Basketball News: Caliper’s Turn
Corrections or additions?
Life in the Fast Lane
These articles by Barbara Fox and Peter J. Mladineo were published
in U.S. 1 Newspaper on February 18, 1998. All rights reserved.
The word of the day is double for everything we are
doing," says Donna Jakubowski, spokesperson for Bristol-Myers
Squibb. "We are doubling the size of pharmaceutical drug
discovery,
doubling the number of new drugs entering the development pipeline
in the near term, doubling that number again in the long term,
doubling
the number of drugs in late development, and doubling product launches
in the next three years."
To permanently house a major productivity program that is expected
to save $1.5 billion, Bristol-Myers Squibb has bought a prominent
Route 1 office building at 100 Nassau Park Boulevard. It has also
started construction on a new building at the Route 206 headquarters
of its pharmaceutical group, is reoccupying a building on Business
Park Drive, and is moving as fast as possible into the former Mobil
research center in Hopewell. Overall the pharmaceutical firm has added
about 1,400 employees to Central New Jersey since last year, growing
from 6,600 to 8,000. It also operates sites on Scudders Mill Road,
New Brunswick, and Cranbury.
B-MS’s Global Business Services Center, staffed by 800 employees now,
resulted from a 1994 productivity effort to reduce costs and reinvest
the benefits in future growth with the eventual aim of increasing
productivity by $1.5 billion through 1998. "The program strives
to exploit advanced technology and work collaboratively across
functions
and business units to share information and services and to reduce
costs," says Jakubowski.
Occupying 2 1/2 floors at the 220,000-foot Nassau Park, this center
supports businesses in North America, Puerto Rico, and Latin America.
It includes Financial Shared Services, Global Strategic Sourcing
(unified
purchasing), Demand Management, and Global Order to Cash. A similar
center has been established in England to provide shared services
for Europe.
Two outside occupants — the law firm of Pellettieri Rabstein &
Altman and Valuation Research — take up the remaining 10 percent
of the space at 100 Nassau Park, and Jakubowski says her firm intends
to maintain those leases. Connecticut General Life Insurance Company
(CIGNA) was the owner and the selling price of the 12-year-old
building,
which includes a cafeteria, was not disclosed. Early in its existence
the long, green-faced building looking out on Route 1 South, was being
characterized as a "sick" building because of some workers’
persistent complaints of headaches and dizziness. Extensive
modifications
were made in the HVAC and the complaints subsided.
Last year Nassau Park added 300 workers for the current total of 800,
and such "staffing up" reflects Bristol-Myers Squibb’s
aggressive
growth plans. Also growing are the sites in Hopewell, Skillman, and
Lawrence.
Eventually the former Mobil site in Hopewell will have 1,200 workers,
and about 800 have already moved into jobs in drug discovery
laboratories,
administration, and information management.
Convatec, at Headquarters Park Drive in Skillman, has grown from 400
to 700 employees. It manufactures ostomy, wound, skin care and
continence
products, and it is headed by the firm’s just-appointed highest
ranking
woman, Christine Poon.
The Route 206 facility in Lawrence (the company refers to it as the
Princeton site) currently houses 2,000 employees and will add 200
discovery chemists by the middle of next year. Under construction
is a 150,000 square foot laboratory and office module, connected with
the existing structure, for state-of-the art chemistry. Also under
construction is a clinical unit, to support clinical studies at Robert
Wood Johnson Hospital at Hamilton.
Remaining stable are the distribution center at Exit
8A, which employs 200 workers, and 777 Scudders Mill Road, which
houses
domestic sales and training offices for the Pharmaceutical Group,
Apothecon, and Convatec. About 2,000 people report to work there.
Because the Hopewell campus has drawn some away, the population at
the New Brunswick headquarters has diminished by about 50 people,
and now 1,450 employees are engaged in administration, R&D, and some
manufacturing at 1 Squibb Drive. (Many of the original manufacturing
jobs went to Indiana and Puerto Rico when Squibb merged with
Bristol-Myers).
Add in 60 people at Forrestal Greens and a handful on Alexander Road.
Douglas P. Tunnell, senior vice president of Global Business Services
and Planning, points out that Nassau Park’s location is central and
attributes the purchase to "our continuing commitment to New
Jersey."
— Barbara Fox
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Secondary School’s
Quick Move
You can’t run a building that serves 76 countries and
1,200 test sites from a trailer. So says Regan Kenyon, executive
director
of the Secondary School Admission Test Board. His organization bought
a building, rehabbed it, and moved in — all within three months.
Why the rush? Because SSATB is a test organization and has a testing
season, just a one-week delay would have put off the move for eight
months.
"If we had delayed one week we would not have had the requisite
time run parallel computer systems and test them at the new site,"
says Kenyon. SSATB’s transition could be a model for companies making
a crucial move quickly.
