PrintOffice furniture company to move into Keystone Park
Work stations, reception tables and desks should be coming out of Patterson’s Keystone Pacific Business Park later this year, after a wholesale furniture maker announced plans to operate there this month.
Office furniture company to move into Keystone Park
Written by Jonathan Partridge / Patterson Irrigator / Wednesday, 30 January 2008
“Everyone is looking at it as a really nice breath of fresh air.”
— Frank Stratiotis
HPL Contract president
Work stations, reception tables and desks should be coming out of Patterson’s Keystone Pacific Business Park later this year, after a wholesale furniture maker announced plans to operate there this month.
HPL Contract plans to occupy a 31,067-square-foot building nestled between Jonathan Homes’ headquarters and a future center for biotech equipment manufacturer Westfalia Separator.
HPL Contract is moving its operations from Hayward, and company president Frank Stratiotis said his staff is excited about the move.
“Everyone is looking at it as a really nice breath of fresh air,” he said.
HPL Contract hopes to expand its operations, and the Keystone park seemed like the perfect place to do that, Stratiotis said. His company, which started in San Carlos in 1997 before moving to Hayward, builds office furniture from laminate material that looks like real wood.
Stratiotis said he looked at other facilities in Tracy and Livermore before choosing Keystone. The Keystone building seemed to be perfect for what he wanted the company to do, and the lower cost of housing in Patterson compared to the Bay Area was a bonus for his employees.
He said the location is central to many of his clients, which are in areas including Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto and the Bay Area.
“Patterson was 75 miles from everybody,” he said.
Some of HPL’s top clients include Kaiser Permanente, Stanford University and Sutter Health. Closer to home, the company recently provided furniture for a building at California State University, Stanislaus, in Turlock.
Stratiotis said the Patterson facility likely will employ about 40 people when it opens. Those include positions in bookkeeping, supervising, customer service, cabinetry and engineering. Construction inside the Keystone building should start in March, with aims of opening sometime in late spring.
Keystone representatives started talking with HPL officials in October.
Jim Little, chief financial officer for Keystone Corp., said the company also hopes to bring in similarly midsized companies into the business park.
“We feel this is a momentum-builder,” Little said.
Keystone President Patrick Gavaghan said the addition of HPL is another example of the business park’s success in attracting a diverse base.
“We are hopeful that this influx of industrial growth will be the first of many new companies coming over the pass and adding new jobs for Patterson,” he said in a prepared statement.
Stratiotis also had good things to say about the officials at North Carolina-based Keystone Corp., which have developed the business park.
“They’re just fantastic,” he said. “The whole package is great.”
Keystone officials made it clear the feeling was mutual, and they said the city’s pro-business stance has helped make the business park a success.
Ironically, the 224-acre developing business park off Baldwin Road has gotten a couple of recent commitments as the real estate market has taken a major downturn. Biotech equipment manufacturer Westfalia Separator announced last year that it planned to take up one of Keystone’s first-three speculative buildings.
Little and Keystone Vice President Keith Schneider said Longs Drugs Stores and Kohl’s put the business park — and Patterson — on the map when they committed to open distribution centers there within the past few years.
Patterson City Manager Cleve Morris said development of the business park, which broke ground in October 2003, has taken longer than the city initially hoped. It is good to see more businesses commit to the project, he said.
Little said Keystone officials knew it would take awhile for the business park to fill out because it was the first project of its kind in Patterson. The company aims to continue to work to fill out some of the remaining speculative buildings at the business park.
“We’re not stopping,” Little said.
To reach Jonathan Partridge at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail him at jonathan(at)pattersonirrigator.com