In celebrating their 60th Anniversary, The Harvester Center has introduced Batavia’s first Co-working space that is now available to the road warrior entrepreneur who is working for themselves from home or on the road as a freelancer at their established business.
“It fits right into our mission,” says Tom Mancuso, President of Mancuso Business Development.
“It’s like that next generation of taking big things and breaking them into smaller pieces that reduces risk for people to be able to try things, so instead of a room for a month you can get a chair for the day.”
“We picture this as more consistent in what we do within a community base, giving entrepreneurs the resources they don’t have at home, bigger printer, conference room and the to be a part of a community of entrepreneurs because there is a synergy that happens in that.”
Currently , there are 70-80 different businesses located at the Harvester Center at 56 Harvester avenue. They range from food businesses, special effects artists, business professionals, people who are writers, artists, musicians, printers, artisans, manufacturers, distributers, and involved in assembly and design.
Whiteford Dental Laboratory moved into their space at the Harvester Center over a year ago and they are expanding into a third space as they prepare to expand and hire an employee to keep up with demand.
“We make teeth,” says Noah Whiteford, President of Whiteford Dental Laboratory.
“We deal exclusively with dentists, we have a very small audience for marketing. We didn’t need a store front which is why we came here. A lab can be pretty much anywhere. We came here because the rent was cheap and we could do whatever we wanted to the facility. We updated it significantly and made it our own.”
David Vining is the Vice President at the lab and spends most days on the road taking care of clients.
“The dentists here love this, now they have a lab technician that can come in chair side, if they have a difficult case, we can sit and we can talk rather than through phone or email,” says Whiteford.
Whiteford Dental Laboratory also services dentists in Buffalo and Rochester.
Whiteford says the company is exceeding sales numbers from last year and every month they are expanding their business.
“We started with zero clients and we have been building and building and now we are at a point where we are capable of expanding.”
Whiteford has invested a lot in digital dentistry and CAD Cam and this year they have purchased more equipment.
Mancuso says the Harvester Center focuses on people who create jobs within the community.
“Some get started here, don’t succeed, some give it a try and they grow here and stay here, then rent another space or buy a building or build a building.”
OrCon Industries, an innovative industrial packaging company, has provided comprehensive solutions for customers’ packaging needs for more than four decades.
In the early 80’s they started at the Harvester Center with 4 employees and 4,000 square feet of space. Three years later they occupied 100,000 square feet of space and then eventually moved to LeRoy and built a 90,000 square foot manufacturing building
Barber Machine Corporation has been located at the Harvester Center since the beginning, they are manufacturers of set screws, both hex and splines sockets. The business split into two different businesses while it was growing, Norbert Barber created Custom Fasteners at 40 Evans street while Neil Barbers’ son is now running Barber Machine at 56 Harvester avenue.
“After 60 years, we are not smart enough to know when everyone is ready to go, some are ready in 3 years, some sooner, and some aren’t ever ready.”
“This is really a 137 year economic development project.”
“The reason this building is even here is because in 1882 there was a fire in Brockport and the Johnston Harvester Plant burned down. The people of Batavia raised money to buy this land and offered to give it to Johnston to build a plant here.
By 1920 the Batavia plant was making 65,000 harvesting machines per year and selling them all over the world.
Vincenzo/Charles Mancuso 
Rosolino/Ben Mancuso
Mancuso says his great grandfather Vincenzo/Charles and grandfather, Rosolino/Ben emigrated to the United States from Sicily and were working in New Orleans in the sugar cane fields when they had a friend from Batavia, NY communicate with them to come to Batavia, because they were adding a building to the north campus of the Johnston Harvester plant in 1907.
“They worked there until my grandfather developed some respiratory issues in the foundry, so he went to trade school and became a plumber which then led to Batavia Plumbing Supply which was the first Mancuso business. The restaurant, the car dealership and the movie theater businesses then followed.”
So when the building became empty in the 50s after Massey Harris-Ferguson began to struggle financially and eventually closed up their Batavia operations in 1958, the Mancuso family was in a position to buy the building and try to fix the community after the large job loss.
“The initial focus was to replace with manufacturing jobs, because at the time that was the primary generator of wealth because it brought money from outside the community into the community.”
Mancuso says his dad, Joe, stopped running the hardware store to search for a manufacturer to fill a million square feet on 60 acres of land in an already 70 year old building in 1959.
Mancuso says it didn’t take long for his dad to realize that no one was going to move into a sprawling industrial space in a little market in WNY.
Eventually it evolved into, “I’m going to take anybody I can get that was willing to start a business in Batavia, NY. and I’m going to do everything I can to keep them alive and help them to grow.”
The first tenant was Ted Snell Signs and they occupied 1200 square feet of space. They created the sign that hangs above the front door. The sign was paid for by not charging them rent.
“It was an example that right from the beginning they worked with people and they were creative in finding ways to encourage people to do stuff.”
Mancuso says now 60 years later, in bits and pieces, the world economy changed and manufacturing is now a smaller part of the economy.
“Now there are tech companies that are global, they bring in money with web businesses. Out of an office you can bring in money from around the world, so the ways of generating wealth and bringing in new wealth into a community have changed, but the physical needs of businesses have changed too.”
Manufacturers now want taller rooms, and the Harvester Center is now more suitable for small businesses. Mancuso says 50-60% of all businesses in WNY have 4 employees or less.
“Smaller units make it easier to start a lower price and control costs and that is important when getting started, especially in a business where you make stuff. Co-working is just another example of continuing to meet the needs of the market.”
For more information on the Harvester Center or a Co-working space:
https://mancusogroup.com/the-harvester-center/