6A www.houstonbusinessjournal.com Week of August 17-23, 2012

BY DEON DAUGHERTYHOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL

The Clear Lake region, still hurting af-ter cutbacks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration program, is set to receive some 700 new jobs when a flight planning services company moves into the area later this year.

Universal Weather & Aviation Inc., based in south Houston, has bought the 158,000-square-foot Gemini Plaza at 1150 Gemini Ave., a stone’s throw from the Johnson Space Center.

The space was put up for sale in April, after the former owner and occupant, United Space Alliance, moved out, said Dan Boyles Jr., the NAI Hous-ton principal who bro-kered the deal.

Boyles said the Gemini Plaza space is a perfect example of how a com-mercial space returned to the market can help diversify a region’s econ-omy.

“This was a 158,000-square-foot build-ing that went vacant in a market that’s not seen a tremendous amount of de-mand with respect to (cutbacks at) NASA and associated contractors,” Boyles said.

“It’s a non-NASA-related contractor that’s come in and absorbed the build-ing almost overnight.”

The company is in the earliest plan-ning stages of moving, but ultimately, more than 700 workers will occupy the space, officials said.

Universal is moving its global head-quarters from its current 90,000-square-foot facility at 8787 Tallyho Road, just east of William P. Hobby Airport. The privately held company provides products and services, such as flight planning, weather brief-ings and aircraft support, for corporate and per-sonal air travel.

Kelvin Collard, execu-tive vice president and CFO at Universal Weath-er, said that after adding a couple dozen employees every year for the past several years, Universal was running out of space.

“We are busting at the seams,” he said.

SLATED FOR AUCTIONTo find the right location, Collard first

mapped out where his employees live. It turns out, more than 80 percent live about 12 miles away in the Clear Lake area.

Meanwhile, the Gemini Plaza build-ing had been under foreclosure and was slated for auction. Collard said Universal “got a good price on it,” but declined to reveal the sale price.

Universal had been at its Tallyho facil-ity since 1987. Once the move to Clear Lake is complete, the company will likely sell the south Houston property, he said.

In addition to being closer to many employees’ homes, Gemini Plaza is still close to Hobby Airport, the site of many Universal clients.

And, the building has a cafeteria kitch-

en that will accommodate its foray into the catering business.

The move itself is still months in the making.

“We’re a logistics company, and we’re open 24/7, so it’s a little complicated how we lay out the move,” he said. “The main concern is not to disrupt opera-tions.”

Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, said the presence of Universal marks an important investment toward diversify-ing the businesses in the region.

“This creates 700 jobs from outside the area and will continue to stimulate an already good economy here,” he said. “It was a building occupied by United Space Alliance that was empty due to layoffs and now, it’s full.” ■

DEON DAUGHERTY covers energy and law for the Houston Business Journal. Reach her at deondaugherty@bizjournals.com, 713-395-9627 or twitter.com/HBJDaugherty. Follow her award-winning “Drilling Down” blog throughout the week at houstonbusiness-journal.com.

Universal Weather moving HQ, 700 employees to Clear Lake

Boyles

Collard

HQ: Houston

REVENUE: FY 2011, $973 million

TOP EXEC: Ralph Vasami, CEO

EMPLOYEES: 700

FOUNDED: 1959

INDUSTRY: air travel logistics

OWNERSHIP: Private

WEB: universalweather.com

You’ve launched your business, lined up some customers and are now ready to start building your staff. Before you start interviewing, however, you may want to think about employee benefits. The benefits package you offer can make a big difference in both who you attract and whether you’ll be able to hold on to them in the future. “Creating a plan right at the beginning makes it easier to hire and retain the talented professionals your firm needs to thrive,” says Adam Segal, director of business marketing at Houston-based Strategic Finan-cial Group LLP, a general agency of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (Mass-Mutual). “As a new company, the last thing you want is high em-ployee turnover.” Often the first perk offered is health insurance, fol-lowed shortly by some kind of retirement plan. As busi-nesses grow, however, a sweetened benefits package can be a particularly effective way of keeping people happy with their jobs and loyal to the company. At University Medical Imaging—a 20-year-old company that provides MRIs, CAT scans, x-rays and ultra-sound procedures—benefits planning gets a lot of attention these days. “We look at it constantly,” says Michael Lechner, practice administrator, noting that the company needs the right staff in order to provide quality patient care. Finding good workers, however, is never easy, even with today’s high unemployment. And once the staff is trained and in place, Lechner says, it’s important to keep competitors from poaching the talent. “So we need to make sure that the grass always looks greener on our side,” he says. The good news: Many of the most valued perks are relatively inexpensive for employers. Moreover, companies are al-lowed to create small classes of employees that qualify for enhanced benefits. That means a group of highly-valued executives might, for example, get improved life insurance coverage or an upgraded disability policy. Such offerings—while extremely meaningful to the employee—are

both tax deductible and significantly less expensive than an increase in pay. At the executive level, special benefits packages can be an important way to attract key employees and keep them on board. Aimed at the highly-compensated employ-ee, these plans can often involve some kind of executive bo-nus or deferred compensation often funded with permanent life insurance.

“You can be really creative when dealing with high-ly compensated executives,” says Reva Ma, a financial professional with Strategic Financial Group LLP. “You can custom build a plan for each executive to reduce taxes and maximize loyalty.” These top-tier plans, for example, commonly come with a

vesting schedule to keep the employee tied to the company. A deferred-compensation plan, for example, might offer key personnel an additional $40,000 a year for 10 years, requir-ing those executives to stay on the job for a decade in order to collect the full amount. But these plans can offer more than golden hand-cuffs. A supplemental employee retirement plan or SERP, for example, can be designed to not only provide the ex-ecutive with additional retirement income, but also to pay the company a death benefit if that employee should die. In some cases, the plan will even allow the company to recoup the cost of premium payments in the event of a death. When it comes to designing benefits, it is impor-tant to remember that one size does not fit all. “We usually

sit down with owners and review their workforce demographics,” asking what they care

about, Segal says. “Sometimes it’s health, sometimes it’s retirement,

and sometimes it’s tax efficient compensation strategies that

drive the proposal.” The goal is to build loyalty and make employ-ees feel appreciated. “The greatest businessmen—the Warren Buffets and the

Andrew Carnegies—will tell you their workforce is their

most valued asset,” he says.

BUILDING YOUR TEAM: Using Benefits to Attract and Keep the Best

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When it comes to designing benefits, it is

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