Coherent laying off 144 at Auburn facility

Coherent Inc. is cutting 144 employees from its already whittled-down presence at the Auburn Airport Industrial Park, according to the Sacramento Business Journal. The laser and optics high-tech company had 700 employees in Auburn in 2001, but had reduced the number in half to 341 in fall of 2003. According to the Business Journal, the layoffs will be effective Aug. 23.Ron Paitich, a former vice president of Coherent and the first general manager of the Auburn campus during the 1980s, said this week that the latest departure represents the closure of the Auburn optics division."I still get Coherent memos and I received one recently stating that the Auburn division was sold entirely to a Colorado company," Paitich said Monday. "That will be the end of it (in Auburn). It saddens me because it allowed me and my family to enjoy life in the foothills and for a while, at least, we were the largest private employer in Auburn. I took great pride in establishing this and was quite happy. Sometimes what makes business sense is not necessarily good for the community or the people."The move represents evolving business interests, he said. "I would say the region should not conclude that Coherent is a company in trouble," he said. "It continues to excel as a world leader in lasers. The unfortunate thing for Auburn is that management had a change of business strategy, which was to outsource much of what was done here in Auburn. And I hasten to add that it isn't like the outsourcing we all feel terrible about, where it all goes to foreign producers. This was all domestic outsourcing to domestic suppliers."According to the Business Journal, in April Coherent agreed to sell some of its Auburn optics manufacturing operation to Research Electro-Optics, Inc. in Boulder, Colo.Paitich opened the Auburn optics division in 1981 with 80 employees. During his time at the airport facility, staff grew to 250 to 300 employees and the work encompassed precision optics, electronic instruments and electronic assemblies. Two more buildings were constructed to accommodate the extra activity."Auburn, to some extent, became a star for Coherent because of high-quality product, responsible labor force and it was an appealing place to attract and retain skilled workers," he said. "Previous to that, it was a real cat fight to keep the critical opticians necessary for laser optics."Paitich resigned in 1989 to establish his own instrument company, Terranova Scientific, which he later sold to a Bay Area company. Coherent's Auburn site has been largely vacant for a couple of years. In 2007, the Abbey Company of Long Beach purchased the four buildings with plans to refurbish them and put them back on the market for lease, Mike Fluty with Coldwell Banker Commercial in Auburn said in an earlier interview. The real estate holdings company, headed by Donald Abbey, has more than 80 properties — office, industrial, retail and multi-purpose — in Southern California, Fresno and Sacramento, with assets totaling $1 billion, according to its Web Site. On the Abbey Web site, the buildings — at 2301 and 2303 Lindbergh St., 12789 Earhart Ave. and 12840 Bill Clarke Way — total 265,615 square feet and are listed for lease, described as campus environment with cafeteria, flexible space configuration, office, lab, assembly, clean rooms, warehouse and R&D.Besides the Coherent campus, United Natural Foods' relocation to Rocklin in 2005 emptied a nearby 150,000-square-foot building and the early 2008 relocation of vitamin maker Ameri-Kal to Texas vacated an additional 23,000-square-foot building. The city of Auburn is looking at options for attracting tenants, according to Mayor Keith Nesbitt."Obviously we don't like losing an employer like that," Nesbitt said Tuesday. "I'm confident that staff can put together a plan. … One of the strategies is maybe breaking up the space. (It is likely) the demand won't be for that large of a space."But Nesbitt stressed that the vacant buildings have not impacted city revenue. "We're still getting money on the buildings," he said. "What we have is a land lease. So even though there are vacancies there and we'd like to see those filled, from a revenue standpoint into our airport fund, we're really not suffering." Nesbitt declined to discuss specifics of any progress in leasing or selling the properties."We've had several people look," he said. "Obviously if someone was in play right now, it would be a confidential matter until something works out. We've had some interest. I don't know how far along we are in the process. The bottom line is that if we were in negotiation, it would be confidential."The location does offer some strong selling points, he said."The way the economy is, I would be overly optimistic if I thought those building would be filled right away. Between the Chamber (of Commerce) and the city, we're trying to fill those things up and eventually we will. It is a good location and with more of the hangars being built and with the east hangar project, that would make it more conducive for smaller companies that want to have a presence and want to have a plane out there. But I'd be overly optimistic to think it is going to happen tomorrow."Coherent's Web site is still listing the Auburn campus, showing responsibilities in diode modules and optical components.Coherent and the Abbey Company did not return calls for comment. The Journal's Gus Thomson contributed to this story.The Journal's Gloria Young can be reached at gloriay@goldcountrymedia.com or comment at Auburnjournal.com.