new. Except for the chief scientific officer,
the medical director, and the general manager, who are working in
Geel, Belgium, the rest of the management team is in Princeton.
Sab Russo of CB Richard Ellis represented the pharmaceutical firm
and James Kinzig of Aegis Property Group represented the Peregrine
Investment Partners, the owner of the building.
The privately-held company works with dermatological drugs licensed
from affiliates of Johnson & Johnson. "Our philosophy is to focus
on dermatological prescription drugs that have a distinct advantage
to what is on the market," says CEO Geert Cauwenburgh (U.S. 1,
February 19, 2003).
"We hope to have another investor who will contribute to a second
round of investment by the end of this month," says Cauwenburgh.
Last year the firm raised $46 million in venture financing, led by
TL Ventures and JP Morgan, who are represented on the board of
directors
by Marc Ostro and Srinivas Akkaraju, respectively. Also on the board
is Drew Schiff of Perseus/Soros BioPharmaceutical.
Cauwenburgh, 49, was most recently vice president of technology
transfer
and external developments for J&J Consumer and Personal Care Products.
Anne M. VanLent, Barrier’s executive vice president and chief
financial
officer, has been executive vice president in charge of portfolio
management at Sarnoff and CFO for Liposome. Marcel Borgers, the chief
scientific officer, is former vice president of life sciences for
the Janssen Research Foundation. Chuck Nomides, chief operating
officer,
was R&D director of Ortho Neutrogena prescription drug development,
part of J&J.
Barrier’s clinical pipeline includes four products in or entering
Phase III trials to treat fungal infections, diaper dermatitis, and
seborrheic dermatitis. In June the company received orphan drug
designation
in Europe for liarozole, which can treat ichthyosis, a genetic
disorder
involving skin that looks like fish scales. Six earlier-stage clinical
products are in the areas of psoriasis, acne, skin inflammation,
fungal
infections, allergies, and wound healing.
Most recently it licensed a new Vitamin D3 derivative, Ecalcidene,
from the Research Institute for Medicine and Chemistry in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Ecalcidene has a potential for treating psoriasis and
acne.
Princeton 08540. Geert Cauwenbergh, CEO. 609-945-1200; fax,
609-945-1212.
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Expansions
Southfield
Shopping Center, West Windsor 08550. Evan Rector, manager.
609-799-8525;
fax, 609-799-8523. Www.abandccomputers.com
ABC Computers flourished in relative obscurity in
Hightstown
for 11 years and then followed the "Go west, young man" advice
to open a storefront at the Southfield Shopping Center. The company
expanded from 1,200 square feet to 2,200 feet. Evan Rector, and his
wife Lori Daume’ (dowMAY) run the business along with some consultants
and investors. They sell custom-built computers and services all makes
and models, including Macintosh.
Rector notes that in the 11 years his company has been in business,
most of his competitors have gone out of business. "Just look
at the pages of your newspaper," says Rector. "Every page
had a computer store advertisements, and where are they now? Gone.
Because they weren’t servicing their customers." When his
attention
is called to some computer companies that are, indeed flourishing,
he points out that his is the only one now located in a retail
shopping
center.
Another differentiating factor: the store has a mascot, Harry the
brindle terrier, whose friendly wag to reduce the anxiety that comes
with a frozen hard drive. "We get people walking in crying because
they never backed up," says Rector. "Almost half our business
is service and upgrades — reconfiguring the computer systems."
What makes his business different, he says, is that he sells only
hardware — no software, and no training — and that he has
the equivalent of an "open kitchen." Like restaurants who
let diners see into the kitchen, his employees do their work in front
of the customers, not in a back room. "Customers are able to see
computers torn apart. They are allowed to ask question," says
Rector. "It’s like seeing your car being brought up onto the lift.
`Do you see the burnt chip here?’ People like coming into the work
area."
Says Rector: "It’s a location-specific business, and our new
location
is demographically better."
1 South, Princeton 08540. Paul B. Miles, president. 609-524-4050;
fax, 609-524-4051. Home page: www.ja.org
As planned, Junior Achievement moved its offices — the main one
in Mountainside, and a satellite office at HQ in Forrestal Village
— to the former Summit Bank building on Route 1 South (U.S. 1,
July 9, 2003).
Princeton
08542. Keith Barclay, sales manager. 609-688-1662; fax, 609-688-1664.
M&T Mortgage, a subsidiary of Buffalo, New York-based M&T Bank, has
moved from 23 Route 31 in Pennington to a larger space on Nassau
Street.
Keith Barclay, sales manager in charge of this office, says that his
four-person branch specializes in unusual or hard to obtain
residential
mortgages. Among M&T’s products is a rehab loan through which a
borrower
can purchase an older home and roll renovation costs into the
mortgage.
