ITHACA — Synairco, Inc. of Ithaca is trying to make air conditioning more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

The company is commercializing a new type of air conditioning that eliminates the use of harsh chemical refrigerants and uses less electricity than traditional systems, President Crista Shopis says.

The company recently won a $50,000 grant through the Syracuse Center of Excellence Commercialization Assistance Program (CAP) to help move its technology closer to market. The money will allow Synairco to work with Air Innovations of Cicero to produce assembly drawings for a larger size system.

The prototype unit Synairco has crafted to this point is small and only suitable for residential use, Shopis says. The new unit would allow the company to test in a very large home or small office building.

The grant will reduce the engineering expense of creating the system so a potential early adopter would have to pay only for building the unit.

In addition to grants, Synairco expects to raise private financing at some point. Shopis says the firm is probably 18 months to two years from fully commercializing its system.

The company expects to build the units itself and sell them through representatives.

Since air conditioning was first developed, not much has changed, according to Synairco. The systems pass air over a coil maintained at a temperature of 45 degrees to cool and dehumidify it.

The process requires chemicals that are potentially hazardous and uses lots of electricity, Shopis says.

Synairco’s technology allows air to be cooled and dehumidified with a coil kept at 60 degrees. The higher temperature means geothermal technology can be used to maintain the correct coil temperature rather than refrigerants and a power-hungry condensing unit, according to the company.

The firm grew from Ithaca–based Taitem Engineering. Taitem President Ian Shapiro originally had the idea for the system and several years ago won some grant funding to analyze the concept and build a prototype. Shopis, who is also a project engineer at Taitem, worked on those early efforts.

She and Shapiro eventually connected with an Ithaca–area entrepreneur, Charles Hamilton, and began working out whether a company could be built around the new technology. A student at the Cornell University Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management also helped in the effort.

The student, Adam Conderman, graduated in June and is now Synairco’s vice president of business development. Shapiro and Hamilton are board members.

Synairco shares space with Taitem at the moment, Shopis says. The company incorporated in January 2011.

In addition to winning the CAP grant, Synairco is in line for another grant, but Shopis says she can’t discuss details of that funding yet. The company also won $15,000 in last year’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition. The firm won the contest’s green business category.                                 

SYRACUSE  —  Electronic medical records (EMR) are leaving the confines of the hospital and heading home with patients, Upstate University Hospital said Jan. 25.

The hospital unveiled Upstate MyChart, a system that gives patients access to their EMRs on home computers, smartphones, and tablet computers. Data available to patients ranges from information on their medical histories to physicians’ notes from medical appointments.

Upstate is making the system available to its outpatients over the course of the year. Upstate MyChart was first available Jan. 25 to patients at the hospital’s Family Medicine practice, and its Department of Pediatrics is scheduled to offer the service in March.

Upstate University Hospital moved quickly to implement Upstate MyChart because of Medicare and Medicaid incentives for using EMRs, according to Teresa Wagner, chief information officer. Those incentives were part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the federal stimulus bill), she says.

The incentives could be worth about $15 million across Upstate’s physician practices, Wagner estimates.

Upstate MyChart also fits in with the hospital’s work with HealtheConnections RHIO Central New York, a regional health-information organization that oversees the area’s Health Information Exchange (HIE). An HIE uses EMRs to give authorized medical providers access to patient information and medical histories in real time.

“We will be sending data [to the HIE] just as we do today from our existing systems,” Wagner says. “In some cases where certain offices had been on paper almost entirely, they’ll now be in a position to send electronic information.”

Patients will be able to use Upstate MyChart to access results from on-site lab tests, lists of their known allergies, and their medical histories. Also, they can use the system to send electronic messages directly to their physicians’ offices, schedule medical appointments, and request prescription refills.

Upstate plans to expand the service to inpatient care after all outpatients are covered at the end of 2012. The hospital has no final timeline for moving the system into inpatient care, but it will eventually cover 60 locations and 900 practitioners, including Upstate University Hospital at Community General. 

