SYRACUSE — Recognition for more than 300 local companies, KeyBank, and outgoing Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney marked the annual CenterState CEO Economic Champions luncheon held Oct. 30.

The organization recognized 302 companies as 2018 Economic Champions for hirings, expansions, and investments in the past year during the event at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter.

More than 1,000 people attended the event, CenterState CEO said in a news release.

Those recognized hired a total of more than 2,600 employees, added 1.2 million square feet in expansions, and spent nearly $750 million in capital investments.

CenterState CEO also recognized more than 80 new businesses and highlighted 68 for celebrating a milestone anniversary.

“In the 15 years since I’ve moved back to Syracuse, I have never seen the level of economic activity that we do now across nearly every industry sector. We are hearing from companies every single day about their plans to expand, hire, and invest in new products and new markets,” Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO, said in his remarks at the event.

The list of those recognized included sole proprietors, retail operators, small and medium-sized firms, multi-national corporations, and key institutions and nonprofits, Simpson added.

“The current macroeconomic environment is strong. It’s reflected in the fact that we celebrate a record number of champions today — 302 companies to be precise,” said Simpson. 

The luncheon also included keynote remarks by Jeremy Garelick, who spoke about his vision to strengthen the region’s film industry and the progress “being driven by his film-production company, American High,” CenterState CEO said in its release.

Awards

In addition, CenterState CEO presented its Community Visionary Award to Cleveland, Ohio–based KeyBank (NYSE: KEY) for its “leadership and commitment” to community initiatives that “create greater community prosperity.”

CenterState CEO cited KeyBank’s efforts to bring the Business Boost & Build program, powered by Cleveland, Ohio–based JumpStart, to Syracuse.

That program, announced in August 2017, is designed to “stimulate economic growth and workforce development by fostering small-business success” in communities across Ohio and upstate New York, including Syracuse.

On its website, JumpStart Inc. describes itself as a “private-public partnership” that provides venture capital and “intensive, high-impact assistance to diverse entrepreneurs and small-businesses owners.”

In addition, CenterState CEO also cited KeyBank’s work in “helping expand entrepreneurship and prosperity” in the community through the growth of women and minority-owned businesses; its lending and other investments in affordable housing and first time home buying; and its support of local programs and organizations, like Jubilee Homes’ Build to Work program, to “help create opportunities for veterans and the un- and underemployed.”

CenterState CEO also presented its inaugural Community Champion Award to outgoing Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney for what the organization said was her “outstanding leadership and legacy of positive impact on the region’s economy and the citizens of Onondaga County.” 

“It has been the goal of my administration from day one to make sure our community is a place our children could stay and find real economic opportunity. From investments like the St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater at Lakeview to the burgeoning film industry; the new and improved Great New York State Fair, the formation and success of the Agriculture Council and the millions invested in our downtown, Onondaga County is truly a great place to live and a community that our children can be proud to call home. Congratulations to all of the 2018 Economic Champions and thank you for honoring me with this award,” Mahoney said in the release.

Mahoney has moved on to become COO of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a special advisor to SUNY Upstate Medical University.

DeWITT — They started in April and have been reported as recently as early October — a series of nine cyberattacks at the Central New York Regional Information Center (CNYRIC) in DeWitt. 

The CNYRIC provides technology services to the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison (OCM) Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and its 23 component school districts. 

CNYRIC has reported coming under this type of cyber-attack on April 11, 12, 13, 18, and 20; along with Sept. 6, 7, and 27, and Oct. 4 of this year. That’s according to a news release on the topic that the office of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) issued Oct. 29.

The lawmaker spoke that same day at the CNYRIC at 6075 E. Molloy Road in DeWitt.

Schumer called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “immediately” launch an investigation into the cyberattacks.

He explained that CNYRIC has fallen victim to nine cyber-attacks in recent months, impeding both students’ and teachers’ ability to access educational materials and forcing officials to devote significant resources to addressing the attacks. 

 “No data has been jeopardized” to this point, but repeated attacks could put “valuable student information at risk,” according to the release. 

“Central New York school districts have fallen victim to far too many cyber-attacks in recent months, potentially putting valuable information at risk, impeding our students’ ability to learn in the classroom and costing taxpayers significant resources. Fortunately, none of these cyber-attacks have resulted in a breach of confidential information, but they still must be stopped in their tracks,” Schumer said. “That’s why today I’m calling on DHS to launch an investigation into these cyber-threats immediately and work as quickly as possible to get to the bottom of this matter. The feds should work hand-in-hand with local officials to figure out exactly where these attacks come from, help fill gaps in cybersecurity and eliminate these threats in the future.”

