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POMCO on track to finish headquarters addition this winter
SYRACUSE — The expansion of POMCO Group’s headquarters in Syracuse is on pace to wrap up by March. POMCO broke ground on the addition to its building at 2425 James St. in the city’s Eastwood section in early 2012. Construction crews are adding about 18,000 square feet of space over two floors to the building, […]
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SYRACUSE — The expansion of POMCO Group’s headquarters in Syracuse is on pace to wrap up by March.
POMCO broke ground on the addition to its building at 2425 James St. in the city’s Eastwood section in early 2012. Construction crews are adding about 18,000 square feet of space over two floors to the building, which had stood at just over 77,000 square feet before the start of work.
The enlarged building will have some space for retail businesses. But the primary purpose of the increased square footage is to give POMCO more space for current employees and new employees. The company, which specializes in administering employee benefits like medical, dental, and disability benefits for self-funded health and risk-management plans, will need the space, according to its marketing manager, Eboni Britt.
“In addition to gaining new clients, which is the norm each year for us, we have a couple of new initiatives that we’re working on that have led to our office expanding,” she says. “We are partnering with a health-insurance company that will give us an opportunity to offer some fully insured plans. That’s an initiative for 2013.”
The partnership should be in place by the end of the first quarter of this year or the beginning of the second quarter, Britt adds. But she declines to offer any more details at this time.
POMCO is also working to prepare to administer the benefits for the first Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) in New York. CO-OPs, nonprofit health-insurance plans that aim to offer affordable insurance to individuals and small businesses, are called for in every state under the 2010 federal health-care reform law.
In May, POMCO announced that it had been selected to administer the CO-OP by Brooklyn–based Freelancers Union, a 170,000-member national nonprofit organization of independent workers. Freelancers Union sponsors the new CO-OP in New York.
The plan is slated to start accepting enrollment this fall with coverage starting at the beginning of 2014. Freelancers Union and POMCO have estimated the CO-OP will cover 100,000 people in the state within seven years.
If it does so, POMCO could add as many as 100 employees over that time period. It has hired for 27 new positions in the last year and currently employs 400 people, with 340 being in Syracuse.
“We’ve been hiring pretty steadily,” Britt says. “We just completed a training class that has 18 people who just came onboard.”
Beken Contracting Services LLC of Syracuse is the general contractor for the project enlarging POMCO’s James Street building, while the Syracuse architect Robert Abbott is its architect. POMCO is not sharing expansion costs or sources of financing.
POMCO generated $51 million in administrative revenue in 2011. Its premium equivalents that year exceeded $1 billion. Its senior executive vice president, Donald Napier, said in May that the firm was projecting 8 percent to 10 percent revenue growth in 2012.
In addition to its headquarters in Syracuse, POMCO has offices in Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, Watertown, Westchester, and New York City. It was founded in 1978 and has a health and dental division, risk-management division, employee-benefit statements division, and commercial-services division.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
New magazine targets Syracuse-area interest in wellness
ONONDAGA — The publisher of THRiVEcny says the Central New York market is primed for the free monthly health and wellness magazine that hit shelves at the turn of the year. “Syracuse is really at the forefront of the trend with integrative medicine in the community,” says Sue Wallace, publisher of THRiVEcny. “A couple of
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ONONDAGA — The publisher of THRiVEcny says the Central New York market is primed for the free monthly health and wellness magazine that hit shelves at the turn of the year.
“Syracuse is really at the forefront of the trend with integrative medicine in the community,” says Sue Wallace, publisher of THRiVEcny. “A couple of area hospitals are starting to incorporate integrative medicine into the care and recovery of their patients. It was just so exciting thinking Syracuse is ahead of the trend.”
Integrative medicine blends traditional medical techniques with other forms of caring for the mind, body, and spirit — from chiropractics to the Japanese technique called Reiki. THRiVEcny is trying to capitalize on the field’s growing popularity with its pages focused on health and wellness.
“What we hope to present with this magazine is that we all need to take responsibility for our own wellness, rather than just depending on our doctor to be well,” Wallace says. “People are looking for more opportunities to help with their health and wellness.”
The magazine’s premier issue hit newsstands Dec. 28. It is currently distributed at over 60 pick-up points in Onondaga County as well as Cazenovia and Oneida. Pick-up points include grocery stores, hospitals, medical centers, medical offices, fitness centers, and advertisers’ businesses.
Virginia–based Dominion Distribution coordinates distribution at retail locations, and Wallace intends to add more pick-up points in the coming months. Runs of 12,000 magazines are set to be distributed every month. The first issue had 36 pages, and Wallace hopes subsequent issues will be thicker.