“We have clinics all over Central New York, from Oswego, Fulton, to Auburn, all the way to Utica, Rome, and certainly into the Southern Tier,” says Dr. David Smith, president of the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University.

Upstate University Hospital, which is part of SUNY Upstate Medical University, used Verona, Wis.–based Epic Systems Corp. to design the EMR system. The vendor had experience working with other academic medical centers, according to Smith.

“It’s one thing to work with a hospital, but because of the complexity and size, it was important that they’d worked with large academic medical centers like the Ohio States, Vanderbilts, Mayo Clinics — that kind of thing,” he says. 

Rolling out Upstate MyChart to outpatients carries a price tag of $20 million — a bill being footed by University Hospital and University Medical Associates of Syracuse, which is Upstate’s faculty practice plan. However, the system could help make physicians eligible for the federal Medicare and Medicaid EMR incentives from the stimulus bill.

Expanding the system to inpatient care will cost an additional $20 million, according to Smith.

The hospital has hired 30 employees to help bring the system online and 12 workers to train doctors and staff members to use it. And it will probably have to add another 30 to 40 employees to make Upstate MyChart available to inpatients.

Most of the new hires will be retained after the system is completely in place, Smith says. Upstate will need them to stay on as support staff.

“Even on the training side, you have to have ongoing training because upgrades will occur,” Smith says.

SUNY Upstate is also in the process of building courses and a certificate program in the EMR technology, according to Smith. It expects to have a plan for the courses in 12 to 18 months, he says.

The medical university would set up training classrooms that would give students the opportunity to go online with mock patient data.

“What’s unique about us is we also have the university side of this to consider,” Smith says. “Ultimately we’d [like to] be able to teach this.”

The system is free for patients to use, and EMRs for each patient will be password protected. Upstate officials described Upstate MyChart as having “bank-level” security.

Other Syracuse hospitals plan to implement EMR portals similar to Upstate MyChart but have not yet done so. St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center plans to launch a website known as “MyStJosephs” that will contain personalized content this spring. It does not yet have a timeline for opening its EMR portal.

And Crouse Hospital also wants to allow patients to view EMRs remotely. The hospital did not release a timeline but said such EMR access is part of its strategic plan.    

ITHACA — A new life sciences incubator at Cornell University plans to help young companies get closer to market.

Plenty of early-stage companies in life sciences are swallowed in the so-called “valley of death,” says Lou Walcer, director of the new Kevin M. McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences. They might have enough funding to complete some initial work, but not the money or resources needed to prove an idea’s commercial viability.

“Facilities and programs like ours exist to fill that gap,” Walcer says. “And it is a huge gap.”

The center launched in early February with the help of a $7.5 million gift from the McGovern family, which includes Kevin McGovern, a 1970 Cornell graduate, his wife, Lisa, and their children, Cornell graduates Jarrett and Ashley. Cornell’s Research Division and NYSTAR’s Biotechnology Institute at Cornell also support the center.

The McGovern Center will help companies founded by inventors at Cornell’s Ithaca, Geneva, New York City, and Qatar campuses. Many of those inventors might be brilliant technologists, but need help with the business end of their operations.

Walcer expects to add three full-time staff members in the coming months, two of whom will be dedicated to helping incubator companies with tasks like business planning and attracting investment.

The McGovern Center includes lab space for up to seven companies, including some very early-stage firms that will work month to month on initial research. Other firms will be farther down the road in their development and work with the center on an annual basis.

Most businesses will spend about 18 months in the center, although that timeline is flexible depending on circumstances. The goal is for the firms to leave the program through acquisition by a larger company or with enough outside investment to continue work on their own, Walcer says.

“Two things that are critical in the life of a young life sciences company are time and money,” he adds. “You don’t have a lot of either.”

The McGovern Center will buy its tenants some of both, Walcer says. The facility offers the specialized, expensive equipment young life sciences firms need to commercialize their technologies plus the permits needed to actually do their work.