Attack impacts

In his remarks, Schumer explained that the cyberattacks were distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks meant to “overload and essentially deny” access to the network. 

The cyberattacks caused network-wide outages affecting all school districts within the CNYRIC, including OCM BOCES and its 23 component school districts. Without access to the network services of CNYRIC, students and teachers were left without access to online tests and other educational materials, causing “loss of student learning hours and payroll for teachers being impacted,” per Schumer’s release.

In addition, officials have had to devote “significant” resources to investigating the attacks and are considering purchasing expensive new defense systems. 

Schumer said that uncovering facts — like where these attacks are coming from and where gaps in security exist — will help CNYRIC “determine the best response and where to invest precious dollars.”

About RICs

New York has 12 Regional Information Centers (RICs), which are organized under the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). They provide services to school districts across the state, including technology-integration training, data analysis, management applications, and large-scale network infrastructure projects. 

In Central New York, CNYRIC provides technological services to OCM BOCES and its 23 component school districts in the region. In total, CNYRIC serves 50 school districts and four BOCES across eight counties in Central New York.         ν

BIG FLATS — Wayfair — a Boston–based online retailer of furniture, home furnishings, and décor items — formally opened its new operations center in Big Flats in Chemung County with a ribbon-cutting event on Oct. 30.

The 63,000-square-foot facility is a customer service and sales office and it first opened in July, according to Griffin Carroll, a company spokesperson.

“Since opening in July, our Big Flats office has seen faster growth than any of our other sales and service offices around the country, already at 250 employees,” Carroll tells CNYBJ in an email. “With previously announced plans to bring 450 jobs to the area, we are already more than halfway there.”

At the ribbon-cutting event, Wayfair co-founder Steve Conine spoke about his roots in the area, as his parents grew up in Prattsburgh. Also, he and company co-founder Niraj Shah are graduates of Cornell University in Ithaca. The two men started the business in their senior year at Cornell, becoming CSN Stores in 2002.

The business has grown to employ nearly 10,000 people around the globe. Wayfair says it offers more than 10 million products and has 12.8 million active customers. The company generated 

$5.7 billion in net revenue for the one-year fiscal period ending June 30, 2018.

In addition to Big Flats, Wayfair has customer service and sales offices in Boston, Maine, Texas, Utah, and Ireland.   

UTICA — Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS) has unveiled what its downtown hospital project will look like when completed near the end of 2022.

MVHS on Oct. 26 revealed the exterior design of its new, 373-bed, 672,000-square-foot hospital in downtown Utica. The presentation included a timeline that indicates MVHS hopes to begin construction in September 2019.

New York City–based NBBJ has been leading the design process for the new facility since May 2017. 

Together with MVHS leaders, they have sought feedback and guidance from more than 2,000 people throughout the community, MVHS said in a news release. They wanted feedback on the design of the new hospital “and its integration with the surrounding downtown area.” The group also met with departments within the health system.

“We are excited to expand upon the vision of this new, integrated health-care campus by sharing this tangible example of how it fits in with the community,” Scott Perra, president and CEO of MVHS, said in the release. “We know that many members of our internal and external communities have been looking forward to the day when the design of the building would be revealed. We are designing the hospital from the inside out, first looking at the processes to care for patients and then designing the space to provide the care. Once the hospital’s layout was finalized, we were able to begin working on the aesthetics of the outside which included following the guiding principles established from the many community meetings held over the past year and a half. This feedback has allowed us to create a stunning design that will fit in beautifully in downtown Utica.”

Ryan Hullinger, partner with NBBJ, called the “guiding principles” from the community meetings “extremely important” in the design process for the new hospital. 

“The principals related to the design and look of the building asked us to consider the historic nature of the buildings around the new hospital as well as both old and new aspects of Utica’s architecture. Using that feedback, our goal for the design was to create an exterior expression that respects the rich history of Utica and complements the surrounding neighborhoods, while projecting a sense of clinical excellence through rigorous detailing and craftsmanship. This design works to embody both Utica’s past and its future,” Hullinger said.

NBBJ is also working with MVHS providers and staff on the design and layout of the various rooms in the new hospital. Crews have built mock-rooms at the MVHS New Hartford Medical Office — Crossroads location which will help to test the designs and layouts to make sure they work “flawlessly in real-life situations.”

UTICA — A professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) will use a $75,000 grant for ongoing work on advanced high-strength steels.

The grant that the National Science Foundation awarded to Zhanjie Li is part of an overall award of $400,000 with collaborating researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, SUNY said in a news release.

The research aims to provide buildings with “improved sustainability” over time as well as “structural resilience,” while maintaining a “cost-effective approach,” per the release.

