A year and half after its plans to manufacture body armor in Kingston were announced with great fanfare at City Hall, Armor Dynamics Inc. is getting a new, 10,000-square-foot facility at the Kingston Business Park.
Original forecasts of 500 new Armor jobs have since been scaled back to 15. Fifty additional jobs may come later, according to the company.
The building will house offices and a research-and-development lab for the company, which plans to manufacture body and vehicle armor, as well as bulletproof vests, building components and other products there.
The products will utilize a new lightweight energy-absorbing material the company has patented, called Magmacore.
The impetus for the project was a $1 million grant obtained by state Sen. William Larkin, who was among officials with gold-colored shovels for the symbolic groundbreaking Oct. 30. Construction is due to begin this month, with the project scheduled to be completed in five months.
Officials at the groundbreaking heralded the company”™s products as contributing to the war effort in Iraq. “It”™s all about saving lives,” said David Warren, a managing partner of Armor Dynamics, noting the firm”™s five-person team represented a diverse background in business, security and manufacturing. Larkin said he had been convinced of the company”™s future success after viewing Armor Dynamics videos showcasing the products”™ velocity-resistance performance and visiting the U.S. Army”™s testing facility in Aberdeen, Md. Even if the war in Iraq “ends tomorrow,” Larkin said, the products could find a use “in crowd control, in the event people are stampeding in Washington, D.C., or New York City.”
The total cost of the facility is $1.8 million, with the Kingston Local Development Corp. (KLDC) paying for the difference with a conventional mortgage supplemented with business-park funds, according to Steve Finkle, the city”™s director of economic development, who was present at the groundbreaking. The city will lease the facility to Armor Dynamics, which will initially pay annual rent of $60,000. That amount will increase to $79,000 the third year, $105,000 the 11th year and top out at $120,000 the 16th year. After 20 years, there will be a 10-year renewal option and the building will be reassessed.
Construction will be by Bette & Cring, a Latham-based firm that is no newcomer to Kingston, having built the Benedictine Cancer Center. Owner Matt Bette said 55 jobs would be created in the construction, including through local subcontractors.
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“As I tell every developer, it”™s a partnership,” Kingston Mayor James Sottile told the crowd. “We got it developed because it was a team approach.”
At last year”™s event at City Hall, company representatives said they were investing $20 million and would bring more than 500 jobs to the area. At the groundbreaking the projections were far more modest, with the new facility expected to attract about 15 jobs.
Warren, a former marine and mechanical engineer who has developed products for the gaming industry and lives in Stone Ridge, said that the company was still committed to phase 2 of its plans to construct a 60,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at the business park, which would bring in an additional 50 jobs, once the facility is up and running.
He declined to specify how much it had invested so far. Last year, the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research awarded a $522,800 grant to Armor Dynamics and its academic partner, SUNY Geneseo, to commercialize the ballistic panels that provide protection for military personnel, according to the state Foundation for Science Technology and Innovation Web site. The company also partnered with researchers at Alfred University.
Warren said the material incorporates the tetrahedron truss invented by geodesic dome pioneer R. Buckminster Fuller, which gives it both strength and flexibility. It has myriad nonmilitary applications, including strengthening structures to withstand the force of earthquakes and hurricanes, he said.
Remarks by several officials at the groundbreaking stressed the theme of persistence in bringing this project to fruition.
The park opened a decade ago with a new, 142,000-square-foot facility for Huck International, a Kingston-based manufacturer of fastening tools used in the aerospace and aviation industries that had outgrown its 40-year-old facility and was threatening to leave the city. The KLDC had obtained the 107-acre site, which is located on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River, from a mining company. The KLDC invested $3.5 million (much of it consisting of state and federal grants obtained from Larkin and U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey), matched by $6.5 million from Huck, to construct its building, which was viewed as the first phase of an industrial development that would amount to 350,000 square feet when fully built out.
However, finding occupants has been difficult, in part, said Sottile, because the buildings have yet to be constructed. The site is isolated from the city”™s main transportation corridors and construction of the business park was opposed by a citizens group. Finkle said 40 acres of the park, which is buffered from Delaware Avenue by woods, would remain undeveloped.
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Huck, which has since been bought by new owners and is now known as Alcoa Fastening Systems, owns its building. The KLDC chose not to follow that model in the case of Armor Dynamics because it is a startup and carries more risk, according to Finkle. The leasing arrangement ensures that the KLDC will retain control of the property should the Armor Dynamics venture fail. “This project represents a growth in our commercial tax base, and it”™s a break-even effort for us,” he said.
Because the park is in the Empire Zone, Armor Dynamics will be eligible for the various tax breaks associated with that program, provided the new jobs are created and the investment is made, Finkle said.
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