Friday, July 3, 2009

Leviton has left the building

From the Times Ledger:

Leviton Manufacturing Co., the largest privately held producer of electrical wiring equipment in North America, has moved its headquarters from the Little Neck site where it operated for 36 years to a new locale in Long Island, a spokeswoman for the company said.

The company, which had been at 59-25 Little Neck Pkwy. since 1973, moved its 400 employees from its Queens site to a new headquarters in Melville, L.I., June 15, said Pamela Winikoff, manager of corporate public relations. No jobs were lost in the transfer, she said.

The company, the largest North American manufacturer of electrical wiring equipment, was originally formed to produce mantle tips for gas lighting and in 1910 it converted to the production of pull-chain lamp holders designed for Thomas Edison’s new light bulbs. It now produces light sockets, switches and outlets, dimmers, wire, power cables, power cords, wall plates and other electrical products.

Dan Andrews, spokesman for Borough President Helen Marshall, said he thought it was unfortunate such a large manufacturer left the borough.

“The city has tax incentive programs to try to keep businesses here and help them expand,” he said. “A problem is that a lot of them don’t know about the programs and we’ve had companies move out of the borough because they didn’t know how to access the programs.”

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank God they didn't leave the country. Now let's hope they didn't leave any nasty surprises like mercury behind either.

Kevin Walsh said...

Leviton used to be on Greenpoint Avenue -- the signs are still there

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/greenpoint.av/greenpoint.ave.html

Le Gross Foo Chat said...

The Little Neck facility was Leviton's business headquarters, not a manufacturing site (aside from maybe a little prototyping work). As Kevin said, the company grew big in the Greenpoint Avenue site, and has now spread to various locations in North America and mainland China. The last I knew they were still doing some manufacturing in San Diego and El Paso.

-Joe said...

Hope they didn't leave any nasty surprises like mercury behind either.

No the MTA/LIRR does that.
When they the converted the substation in Manhasset to solid state (around 91).
The bozos left the giant old mercury vapor rectifier tubes and a 2 acres of crap on the tracks for almost 2 years.
The vandals eventually found the big glass tubes and guess what happened ?

Anonymous said...

Dan Andrews, spokesman for Borough President Helen Marshall, said he thought it was unfortunate such a large manufacturer left the borough.

Danny boy you need to court Queens businesses, know who are your most important taxpapyers!

Anonymous said...

Looks like Bloomie's pledge to create and keep 400,000 jobs in NYC is going to be more of an uphill battle. Yeah, as if he ever intended to keep promises in the first place.

Anonymous said...

That building will make a nice homeless shelter.