Global Westchester: one leaving, one stays

Hundreds of manufacturing jobs will stay in downtown Yonkers, while almost as many jobs will be lost on Westchester”™s Platinum Mile office-park corridor in the wake of recent moves by two of the county”™s global corporate tenants.

In a deal greased by the state”™s economic development arm and announced by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. will keep 375 full-time jobs in Yonkers and invest $25 million in its U.S. corporate headquarters and manufacturing plant there.

In Harrison, Nokia Corp., the Finnish telecommunications giant, will close its U.S. regional office at 102 Corporate Park Drive and eliminate or transfer about 300 positions there as it carries out a global consolidation and shrinks its work force by 7,000 employees over the next two years.

Near the downtown waterfront in Yonkers, Kawasaki will buy and renovate the facility it currently leases at i.park Hudson in the former Otis Elevator Co. complex. Empire State Development Corp., the state agency, awarded Kawasaki a $500,000 capital grant for the project.

A subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., headquartered in Kobe, Japan, the rail car maker has based its U.S. operations in Yonkers since 1985. The company, which built its first locomotive in Japan in 1912, launched its rail transit business in the U.S. at the Wells Avenue plant with an order of 95 subway cars for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) line between New York and New Jersey.

Kawasaki secures an average of $460 million a year in contracts, according to state officials, and annually produces about 180 rail cars for various transportation authorities, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority”™s New York City Transit, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Two years ago, with a 10-year lease at i.park Hudson set to expire at the end of 2010, the Yonkers manufacturer was directed by its parent company in Japan to find a permanent base for its U.S. operations. Company officials said they considered multiple sites, including New Jersey and Nebraska, where Kawasaki 10 years ago opened a state-of-the-art rail car shell manufacturing plant in Lincoln, the state capital. The Yonkers plant”™s location at the center of the nation”™s busiest passenger rail corridor in the Northeast proved most cost-effective for the rail-car supplier.

“We are very happy to stay in our New York home,” Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. CEO Hiroji Iwasaki said in a written statement. “We had considered locations outside New York state for this, but based upon the tremendous quality of our work force here as well as the help provided by Empire State Development, the decision was an easy one to make. Kawasaki”™s philosophy is ”˜customer first,”™ and this proximity will allow us to respond to our customers”™ needs in a timely manner.”

For Nokia, the world”™s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, proximity to its major new partner in smartphone development ”“ West Coast-based Microsoft ”“ might have influenced the company”™s decision to close its Westchester office.

Officials at Nokia headquarters in Espoo, Finland, said approximately 500 jobs will be eliminated in the U.S. as the company reduces its research and development activities at its Nokia Inc. offices in San Diego, Calif., and at 102 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison. Operations will cease in Harrison, said Nokia spokeswoman Henna Pelkola. The consolidation will be completed by the end of 2012.

Nokia opened its Platinum Mile office in 2006 after extensive renovations to the 103,000-square-foot building that were part of the company”™s estimated $30-million office project. Vacant for 10 years, the building previously was occupied by Malcolm Pirnie Inc., which moved next door to 104 Corporate Park Drive. The downsized environmental services company last year relocated again to Westchester One at 44 S. Broadway in White Plains.

Nokia officials gave no timetable for pulling out of the county. The company has employed about 300 workers here. Nokia did not disclose how many of those positions will be eliminated or transferred.

Sunnyvale, Calif., where Nokia this year opened a 156,000-square-foot office and consolidated its San Francisco Bay area operations, will become the central site for Nokia”™s North American sales and marketing operations, Pelkola said.

The West Coast shift in operations serves Nokia”™s newly formed partnership with Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash. The companies this month completed an agreement to jointly develop a new global mobile ecosystem and reported significant progress in developing the first Nokia smartphone products incorporating the Windows Phone platform.

Nokia also will transfer its Symbian software activities, which includes about 3,000 employees, to its new strategic partner Accenture. Along with that move, an additional 4,000 Nokia employees will lose their jobs by the end of 2012. Most of the layoffs will be in Denmark, Finland and Great Britain.

Nokia expects to save 1 billion euros in 2013 when the consolidations and work force cuts are completed.

The company said all affected employees can stay on the Nokia payroll through the end of 2011. The personnel reductions will occur in phases, linked to the roll-out of Nokia”™s planned product and services portfolio.