Mediacom, the country”™s eighth-largest cable-communications company, is building a new headquarters in the town of Blooming Grove and will consolidate a pair of regional offices there.
The company bought former farmland and adjacent properties and had created a contiguous 200-acre Blooming Grove parcel on Old Mansion Road in 2002. The $35 million, 110,000-square-foot facility is expected to create dozens of construction jobs and retain Mediacom”™s current 250 local jobs, with room to expand on those 200 acres.
The state also played a role with a multimillion-dollar incentive package.
Rocco Commisso, founder and chairman of its board, cobbled together his cable empire beginning in 1996, following in the footsteps of his former employer and mentor, Alan Gerry, who lured Commisso away from banking and into Gerry”™s lucrative cable business as his chief financial officer until Gerry sold to Time Warner Cable in 1995.
Commisso stayed involved in the growing telecommunications industry, at first working out of his home and then growing the company in much the same way Gerry grew his ”“ in small, underserved communities. Mediacom has a presence in 22 states with more than 1.3 million subscribers. The privately held company has 4,500 employees nationwide.
Now, Commisso is readying to merge Mediacom”™s current offices in Middletown and Goshen into the Old Mansion Road location, where 110,000 square feet of Class A office building is going to be constructed to house Mediacom”™s administrative staff.
“The Orange County Industrial Development Agency has given us a 15-year PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program and there will be some funding through Empire State Development,” said Tom Larsen, group vice president of legal and public affairs. According to a prepared statement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo”™s office, ESD provided Mediacom with an incentive package totaling $7.5 million.
“We started construction on Aug. 8, working on the access roads, and expect to have the project completed by September 2012,” said Larsen, moving its 220 full time employees and 30 consultants to the company”™s new headquarters. Â “We”™ve given ourselves a tremendous amount of space. Our long term goal is to grow.”
“We started with a vision of relocating to a state-of-the-art corporate park that reflected the high-tech nature of our business and that our employees would be proud to call home,” said Commisso in a prepared statement. “Along the way, we received tremendous cooperation and encouragement from town, county, state and federal governmental officials, facilitating our decision to remain and build in New York. While the state of New Jersey made an extremely attractive offer to move there, Blooming Grove is an ideal location for our Hudson Valley based employees. It is my hope that Mediacom”™s major capital investment in this project paves the way for accelerating economic development in Orange County.”
A native of Calabria, Italy, Commisso”™s family emigrated to the U.S. when he was 12. After winning a full scholarship to Columbia University, Commisso went on to work for Pfizer, then entered  banking until he was lured away from the financial world by Gerry, serving as his executive vice president and chief financial officer until Gerry sold Cablevision Industries to Time Warner. Gerry called his protégé, Commisso, “one of the last great pioneers of the cable industry” in an article in Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
Commisso has an armful of awards for his telecommunications expertise and entrepreneurial wherewithal.
He”™s on the board of directors of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and Cable Televisions Laboratories Inc., the National Italian-American Foundation and C-Span and is a member of the Cable TV Pioneers. He”™s a recipient of the Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership and was inducted into the Cable Center Hall of Fame in June. Locally, the Hudson Valley hasn”™t overlooked the cable entrepreneur”™s accomplishments. In 2010, he was welcomed into SUNY New Paltz”™ School of Business Hall of Fame and named Business Person of the Year.
News of Mediacom”™s decision to stay in New York was welcomed by Cuomo, ESD chief Ken Adams, and by federal, state and local officials. “As town supervisor, I am both proud and pleased that Mediacom has chosen the town of Blooming Grove as its new home,” said Supervisor Frank Fornario.
Larsen said the new headquarters is relocating to an area where “business is coming together ”“ particularly the Route 17M corridor between Monroe and Goshen.”
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