“Those can take years to get,” Walcer notes.

The center’s first occupant is Glycobia, Inc., which is developing techniques to produce human peptide, protein, and antibody drugs using common bacteria. Matthew DeLisa, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Cornell, founded the firm.

Walcer hopes to announce the center’s second tenant in March. Life sciences, he adds, extends beyond the health-care realm in this case.

While firms working in the pharmaceutical or medical device spaces will certainly be part of the center’s future, companies in areas like horticulture or food technologies are also eligible to be considered as tenants.

There have been fewer venture deals and acquisitions in life sciences in recent years, Walcer says, but those that have closed have been much larger than in the past. It’s becoming expected that institutions like Cornell will help incubate and develop the most promising of the technologies their researchers produce, he explains.

That reduces risk for investors or companies making acquisitions down the line, he says.

The McGovern Center is also striving to keep jobs and investment in Central New York. Left to their own devices, companies like the ones that will populate the facility often wind up in cities with strong life sciences clusters like Boston, Walcer says.

SYRACUSE — Representatives from Upstate Venture Connect have been meeting with groups from around New York State in an effort to spark the formation of more seed funds.

Both the Seed Capital Fund of CNY (SCF), which formed in Syracuse in 2007, and the Cayuga Venture Fund of Ithaca, which served as the model for SCF, have been successful in making investments in a number of early-stage companies over the years, says Upstate Venture Connect (UVC) CEO Nasir Ali, who also serves as SCF executive director. There’s no reason similar groups can’t launch elsewhere in the state or even in communities where seed funds are now operating.

“We have room in our communities for a lot more people to be angels,” Ali says.

UVC is a nonprofit group formed in 2010 to encourage the development of more small, innovative companies in upstate New York.

Organized funds like Cayuga and SCF have some key advantages over more loosely organized angel networks, Ali notes. Such networks in upstate New York often include individuals who made their money in traditional industries.

But the investment opportunities they’re presented with are often in cutting-edge, highly technical sectors.

“They’re being asked to make investments in things that they have limited knowledge of,” Ali says.

So frequently, a couple of angels in the network who do understand a business wind up on the hook for large sums. The problem is magnified if a young company runs into challenges.

Those couple of angels could then be asked to put up even more money. It’s a cycle that can easily result in a startup not making it through a rough patch, Ali says.

Using a fund model, where all investors contribute to a pool of capital, spreads out the risk. And it allows members of the fund to take advantage of each other’s knowledge, Ali says.

“At the end of the day, it’s possible to make up a $150,000 to $200,000 investment not in terms of three or [four] people writing $50,000 checks, but maybe 40 people participating by writing $5,000 checks,” he says.

Ali has met with groups in Rochester and Buffalo about starting seed funds in those cities. And he offered guidance to the organizers of Eastern New York Angels (ENYA), which launched in 2010.

The fund made its first investment in October, says Richard Frederick, a founding member of the fund and member of its management committee. It committed $150,000 to Ener-G-Rotors of Rotterdam.

The company is commercializing a technology that captures waste heat in industrial settings and elsewhere and converts it into electricity. 

In January, the group made a $200,000 investment in Paper Battery Co. of Troy, which is developing a thin, flexible power source with applications in fields like defense, health care, and consumer electronics.

ENYA adopted nearly the entire model used at SCF and Cayuga, Frederick says. It allows the group to work faster than an angel network. With a network, companies would come in, pitch, and then negotiate separate deals with interested investors, he notes.

“Generally, you’re not getting the kind of money you’re looking for,” Frederick says. “Now, a group comes in and you’re actually in the position of being able to write a check right away.”       

SALINA  —  Immediate Mailing Services, Inc. (IMS) is expanding and addressing a range of clients’ needs.

The company, based in Salina, offers a range of mail-sorting, printing, and direct-marketing services — it can print mailings like bank statements or advertisements, insert letters into envelopes, and presort mail so that the U.S. Postal Service delivers it at a discounted rate.

