New Jersey”™s loss is a gain for metropolitan New York and its technology sector, as Iona College has found in the Garden State its first business partner in the Empire State”™s 2-year-old Start-Up NY economic development program.
That partner, though, will not be moving to the college”™s urban campus in New Rochelle but instead to a Rockland County office park where Iona”™s Hagan School of Business has a graduate center for students pursuing MBA degrees.
Iona officials and Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month announced that Syncsort Inc., a big-data software provider for industries with an international list of clients, will relocate its headquarters from Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey”™s Bergen County to Blue Hill Plaza, a two-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office park in Pearl River. Syncsort has leased 50,000 square feet of space in 2 Blue Hill Plaza, the six-story, 550,000-square-foot office building where Iona operates its Rockland Graduate Center.
Syncsort CEO Lonne Jaffe said the company expects to make the 6-mile move across the state border in late spring after a build-out of the Pearl River headquarters. The company told state officials it will invest $2,895,000 in its New York location.
Jaffe said Syncsort has about 145 employees at its Woodcliff Lake headquarters, and he expects all to stay with the company when it relocates within a roughly 15-minute commute from its current location.
Operating in a designated Start-UP NY area, the company will pay no state taxes for 10 years. Employees residing in New York will pay no state personal income taxes for the first five years at Syncsort”™s new location. For the second five years, employees will be exempt from state taxes on income up to $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for taxpayers filing a joint return.
Jaffe said the state income tax exemption could be an incentive for some Syncsort employees to move from New Jersey to New York. “That”™s another ancillary potential benefit for New York,” said Jaffe, a New York City resident and former IBM Corp. executive.
Syncsort gives Iona College and particularly its business school a corporate partner known for its innovations in big-data processing, an academic focus at the Hagan school, which two years ago opened a Business Analytics Institute and a Center for Health Care Analytics.
“The fit from an academic perspective was the most important part in our decision to sponsor the company” in the Start-Up NY program, said Dan Konopka, director of corporate, foundation and government relations at Iona. He said the college, which has been approached by “dozens of companies” interested in the state”™s tax-free campus program, wanted to find “a manipulator of big data.”
Syncsort initially will work with Iona on big data in the health care field, Konopka said. Iona is working closely with a number of hospitals in the area analyzing aggregated health care data from electronic health records, he said.
Konopka said Syncsort has agreed to work with the college to develop course curriculum. Jaffe said the company”™s insights into changes in the technology industry could affect Iona”™s curriculum offerings.
Syncsort also has agreed to collaborate with Iona faculty on research projects and work with students majoring in computer science and information systems. Iona in turn could offer work-related courses for Syncsort employees, Konopka said.
Syncsort also will provide student internships ”“ at least four at the outset ”“ and has said it will help Iona graduates find employment in their field, he said.
Iona College President Joseph E. Nyre in a press release said the collaboration “is a partnership that we believe will be a model for others in New York and the nation.”
When joining the Start-UP NY program in 2014, Iona officials reserved 9,000 square feet of office space in two buildings on its main New Rochelle campus as a tax-free zone for companies. The state allows companies to occupy designated tax-free space at other properties where their partnering academic institutions operate, and Iona last March received state approval for a tax-free area at Blue Hill Plaza.
“That was a more viable location because we didn”™t have to give up anything” on the New Rochelle campus, said Konopka. For Syncsort, “The nice part about that was they were able to find the space that they needed.”
Before the state would approve Iona”™s bid to sponsor Syncsort in the Start-Up NY program, the college was required to survey the Rockland business sector to be sure the big-data software company will not be directly competing with other businesses in the area. The state Department of Labor also did its own survey, Konopka said. “They”™re careful not to bring in a competitor on a tax-free basis,” he said.
For Syncsort, said CEO Jaffe, Iona “is this incredibly rich source of potential talent for us.” The relocation also brings the 200-employee company, which has customers in 87 countries, into the “New York City tech ecosystem” and its fast-growing enterprise software sector.
“On a personal level, it”™s very meaningful or me as a long-time New Yorker” raised in Brooklyn, he said.
Syncsort, which Jaffe said has just under $100 million in annual revenue, last November was acquired by Clearlake Capital Group L.P., a private investment firm in Santa Monica, Calif. With Clearlake”™s financial backing, the software provider for health care, financial services, telecommunications and other data-intensive businesses will “double down on all of our strategies,” Jaffe said, and plans to do many more acquisitions of highly differentiated companies in the tech sector. Some of those acquisition targets are in and around New York City, he said.
At Blue Hill Plaza, Syncsort is leasing some of the 287,000 square feet of space vacated about one year ago by the Verizon Data Center, said James B. Tully, executive vice president in the Saddle Brook, N.J. office of CBRE Inc. CBRE is leasing agent and property manager for Blue Hill Plaza”™s owner, Glorious Sun (New York) Inc., a subsidiary of Glorious Sun Group, an international apparel business headquartered in Hong Kong.
Glorious Sun in early 2015 bought out its junior partner at Blue Hill Plaza, Robert Martin Co. in Elmsford, “so that they could have more flexibility in dealing with tenants and making decisions,” Tully said.
Other tenants in the plaza complex include Orange & Rockland Utilities, Hunter Douglas, Active Media Services Inc., which signed a long-term lease renewal last year for 100,000 square feet of space, Blue Hill Data Services, Rockland Business Association and Rockland Economic Development Corp.
“It”™s the number-one business address in Rockland County,” said Tully. Yet brokers marketing the property are challenged by fixed perceptions that Rockland County is a less desirable place to do business than neighboring Bergen County, he said
“Primarily our competition is New Jersey,” Tully said. Despite Rockland”™s office-market history, “We feel that”™s where there”™s a higher probability of success” in attracting tenants.
Syncsort”™s relocation is one such success.