THRiVEcny aims to grow a “pass-on” readership, according to Wallace, who worked in sales, development, and management before helping to found the magazine. She says her research shows that every copy of the magazine could have two readers. Some magazines will be passed from friend to friend, and others will be read by multiple people in doctors’ offices, she continues.
“Being a free publication, people are picking it up because they want to read it,” Wallace says. “Putting them in places like doctors’ offices where people are sitting there and they have time to read through, the readership would be more than the circulation number.”
Wallace and THRiVEcny co-founder Lisa Cavallaro — a master certified coach, certified weight-loss coach, Reiki master, and founder of Blue Rose Coaching who also serves as the magazine’s editor — are currently the magazine’s only two employees.
The publication also includes the work of contributing writers, probably numbering about nine per edition, according to Cavallaro. The owners would like to add more employees as growth dictates.
The magazine generates revenue entirely through advertising sales, Wallace says. She and Cavallaro are not sharing revenue totals or projections at this time.
They currently run the publication from their homes. Dual Printing Inc. of Cheektowaga, near Buffalo, prints the publication.
“I see many people running businesses from their homes with people working remotely, and it works,” Cavallaro says. “As a coach, I’ve been working from my home for years.”
Issues of THRiVEcny will contain a range of articles. For example, the premiere issue had articles on integrative medicine and the Dalai Lama, who visited Syracuse in October. Every edition is also slated to contain monthly features aligned around themes including “eat,” “move,” “connect,” “spin,” “thank,” “breathe,” and “prosper.”
“Each month we have articles that fit in for each one of those monthly features, as well as some others,” Cavallaro says. “The whole idea for this magazine is that we want to keep it simple, very easy to read.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
Titan eyeing new CNY sector after being acquired
Titan Insurance & Employee Benefits Agency, LLC could be reaching into a new sector in and around Syracuse after being acquired by U.S. Retirement Partners. “The expansion to the Central New York market will be driven by two factors now,” says Eric Gilbert, Titan’s executive vice president. “We have what I call the corporate market.
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Titan Insurance & Employee Benefits Agency, LLC could be reaching into a new sector in and around Syracuse after being acquired by U.S. Retirement Partners.
“The expansion to the Central New York market will be driven by two factors now,” says Eric Gilbert, Titan’s executive vice president. “We have what I call the corporate market. But we’ll now have the K-12 space.”
Rochester–based Titan was already working its way into the Syracuse area’s corporate market. In early 2012, it opened a branch office in Salina focused on finding clients in the region with 50 or more employees. But when Iselin, N.J.–based U.S. Retirement Partners acquired the firm in early December, it pushed Titan toward serving public employers as well.
The New Jersey company made Titan part of its U.S. Employee Benefits Services Group. A majority of that group’s clients are public entities like school districts.
Adding the K-12 sector has already led Titan to take on employees. It hired a regional business manager in Long Island and opened an office there. That brought its total number of employees to 16.
“When we were approached and acquired, there was a lot of desire on U.S. Retirement Partners’ part to expand their coverage of the K-12 market of employee benefits on the island,” Gilbert says.
Titan’s staffing growth isn’t over. The firm is looking for a regional business manager who would work from Central New York, or possibly Rochester. And, it needs to hire a person to replace a departed employee in Salina. Titan temporarily shuttered its Salina office at the end of September after its sole Central New York employee left the company.
The firm’s office in the Syracuse area will reopen, although it may not be in Salina, according to Gilbert.
“We’re going to open it back up,” he says. “We’re likely going to have two people there. We talked about going more downtown, so we’re looking around at some space.”
Titan hopes to conclude the search for a replacement for its previous Salina employee soon, Gilbert adds. Then it will likely hire the regional business manager at the end of the first quarter, he continues.
Neither Titan nor U.S. Retirement Partners disclosed the financial terms of the acquisition. Michael Gurowski, Titan’s founder, will remain with the company as its president.
Titan will also operate under its own name in all of its current markets, except Long Island. Its Long Island operations will be branded under the U.S. Employee Benefits Services Group banner, according to Gilbert.
“In the local markets, in what I would call the Thruway markets, Buffalo through Utica, we’ll continue to use Titan because of our brand presence,” he says. “In the K-12 market in Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, where we’ll be expanding quickly, it will be U.S. Employee Benefits Services Group.”
Gilbert declines to share revenue totals for Titan or its new owner. U.S. Retirement Partners has 24 regional partner firms and serves over 1 million clients.
