Lamar Advertising moves local office to DeWitt

DeWITT  —  Lamar Advertising Co. (NASDAQ: LAMR) is settling its Central New York office into a new location after purchasing a building on East Molloy Road.

The outdoor-advertising firm, which had been located at 745 W. Genesee St. in Syracuse, relocated to 5947 E. Molloy Road in DeWitt on June 18. Lamar, which is based in Baton Rouge, La., committed to moving about five months ago after deciding its former Syracuse home needed too many small updates, according to Richard Ruch, the company’s vice president and general manager at the local office.

“It got to the point where it needed too much for us to invest in the building anymore,” he says. “It was small things over time — the concrete was worn, the lighting fixtures needed work.”

Lamar closed on the purchase of its new building on June 8. Ruch declined to share the financial details of the transaction. 

The East Molloy Road facility and the land it sits on are tentatively assessed at $379,300 for 2012, and its previous owner was O & J Enterprises, LLC, according to the Onondaga County Office of Real Property Tax Services website. The building had been the home of the construction firm LaBarge Cos.,Ruch says. 

The East Molloy Road building is just over 15,000 square feet, he adds. That’s smaller than the West Genesee Street structure Lamar vacated, which was slightly more than 21,000 square feet. The company has placed the West Genesee Street building up for sale. It is currently attempting to sell the building privately with an asking price of $450,000.

Lamar did not downsize its local work force when it moved into the smaller location, according to Ruch. It has 15 employees at the DeWitt office, the same as it had before relocating.

Lamar could move into a smaller space because of changes to the billboard-advertising industry in recent years, according to Ruch. It no longer needs as much space to do work in its facility.

“Before we had a lot of labor involved in the office in the back end,” he says. “We used to paint and prep. Now our business has gone from that to vinyl billboards, which we warehouse, and electronic billboards.”

Moving into the East Molloy Road office required no major construction, according to Ruch. He estimates work being performed would be valued at less than $20,000, but Lamar employees are handling the necessary renovations in-house, he says.

Those renovations include some floor-plan changes, such as knocking down a wall to turn two rooms into one. Employees are also installing shelving that has been moved from Lamar’s former office on West Genesee Street. However, other changes, such as new carpeting, weren’t necessary, Ruch says.

“It is such a very attractive place inside and out,” he says. “I had my people up from Baton Rouge, and they said we can’t let this building get away.”

Lamar first considered moving from its office on West Genesee Street in 2008, according to Ruch. It put those plans on hold when the recession hit, he says.

The company’s Central New York operations had been headquartered at 745 W. Genesee St. since Lamar acquired Penn Advertising, Inc. in 1997. Penn Advertising had operated in Syracuse at the location before that, Ruch says.

Lamar’s relocated office’s territory stretches from Cortland to Watertown and Malone, and from Weedsport to Utica. The office’s territory includes all of Oswego County, as well. The company operates more than 700 billboards in Central New York, according to Ruch. 

The Central New York office is targeting nearly $6 million in revenue in 2012, he says, up about 5 percent from 2011.

Ruch would like to add some sales and clerical employees at the DeWitt office in the future, he says. Lamar’s plans to increase staffing at the location will be dictated by business growth, he continues.

Lamar has more than 800 media representatives across the country and an inventory of more than 155,000 outdoor advertising structures. The company reported $1.13 billion in net revenue in 2011.