City Business Honored - Courier-Post
By Eileen Stilwell Courier-Post Staff, Camden
Tucked away in a cavernous warehouse on the Camden Waterfront is a business that began before George Washington became president.
Joseph Oat Corp. is still there. Today it makes massive metal containers for the petrochemical and nuclear power industries around the world, attracting little local attention.
That changed Thursday when the Camden Chamber of Commerce, a division of the Cherry Hill Regional Chamber, recognized the family-owned company for its longevity and financial success. Founded in 1788, the company now has 130 employees earning an average $50,000 a year. More than half are Camden residents.
Designed to honor the old and new guard in Camden, the Camden Chamber presented plaques to Joseph Oat Corp., to Carl Dranoff for transforming the former RCA Nipper building into a tower of luxury apartments on the waterfront and to Rutgers School of Business for supporting programs that benefit the regional business community.
The standing-room-only event was held at Twenty Horse Tavern, a new bar and restaurant on 2nd Street that has its own story. Formerly a stable that held 20 teams of horses used to deliver lumber, the restaurant is another enterprise hoping to capitalize on the city's colorful history.
Ron Kaplan, president of operations of Joseph Oat, said his father, Marty, kept the original name when he and a partner bought the company in 1966. Since then they have increased warehouse space twelve-fold and boosted annual revenues from $250,000 to $40 million.
About 70 percent of the nuclear power plants in the United States - and about 25 percent around the world - use their Camden-made products, said Kaplan, 55 of Moorestown.
Last year, Justin Kaplan, 23 and a graduate of Cornell University, joined his father and 81-year-old grandfather in the firm.
"Working with Dad can be tough, but rewarding. We built this business together," said Ron Kaplan, who graciously acknowledged his landlord for the past 40 years, the South Jersey Port Corp.
"We've had a wonderful relationship and I've never see people work so hard in my life," said Kaplan, about Joseph Balzano, executive director of the agency, and Hank D'Andrea, facilities engineer for the port's sprawling real estate.
Carol Dranoff, the developer who dared to bring market-rate housing to Camden, told the audience the 341-unit Victor Building is 75 percent rented.
"It should be completely leased by the end of the year," said Dranoff. Still to come is Radio Lofts, a companion RCA building that is slated to become 90 loft condominiums, adjacent to The Victor.
Accepting the award for the Rutgers Business School was William Reynolds, who helped turn a $1 million endowment from the estate of William G. Rohrer seven years ago into a training ground for businesses.
Rutgers supports the efforts with office space, in-kind services and about $40,000 a year for operations.
With help from the Delaware River Port Authority and state and federal grants, the William G. Rohrer Center for Management & Entrepreneurship runs an incubator in Camden for 40-some businesses that employ about 100 people.
The center also has trained more than 2,000 people and has created a special unit for family-owned businesses that generally have a unique set of business issues.
"I'm confidant that Camden will soon have the dramatic mix of residences and businesses and intellectual life that I saw 40 years ago in Philadelphia when I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania," said Reynolds.
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