May 17, 2007

By Virgil Hervey

A successful homegrown business recently outgrew Yellow Springs and moved out of town to more spacious quarters. Started in 1994, LaserLinc, a company that designs, manufactures and sells scanning laser micrometers and PC interfaces, had been located on South Walnut Street near Kings Yard. But as of May 1, the company calls Zapata Drive in Fairborn home.

LaserLinc stayed at the Walnut Street location as long as it could, said LaserLinc President Dan Dixon in a recent interview. According to Dixon, the company had incredible growth in the last six months due to increased marketing efforts. Finally, space restrictions were negatively impacting the business.

“We needed a professional building with between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet at a modest price,” Dixon said. “There was nothing like that in Yellow Springs.”

The company’s need for more space has been obvious for years, Dixon said, and he tried to find a way to stay in town. In an attempt to find a solution, he spoke with local building owners such as Bob Baldwin and MillWorks owners Rod and Ellen Hoover, along with former and current Village Managers Rob Hillard and Eric Swansen, but nothing worked.

Ultimately, he just had to leave, according to Dixon, who grew up in the village and who is raising his family here.

“I love being in Yellow Springs,” said Dixon. “It was wonderful doing business in town. I could walk across the street and get a cup of coffee from Dino’s. But location is about more than where you get your coffee.”

For years LaserLinc had also considered the possibility of moving to the Center for Business and Education (CBE), Dixon said. But the CBE was never in a position to quote the company a square footage price.

Dixon and LaserLinc Vice-President Jeff Kohler also considered building from scratch and would have done so had a few suitable acres been available, Dixon said, but they could not find usable land.

LaserLinc currently has about 20 employees. Seventeen of them work at the plant location — many with six figure salaries. They started the year with 12 employees and Dixon expects the business “to grow like crazy.” Most of the employees live down I-675 and have a 20 minute shorter commute to the Fairborn location.

The laser micrometer was invented by Yellow Springs resident Harry Petrohilos in the basement of his then Miami Drive home. That effort grew into a multimillion dollar company that is located in Huber Heights — another business Yellow Springs could not retain, Dixon said. That company is now owned by LaserLinc.

MillWorks owner Ellen Hoover said she and her partners, who also include Sandy Love and Sam Young, tried to accommodate LaserLinc, even offering to construct a spec building or to sell them land, but in the end they just didn’t have the production space to offer.

According to Hoover, MillWorks just recently lost a valued tenant in New Century Plastics, a once-successful injection molding business that finally succumbed to competition from bigger companies and auto industry issues. Again, MillWorks made “all kinds of concessions to try and help,” Hoover said, but they couldn’t save the company.

MillWorks has since attracted several new tenants, but none of them have the kind of payroll that New Century Plastics had, representing a net tax revenue loss to the Village.

MillWorks is renovating office space and some production space as well as the exterior of the building, she said. They need tenants for the office space and also have some production space available.

“We have excellent current tenants and prospects,” Hoover said.

The Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce also worked with LaserLinc, according to Chamber Coordinator Karen Wintrow, but was unsuccessful in locating a larger space.

The Village government also attempted to find a solution for LaserLinc, according to Village Manager Eric Swanson, who said the town has had a longstanding tradition of having new businesses start here and then leaving when they grow. He said he is currently working with another company that has the same problem, but declined to name it.

“This town is good at taking an idea from concept to new businesses,” Swanson said in a recent interview. “The question is, ‘When they develop, where will they develop to?’

The town needs something in size between the CBE and MillWorks to offer growing businesses, Swansen said.

Dixon, Hoover and Wintrow all agreed that things might have been different if the Center for Business and Education had been farther along with its infrastructure.

“Timing is everything,” Wintrow said.

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com