Engineering a rural recovery

Mechanical Engineering, May 1998 by Valenti, Michael

A veteran mechanical engineer helps rural communities attract industrial investment using a blend of business savvy, technical expertise, and government incentives. By Michael Valenti, Associate Editor

THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF mechanical engineers are often measured in technical terms-by designing manufacturing equipment, for example, that will substantially increase production or reduce manufacturing costs. However, mechanical engineers often play a lessheralded role as professionals who use their technical and management skills to foster job creation and corporate investment in regions seeking development.

One such engineer is Peter Cann, a mechanical engineer who helped foster three expansions and a relocation in Madison County, N.Y., boosting the employment rolls and tax base of a region that industry had left years previously. Cann traced a circuitous route to his present assignment, having graduated with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston. He began working for Carrier Air Conditioning in 1964 during his sophomore year and retired after 30 years in the technical, marketing-product-planning, and program-management divisions. Cann earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering and another master's in business administration from Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., during that time.

"I've lived on a 70-acre tree farm for 25 years," he said. "When Carrier relocated to Indianapolis, I did not want to leave, so I started a business designing World Wide Web sites, then joined the Madison County Industrial Development Agency as executive director in January 1996."

The state established the Madison Country Industrial Development Agency (IDA) as a public-benefit corporation in 1976. The agency answers to a board of directors and is partially funded by county contract. The IDA's mission is to increase jobs and expand the tax base in the county by serving as a business advocate in the community, providing assistance to business in financing, tax abatement, relocating, expanding, training, networking, planning, and reducing energy costs.

Cann said his mechanical engineering and business background equipped him well for his duties at the Madison County IDA. "I can work with manufacturers because I understand technical issues, such as power requirements; with managers because I understand administrative tasks; and with owners because I understand the business aspects."

FROM TRACTORS TO LAWN MOWERS

Madison County is located approximately 20 miles from Syracuse and Utica in central New York. The 661-squaremile county's economy traditionally has been dominated by agriculture, a fact that shaped the county's industrial heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

From 1852 to 1892, Wood, Taber & Morse Steam Engines in Eaton, N.Y, designed and built steam engines used to power farm machinery such as threshers and corn grinders, according to Mary Messere, historian for Neighbors for Historic Eaton. She added that the company developed portable models able to be transported by horses to power cotton gins, woolen mills, and other agricultural machinery.

"By 1882, the company connected the engine to transmission gearing to make it self-transportable using all wheels once in the field," Messere said. "This was the first four-wheel drive and the precursor of our modern tractors." In 1892, the last of the principals died with no provision made for transition, and the company folded.

In nearby Stockbridge, N.Y, the Munnsville Plow Co. supplied farm implements from the mid-19th century until 1927. That firm's demise reflected the industrial trend of manufacturers leaving small towns to set up factories closer to major markets in larger cities. At the same time, workers could afford automobiles to commute from smaller towns to the big cities. Manufacturing would not return to Stockbridge for 60 years, when industry moved back from larger metropolitan areas to small towns in search of open space, lower costs, and a more attractive quality of life for its workers.

In Stockbridge's case, that company was Ferris Industries Inc. in nearby Vernon, N.Y The firm needed to expand its commercial-lawn-mower manufacturing a year ago because of burgeoning sales. It required a sizable piece of property to consolidate its manufacturing, sales, and warehousing operations at a single location. Despite being wooed by other regions around the country, Ferris was determined to stay local to reward the loyalty of its longtime employees.

"This made us inventive in our search," said company president Dave Ferris. "We looked at seven different sites until [we] identified the old Stockbridge high school and felt it would make an ideal headquarters." This property is a 15-acre site 10 miles from Vernon that comprises the redundant Stockbridge high school buildings, now superseded by a newer building.

The old school consisted of two 12,000-square-foot Butler buildings, steel structures that are ideal for conversion to manufacturing space, joined by the classrooms and gymnasiums. By removing the second story of the classroom building and linking the two buildings with a new 35,000-square-foot structure, Ferris will be able to move into its 55,000-square-foot facility for approximately $1 million, less than half the $2.5 million expense of building a completely new structure.