News Business Reporter
9/1/2006
National environmental engineering firm Malcolm Pirnie said Thursday that it is relocating its Western New York office from Orchard Park to downtown Buffalo as of November.
The firm, currently located at 40 Centre Drive in the Quaker Center office park, will take over 10,000 square feet of vacant work space on the sixth floor of the KeyCenter in Buffalo. The relocation includes 55 engineers, scientists, management consultants and support staff.
The new space, which has not been occupied, is more centrally located for the firm's customers, which include the City of Buffalo, Erie County, and other public and private-sector clients in Buffalo, Amherst, Tonawanda and Lockport. As a result, the move will allow Malcolm Pirnie employees to work more efficiently, and will provide room for expected moderate growth in the future, managers said.
"Buffalo is the centerpiece of the Western New York community and this change of location is consistent with our firm's desire to play a part in and build on the momentum for the resurgence and redevelopment of downtown Buffalo," said John Amend, vice president of municipal water and wastewater services for the engineering firm.
The KeyCenter space is slightly smaller than the firm's existing 10-year-old operation, which has about 12,000 square feet, but that includes a lab and other areas that aren't being used now. Officials did not know what would happen to their existing space.
"Malcolm Pirnie's decision to move into downtown Buffalo is another indication of the continuing attraction of the city's business district," Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said in the press release.
Malcolm Pirnie is a 110-year-old firm with 55 offices and more than 1,600 employees nationwide. The firm specializes in drinking water and wastewater treatment, ethanol production, brownfield remediation, hazardous waste site permitting and industrial environmental issues. Its Red Oak division has more than 200 experts providing management services.
The firm has operated in Western New York for more than 30 years, starting with a one-person office and expanding significantly over three decades - but always in the Southtowns. Its track record locally includes brownfields remediation for the Union Ship Canal on Buffalo's waterfront, now known as the Buffalo Lakeside Commerce Park.
In addition, the firm designed the Erie County Water Authority's Jerome Van de Water water treatment plant in Tonawanda and Amherst's "big blue water tower," renovated the Water Authority's Sturgeon Point plant, designed many water transmission mains, participated in the Buffalo Sewer Authority's Squaw Island landfill closure, cleanup, and park development, and completed several construction projects at the Sewer Authority's Bird Island wastewater treatment plant.
It's also worked for businesses such as the proposed ethanol production plant Empire Biofuels, Lapp Insulator Co., international chemical company Arkema, and other chemical, automotive and industrial clients.