SSATB develops and administers tests primarily for admission to
independent
schools. A non-profit educational organization, it moved last fall
from a building that it owned, an historic Steadman building on
Stockton
Street in Princeton Borough, to a building twice as big that it
purchased,
a Route 518 building formerly owned by the Princeton Bio Center.
Known most recently as the Carl C. Pfeiffer Institute, the Bio Center
was founded in 1973 as an outpatient nutrition clinic specializing
in biochemical testing, allergies, and diet and treating a variety
of disorders and diseases. The institute has closed but the vitamin
sales division has relocated as Princeton Bio Center to 1000
Herrontown
Road.
SSATB paid $1.3 million for the 11,000-foot building with 3,000 feet
of basement storage, and the renovations totaled $400,000. Lawrence
and Sharon Tarantino did the design and Sweetwater Construction
knocked
out 30 walls, removed washstands, took out a big laboratory with
showers
and a biohazardous refrigerator, and totally rewired it for computers.
In addition to "SSATB green," used in the logo, the decor
is cream, tan, gray, and white plus stainless steel and glass in the
office area and mahogany and teak in the public area. "I wanted
a high tech look in operations, and a traditional look in the
executive
end — and no transition," says Kenyon.
Allied handled a moving contract that specified "no
18-wheelers"
on the residential street. "The 12 trucks were out in the parking
lot waiting for the final certificate of occupancy," says Kenyon.
"The business was down two weeks. We had everything run in
parallel,
all the phones and high speed international faxes, but at the same
time we couldn’t immediately overload the server with 30
terminals."
Why move? In addition to needing more space, SSATB needed a different
floor plan. Until five years ago it was part of Educational Testing
Service and required no space for operations, only for hosting and
conferences. Now it must store tests. "We essentially had a
horizontal
business in a vertical building," says Kenyon. "We had to
process tests and take them through computers, and we were carrying
them up and down three and four floors." All under tight security.
SSATB employs 17 full-timers and brings in 15 temps during the testing
season. That does not include the cadre of consultants who help write
the test, which has 72 forms. Student fees of $57 to take the test
constitute most of the SSATB’s $3.5 million budget. Roughly $250,000
($300 to $500 from each of 600 member schools) is collected from the
schools.
When parents receive the scores they are often shocked, because the
test compares students applying to such top schools as Andover,
Princeton
Day School, and Hun. "They are used to dumbed down achievement
tests," says Kenyon.
Kenyon insists testing does not favor the elite. "I see it as
a tool of access," says Kenyon. "We give fee waivers out to
almost 10 percent of the kids, and we find a lot of kids in inner
cities could score well on this."
"I grew up in a family that emphasized education," says
Kenyon.
His mother was a teacher who earned her Ph.D., and his father, a
foundryman,
went to night school, and ended up as a librarian. He loved
Shakespeare
and named his son after one of King Lear’s daughters. "The other
two were Cordelia and Goneril, and I think I lucked out," Kenyon
jokes.
He majored in American history at the University of
Mississippi, Class of ’69, and stayed to earn a master’s in education.
He taught "at risk youth" in St. Louis, founded a minority
high school and independent day school at St. Croix, then during the
Carter administration served as the first federal official in the
United States office for private schools. After earning his doctor’s
degree at Harvard he came to Princeton in 1983 be in charge of
separating
SSATB from ETS. He has a son and a daughter at Lawrenceville School.
"It had become evident the two organizations had different
educational
philosophies," says Kenyon. "We deal with many fewer
test-takers
than they. Just like any smaller company we are able to offer a
customer
service at a different level."
Also ETS had established another test, the ISEE, the Independent
School
Entrance Exam, and it was competing against itself. "Their test
is not meant to be as difficult as ours. We do have the bulk of the
well-known schools. We probably have more minority test takers than
they do."
"It’s meant to distinguish high academic ability, and it deals
with the ceiling of the population," says Kenyon. The test is
not federally regulated because it is used only by private
institutions
for eighth through tenth grades.
The Tarantinos and contractor Bob Dunham had won an award for historic
renovation on the Stockton Street house, which was appraised several
years ago at $1.25 million. Princeton Borough is temporarily occupying
it during the renovation of Borough Hall. The structure is zoned for
residential or nonprofit use and, says Kenyon, "we want to be
very careful who we sell it to."
518, Skillman 08558. Regan Kenyon, executive director. 609-683-4440;
fax, 609-683-1702. Home page: http://www.ssatb.org.ssat.
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Bonner’s New Home
Need a 12-person conference room for your community
or nonprofit meeting? Forget the church basement, have your meeting
in a 150-year-old $850,000 mansion on Mercer Street. It’s the new
home of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, and it came
complete with an extra conference room that the foundation’s executive
director, Wayne Meisel, invites you to use.
