CICERO — Syracuse Label & Surround Printing is preparing to build a new 60,000-square-foot facility to call home on a 6-acre plot at Hancock Airpark in Cicero.

The company prints labels for consumer packaging, such as unsupported films, lid stock, and pouch structures. Specific products include flexible packaging, pressure sensitive labels, cartons, and shrink sleeves, according to its website.

Syracuse Label, currently located at 110 Luther Ave. in Salina, is still finalizing the purchase of the Hancock Airpark plot from Onondaga County, which has priced the land at $229,000. The nearly 6-acre space is comprised of two adjacent parcels, according to the president of Syracuse Label, Kathleen Alaimo.

The company hired VIP Structures as general contractor for the project on May 22, according to VIP’s chief marketing officer, Meghan Tidd.

VIP Structures, which is based in Syracuse at 1 Webster’s Landing, is a design-build company that will handle the design, engineering, and construction of the facility.

Construction will ideally begin in July or August, says Alaimo, but much ground needs to be covered before then. VIP is still in the preliminary design phase, having been hired only recently, says Tidd, meaning no renderings of the completed building have been made, and the subcontractor bidding process has not yet begun.

Despite that, Tidd says a July or August groundbreaking is well within reason because of VIP’s design-build method, which condenses the planning process. This allows VIP to begin construction faster than the traditional method, in which a building’s design and construction phases are handled by separate companies, sandwiched around a bidding process, she says.

Syracuse Label wants to have the new structure’s framing up by this winter so that the plumbing and HVAC elements can be worked on during the cold months, says Alaimo. She says the company is targeting an April 2016, move-in.

Syracuse Label was approved for multiple financial incentives by the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA). The company was awarded a 10-year payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) program. The value of the PILOT — how much money it will save Syracuse Label — won’t  be known until construction is complete and the property value is assessed, according to Julie Cerio, director of Onondaga County’s Office of Economic Development, OCIDA’s parent organization.

The company was also awarded a credit on the state’s mortgage recording tax, valued between $40,000 and $50,000 depending on the amount of mortgage the company takes out, according to Alaimo. It was also granted up to $250,000 of sales tax relief for building materials.

The firm also owes OCIDA approximately $67,000, a fee valued at 1 percent of the total estimated project cost presented to OCIDA, according to Cerio.

Alaimo told CNYBJ that Syracuse Label would have been forced to stay put without the assistance.

The company doesn’t have any immediate plans to hire more employees, says Alaimo, adding that the opportunities afforded by the larger space may lead to growth down the line. She estimated the company’s 2014 revenue at about $18 million.

Estimated project costs reported by the company to OCIDA during the application process totaled more than $6.6 million. That includes $4,889,000 for building and construction, $269,000 for engineering, $1 million for machinery and equipment, and the $229,000 for buying the property, according to OCIDA documents. Other project costs were not disclosed in the documents.

Alaimo says Syracuse Label is receiving bids from banks looking to provide it with a line of credit to help cover the project costs. She did not name the banks.

Why move?

First and foremost, the purpose of the move is to increase space, says Alaimo. “Our current building is comprised of multiple buildings we’ve put together over the years, so it’s not as efficient as it can be,” she says. “As we would grow through the years, we would buy our neighbors and expand into the adjacent building.”

Syracuse Label’s current location, and home of 40 years, comprises between 35,000 and 38,000 square feet, Alaimo told CNYBJ. The new location’s production space alone will be nearly as large, at approximately 33,000 square feet. Another 18,000 square feet will be devoted to warehouse space, and roughly 9,000 to office space.

Having the extra room will improve the company’s efficiency — its use of space, its manufacturing process, the flow of materials in and out — and will keep the company competitive with bigger label companies, Alaimo contends.

The entire building will be climate-controlled, whereas the manufacturing space in the firm’s current location is not. This, along with the added space, will allow Syracuse Label to expand its use of shrink sleeves, a kind of form-fitting label material that can wrap around various containers. It’s a more recent product added to the company’s offerings, but Alaimo says its use has been limited because of space constraints and the material’s sensitivity to heat.

The company plans to reach out to National Grid and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to learn best practices of climate control.

Syracuse Label has 80 employees, all but two of whom are full-time, says Alaimo, who has been with the company for more than 30 years. She was named president in 2007, the same year the company became 100 percent employee owned.        

LYSANDER — PaperWorks Industries, Inc. is moving into a new space in Lysander that nearly triples its operating capacity.

Paperworks is a Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania–based firm that produces specialized folding cartons.

The company signed a lease for more than 492,000 square feet of space in a warehouse located at 2900 McLane Drive in Lysander.

Paperworks has been operating in a 175,000-square-foot space at 8800 Sixty Road in Lysander, according to its website.

Dennis Hennessy, vice president of COR Brokerage, announced the lease agreement in a May 29 news release.

“They expanded their operation in Baldwinsville … because business is going well,” says Hennessy.

The lease took effect June 1, Hennessy told CNYBJ in a phone interview.

Both sides completed the lease arrangement in late April, he added.

“I was able to … get an owner who was willing to work hard to put a deal together and a tenant who was … in need of … all [its] Syracuse operations under one roof,” says Hennessy.

The deal involved between six and seven months of negotiations. Hicker flew in from Southern California, and the PaperWorks CFO traveled to Central New York from the Philadelphia area.

“They had a very cordial meeting,” says Hennessy. “It was an all-day meeting.”

In the news release, Hennessy called it “one of the largest industrial warehouse leases ever brokered in Central New York.”

Hennessy represented Orangeball, LLC, the entity that owns the property, he says. Mark Rupprecht, senior broker in the Syracuse office of CBRE, Inc., represented PaperWorks, he added.

CNYBJ requested comment from PaperWorks Industries Inc. but the company didn’t respond to an inquiry before press time.

PaperWorks’ long-term commitment, which extends through 2032, is a “tremendous win” for the Syracuse area, George Hicker, managing partner of Orangeball, said in the COR news release.

Hicker is also known for his days with the Syracuse University men’s basketball team between 1965 and 1968.

Besides his role in the ownership entity Orangeball, Hicker is the founder and president of Sherman Oaks, California–based Cardinal Industrial, according to its website. 

The company owns a portfolio of “mostly industrial warehouse assets located throughout the United States containing approximately 14 million [square feet], valued in excess of $600 [million],” the website says.

The Lysander location of PaperWorks is its “largest” in North America, according to the COR news release. The firm currently employs more than 250 Central New York residents.

The site was once the local home of the Bloomfield, Colorado–based Ball Corp., which is a provider of metal packaging for beverages, foods and household products. It also provides “other technologies and services to commercial and governmental customer,” its website says.

Ball has since sold the division that had operations in Lysander and ceased those operations, according to Hennessy.