Wall Street West Gets Scranton Center

SECCAS LLC is opening a secondary data center in Scranton, Pa., as part of that state's Wall Street West initiative to attract financial industry data centers. SECCAS, which provides hosted compliance solutions for financial services companies, said it picked the Scranton site after reviewing multiple locations in New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

SECCAS is an acronym for Secure Electronic Communication Compliance Archival System, with a customer list that includes banks, broker dealers, investment advisers and hedge funds. The company said the Scranton facility will provide full redundancy for its New York City operations and also serve as the primary location for the firm's litigation-readiness business.

"Northeastern Pennsylvania is an ideal location for disaster-recovery facilities," said Daniel Summa, President of SECCAS, who noted that the region is served by a different power company and watershed than the New York region and can also provide real-time data replication. "And unlike what we saw in other parts of the country, Wall Street West was able to bring together the state and local municipalities as well as private entities to work together with a single voice. That combination of factors makes northeastern Pennsylvania and Wall Street West ideal partners to support our business growth."

Wall Street West aims to "bolster New York City's stature as the country's preeminent financial center by providing disaster recovery and back-up locales for that city's financial-services firms." The partnership of more then two dozen organizations and agencies is supported by a $15 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Wall Street West and its economic development partners worked closely with SECCAS for several months to identify a location that meets the company's requirements for a mission-critical back-up site.

"This first Wall Street West success story shows what happens when regional partners - the city of Scranton, the Scranton Plan, DCED, Penn's Northeast, and the Governor's action team - work together," said Catherine Bolton, Project Director at Wall Street West.

"This project is another great example of how our competitive business environment and strategic investments are working to grow our economy," said Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell.

As part of its $850,000 project, SECCAS will purchase new equipment, make leasehold improvements and train its new employees. The Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, Scranton Office of Economic and Community Development and Penn's Northeast worked with GAT and SECCAS to help the company secure a $270,000 funding package offer that includes a loan of up to $250,000 through the Machinery and Equipment Loan Fund and $20,000 in Customized Job Training funds.