Small Steps...
Tech firm coming to city
Computer company to occupy redeveloped downtown mill building
Matthew McCormick
Staff Writer
An Upper Valley-based high tech firm on Wednesday announced plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Lebanon to Claremont's Wainshal mill building in a move city boosters said is key to downtown revitalization efforts.
Other key developers of the city's long-vacant mills said that the new tenant likely will be the linchpin that ensures the success of the district, moving the timeline for completion of the whole project up by years.
"This is a big day for the city," Mayor Scott Pope said of Red River Computer Company's presentation to the city council at its meeting Wednesday. "This changes the whole complexion of downtown ... It makes these mill buildings symbols of the future of Claremont."
Red River, a reseller of customized computer equipment, largely to the federal government, will be part owner of the six-story, 60,000-square-foot structure.
Upon council approval in January, the company will sign a purchase, sale and development agreement with two other mill district developers to revitalize the structure.
The partnership will include Rusty McLear and Alex Ray, the principals of Woven Label LLC, and John Illick of Sugar River Development LLC, who also own and are renovating nearby Petersen and Woven Label buildings.
Work on all three buildings - the cornerstone of the city's effort to revive commercial activity downtown - will begin in May and is slated for completion 12 months later, Illick said.
It is a timetable that puts the completion of the mill district project, which will bring in $25 million in private investment, years ahead of schedule.
While both Peterson and Woven Label were set for construction next year, city officials originally had planned to complete the Wainshal separately because of the difficulty of finding a tenant for the 30,000 square feet in the building's top three floors.
Illick said Red River's 60 New Hampshire employees - a number the company hopes soon will climb to 100 - will provide customers for the Common Man restaurant that will be housed in the Woven Label and buyers for the 47 condominiums that will go in the Peterson building.
And City Manager Guy Santagate said the spin-off will not be limited to the mill district.
"To say we are enthused is an understatement," Santagate said. "We are confident this project has the potential to transform Claremont for the better."
That is a vision shared by Red River, which began looking to relocate out of its cramped, 10,000-square-foot headquarters in Lebanon's River Mill Complex about five years ago, CEO Rick Bolduc said.
"We wanted to be close to a downtown area that was revitalizing ... we didn't want to go to an established community where the growth was all tapped out," Bolduc said.
Formed in 1995 with just four employees, Buldoc said the company now employs nearly 100 people in offices in Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina and California and boasts $100 million in annual revenues.
The company, which counts among its major clients the Army, Navy, Department of Homeland Security and NASA, still is growing at a rate of about 35 percent annually, Buldoc said.
That likely will mean an additional 10 to 20 hires annually at its Claremont headquarters, which houses a portion of Red River's sales team as well as its accounting and contract departments, he said. Though both Buldoc and Mann declined to discuss exactly how much those positions will pay, they told the council that they are "upper-end" jobs.
"All of our positions are really nicely paid," Mann said in an interview prior to the meeting.
Both Mann and Buldoc said they looked forward to tapping the area's labor pool and partnering with local educational institutions, such as Granite State College and the Sugar River Technical Center, to train them.
At first, Red River plans only to fill the 20,000-square feet in the building's top two stories and does not have plans for the remaining 10,000 it will own in the building.
The bottom two floors of the Wainshal will house an indoor pool and 34 rooms of a 44-room Common Man Inn that also will occupy the top floor of the Woven Label building.
The final floor will be used for office space.