IMS also has the capability to generate and deliver electronic statements and advertisements. And the company’s diverse set of services are helping it grow.

“2011 was one of the best years in the history of this business,” says John Mashia, Jr., president and COO of IMS. “We’ve invested in technology, and our business has grown.”

Investments in technology at the company’s headquarters include two Pitney Bowes inserters that can insert up to 12,000 letters per hour into envelopes. The inserters, which IMS purchased in December, can handle a range of mail sizes.

Mashia declined to disclose the exact price IMS paid for the inserters. The company’s investment in technology, which also includes software, was “over seven figures” in 2011, he says.

In the last six years, IMS purchased a Xerox iGen3 printer and a Xerox iGen4 printer, which can print in color with variable names and data. Those machines enable the company to produce advertisements that contain details such as the number of reward points a specific customer has earned at a store.

IMS has 110 employees at its headquarters in Salina. Its employment rolls there have grown by about 10 percent in the last year, according to Mashia.

The company also has branches in Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester, as well as a location in northern Virginia that serves the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. IMS employs about 260 people companywide, and has added 50 employees in the last 18 months.

Mashia anticipates IMS will continue to add jobs, although he says its rate of hiring will depend on its growth. The company’s future openings will likely be in software development, information technology, sales, marketing, and finance, he says.

IMS partners with New York State Industries for the Disabled (NYSID), a not-for-profit that works for employment for state residents with disabilities. That has allowed it to fill some of its staff positions with workers who have disabilities, although Mashia declined to say how many people work at IMS as a result of the partnership.

“We’ve been able to place individuals with disabilities and give them an opportunity for employment in our organization,” he says. “We’re fulfilling a need we have, but we also feel we’re contributing to the community.”

IMS generated $82 million in revenue in 2011. Mashia projects revenue growth of at least 10 percent in 2012, which he says would be consistent with the firm’s growth in 2011.

Transpromotional bank statements are currently a major source of that growth, Mashia says. Transpromotional statements are bank statements that carry advertisements alongside standard statement information.

IMS prints standard and transpromotional customer statements for financial institutions like banks and credit unions. If a bank wants to send statements with promotional material, IMS can insert advertisements at the bottom or side of a page that are targeted toward each individual customer.

“You’re trying to focus that message based on the individual data you get,” Mashia says. “You might be a good candidate to refinance your mortgage.”

IMS directs the advertisements on transpromotional statements based on information its clients provide, Mashia says. He declined to name any of the company’s clients.

Many financial institutions are migrating to transpromotional statements, according to Mashia. IMS can also produce electronic statements and bills, although some industries are adopting electronic communications more quickly than others, he says.

“Both in collections and medical billing, we’re seeing a very slow migration,” Mashia says. “People don’t want to see an e-statement as their doctor’s bill. They want to touch it.”

IMS started offering electronic services such as e-statements in the last five years. The company declined to disclose the portion of its revenue that comes from e-statements, but Mashia indicated that revenue from the service is growing at more than 10 percent per year.

Mashia says IMS has added new services since its owner and CEO W. Lee Vanderpool, Jr. started it in 1986 in DeWitt as a firm specializing in presorting mail. That is still a major part of its business — it sorts more than 3 million pieces of mail per day across its facilities — but it started printing in the early 1990s.

“People came to us with a need,” Mashia says. “We evolved into other business units.”

IMS clients include banks, credit unions, insurance underwriters, medical providers, colleges, transportation service providers, nonprofit groups, government agencies, and solicitation agencies.                        

SYRACUSE — ZeroDraft opened its third office in January and has plans for even more expansion in 2013 or 2014.

The Syracuse–based company provides services like insulation and air sealing, replacement windows and doors, energy assessments, heat and cooling, and more to residential and commercial customers. The firm’s third office, in Buffalo, opened last month with six employees, plus another three coming on board in early March, ZeroDraft Chief Operating Officer Mike Borek says.