The 17-year-old Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, operates
on a national level to support faith-based organizations (synagogues
and churches) in their hunger-fighting efforts. It also provides
scholarships
at 22 southeastern colleges. Bertram Bonner, who died in 1993, was
a developer who built 30,000 homes and apartments on the East Coast
including the Quail Ridge townhomes in Franklin Township. His wife
now supervises the work of the foundation. Last week, in fact, she
bought a $30,000 refrigerated truck to support the work for a
statewide
food "gleaning" program, a program for which the foundation
helped Farmers Against Hunger land a $.5 million federal grant.
In addition to being the traditional type of foundation that gives
out money, the Bonner Foundation works actively with the institutions
to convene meetings, provide training, and develop materials —
work traditionally done by separate nonprofit groups. Second, it
operates
as an advocate for the institutions as if it were a consortium. It
also brings its eight years of experience to the higher education
community. "We do outreach, offering other colleges and
universities
the chance to learn from our challenges and successes with our 23
schools," says Meisel.
Princeton University owned the house, which it had been vacant since
faculty members moved out about 10 years ago. Residential neighbors
were concerned about preserving the integrity of the neighborhood,
and in response a gravel driveway was used and no signs were erected
for the parking slots.
Mrs. Bonner bought and restored the building and donated it to the
foundation to serve as its headquarters. Including the renovations
it cost about $870,000 and comes with nine parking spaces. "Our
lease at 22 Chambers Street was ending, and it wasn’t clear whether
we would get the space," says Meisel. "At the same time this
building came up."
The architect was Jeffrey Clarke of Clarke Caton Hintz in West
Trenton,
and John Garretson, a member of the family that used to own Clayton’s
department store on Palmer Square, was the general contractor. Mrs.
Bonner decorated and furnished the offices. "Mrs. Bonner’s whole
heart and soul was into this place," says Meisel. "She didn’t
want to leave us with a building that was semi-broke."
Operating from Mercer Street will not save money, because its upkeep
is expensive. But it will assure the foundation a comfortable
environment
in the decades to come. Is this place, in fact, too cushy for an
antipoverty
foundation? Meisel is a notorious penny pincher when it comes to
spending
foundation money on administrative expenses, and he has thought this
question through: "I have talked to people getting money from
us — college presidents and local community groups — about
this very issue. Nobody has begrudged that we are here."
"Our society is filled with dichotomies," he says.
"Princeton
is filled with nice buildings. I think it makes all the difference
in the world that the building was restored and given to us from
outside
the foundation. My feeling is, that that was the gift, and what I
would like to do is make it as friendly and open as I possibly can,
and get as much work done on these issues and causes that I can
possibly
do."
"We are downtown, next to a private club (the Nassau Club), the
seminary, and to the university," says Meisel. "Given what
we are doing in education, service, community and institutional
relations,
and given the people that we attract to the town — whether they
be college presidents or religious leaders involved in social justice
or local people convened to address community challenges and
opportunities
— I hope our presence here opens up a spirit in the town while
preserving the integrity of the town."
"It’s a great place to work," says Meisel. "The wood and
the vibrations are kind of crisp and clear. I feel like I am working
inside a large violin."
10 Mercer Street, Box 712, Princeton 08542-0712. Wayne W. Meisel,
executive director. 609-924-6663; fax, 609-683-4626.
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Expansions
Cranbury 08512. 609-409-1015; fax, 609-409-1014. E-mail:
Home page: http://www.evcor.com.
Got a question about postage rates? Stephen H. Cooper
is the man to ask. Cooper is president of Evcor Distribution Plus,
a "software integrator and value-added reseller" that recently
took 3,800 square feet at Campus 130 in Cranbury.
"We do software primarily for companies’ warehouse and shipping
departments," says Cooper. "We integrate an off-the-shelf
package to meet the specific needs of our customers."
"We help companies with small package carrier compliance and
rating
issues," he says.
The need for such a product is justifiable — recent changes in
the UPS system are a case in point. "It’s not as easy as it used
to be to ship UPS," says Cooper. "The label has to look a
certain way, the barcode has to look a certain way, the rating
structure
is getting more complicated as they add new service levels. Our job
is to understand what those compliance issues are."
Cooper, 39, studied marketing at the Philadelphia College of Textiles
and Science (Class of 1980) and worked for a competitor, NeoPost,
then located in Iselin, for the first part of his career. He started
Evcor in 1990 after seeing that "the flexible communications niche
wasn’t being filled," he says.
"Even though it’s a small market to begin with there’s a big niche
in there that wasn’t being introduced. So we went out and figured
out how to do it."
Evcor’s systems cost from $100 a month to $3,000 a month to lease,
but, Cooper maintains, don’t quite qualify as a tough sell. "It’s
tougher than selling a stand-alone PC but not as hard quite as hard
selling a warehouse management system," says Cooper. "The
company has to change the way they do business to fit that automation.