Titan, founded in 2006, has more than 600 employer clients. In addition to its Rochester headquarters and Long Island office, it has an office in Canandaigua. The Canandaigua office is a satellite that Rochester–based employees typically use to meet clients, Gilbert says. Titan remains committed to expansion in Syracuse, he adds.
“Syracuse was looked at as a place to grow and build there and call a second home,” Gilbert says. “Our goal is to have a staff there and have a presence there.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
Syracuse in line for Q1 hiring despite plans dipping from last year
First-quarter hiring plans in the Syracuse area are down slightly from last year but still positive, according to a survey released in December. The Syracuse metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has a net employment outlook of 5 percent for the first quarter of 2013, found the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. The net employment outlook subtracts the
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First-quarter hiring plans in the Syracuse area are down slightly from last year but still positive, according to a survey released in December.
The Syracuse metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has a net employment outlook of 5 percent for the first quarter of 2013, found the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. The net employment outlook subtracts the portion of employers that expect to reduce staffing from the portion that anticipate hiring.
The region’s outlook fell from 7 percent in the same quarter last year and 7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012.
Still, the 5 percent net employment outlook foreshadows hiring at a “moderate pace,” according to Manpower, which is a division of Milwaukee–based ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN).
Cuts were planned at 7 percent of the Syracuse MSA’s employers, compared to hiring that was in the works at 12 percent. A majority of employers, 79 percent, expect to maintain their current number of employees, while 2 percent weren’t certain what they would do with their staffing levels.
However, the manager of Manpower’s branches in Syracuse and Oneida, Peter DeBottis, believes businesses may add workers at a slightly higher rate now that Congress has passed legislation pertaining to the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff.
“A lot of employers were interested to see what was going to happen with the fiscal cliff,” he says. “I think it was wait-and-see. Now that it’s been resolved, I think people are going to go back to functioning.”
Top jobs being filled through the Syracuse and Oneida offices include human resources, engineering, technical, and high-level sales positions, DeBottis says. And the offices are working to fill more permanent positions than temporary ones, he adds.
“So that’s a commitment,” says DeBottis, whose Manpower territory stretches from the west of Auburn to the east of Utica and from Lowville in the north to Tully in the south. “Those are more high-dollar positions, and that’s a commitment for growth.”
The Syracuse MSA’s net employment outlook trailed the rest of the nation’s outlook. The national net employment outlook for the first quarter of 2013 jumped to 12 percent.
That’s up 9 percentage points from the same quarter of 2012. It’s also a 1-point increase from the fourth quarter of 2012 and the strongest first-quarter hiring outlook since 2008.
Nationally, employers said they planned to hire in 12 of 13 industry sectors measured in the Manpower survey. Those sectors included wholesale and retail trade, which had a positive outlook of 17 percent, as well as leisure and hospitality, which posted an outlook of 14 percent.
Other positive national outlooks were in professional and business services at 13 percent, information at 12 percent, financial activities at 11 percent, education and health services at 8 percent, government at 8 percent, mining at 7 percent, other services at 7 percent, durable-goods manufacturing at 5 percent, nondurable-goods manufacturing at 5 percent, and transportation and utilities at 4 percent. The sole sector with a negative outlook was construction at -2 percent.
Manpower polled more than 18,000 employers across the United States and in Puerto Rico for its survey. The staffing firm releases its Employment Outlook Surveys quarterly.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
Downtown gym expands with more space, upgrades
SYRACUSE — A fitness club in downtown Syracuse has expanded with the addition of new workout space and amenities, according to the Downtown Committee of
CenterState CEO forecasts steady growth for 2013
SYRACUSE — CenterState CEO’s Economic Forecast predicts modest but steady growth for Central New York in 2013. The business leadership and economic-development organization presented those
New course from eCornell focuses on new media marketing
ITHACA — Cornell University and eCornell are rolling out a new online course aimed at training hospitality professionals in new media marketing skills. The free
Carrols settles sexual-harassment litigation
SYRACUSE — Carrols Corp. has agreed to settle sexual-harassment litigation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that dates back to 1998. Carrols, a subsidiary
Faxton St. Luke’s eliminates 37 positions
UTICA — Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare slashed 37 positions in a mix of layoffs and eliminated vacancies, carrying out a round of job cuts it
Maines Paper and Food Service names CFO
CONKLIN — Maines Paper and Food Service, Inc. announced it has promoted Terri Deane to senior vice president and chief financial officer. Deane joined Maines
Stay up-to-date on the companies, people and issues that impact businesses in Syracuse, Central New York and beyond.