By early July, the company expects to have 15 employees in Buffalo and 17 to 20 by the end of the year. The expansion to western New York comes on top of the addition of 20 new employees companywide in 2011, Borek says.

ZeroDraft now employs about 90 people.

Buffalo’s housing stock is similar to Syracuse, Borek says. There’s just more of it.

“It’s bigger on all fronts,” he says. “And we felt like a lot of the things that would plague a home in Central New York would be the same there.”

Distance wasn’t a factor either. The company has already learned to manage a remote office with its Albany location and the distance from Syracuse to Buffalo is about the same.

Also, the company’s two previous markets were doing well.

“We did see good growth from our existing markets,” Borek says. “That’s what gave us even more confidence to expand.”

ZeroDraft will focus initially on residential work in Buffalo, Borek adds. The jobs tend to be smaller in scale and can be completed more quickly than commercial projects, so the company is able to ramp up the residential side of the business faster. 

But Borek says ZeroDraft will start seeking commercial work in Buffalo this summer. Some of the new hiring expected this year will come as the commercial business in the market grows.

Companywide, the commercial-residential split is about 50-50, Borek adds.

He says the firm is definitely looking at expanding to a fourth market. Rochester, the Southern Tier, and the Hudson Valley are all potential targets for a future location in the next few years, Borek says.

ZeroDraft’s growth has been driven in part by its sector, he adds. Interest in areas like building performance and energy efficiency has been rising in recent years.

Government incentives have also helped.

ZeroDraft expanded to Buffalo under a new brand name, UltraSpaces. The company will also use the new name in any future new markets, Borek says.

The business will continue to use the ZeroDraft name in the Syracuse and Albany markets since it already has such high brand recognition in those areas. But for the future, Borek says the firm wanted a name that implied a broader scope.

The name ZeroDraft, he says, could insinuate a focus on only air sealing and insulation. And while the company already provides services beyond those two, it may look to add even more in the future.

ZeroDraft has plans to start working with renewable energy, particularly solar power, Borek says. That could include solar-powered hot-water systems as well as the use of solar cells to generate electricity.

“We like the generality of the name,” Borek says. “It could accommodate growth into other energy-related areas.”   

SYRACUSE  —  Organizers of CenterState CEO’s annual business show are making several moves this year — on the map, on the calendar, and in planning and promoting the event.

CenterState has decided to hold the show, which is in its 20th year, on Oct. 25. That is about seven months later than it has been held in past years.

It also chose to return the show to the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at the Oncenter in downtown Syracuse. The event has not been held downtown since 2007, and has been at the New York State Fairgrounds in Geddes in recent years.

“We wanted to bring something bigger and better to the business community,” says CenterState Vice President of Chamber Services Jane Amico. “[Bringing the show downtown] really provides some great access in a venue that is really conducive to trade shows.”

This will mark the first time the show has ever taken place in the fall, Amico says. Last year, the show was held March 24. But the October date is a better fit for businesses, according to Amico.

“Companies are making their critical business decisions in the fall,” she says. “It’s the time that we have heard back from our members is the best time.”

CenterState CEO is a private, not-for-profit business-leadership and economic-development organization that covers 12 counties and represents more than 2,000 members. 

The location and date aren’t the only changes for this year’s show, which CenterState is calling the Time Warner Cable Business Class CenterState Business Showcase. CenterState is also revamping the showcase to improve its quality and increase its regional presence, Amico says.

The organization is partnering with Syracuse–based Galaxy Communications to upgrade the show. Galaxy is a radio-station owner that also has an events division, called Galaxy Events. That division helps put on events such as Onondaga County’s Lights on the Lake and also owns Taste of Syracuse. 

Galaxy Events will help find sponsorships for the business showcase and build its marketing. Galaxy Communications owns 14 radio stations in Syracuse, Oswego, and Utica, and it will advertise the business showcase on those stations, according to its president and CEO, Edward Levine. 

