BATON ROUGE, LA — PreSonus held a groundbreaking ceremony Aug. 22 for its new headquarters and research facility at 19151 Highland Road here, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and other VIP guests in attendance. The new 44,000-square-foot building will cost approximately $8.3 million, including land and development.
More details from PreSonus (www.presonus.com):
PreSonus has expanded from 49 employees in 2009 to more than 130 employees worldwide, including the 80 full-time employees who are overflowing its current offices on Florida Boulevard. According to PreSonus CEO Jim Mack, PreSonus has grown its revenues by more than 50% last year and is slated to enter new product categories to continue its growth.
Completion of the building, which was designed by local architects Ritter Maher, LLC, and developed by Moniotte Investments, is expected in the late summer of 2013. It will easily accommodate at least 125 employees-crucial because PreSonus is continuing to grow and hire-and offers many amenities that are not available in the company’s current space.
Among the unique features of this building will be a specialized high-tech recording studio/R&D space that is being custom-designed for PreSonus’ engineering and testing teams by the award-winning Walters-Storyk Design Group of Highland, New York. The 2,500-square-foot, state-of-the-art studio will feature a control room, a 500-square-foot live-sound room, two isolation rooms, a video-production suite, five test labs as well as a separate 1,500-square-foot live-sound room.
PreSonus’ rapid growth, local hiring, and emphasis on digital engineering qualified it for LED Digital Interactive Media and Software Development tax-credits. This program supports the creation of quality digital-engineering jobs that stay in the Baton Rouge community. Historically, companies like PreSonus have usually located on the East or West Coast.
However, the tax-credit program has helped make it possible for PreSonus to grow and prosper in its home city, investing these funds in new engineering staff and in research and development. Many of the new hires are highly skilled digital-hardware and software engineers residing in the Baton Rouge area.
Much of the engineering team graduated from the LSU Engineering Department, and the company was recently named to the LSU 100 Fastest Growing Tiger Businesses. PreSonus also is working with LSU in an effort to develop local design talent through the university’s outstanding engineering programs and internships.
