Gwinnett booster moving company to Buford
Seeing Terri Jondahl at her office at CAB, Inc, it's easy to understand how she's become known as a tireless advocate of Gwinnett's business community. She talks fast and has the kind of energy that allows her to spend all day dealing with business problems and still make it to a chamber of commerce function at night.
Jondahl, the manufacturing company's CEO, lives here and serves in high-profile roles at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce - both in the chairman's club and on the board of directors. She's become well known for her work promoting the chamber and the county itself.
And yet, her company isn't even located in Gwinnett - at least not yet.
"I noticed that even though I had my office up here in Hall County, I was spending all my time doing stuff in Gwinnett," she says. "There's just so much vibrancy there."
Now CAB is moving its headquarters to a 16-acre property it owns off Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Buford. Jondahl is currently working with architects on the final building plans and hopes to complete the move within the next eight to 12 months.
Hall County officials weren't happy to lose the company, especially to Gwinnett with its much larger business base, but Jondahl says that her home county's resources are better suited to a fast-growing company like CAB.
"(Hall County) didn't want to us go, but it really was a live-work-play thing," she says.
CAB's primary business is manufacturing pipe flanges for the water supply and wind power industries. Over the next year, the company plans to move its distribution facility from Oakwood, Ga. to its manufacturing center in Nacogdoches, Texas. Along with the new headquarters in Buford, the company has offices in Shanghai, China; Delhi, India and Busan, South Korea.
The firm is also in the process of buying a distributorship in South Africa, where Jondahl expects the demand for new infrastructure to drive sales growth.
Growth has been a sign of CAB's recent success. Jondahl came to CAB in 1996 when the company had $3.5 million in annual revenue. This fiscal year, the company expects to bring in revenues between $90 and $100 million, Jondahl says.
Early on, Jondahl fell in love with Gwinnett. The native of Northern California lived for a time in Lilburn before moving into a home on Lake Lanier in Buford. Now she's plotting her company's move into new digs.
She already has a plan for a 15,000-square-foot headquarters with a stone facade, walking trails and exercise club.
"I want to create an environment where our employees can exercise and live healthy lifestyles," she says.
CAB's new building is also undergoing a "green review" to determine ways of making it more efficient and environmentally friendly. Jondahl says the company is considering using geothermal heating (which works by drawing heat from a well deep under the ground), cork flooring and other building techniques aimed at keeping utility costs low.
It's not an entirely new concept for the company. Its Texas factory already gets 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.
"There's not a huge premium involved in a lot of this stuff, but the price of electricity is only going in one direction," she says. "We plan to stay in this building for decades, so it makes sense to consider these things."