The firm also does construction loans and refinancings.
Sayreville 08872. 609-860-1922.
After 10 years at Center Point Industrial Park, Intimate Resources,
a privately owned lingerie firm, opened an additional distribution
center on 500 Kennedy Drive in Sayreville 08872. Its location at 3
Fitzgerald Avenue was closed for a time, but it has now reopened.
The headquarters is in Manhattan’s garment district.
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Forrestal Incubees — Two Years Later
Two years ago, recent graduates of Princeton University
were working on advanced power conversion technologies with Ed Zschau,
a faculty member at Princeton University, as their mentor and
landlord.
Their company, Princeton Power Systems, was one of two Zschau
companies
that debuted that year. Onclave, a software firm, was on the cover
on April 5, 2001, and Princeton Power Systems was featured on November
28, 2001.
Four engineers on the Princeton Power Systems crew employed a patent
held by the father of one of the four, Rudy Limpaecher. They were
working on software for an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device,
intended for brief power flickers and uneven current. Later they
progressed
to making motor controllers, wind turbine converters, and grid-tied
inverters.
Now Princeton Power Systems has landed a significant contract with
Worldwater Corp., a public company based at Pennington Business Park,
to help develop a more reliable and cost effective method for
converting
electric power cleanly (www.worldwater.com). For Worldwater, Princeton
Power’s technology will help to control the interaction between the
electric grid, solar power, and an electric motor.
Worldwater holds the prime contract from the New Jersey Board of
Public
Utilities under its new REED (Renewable Energy and Economic
Development)
program. This program aims to stimulate the renewable energy industry
in New Jersey and to make New Jersey the new "Silicon Valley"
for renewable energy economic development.
"Our patented AC-link technology offers the potential for reducing
the current control subsystem cost by more than 50 percent,"
explains
Darren Hammell, president and CEO of Princeton Power Systems. AC-link,
says Hammell, uses simpler, more reliable components and incorporates
advanced algorithms for controlling various aspects of the electric
power, which allows the use of less complex, less expensive hardware
to achieve precision power control.
AC-link will be integrated into WorldWater’s proprietary solar pumping
system, which controls power flow from a solar photovoltaic array
and dynamically interacts with the utility grid and/or uses it to
run an AC motor to power water pumps, compressors, etc. The system
will be designed and a prototype developed, installed and tested at
Rutgers University’s Snyder Farm test-bed facility.
Princeton Power Systems is also working with the Office of Naval
Research
to determine the feasibility of using its products to power large
shipboard propulsion drives and other electrical systems.
Three of the four founders — Hammell, Erik Limpaecher, and John
Mark Holveck — are still with PPS, and a fourth, John W. Lerch,
has left to found Proximities, at 501 Forrestal Road, which is
developing
radio frequency identification wristbands for entertainment
venues(www.proximities.com U.S. 1, May 14, 2003).
PPS has hired three new people for a total of six. "Those guys
have really done a masterful job," says Zschau. Onclave, the other
firm that started under his wing, has not had similar success. It
offered a software product for PR firms that was endorsed by a trade
group and was beginning to service customers, but the corporation
was dissolved last year. "In this climate, we couldn’t raise the
money to continue to operate until we could become profitable,"
says Zschau.
Forrestal Campus, Princeton 08540. Darren Hammell, CEO. 609-258-5994;
fax, 609-258-7329. Home page: www.princetonpower.com
Pennington
Business Park Building B, Pennington 08534. Quentin T. Kelly, chairman
and CEO. 609-818-0700; fax, 609-818-0720. Www.worldwater.com
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Name Changes
Park Plaza, Princeton 08540. Kenneth Seibel, president. 609-799-3279;
fax, 609-987-0185. Www.seibelgroup.com
The 31-year-old printing company has changed its name
from Easy Graphics Creative to the Seibel Group. "New clientele
would hear `Easy Graphics’ and think we were a quick print shop, when
we are a mid size commercial printing company. Everything else is
the same," says Kenneth Seibel, who has been with the company
since it was founded by Newton Milner and his wife. He bought the
business 10 years ago, and it does graphic design, printing, mailing,
and fulfillment services with an emphasis on corporate communications.
"It did start out as a quick print shop but has evolved to a
16-person
firm," he says. "With our on-staff art department and
fulfillment
capabilities we can take a project from soup to nuts, Most printing
companies don’t have an agency-caliber design staff, they have only
a prepress department. We can go one step further — take the job
before it is designed and do it all for them."
Seibel’s pride and joy is a five-color printing press, a Heidelberg
Speedmaster 74, with an aqueous coding system that seals the ink to
the paper. "It is a lot faster and a lot less expensive than other
processes."