Galaxy Events is also bringing some major speakers to October’s show, Levine says. They include former Syracuse University running back Floyd Little, who owned automobile dealerships after he retired from football, and Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc. co-founder Jerry Greenfield.

The show’s roster of speakers is not yet complete. Galaxy plans to add more speakers who play a major role in the business world, Levine says.

“It’s going to take a decidedly national profile with an emphasis on what’s happening locally and regionally in upstate New York,” he says. “Our goal is not to have it be the best business show ever in Syracuse. Our goal is to have it be one of the better business shows in the United States.”

Galaxy is taking financial responsibility for improvements such as bringing in the speakers, according to Levine. He said the company’s commitment is “well into six figures” but did not disclose a specific amount.

“Obviously the speakers come with a price tag, and trying to upgrade the show, there’s going to be increased expenses,” he says.

CenterState CEO and Galaxy have signed a two-year contract to work together on the business showcase for two years. A ticket to attend this year’s show will cost $5, and CenterState expects this year’s event to attract more than 8,000 attendees.

Prices for exhibitors are not changing from last year, Amico says. Last year, exhibitors who were CenterState members paid between $575 and $725, depending on their number of employees. Non-members paid $675 to $825. Anyone who wants to reserve exhibit space can do so at CenterState’s website, www.centerstateceo.com.

SYRACUSE  —  Solvay Glass is preparing to open a new window of opportunity this spring with a renovated showroom. 

“Getting people into the showroom is going to be exciting now,” says Lisa Husnay, marketing director at Solvay Glass. “We’ve got beautiful displays.”

The business is in the process of redoing the showroom at its headquarters at 735 Erie Blvd. West in Syracuse. Improvements include new lighting, new tile floors, and fresh product displays. Workers are also moving some showroom walls to give the area a more open feel.

Solvay Glass employees are performing the renovations, which are scheduled to be completed in time for a grand showroom opening in April. The remodeling will likely cost between $75,000 and $100,000, although the company does not have a final price tag because the work is not complete.

The Syracuse headquarters, which is the company’s only location, is 20,000 square feet. About 7,000 square feet are dedicated to showroom and office space, while warehouse space makes up the remaining 13,000 square feet.

Solvay Glass has owned the building since 1995, when it purchased the structure for $450,000, according to records from the Onondaga County Office of Real Property Tax Services. Solvay Glass’s original home was 1209 Milton Ave. in Syracuse.

Solvay Glass installs storm doors, windows, custom-designed shower enclosures, mirrors, and sunrooms. It also repairs glass and screens, finishes basements, and installs bathtubs and bath liners.

In February, the company switched to a new bathtub and bath-liner supplier — Palatine, Ill.–based Bath Planet. The new supplier’s products come in a range of colors and styles that are a far cry from traditional white bathtubs, Husnay says.

“A liner is a liner — that’s what we all fell into,” she says. “Now? No way. It’s more exciting. It’s one of the things you look for.”

The new line of bathtubs should help Solvay Glass increase its share of the Central New York bath market, according to Charles Cometti, company owner and general manager.

He estimates the business has about 5 percent of the local bath market now, but believes it could grow to 15 percent to 20 percent.

“This is like the next generation of bath and shower remodeling,” he says. “It meets the styling of the bathrooms today.”

And bathrooms are often in need of updating, according to Cometti.

“Bathrooms get dated relatively quickly today,” he says. “Unfortunately, today builders are using less-expensive materials just to stay competitive.”

Cometti, who is the son of Solvay Glass founder Henry Cometti, declined to name the company’s former bathtub supplier. He also did not reveal the share of the company’s business that comes from bathtubs and bath liners.

Solvay Glass generated between $4 million and $5 million in revenue in 2011, Cometti says. He expects that to grow 10 percent or more in 2012, which would put revenue over the $5 million mark.

