Bigger is better for White Plains firm - Westfair Communications

2010_0801vhb0012 — Planners David Schiff, left, and John Saccardi on a terrace at 50 Main St., their company”™s new White Plains home. The Ritz-Carlton towers in the background are among the many development projects on which their firm has worked.

Partners for 23 years, John Saccardi and David Schiff describe themselves as “hands-on” in their White Plains planning business. On moving day, that means pitching in with principals”™ muscle and perhaps more cerebral skills, such as doorway navigational planning for office furniture.

Saccardi and Schiff this summer moved into their fourth and largest location in downtown White Plains since opening their planning business for public and private clients in 1988. This time, though, their presence was not required on moving day. Drop by when we”™re done, Saccardi was advised.

“It was somebody else”™s headache,” said Schiff. And most of the furniture did not make the move from the company”™s 5,300-square-foot office at 445 Hamilton Ave. Schiff said his hard work “was throwing out stuff” for relocation to a shredder.

The company move to a newly furnished, 9,000-square-foot office at 50 Main St. was made by the facilities staff at VHB Engineering, Surveying and Landscape Architecture P.C. A year ago this month, the partners made a more momentous move for their business and their approximately 15-employee staff when they agreed to sell Saccardi & Schiff Inc. to VHB, an affiliate of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. They are now principals at VHB.

Based in Watertown, Mass., VHB Inc. provides integrated planning, design, transportation, land development, engineering and environmental services from 22 East Coast offices from Vermont to Florida staffed by about 800 employees.

Its acquisition of the Saccardi & Schiff firm strengthens VHB”™s “tip of the spear” services, the planning at the front end of development projects, said VHB principal Ken A. Schwartz, who heads the corporation”™s planning practice. “Many of our recent acquisitions have been planning firms,” he said. VHB now employs about 65 certified planners.

Schwartz said VHB also plans to draw on Saccardi”™s and Schiff”™s expertise in affordable housing and community development consulting for its other East Coast offices, he said.

Saccardi said he and his partner about two years ago were contacted by colleagues at a planning firm on Long Island that had recently joined VHB, which was interested in expanding its planning operations in New York. VHB had its sights on the Westchester and Hudson Valley market, where Saccardi and Schiff have been planning consultants to both municipalities and private developers and companies that include Cappelli Enterprises Inc., Avalon Bay Communities and Pepsico Inc.

“We were always interested in going into Westchester County, but we could never break into that market on our own,” Schwartz said.

“It”™s very difficult to serve the Westchester and north (Hudson Valley) market from Long Island,” said Saccardi. “To serve this market, you really have to be in this market.”

After a year of discussions, Saccardi and Schiff Inc. was purchased by VHB in October 2010. On Oct. 18, a year after the deal closed, VHB principals and staff will be joined by public officials to celebrate the opening of the new office at 50 Main, a Mack-Cali Corp building.

Saccardi said the acquisition follows a national trend in which smaller planning firms have joined larger companies. “It”™s been happening all over probably for about the last 10 years,” he said.

Had VHB been a 20,000-employee international company rather than an 800-employee company with a regional focus, “We wouldn”™t have done it,” Saccardi said. “It had to be the right fit for us. Those megafirms, you lose more than you gain” as an acquired small company.

Saccardi said the VHB affiliation allows the planners to offer clients a fuller range of project services, including civil engineering, landscape architecture, transportation development and traffic engineering, “in an integrated way.” It allows the firm to venture into new areas and take on development projects that it previously might have lost out on because of its limited scope of services.

“It”™s giving our staff a chance to spread their wings a little further,” said Schiff.

Schiff said the company relocated to make room for expansion. VHB plans to double its employee numbers in the White Plains office over the next five to six years, he said.

The new office”™s proximity to the downtown Metro-North Railroad station also attracted the company. Several VHB employees commute by train from Dutchess County and New York City.