Such an approach would involve incorporating next-generation, advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) material into construction, and more specifically, as part of cold-formed steel framed buildings, the school added.

 “I’m excited for the opportunity to perform this work along with the team from Hopkins. Society’s needs for quickly constructed, highly-efficient, cost-effective, sustainable, and resilient buildings are vast,” Li said. “AHSS with strengths as much as five times higher than conventional mild steels used in current constructions have great potentials in building structures.”

The automotive industry has benefitted from AHSS via “increased efficiency” for automobiles as a result of reduced mass and “better performance.” 

Leveraging the same AHSS sheet steels already developed for automotive applications, Li’s research can provide an “accelerated path for society to benefit from these improvements.” 

The work in this field provides a plan to “overcome the scientific barriers” in the application of next-generation steels to cold-formed, steel-building construction and “begin the optimization” of the uses of these steels.

“This research effort, while expanding the state of the art in steel structural design, will also provide our undergraduate students with the opportunity to work with Dr. Li as research assistants and also allow Dr. Li to provide students in his classes with the tools required for designing the next generation of steel structures,” Andrew Wolfe, interim dean of the College of Engineering at SUNY Poly, said in the release.

The NSF funding will enable the researchers to further their work developing and improving upon the use of these “enhanced” steels in the construction of structures as prototypes. Such prototypes could help to “maximize the benefit” of adopting AHSS in a number of construction-focused applications, SUNY Poly said.

VOLNEY — The New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) recently announced the completion of a $1.9 million intersection modernization project in the town of Volney in Oswego County.

The project includes a new restricted crossing U-Turn — also called a legal U-Turn — at the intersection of State Route 481 and County Route 45 that the DOT says is the first of its kind in New York state.

Under the new design, vehicles traveling on Route 45 that are looking to turn left onto the busy, high-speed Route 481 must first turn right before proceeding to a legal U-Turn at a designated location that will allow them to more safely enter 481 in the direction they want to go, the agency said.

Before the redesign, crossing the six lanes of Route 481 was “difficult because of limited sight distance, high speeds and a wide center median,” the release stated. The new intersection features two U-turns newly constructed in the median of Route 481 — one just north of the intersection with Route 45 and one just south of the intersection. 

All traffic on Route 45 is now required to turn right at the intersection with Route 481 with the following options, the DOT noted:

• Traffic heading east on Route 45 will be directed to turn right onto Route 481 southbound. Motorists can then proceed southbound on Route 481 or use the U-turn to access Route 481 northbound. They can then head north or take a right turn onto Route 45 to continue heading east.

• Traffic heading west on Route 45 will be directed to turn right onto Route 481 northbound. Drivers can then continue northbound or use the U-turn to access Route 481 southbound. They can then head south or take a right turn onto Route 45 to continue heading west.

“The change significantly reduces the risk of right-angle crashes at the intersection,” the state DOT contended in its release.

“The new configuration of this intersection on 481 addresses long-time safety concerns,” Assemblyman Will Barclay (R–120th Assembly District) said in the department’s release. “I am glad the DOT made this section of 481 in Volney a priority this year and happy to see it is completed before winter. The work will be a benefit to motorists for years to come.”

The DOT added that the intersection improvements will particularly benefit The Manor at Seneca Hill, a nearby nursing home and assisted-living facility, as most visitors and staff use the intersection of Route 481 and Route 45.

The Volney project also complements “Central NY Rising,” the region’s economic-development blueprint, the department said.

DeWITT — The Aldi store in DeWitt reopened to shoppers on Oct. 24, following a remodeling project that started back in September and expanded its retail space.

The store, located at 6633 Manlius Center Road in DeWitt, closed on Sept. 11, Aaron Sumida, VP of Aldi’s Tully division, said in an email response to a CNYBJ inquiry. 

The project added about 2,000 square feet of retail space to the store that previously measured about 10,000 square feet, he said.

The remodeling work is part of a 

$1.9 billion initiative to remodel and expand more than 1,300 Aldi stores nationwide by the end of 2020, the company said in a news release. 

Citing its status as a privately held company, Sumida declined to disclose the company’s cost to remodel the DeWitt store or the contractor that handled the work.

The updated DeWitt store features open ceilings, natural lighting, and “environmentally friendly” building materials.

It also provides shoppers a “convenient, easy-to-navigate layout focused on what people love most: fresh food, produce, dairy and baked goods,” Sumida contended in the email response. 

In operation in the grocery-retailing industry since 1976, Aldi operates more than 1,800 U.S. stores in 35 states. Aldi Inc. is headquartered in Batavia, Illinois, according to its website.