Tagged: eastman business park

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) was in Rochester Wednesday for a progress report on a high-tech project the state helped fund.

Three early stage companies - Intrinsiq Materials, Quintel USA and Omni-ID - have set up shop at Kodak's Eastman Business Park.

The venture-backed project was first announced two years ago.

Since then, the three companies have filled 39 jobs. The target date for the 250 jobs originally pledged is still about three years away.

"When you're working with emerging companies, it takes longer," said Greater Rochester Enterprise CEO Mark Peterson, who was involved in landing the project. "This is a milestone today because we're at a start point where now we're really going to start to see movement."

Kodak's Eastman Business Park (EBP) welcomed its newest tenant Friday. But the park's director says Kodak's bankruptcy is giving pause to some prospective projects.

"I will be honest, some of the very big ones - the $200-, $300 million projects - they've slowed down a bit as they try and determine what perhaps Chapter 11 might mean," EBP Director Mike Alt said Friday. "But most of the other projects are moving forward."

That $300 million project - a biofuel plant headed by the U.S. Renewables Group - is the centerpiece of the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council's strategic plan.

Solar firm Natcore Technology cut the ribbon on its new R&D center at Eastman Business Park Friday.

The official opening of the million-dollar clean room consolidates Natcore's R&D work in Rochester.

But getting funding for a solar manufacturing line remains a challenge.

Executives from foreign solar companies are descending on Rochester over the next couple of weeks, to hear a pitch from Natcore Technology.

“What we’re saying is, ‘If you want our technology, you have to take a hard look at it here,’ ” says Natcore CEO Chuck Provini.

Natcore has a small research facility at Rochester’s Eastman Business Park. For about a year, the company has been looking for money to establish a much bigger manufacturing presence in Rochester. But Natcore says talks with federal and regional officials have yielded no funding.

Now, Natcore is turning to solar companies from India, China and Italy for a possible joint venture that would make flexible solar cells on equipment that once made Kodak film.

But there’s a catch.

“It’s their money,” Provini says of the foreign companies. “And if they say, ‘Chuck, we really enjoyed the visit, but no,’ [then] we’re a business ... and we’ll go where we can best help save the world, not just a country.”