Quick Notes: Trends & Talk About Town

By Dennis Quick

Last month, I visited my hometown of Rochester, N.Y., a place I had not seen in nearly 20 years. My three-day visit made me appreciate Charleston all the more.

It wasn’t so much the Rochester weather that had me longing for Charleston, although when my mother, brother and I arrived at Rochester International Airport, the temperature was 39 degrees. In May. (Of course, it once snowed there in June.) The previous day it was 80 degrees, we were told.

Such schizoid weather, which favors winter far more than spring and summer, was one of the reasons I packed my bags and kissed New York state goodbye all those years ago.

Nor was it the lack of lovely architecture, palmetto trees and ocean views that had me hankering for the Holy City.

What made me thankful to be living in Charleston was the deadness of downtown Rochester.

Rochester is the home of photography giant Eastman Kodak Co., whose headquarters are downtown. When I worked for Kodak in the early 1980s, there were more than 60,000 Kodak employees in the Rochester area. Layoffs over the years have whittled that number down to about 21,000. Word is that more layoffs are to come.

Xerox Corp. is another major Rochester employer. When I lived there, Xerox had about 15,000 employees. Today, there are only about 9,000 Rochester “Xeroids,” as we Kodakers mockingly called them. (The Xeroids ended up getting the last laugh. Kodak once competed head-to-head with them in the photocopier industry. In the 1990s, Kodak killed its copier program and got out of the business. Xerox is still in it.)

Massive layoffs do more than toss people into the unemployment line. Massive layoffs clobber the community’s small businesses and retailers. That is why, during our Rochester visit, my brother had trouble finding a store near our downtown hotel where he could buy a necktie.

The city’s big department stores, Sibley’s and McCurdy’s, closed in the 1990s. Both once were about a block from our hotel. Scores of clothing stores and shops have disappeared. Here and there you can still find a restaurant, but nowhere near as many as there once were.

Car dealerships and appliance stores loved Kodak, especially in March. Every March, Kodak employees received a bonus, a practice the company began in 1912. Even during the Great Depression, Kodak employees received bonuses. When I was there, it was common for some folks to spend their bonuses on cars, stereos, whatever they could afford. Apparently, the company continues to issue bonuses, but many of the car dealerships and appliance stores along State Street and Lake Avenue—home, respectively, to Kodak’s corporate offices and the behemoth Kodak Park facility, where film, photographic paper and chemicals are made—have shuttered their doors.

Also gone are two huge suburban-based Kodak manufacturing facilities, which employed a sizeable percentage of Kodak’s workforce. When those facilities bit the dust, nearby restaurants and stores went under, too.

It is sad to look at the city today. Not that it is a boarded-up ghost town, but it has seen much better days.

Xerox Tower, which houses the company’s Rochester offices (Xerox’s corporate headquarters are in Stamford, Conn.), and Kodak’s corporate office building are downtown landmarks, the anchors of Rochester’s skyline.

The distinctive buildings—Xerox’s a 1960s skyscraper, Kodak’s a 19-floor, early 20th-century structure—represent what was once a vibrant, bustling city. Business-attired Xeroids and Kodakers were seen everywhere. You couldn’t help but bump into one.

Today, the Kodak and Xerox buildings seem lonely. It is the loneliness of two people who used to be the charming, cocky, lives of the party and now find themselves out in the cold, unconfident and uncertain, without a party and without an entourage.

Corporate smugness can be lethal. Just ask Kodak. In the early 1980s, the company scoffed at the digital writing on the wall. Film-based photography is here to stay, Kodak thought, and we’re the biggest dudes on the block. Can’t touch us. About a half-dozen chief executives later, the company is scrambling to get into digital photography.

Rochester can learn something from the Charleston region. When the Navy base and shipyard closed, that was supposed to be the end of the Lowcountry. Folks had their trumpets polished and ready to blow Taps. However, economic developers saw the base’s demise as an opportunity to diversify the region’s economy. They did just that.

Not only are we still here, but people from places like Rochester are moving here by the battalion. If you don’t think Charleston is a hot spot, go to Rochester and tell the folks up there that you are from down here, and watch their eyes light up with envy.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.

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