What we do the customer doesn’t have to change the way they do
business.
We’re just enhancing the way they do business. Our products are
cost-justifiable
or people don’t do it."
Robbins concedes a little bit of dismay on moving. The old location,
at 13 Main Street in Robbinsville, was next door to the beloved
Ernie’s
Pub. "We’re bummed," he says. "No more beers and
cheeseburgers
at lunch time." Instead, Evcor employees will have to acquaint
themselves with nearby Cranbury Station, 400 yards south on Route
130. "That’s a pretty good pub," he says.
Princeton 08540. Robert Criscuolo Jr. CPA, president. 609-419-0600;
fax, 609-419-0737. Home page:
http://www.acsysinc.com/rylan.htm.
Rylan Forbes has announced a merger with ACSYS Resources, which also
has a location at 5 Independence Way, one of seven offices in New
Jersey and Pennsylvania. It provides accounting, finance, and
information
technology recruiting and staffing — permanent, temporary, or
consulting.
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Crosstown Moves
08610. 609-987-0199; fax, 609-585-9465.
The accounting firm, headed by Wellington Davenport, a former
financial
officer at Johnson & Johnson, moved from Lawrence Commons. The phone
number is answered at the new location. The fax is new.
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Leaving Town
Suite 648, Plainsboro 08536. Steve Puchalsky, vice president, sales.
609-799-4403; fax, 609-799-7405.
A marketing incentive firm based in St Louis has moved and did not
respond to requests for a forwarding address.
Building
D, CN 5201, Princeton 08543-5201. Ray Walsh, general manager.
800-927-2790.
The security company moved from Emmons Drive to 50 Twosome Drive,
Unit 5, Box 1013, Moorestown 08057. Phone, 800-927-2790; fax
609-642-2207.
220, Lawrenceville 08648. John McGuire, president. 609-452-9595; fax,
609-452-7235.
The business that arranged group discount purchasing of legal fees,
financial fees, and other real estate related items has apparently
moved out of its quarters. The phone has been disconnected and there
is no listing in directory assistance. It moved into the space in
early 1996.
Road, Suite 101, Princeton 08540. 609-520-2044.
The firm has closed this office on Alexander Road. Phone calls are
being directed to the Norton-Oaks Agency at 6 Becker Farm Road,
Roseland.
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Management Moves
Princeton-Hightstown
Road, Cranbury 08512. Joseph C. Maida, president. 609-443-4409; fax,
609-443-5796. E-mail: wvhw76a@prodigy.com.
Office Park, Building 1, Cranbury 08512. 609-443-4409; fax,
609-443-5796.
James Harttraft Jr. CPA died in October. His business has been
purchased
by Nicholas C. Maida, CPA Chartered. Location, phone, and fax remain
the same and clients have been referred.
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Basketball News: Caliper’s Turn
The Continental Basketball Association has approved
the entry of a Trenton squad in the expanding 10-team league, pending
community support. The team’s organization is currently headed by
Caliper Sports & Associates, a group of investors headed by Herbert
M. Greenberg, CEO of Caliper, the psychological testing firm located
at 751 Mount Lucas Road (http://www.caliper.txt).
To win final approval, Greenberg and crew must sell at least 2,500
season tickets and gain "a reasonable amount of corporate support
through the sale of advertising and box seats," says a press
release
issued by Caliper.
If this effort succeeds, the team will play in the planned Mercer
County Arena, the Trenton site that will be home also to the minor
league hockey team scheduled to begin playing in the fall.
The other stockholders in Caliper Sports & Associates are Harold
Weinstein,
Greenberg’s consulting partner; Steve Wills, a partner at Golomb,
Wills & Company; Ben Shiriak, president of Maxim Sewerage Corporation;
Bob Wenzel, former head coach at Rutgers and assistant coach for the
New Jersey Nets.
Last year 50 CBA players were called up by NBA teams; NBA stars from
the CBA include John Starks, Anthony Mason, and Matt Maloney. For
Greenberg and Caliper this could be the opportunity to put into
practice its own advice. Among Caliper’s many clients are several
pro teams seeking psychological profiles of prospective players.
Caliper
claims it can often distinguish potential winners on the basis of
its tests (U.S. 1, October 29, 1997).
Once the deal is sealed, there will be a community-wide effort to
pick the team’s name, says Greenberg.
08543-2050. Herbert M. Greenberg Ph.D., CEO. 609-924-3800; fax,
609-683-8560.
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Deaths
supervisor
of road service at AAA of Central New Jersey and had worked for Starr
Tours.
at the Fashion Bug at Lawrence Shopping Center.
internal auditing department at Dow Jones on Route 1 North.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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