Questions that Needed Answers
We interviewed five people who had different ties to Kodak and its bankruptcy. Here are some notable responses:
What was it like working at Kodak?
Todd Sankes (former Kodak Employee): "I really look back on my time at Kodak fondly. It was a great place to work and a great atmosphere, and I feel like everyone really wanted to be there. It was a growing, fun place, and it's a real shame what happened to it. "
Walt Collins (former Kodak Employee): "It was just a terrific place. People were great. They had really great people. Somehow I do not think that their senior management decisions in the last 30 years have been very good, but it was a dynamic place to be at because we were expanding. "
Have there been visible affects on the city of Rochester since Kodak has gone bankrupt?
Sankes: "The 19th ward, right over by the U of R, has really seen some tough times since then. The city has definitely taken a turn for the worse, but, with that said, I do still live in the area, and still love living here. "
Jeff Solomon (Rochester Native): "The whole Kodak park has been disassembled. That whole side of the city has totally changed. The small businesses have gone out of business, small repair shops etc because people used to use them all the time now they're not getting that traffic flow to that part of the city and people are not coming in from the suburbs to work there so they are not dropping off their laundry or getting their cars fixed... so now a lot of those local businesses are gone now because of that."
How do you believe the Kodak Bankruptcy effected the city of Rochester?
Mark Zupan ( Dean and the Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Simon School): "I think you have to look more broadly at the total impact of Kodak, that virtually nothing lasts forever and how blessed we are some magic like this happened for such an extended period of time... When people look at just the employment loss at Kodak, what they miss out on is all the firms that ended up being spun out of Kodak whether its divisions with Southerland, ITT or Carestream, so the job footprint is still pretty significant when you factor that in. And let alone all the entrepreneurial start ups when an engineer leaves Kodak and he or she starts a business and helps it grow... Probably the biggest legacy would be the contribution that Kodak made to area universities and colleges: RIT, University of Rochester. George Eastman was the largest, in real terms, philanthropist of education and we disproportionately benefited from that. And the impact U of R has on attracting students, research impact starting ventures, he played a key role in making that happen."
Duncan Moore (Professor of Optical Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Rochester): "Well it didn't have as much effect as you would have thought. I mean it certainly made big headlines in the New York Times in January last year when it happened, but the scaling down of Kodak has been so gradual, it occurred over a 30 year period. I don't think people really realized the problem until the headline read 'University of Rochester the Largest Employer in the City of Rochester'... A couple things that were different in Rochester than in Toledo or Detroit, were in many of those situations the companies closed down instantaneously. So it was like, one day the company was there and the next day they announced they are closing and in 30 or 60 days the whole thing was shuttered and that didn't happen here. It just happened over a slow, slow process. The other difference is that the people that worked at Kodak were highly educated, so they could get other jobs."