Kodak considered selling its 1,250-acre business park to a smaller company after emerging from bankruptcy, but has instead been courting new businesses to the site, with the promise of access to plentiful utilities, infrastructure and Kodak’s specialty technical and industrial capabilities.
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Kodak is planning to provide space for 58 different companies in its 2 square mile campus.
One tenant, LiDestri Food & Beverage, could tap Eastman’s short-line railroad to move the tomatoes it processes into pasta sauces and Salsa. And there are two medical marijuana firms interested in using the campus, provided their licenses get awarded later in the summer.
In this July 15, 2015 photo, Michael Alt, director of Eastman Business Park, sits outside the building in Rochester, N.Y., that housed Kodak founder George Eastman’s office. Currently, 6000 people are working there and 1200 of them being the employees of Kodak. The worker capacity of the Kodak Park is 30,000 but according to the experts, it would only reach 10,000-11,000 in realistic terms. “One of the things on our radar are flexible solar cells… and they would be made using the same equipment”. The Eastman Business Park and the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced a collaboration last month that will give startup companies access to resources at either facility. The state of New York has also donated around one hundred million dollars to help renovate and update the site and facilities.
Kodak is progressively coming out of its slump, and with so many new business ventures, it’s sure to aid in the building up of the new version of this staple brand. Previously, in 2014, Kodak put the park up for sale, but then took it off the market to make this separate division. The decision has come after the company claimed its commitment to grow its motion picture and commercial film business.
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And the work of former Kodak engineers using 35-year-old repurposed equipment contributed, for example, to the development of night-vision goggles like those used during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Slaughter said.
