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PAETEC' plans for downtown headquarters scaled back
October 5
Steve O'Brien
Wham10.com
Rochester, N.Y. - PAETEC's new headquarters, located in Midtown, will not be as large as originally planned. When the new building is completed, the
new plans are for 9-10 stories instead of 25-35, and for 350,000 square feet instead of 500,000 square feet.
Arunas Chesonis, the companyâs CEO, says the struggling economy is to blame.
"What we did over the last three months is almost a reverse engineering
process where we said, ÎWhat would be the most cost-effective size building for the amount of space we need?âä
PAETEC serves 50,000 businesses nationwide, with 850 employees in Rochester. The new building would hold 1,500 employees as the company continues to grow.
Chesonis originally wanted to combine the four buildings already in suburbia.
He said, "Between now and the next couple of years there may be another building. To have all your people spread out in five or six different spots is just not effective for your customers.ä
The $100 to $120 million project would be 3.5 times the size of the corporate building in Fairport.
Architects from the DCS Corporation in Washington DC created the design.
"Actually I think it's going to be very attractive,ä said Debby Wilson, who works downtown. ãI think it will be a nice addition to downtown.ä
Chesonis explained that he wanted the new building to be "Most efficient, most exciting for a developer to own it, because then it's got the flexibility for multi-tenants down the road·if PAETEC was not to be there anymore 20-30 years from now.ä
The company expects to break ground in October 2010. If everything goes according to plan, Chesonis hopes everyone will be moved in the new building by late 2012. He said he plans on signing a 20-year lease, but he's not sure if his company will be a complete owner, partial owner, or tenant.
He indicated that decision would be made in the next nine months.
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