The following article appeared in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader on September 19, 2007.
WILKES-BARRE – Solid Cactus will uproot its downtown offices and leave for a new location in the Back Mountain, the company president said Tuesday.
The growing Web site design and e-commerce company will move into the Solid Cactus Technology Center in the former Westmoreland Elementary School in Kingston Township next year.
“Finding the perfect fit has taken nearly a year,” said Scott Sanfilippo, Solid Cactus president and co-founder.
His company signed a five-year lease for 16,000 square feet in the building owned by Scott Ciravolo.
The move from Solid Cactus’s offices in the Jewelcor Building on East Market Street should begin after Christmas and be completed by the end of February, Sanfilippo said.
The company has outgrown the office space it has leased for five years and needs more room for its employees. The workforce numbers 115 and is expected to increase to 250 by 2009.
Its growth rate earned the company the 255th spot on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the country.
Sanfilippo said he and others in the company talked about buying a building and looked at possible sites, but the timing and the fit were not right.
The former school has the space the company needs inside and out. “The key really was the parking,” he said. The new location has more than 200 parking spaces.
The three-story building has been gutted and is ready to be renovated to the company’s specifications. Sanfilippo said Solid Cactus will have complete creative control over the interior design. The award of $967,400 in assistance from the state last weekend will be used to buy equipment, furniture and to outfit the new offices.
The center will have a gym, locker room, fitness center and a full-service cafeteria. The company’s call center will be on the first floor. Work areas will be located on the second floor and executive offices on the third floor.
The design will have the employees in mind in keeping with the company’s recognition for the second consecutive year as one of the “Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania.”
“Our people are happy and that is tremendously important to us,” Sanfilippo said. “It really guides our decisions going forward.”