PepsiCo will leave Somers facility by early 2016

Five years after opting to keep its bottling division in the town of Somers, PepsiCo Inc. by early next year will relocate its operations and employees there to its offices in White Plains and Purchase, the company said Tuesday.

Tuesday”™s announcement from PepsiCo followed a recent announcement from Somers officials that the food and beverage industry giant, a major source of tax revenue in the town, will exit its 540,000-square-foot facility at One Pepsi Way by the first quarter of 2016. PepsiCo and its former spinoff company, Pepsi Bottling Group, which Purchase-based PepsiCo reacquired in 2010, have operated in Somers since 1989.

PepsiCo issued this statement Tuesday:

One Pepsi Way. File photo

“Housing our operations in Westchester is a strategic decision, based on the availability of talent, the strength and quality of infrastructure.

“We remain committed to business operations in the county ”“ through a combination of solely-owned and leased properties. However, after a regular review of our real estate footprint, we have taken the decision to exit our Somers facility.

“Employees working in the Somers facility will be relocated to our offices in Purchase or White Plains.

“The exit from Somers was not an easy decision as we have a history at this location. The decision to relocate allows us to achieve operating cost savings and further enhance internal collaboration.”

The Somers facility, headquarters for the PepsiCo Beverages Americas division, employed about 1,200 company employees and contractors when PepsiCo signed a five-year lease in Somers in 2011 and expanded into former General Motors Corp. space in the nine-story building. The expansion was aided by a $4 million grant from Empire State Development Corp. Town of Somers Supervisor Rick Morrissey said PepsiCo currently employs 1,200 to 1,400 workers there.

PepsiCo”™s lease signing in 2011 ended a roughly three-year effort by state and county officials and U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer to keep the Pepsi bottling group in Somers and counter an effort by Connecticut officials, reportedly sweetened by up to $30 million in financial incentives, to bring the company to Danbury. PepsiCo”™s lease agreement included a five-year renewal option.

“For the town, it was a surprise,” Morrissey said Tuesday of the company”™s decision to relocate. Yet he had indications last June that a move could be planned when PepsiCo”™s Somers landlord, Norman A. Sturner, founder and head of MHP Real Estate Services in Manhattan, expressed concern that PepsiCo had not signed a lease renewal.

Morrissey said the loss of PepsiCo will have no immediate impact on the town”™s tax base, which has long been buttressed by the presence of IBM Corp. and the Pepsi bottling division. He was optimistic that other tenants will be found by the building owner, with whom town officials will work to attract tenants to the facility, Morrissey said.

“It”™s a beautiful facility” close to the Metro-North Railroad commuter line and Interstate 684, the supervisor said of One Pepsi Way, which sits on a 206-acre property. “PepsiCo has been a great neighbor, but their leaving is not the end of the story.”

Morrissey said he has reached out to the Westchester County Office of Economic Development “just to put them in the loop” and will meet with Sturner and county officials in a coordinated effort to replace PepsiCo in Somers.

The supervisor said PepsiCo officials have said Somers employees will be moved to the company”™s office in White Plains and ultimately to its 45-year-old headquarters in Purchase.

“We have a number of Somers residents that work at PepsiCo” in the town, Morrissey said, “but they said there’s going to be no reduction in the workforce” with the relocation.

PepsiCo two years ago moved about 700 employees from its Anderson Hill Road campus in Purchase to newly leased swing space at 1111 Westchester Ave. in White Plains at the start of a $243 million, 30-month renovations project at its 440,000-square-foot Purchase headquarters. The White Plains space had been vacated about a year earlier by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. when it relocated its headquarters and about 800 employees to Stamford, Conn.