He also expects to boost employment in the next several years. Solvay Glass currently employs 35 full-time employees and 12 to 15 seasonal workers. The business could expand its work force by about 10 percent over two years, Cometti says. That would match the company’s employment growth in recent years — its employment rolls grew by 10 percent in the last two years.

Solvay Glass serves areas within a 60-mile radius of Syracuse. Cometti says the business may consider expanding its territory in the next year to 90 miles or 120 miles. However, that expansion would not involve adding a second location.

OSWEGO — Gentiva Health Services, Inc. decided to move from its home of five years in Oswego to accommodate increased staffing levels that left its longtime office bulging at the seams.

“We’ve really just outgrown the space,” says Bernadette Schuffenecker, branch director of Gentiva’s Oswego office. “We would have been happy to stay [in place] if we weren’t growing.”

The home-based health-services provider decided to relocate its Oswego office from 335 W. First St. to 19 Fourth Ave. in Oswego. It had been looking for new office space for about a year, Schuffenecker says.

Gentiva’s new office is 4,940 square feet, giving it more space than it had at West First St., where it leased 3,500 square feet. The company is leasing its new home from Hillside Commons, LLC.

The new space was necessary because Gentiva added 11 employees in Oswego in the last year. It had 17 full-time employees and two part-time workers at the beginning of 2011 and now employs 27 full time and three part time.

It made the new hires because the number of patients in Oswego County grew, Schuffenecker says. The office served about 125 patients at the beginning of 2011, while it now serves 190.

Gentiva Health Services, Inc. is a national home-health and hospice company based in Atlanta with more than 475 locations across the United States, including Central New York offices in Auburn, Liverpool, Oswego, and Utica. Its New York locations do not provide hospice services, according to Schuffenecker.

The company’s Oswego office provides nursing and rehabilitation services to senior citizens. Employees work with senior citizens in their homes but need office space to do paperwork, complete billing, and communicate with physicians, Schuffenecker says.

“A lot of our patients need physical therapy to get them moving so they aren’t homebound,” she says. “We do a lot of work after knee replacements and joint replacements.”

Gentiva also operates a program known as Safe Strides, aimed at people who have balance problems and are at risk of falling. Therapists work with patients so they can move around their homes and leave their homes safely.

Other therapy services the Oswego office administers include occupational therapy and speech therapy, Schuffenecker says. Those therapies can help seniors live independently in their homes, she adds.

The office’s nursing services include wound care and infusion services, which deal with intravenous medications. And the Oswego office helps set up medication plans and teach seniors about potential side effects from medications.

“Medication is a huge part of our job,” Schuffenecker says. “When you get older you can be on 10 medications, and it’s really difficult to manage the medications.” 

The senior-citizen population in Oswego County is growing, and Gentiva anticipates demand for its services there will increase in coming years, according to Schuffenecker. The company is prepared to hire more employees in Oswego if it needs to and has made sure the new Fourth Avenue office has enough space for growth, she says.

“We looked for a space so we could grow another 25 to 30 percent if we need to,” Schuffenecker says. 

Pat Benz of the Bell Group, a Syracuse–based commercial real-estate tenant-advisory firm, represented Gentiva as it searched for its
new home, along with Jim DiDia of the Chicago–based real-estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. The Bell Group and Jones Lang LaSalle worked together to handle lease negotiations and space-plan consulting, while the Bell Group provided a market review.

The new space on Fourth Avenue required new walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as electrical, data-line, and phone-line work, according to Schuffenecker. Hillside Commons, LLC coordinated the work, and expenses were built into Gentiva’s lease, she says.       

WATERTOWN –– Waite Toyota of Watertown, a fourth-generation auto dealership that has been serving Watertown and the Fort Drum area since 1929, is expanding and remodeling its facility.

Darrick Pleskach, general manager, says the dealership is participating in the nationwide Toyota re-imaging plan, and is expecting to put up a new sales center as well as a new service center in this year’s expansion. 

