ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Constellation Brands announced Wednesday it is moving its headquarters from Victor to downtown Rochester.
Constellation, a worldwide beverage leader, will move its primary operation, and nearly 400 jobs to the Aqueduct Building on East Broad Street in Rochester, with approximately 170,000 square feet of space.
Presumptive Rochester Mayor Malik Evans joined Ally Peters in the News 8 studio Wednesday afternoon to weigh in on the move, and its potential impact to the city.
Ally Peters: This is huge for downtown Rochester. What are your general overall thoughts?
Malik Evans: Well I think it’s excellent when we are able to get a world-class organization to move right downtown. It’s something that is important. When you look at downtowns, a lot of successful downtowns have corporate headquarters that are there, anchor institutions that then lead to other development that comes after that. So I am excited about the Constellation move and I look forward to welcoming them downtown.
AP: This brings quite a few jobs to the area. What do you think this means for businesses or companies in the downtown Rochester area?
ME: I think what it says to businesses and companies in the downtown area is that downtown is a place where you may want to set your flag down for your business. I think it also provides inspiration to smaller and medium sized businesses that want to operate downtown because when you have a big anchor, it then provides that multiplier effect. If you wanted to open up a restaurant or another service industry, you will have customers right there in the headquarters that then can take their business to you and hopefully lead to more business. Whenever you have these anchor institutions, they provide the opportunity to have a multiplier effect on the region, and we know how important downtown is in Rochester.
AP: Very important. We also know there has been some crime in Rochester — we’ve seen a lot of it this past year. Do we think that this move will have any impact on that?
ME: I think the more you have activity in places, it sends the message that you’ve got positive things going on. Activity is good because you don’t want to have empty buildings. You don’t want to have empty spaces. When you have activities with things happening, be it building small businesses, green space, concerts, all those things are important in order to keep an area vibrant and alive, and that kind of drives away crime. We want to make sure we encourage those types of things.
We also think that having companies like Constellation say “Hey, we believe in downtown,” it will make others also believe in downtown. So we want to see Constellation and others make downtown Rochester their home.
AP: Do you have any plans yourself to be working with this company once they do move into the area?
ME: Absolutely. We want to make sure that any company — Constellation in particular because that’s what we’re talking about today — that we provide them with what they need in order to want to stay in Rochester, and that we continue to work with them to be a part of the Greater Rochester community and we are welcoming them with open arms. We think that it also has the ability to be able to encourage others, and I think that is just the biggest message that is being sent, that a world-class brand that many people are extremely familiar with is deciding to locate their corporate headquarters right in downtown Rochester.