Business sees daily reminder of 9/11

WINDSOR — Never mind the calendar.

Every day of the year bears evidence of Sept. 11, 2001, on the grounds of Kodak Colorado Division.

“We’ve increased security,´ said Lucille Mantelli, public-affairs manager at the plant. “We’ve asked employees to always have their badges visible. We’ve closed off our lobby & so somebody couldn’t just come by the receptionist and get in. The lobby is locked off from the rest of the facility.”

One year after the deadly terrorist attacks on the United States, companies of all sizes in Northern Colorado are living with lingering effects of that day.

Some are visible, like Kodak Colorado’s security measures.

Some are abstract, like an executive’s decision to avoid air travel.

There’s also the impact on the bottom line.

The terrorist attacks chilled an already sluggish U.S. economy, and are indirectly blamed for making 2002 a negative year in many business sectors.

“Can you actually say the terrorist attacks affected agriculture? Probably not directly,´ said Robert Brown, president of Harsh International, an Eaton company that manufactures farming equipment. “But it certainly did put everybody’s thoughts and concerns in another direction besides buying new equipment for the farm.”

Harsh’s sales are off 20 percent this year, Brown said. And just like his customers, Brown has also held back on buying capital equipment for the business.

Leed Fabrication Services of Brighton, which supplies tools and services for the oil-exploration industry, has been one of the fastest-growing companies in Northern Colorado over the past four years.

“We’ve gone from profits in the 8 to 10 percent range to just trying to eke out a profit this year, quite honestly,´ said Pat Daniel, president and CEO at Leed.

As with Harsh, Leed felt the impact of customers who were shy about investing this year.

“It was more of a domino effect,” Daniel said.

Kodak has also claimed some financial impact from the terrorist attacks. Leisure travel was clearly hindered in the months after Sept. 11, and fewer vacationers meant fewer pictures — a direct dent in the photography giant’s sale of film, Mantelli said.

Despite the wide-ranging economic impact of the Sept. 11 attacks, some local firms managed to pick up business as a function of their respective services.

Greeley-based construction company Hensel-Phelps is a lead contractor on repairs to the Pentagon, one of the targets in the attacks. The project could be worth more than $1 billion for Hensel-Phelps by the time it’s completed in 2010.

Increased spending on security by government agencies has generated extra sales at Paravion Technology in Fort Collins and its sister company, Century Helicopters.

Paravion mounts surveillance camera units on helicopters. With the availability of extra federal funding for security needs, public agencies have been turning to Paravion, said Michael Hansen, a company executive.

Century Helicopters, meanwhile, lost all business in the days after the attacks. “When the airspace was closed, none of our customers were flying aircraft,” Hansen said.

Business turned around, however, as helicopter owners increased the use of private aircraft to avoid inconvenience at commercial airports, Hansen said.

At Kodak Colorado, the post-Sept. 11 period was characterized by caution.

Parking on the circular driveway in front of the plant’s main doors was forbidden until April. Night deliveries to the plant were halted until January. And the longtime employee practice of parking cars near the loading docks for a quick dash into the building was eliminated.

Since Sept. 11, security guards have increased the frequency of building sweeps at Kodak, where the company handles large quantities of chemicals in its manufacturing process.

“We wondered how our employees would react to that,” Mantelli said. “Basically, we didn’t have any negative reaction. “It was more like, ‘I’m not happy with it, but I know why you’re doing it.'”

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