Waite Toyota of Watertown, located at 18406 U.S. Route 11, bought the building next door from DealMaker Ford of Watertown two years ago and leased it to Davidson Ford, which had acquired DealMaker. Davidson Ford moved Feb. 15 to its new location, just down the road.

Waite Toyota plans to start its remodeling project soon, with its contractor, Adams Center–based Widrick Construction, says Pleskach. He couldn’t specify a date. Waite is also working with Gymo Architecture, Engineering & Land Surveying, P.C. of Watertown on the project.

Pleskach says the dealership’s current site is about 14,000 square feet, but will expand to about 28,000 square feet when the renovation of the former Davidson Ford building is finished. He says that Waite’s sales, service, and parts departments currently share a building. But after the renovation, the new sales center and new service center will be located in separate buildings.

The former Davidson Ford building will become the new sales center for Waite Toyota, and the existing Waite site will still house its service and parts departments. The project will be completed in two stages. The dealership will stay in its current home while the new site is under construction. Waite Toyota will then move into the refurbished former Davidson Ford building while construction crews work on the current Waite Toyota structure. 

Pleskach, who has been working at the dealership for 18 years, says the business completed its last remodeling project 17 years ago, but it was mainly a cosmetic change rather than a structural revamp.

“Since then we have added another building for reconditioning and environmental protection,” he says. “We have also added the Scion brand and a new showroom for that.”

Pleskach says the new Waite Toyota service center will have a drive-thru lane so that customers can leave their vehicles for service without having to brave the elements. 

“It will be covered and heated,” Pleskach says. “It will have garage doors on either side of the building, and basically, it’s going to allow the customers to pull up to the drive door, the light will turn green, the door will open, the customer drives in and is greeted by one of the assistant service managers.”

He adds that the new center will have an express lube, and the dealership will update its customer waiting area by adding flat-screen TVs, food, and beverages to make it more comfortable.

“We knew there was a need for both of these but we did not have the space or capacity to facilitate such services,” says Pleskach. “Customers want their services yesterday, so the quicker we can get to the basics, the happier they will be.”

Pleskach says the total cost of this year’s expansion will be between $2 million and $3 million. Waite Toyota will obtain much of the financing for the project through loans from area banks. He couldn’t name the banks or provide dollar amounts.

He says Toyota will not directly help fund the dealership’s revamp, but it helps reimburse the dealership by providing added inventory of vehicles.

“They give us extra product that we wouldn’t normally have,” he says, “and we pay for that as well, but they allow us to get it, basically.”

A difficult 2011

Pleskach says 2011 was a trying time for both Toyota and the dealership.

There was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, “which caused us to be short on inventory throughout pretty much every aspect of the dealership … sales, parts, service … so last year was a down year for us,” he says.

Pleskach says the dealership sold about 1,100 vehicles last year, with about 60 percent of them new vehicles and 40 percent used. He says the dealership’s five best sellers in 2011 were the RAV4 (79 sold), Tundra (68 sold), Camry (64 sold), Corolla (56 sold), and Tacoma (53 sold). 

“Historically these numbers are higher, but as I said, we struggled to meet the demands of our customers due to the supply shortages caused by the disaster in Japan,” he says. “The supply has now caught up and we will be in full swing for 2012.”

Pleskach predicts that the dealership’s revenue will grow 20 percent to 30 percent this year compared to 2011.

As Waite Toyota is expanding its facility, Pleskach says the 32-employee business is also gearing up to hire more employees this year.

“We don’t know exactly how many [new employees]; I guess we are going to fill the positions as the need arises,” he says.

Waite Toyota now has openings for service writers and assistant service managers.

Pleskach says the business relies heavily on its service and parts departments, which accounted for about 60 percent of the dealership’s revenue in the past few years. And, he projects that it is going to be able to do a lot more service from the new service center.

“I think it will be a more comfortable atmosphere after we get all of the construction done,” he says. “But I think the biggest hurdle would just be getting through the construction …”

Waite Toyota is aiming to complete the remodeling project before next winter.