Photography pioneer Kodak embarks on a new business venture as an establishment landlord. After the company's bankruptcy, Eastman Business Park no longer operated on some of it buildings. Instead of machines and chemicals that were responsible for production of countless films, it will now house solar cell and medical marijuana dispensaries, while tomatoes now abound the exclusive rail line beside coal, as per Southeast Missourian.
Eastman Business Park had buildings and foundation similar to that of a small city back when people used cameras that relied on films for acquiring a good photo. Now, the 127-year-old icon has been brushed off by digital photography.
However, instead of auctioning its vast, 2-square-mile campus more popularly known as Kodak Park, the firm has capitalized on their structures and location to their advantage and be landlord to 58 different companies and still counting.
Michael Alt, retiring director of Eastman Business Park, said, "There's tremendous value in being able to repurpose the assets that exist here."
According to Vocal Republic, Kodak has enticed potential proprietors like Natcore Technology Inc., producer of solar panels and Lidestri Food and Beverage that makes use of the short-line railway to load the tomatoes it uses for its salsa and pasta sauces, with its state of the art manufacturing possibilities.
Apparently, the laborer capacity of the Kodak Park is 30,000, but experts believed that a realistic figure would be about 10,000-11,000 only. At the height of their reign during film photography days, there were above 50,000 employees working at Eastman Business Park, at present there are around 1,000.
Meanwhile, a member of the Finger Lakes Regional Council, Mark Peterson, said, "It was a potential challenge to have such a large footprint in the heart of our community potentially go idle or not be leveraged properly." The council, created by Governor Andrew Cuomo, was created to drive economic growth in the area, as per Dispatch Times.
Despite some huge losses, Kodak now manages to bounce back and make use of properties and facilities that they have to churn in profit for the company.
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