Syracuse, NY -- Facing difficulties recruiting young scientists and engineers, O'Brien & Gere is moving its headquarters to a hip, urban center — downtown Syracuse.

The engineering firm’s move from leafy suburbia to gritty Syracuse bucks a decades-old trend among retailers and businesses, who fled downtown as fast as malls and suburban business parks could be built. O’Brien & Gere was part of that flight, leaving their Syracuse office for Liverpool in 1972, and in 1988, moving to DeWitt, in a business park where it neighbors medical and credit union offices.

A new generation of employees wants something else, said Dot Hall, a senior manager. Surveying college graduates who declined O’Brien & Gere job offers, Hall learned they wanted to work in cities where they can walk to restaurants, shops and entertainment. It didn’t matter if the job offer was for an O’Brien & Gere office in suburban Detroit, suburban Philadelphia or suburban Syracuse.

The Syracuse office, which opens Aug. 30, will be the first of O’Brien & Gere’s 31 offices to move to an urban center, the first where employees will have to pay for parking.

Recruiting young employees isn’t the only reason for the downtown move. O’Brien & Gere’s spacious wood-paneled office complex in DeWitt, with a babbling brook flowing through a skylit atrium, conveys the wrong image in today’s lean and green engineering market. It is, by today’s standards, excessively luxurious.

"Twenty years ago, our core business was environmental issues, with the Superfund and lots of scientists and lawyers coming through," said Terry Brown, CEO. "Now it's more industrial, people in golf shirts and slacks, not suits and ties. The new office will be high-tech, an open-office environment that will convey a more contemporary image, that will encourage more collaboration, more intellectual collisions."



Brown himself is giving up an enclosed wood-paneled lair for a desk in an open office, his only privacy a white partition. He does have a nice view looking east over Syracuse.

Moving 350 suburbanized employees to a new urban office has its challenges. One was that nearly 30 O’Brien & Gere employees had never ventured into downtown Syracuse on their own, and many more were unfamiliar with it.

“A lot of people are intimidated by city settings,” said Hall. “The parking, the crime. As the suburbs have sprawled with conveniences, people don’t need to go downtown.”

Over the last year, O’Brien & Gere has been trying to lessen the intimidation factor, hosting events to help employees get acquainted with Syracuse.

It started last summer with drive-by tours. Highlights were the downtown farmers market, the federal building, the Washington Street parking garage and Armory Square — just a block from O'Brien & Gere's office-to-be.

Then came “Two Dollar Tuesdays” at the DeWitt office, when $2 bought a picnic lunch and all the money went to downtown charities. Charities set up information booths and sought volunteers.

Downtown restaurants came to DeWitt, offering food samples, passing out coupons and menus.

January and February were “downtown days” at O’Brien & Gere. Each week, businesses from a different retail or service sector would set up tables and introduce themselves. There were bakeries, dry cleaners, fitness centers, a child care center, clothing and novelty shops, hair salons, theaters and museums. For these businesses, O’Brien & Gere will be a welcome neighbor. Its salary and benefits payroll of $20 million averages $60,000 per employee.

Centro representatives visited. Employees explored different commuter bike routes to find the best ones. Engineers calculated every employee's commuting distance to downtown, and found the new location reduced the company's commuting mileage 20 percent.

The company held monthly meetings with employees about construction progress, parking concerns and their new telephone system. Employees tried out and voted on furniture and cubicle designs.

“We tried to be as engaging as we could in the hope that we were minimizing stress and anxiety of the move,” Hall said.

Last week over lunch, employees listened as John Marcon, a retired Syracuse police officer and director of the Downtown Committee’s security force, briefed them on downtown safety.

“Sometimes people walk around in a cloud,” he said. He warned employees to stay alert and mindful on the street, to not talk on the cell phone aimlessly. “People are watching you, sizing you up.”

Marcon also noted that downtown, one of Syracuse’s eight crime statistic areas, was one of the city’s safest. Police records bear that out. January to June of this year, only Eastwood had lower crime statistics. Marcon advised employees not to give money to panhandlers, but to give money to charities instead.

In Syracuse, O’Brien & Gere is leasing three floors at 333 W. Washington Street from The Pioneer Cos. In 2008, O’Brien & Gere sold its DeWitt headquarters for $7.5 million, freeing up cash for other investments, said Hall.

Transportation will be another adjustment. Employees will pay for parking at the Washington Street garage, but the company is picking up the tab for the first six months. After that it is enabling employees to pay for parking with pre-tax dollars.

The company is abandoning its motor pool of 15 vehicles, and will have an arrangement with Enterprise-Rent-A-Car for mid-distance business travel.

The company will bring other people downtown, too, averaging 50 to 70 visitors a day — customers and out-of-town employees.

“We are fed by work from outside Central New York,” said Brown.

With all the changes the move will entail, even employees like Jeanne Korchak are excited. A Binghamton native, Korchak went to work at O'Brien & Gere 17 years ago because it was in the suburbs. When she first learned about the move she was hesitant about it. A few weeks ago she attended the Downtown Committee's annual meeting. She was surprised to see more than 400 people there.

“This is a whole new world for us,” she said.

--Contact Dave Tobin at dtobin@syracuse.com or 470-3277.