I just recieved my notification of the demolition of B65 and B69 at Kodak Park. This is very sad. These buildings housed Photographic Technology, the division that did final testing on all products and did troubleshooting of all processes.

They had running seasoned processes of all chemistry running in a variety of machines there, and experts to test the processes.

B-65, on Ridge Road was the center for all Kodak processing for years. You could walk by the building and look in the huge picture window in the front and watch customer film bags speeding by on the belt for packing and shipping world wide.

Now the buildings are coming down in about 2 weeks. I'm so sad. Demolition is now moving into Kodak Park West.

PE

It is all rather sad. I'm curious though, what's the purpose of demolition rather than mothballing (assuming Kodak still own the land rather than it having already been sold)? Is there new development planned on the sites, or some other reason (tax rules or whatnot)?

I think the big issue is property taxes on the buildings, and I'd assume they'd have to do some sort of maintentance, even if they weren't in use.

I would also imagine that the physical assest can be removed frm the books, which might also lower thier tax burden.

I think the big issue is property taxes on the buildings, and I'd assume they'd have to do some sort of maintentance, even if they weren't in use.

You hit the nail directly on the head. New York is notorious for their excessive tax infrastructure.

I would be much more concerned if Kodak left the buildings standing because one could argue that it costs more in the short term to bring them down. Kodak is strategically optimizing their balance sheet with an obvious emphasis to stay in the game, otherwise, why would they do it?

In spite of all of the negative comments made about Mr. Perez, his strategy is working.

Kodak has now turned around the film operation and is running what is left at full capacity and making a tidy profit from the operation. This makes everything optimal for analog products as now instead of unsteady starts and stops of production lines and changes of speeds, all lines are running 24/7/365 at full speed.

Unused buildings have been torn down and remaining operations have been consolidated into the other buildings.

It is smaller, leaner and able to run faster and turn corners faster as the market changes. They are showing that they intend to remain players in the conventional film market until the very end.

PE

Like PE, I am an ORG (old retired guy) who worked for many years for a major manufacturer with lots of facilities in upstate NY. The place where I worked has gone through a similar downsizing.

It's very simple concept - taxes on grass are much lower than the taxes on empty buildings. So it's not a really hard decision for corporate beancounters to decide when abandoned buildings should be demolished.

Selling the property for reuse usually requires that there be a thorough environmental hazard investigation, and its almost impossible for the owner to dodge responsibility for cleaning up any contamination found on the site. For that reason, the usual approach is to demolish the buildings, plant grass and trees, and then build a fence around the property.

And like PE, while I am sad to see the old buildings come down, I am far more interested in earnings per share these days, and anything that makes that metric look better is a good thing!

These two buildings along with the last two demolished would probably have had the lowest pollution index of any at Kodak Park. Even though 2 of them handled chemicals it was not any worse than a photofinisher would have.

In any event, EK tried to sell the current two and had no takers for several years even though 69 was rather modern, having gone up in the 70s.

PE

I was just informed that the demolition has been cancelled. A contractor working on the project cannot finish one phase of the work required and therefore the implosion will have to be rescheduled.

A reprieve, but not a pardon.

PE

This morning, Oct. 6th, at about 7:45, the two buildings went down. The proceeding (high speed disassembly) was marked by an introduction by the CTO (Chief Technical Officer) and we were treated to coffee and refreshments at a tent placed there for employees, retirees and local neighbors of Kodak Park.

This represents a loss of about 30% of the development facilities of the research labs and it was also the old processing lab for all Kodak films. That operation ceased at Kodak Park in about the 70s though.

I got a commemorative pin from Kodak as well at the visitor center entrance where they checked our invitations.

The place was jammed and they had all of the local media there as well as an overhead blimp.

The dust cloud covered some cars so heavily that people could hardly see out of the windows. I parked far enough away that my car was clean, but I still got a bit dusty walking back to it.

Driving home, the dust cloud extended about 1 - 2 miles north of the Park. It was like driving through light fog.

I took a lot of pictures, but I used digital as I thought it suitable for snapshots.

One person wanted to take my picture with the 2 buildings as background. I declined and told him that it was enough that digital was causing the problem, but to take the picture in digital was to add insult to injury. That got a lot of laughs and sympathy among the onlookers.

It was rather sad for me to see them go.

Whats next?

PE

Whats next?

Who knows??? Your guess is probably better than the ordinary user of Kodak products. Perhaps the next thing they will do is change corporate colors (I one read that yellow is generally considered one of the worst colors to use from the marketing perspective), or change the name... to Digidak.