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New in Town
Princeton
08540. Andrew Janoff, executive assistant/office supervisor.
609-430-1100;
fax, 609-430-9995. Home page: www.celator.ca
Celator Technologies, a Vancouver-based
biopharmaceutical
company, has opened an administrative office at 1 Airport Way. The
company, founded in 2000, named former Elan executive Andrew Janoff
chairman and CEO in 2002. Janoff, a Yardley resident, divides his
time between this office and the company’s headquarters.
Karen Simmons, executive assistant and office supervisor, is also
from Elan, as is Christine Swenson, head of pre-clinical development.
Rounding out the administrative staff in this location is the head
of pharmaceutical development and the chief medical officer. Lab
facilities
are located in Vancouver.
Celator received $6.8 million in its first round of venture capital
funding in late-January. The company, a spin-off of the British
Columbia
Cancer Agency, is developing new technology for targeting synergistic
combinations of rationally selected chemotherapeutic agents
to sites of disease. This approach seeks to modify the existing cancer
chemotherapy discovery process by fixing the ratios at which drug
combinations act to kill tumor cells.
Tim and Janis Ketchmark, owners. 609-243-0006; fax, 609-243-0008.
Home page: www.maidpro.com
Tim and Janis Ketchmark have opened a home and office cleaning
franchise,
one of more than 30 businesses franchised by the Boston-based firm,
MaidPro. Tim Ketchmark, a 1981 graduate of Loyola University in
Chicago,
had worked for 18 years for Siemens Medical. When the business unit
moved from Iselin to Malvern, Pennsylvania, he decided to go into
his own business. Until now, Janis had devoted herself to the couple’s
three school-aged children. They have eight employees so far, and
their territory covers the greater Princeton area, including all of
Mercer County.
"The people who do our cleaning are employees of our company,
so we are responsible for bonding and insuring them," Ketchmark
says, "and we are paying the proper payroll taxes. After a week’s
training, our employees earn $10 an hour, and full-time employees
can accrue vacation and sick time, but unfortunately not health
insurance."
Established in 1991, the company was rated 419 among the top 500
franchisers
by Inc. Magazine.
08536. Andrew Narine, manager. 609-275-9UPS; fax, 609-275-9897.
Home
page: www.theupsstore.com
Renu Singal opened the UPS Store at Plainsboro Plaza, one of more
than 3,000 in the chain of mailing and office services stores. It
offers full service packaging, mailbox and postal services, black
and white and color copying, document finishing, office and packaging
supplies, notary services, and passport photos. Singal had been a
reference librarian at the Princeton Public Library and the East
Brunswick
library.
08902.
732-422-4141.
So-Deep, a company based in Manassas Park, Virginia, has opened an
office in North Brunswick. The 100-person company, founded in 1981,
provides information to project designers and owners on the existence
and location of underground utilities. The company, which has 13 other
offices, lays claim to creating subsurface utility engineering as
a specialty.
The company employs engineers, land surveyors, and geologists,
supported
by CADD and field technicians and by utility records and coordination
specialists.
08558.
Ken Pizzico, manager. 609-613-5300; fax, 609-613-5310.
Yellow Book, which competes with phone companies for advertising in
its phone directories, has opened an office in Skillman. Ken Pizzico,
manager of the office, says he has 20 sales reps. The office sells
ads to companies throughout the state, but is primarily responsible
for Mercer, Somerset, and Hunterdon counties.
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Contracts Awarded
Princeton 08543-5300. Satyam Cherukuri, president & CEO. 609-734-2000;
fax, 609-734-2040. Home page: www.sarnoff.com
Sarnoff Corporation has signed onto a three-year, $8 million project
on video compression for DSL. Half of the money is coming from the
commerce department through the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The remainder is coming from DSL equipment maker Alcatel;
set-top box maker Thomson; SBC, a Baby Bell that is the largest
national
provider of DSL, and Sarnoff.
Sarnoff plans to use old copper wire lines to deliver two
broadcast-quality
video streams, so one family can watch two different programs.
East, Suite 2100, Princeton 08540. Dipak Chattaraj, managing director.
609-720-9200; fax, 609-720-1155. Home page: www.ranbaxy.com
Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals has received tentative approval from the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration for a generic version of Zocor, the
cholesterol-lowering
drug in the statin class that is made by Merck. Zocor is the world’s
second-largest selling drug, and Merck’s patent on it is expected
to expire in 2006.
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Deaths
supervisor at the Medical Center of Princeton.
she worked at Deborah Heart and Lung Center and Bayada Nurses Home
Care.
for CNA Insurance Company as a regional warehouse coordinator.
Testing Service and Creative Playthings and was active in the
Princeton
and Rockingham historical societies.
Corrections or additions?
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