Connecticut companies join Start-Up NY in Hudson Valley

Two companies that launched in Connecticut will relocate to Ulster County and partner with SUNY Ulster as part of the state”™s fledgling Start-Up NY program to attract new and expanding businesses and out-of-state companies to tax-free zones on or near college campuses across the state.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that Mid-Island Aggregates Distribution LLC, based in Sherman, Conn., and Sustainable Waste Power Systems Inc., a Ridgefield, Conn., startup, will relocate their operations to Hudson Valley tax-free zones sponsored by SUNY Ulster, the two-year community college with a main campus in Stone Ridge. They are among 13 additional businesses that will expand or open in New York through the Start-Up NY program, in which more than 42 companies already participate, Cuomo said. Together the 55 companies have committed to create more than 2,100 new jobs and invest more than $98 million statewide, he said.

Job-creating businesses approved for the program will operate tax-free for 10 years, paying no state income tax, business or corporate state or local taxes, sales tax, property tax or franchise fees. Their employees will pay no state personal income taxes for the first five years in the campus zone. For the second five years, workers will pay no state taxes on annual income up to $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for taxpayers filing a joint return.

The mid-Hudson Valley is expected to net 44 new jobs with the arrival of the two Connecticut companies, which plan to invest a total of nearly $2.1 million in their new green-industry operations in the town of Ulster.

State officials said Mid-Island Aggregates will occupy the former Callahan Industries Plant, where it will remanufacture mine tailings available in the area and turn the waste material into construction products for landscaping, brownfield cleanups and construction projects. The company has identified numerous former mining sites as well as large reserves of sand, stone, and fine clay deposits scattered around the state. The company will create five new jobs while investing $1.54 million, according to the governor”™s office.

At Sustainable Waste Power Systems, “We”™ve been waiting for months and months” to be accepted into the Start-Up NY program and open an office at Tech City, the former IBM complex outside Kingston, said the company”™s founding president and CEO Christopher P. Gillespie. “We”™re really anxious to get this thing done.”

Gillespie, who launched the company in 2012 with his son Michael, currently has his office above the garage of his Ridgefield home. “We”™re pulling up roots here and going across the border,” he said. The startup has four employees.

Moving to Building 22 at Tech City, Sustainable Waste will work with contract manufacturers in New York to build and commercialize the company”™s patented small-scale, modular waste-to-energy conversion system. Marketed as GIPO, or Garbage In Power Out, the company”™s wet gasification technology to convert garbage and biomass into steam heat, potable water, chilled water for air conditioning and other products is the only one of its kind in the world, Gillespie said. The GIPO process reduces costs for users and produces more usable energy because it does not require waste to be dried before converting the material, he said.

Gillespie said the startup”™s Tech City space will serve as its engineering and operations center. State officials said Sustainable Waste will create 39 jobs there while investing $516,780.

In addition to its partnership with SUNY Ulster in the college”™s Start-Up NY zone, Gillespie said, the company will also partner with City College of New York, to which it has donated its prototype GIPO system. Its first project with CCNY in 2015 will be the construction of the world”™s first wet gasification lab, he said.

Established in 2013, Start-Up NY had 61 participating colleges and universities at the close of 2014, including 15 private institutions, among them Iona College, the College of New Rochelle and New York Medical College in Westchester County. State officials said the schools have established about 345 tax-free areas for new or expanding businesses to operate on or near their campuses.