dognose
Silver Member
Chronicle Heritage closed more than 20 offices without a public announcement, leaving employees shocked and major archaeological projects facing an uncertain future.
The archaeology megafirm Chronicle Heritage has abruptly shut down its offices. It was the largest cultural resource management company in the country.
Jakob Sedig, a senior archaeologist with Chronicle Heritage who served as the principal investigator for the company’s Phoenix and Tucson offices, confirmed the closure to Inc.
Science first reported the closure on Tuesday, but rumors have circulated online since the beginning of this month. The move, which has not been announced publicly by the company, came on October 1, when employees were told at a town hall meeting. According to Sedig, the executive team informed office principals the night before.
The company was a major player in the for-profit cultural heritage industry, with more than 20 offices, approximately 600 employees, and an estimated annual revenue of $100 million, according to Science. Companies such as Chronicle Heritage are often hired to conduct legally required archaeological surveys and other reviews before major development projects.
According to Science, some observers have estimated that Chronicle Heritage conducted up to 90 percent of the archaeological research performed in the U.S. last year.
Christopher Dore, president of the Society for American Archaeology, told Inc. that the industry’s first concern was for the employees being laid off with little notice. However, Dore, who said he has no inside information about the company’s decision, noted that demand for archaeological work remains.
“The people aren’t going away, and the amount of work isn’t going away. It’s just simply that you have one fewer companies to do that, and other companies are taking advantage of great people who are now on the market looking for jobs and hiring up those people.”
Many former Chronicle employees have already been hired elsewhere, Dore told Inc., describing the closure as spurring a hiring frenzy across the industry. Sedig told Inc. that most of the company’s Caribbean division had already been rehired by a new company.
One of the bigger concerns is what will happen to the materials and projects Chronicle leaves behind.
“We have… the ethical responsibility for dealing with collections, the collections of artifacts, archaeological materials, that the company has within their laboratory system for projects that were underway, as well as…paper records and things like that related to the research that the company did,” Dore said.
He told Inc. that these heritage artifact collections are nonrenewable, spurring fears that materials will be thrown out.
“That’s the million-dollar question, and for a lot of us, that’s our main concern,” Sedig told Inc. “A lot of us do archaeology because we want to protect cultural resources and cultural heritage, and there’s no real plan, as far as we’re aware, of what’s going to happen to these resources.”
According to Sedig, Chronicle CEO Mel Gordon said at the firm’s last meeting that the company had allocated $1 million to rehouse or re-curate the hundreds, if not thousands, of boxes of artifacts in its care, some of which contain human remains. But Sedig added, “If you ask any museum professional, that’s a tenth of what it’ll take to rehouse all the materials.” He said a small crew had been brought back as on-call contractors to help close out office spaces, but that employees knew of no plan for the collections held in offices across the country.
Sedig said staff knew the company was struggling. At an all-hands meeting earlier this year, Gordon told employees the company was spending more money than it was making. At the time, between nine and 12 people were laid off, and restructuring was promised, but there was no mention of closure. The same financial reasoning was given at the final meeting.
That explanation surprised some employees, Sedig said, because several offices, including Phoenix, were profitable, and some offices had even posted job openings as recently as two weeks before the closure.
“We sort of knew that the company was not in great financial shape, but the immediacy of this is what was shocking,” Sedig told Inc.
Phoenix Business Journal reported that a WARN letter was filed on Monday. The Journal reported that the Chronicle was pursuing new financing to avoid a closure. “The company believed in good faith that announcing a potential closing earlier would have prevented it from obtaining such support,” the letter read. “Unfortunately, the company’s efforts to secure financing ultimately fell short, necessitating this immediate closure announcement.”
Some in the field have connected Chronicle’s closure to those proposals. Dore disputed that, adding that they “haven’t affected the marketplace yet.” He pointed to Chronicle’s private-equity owner, Riverside, which grew the company rapidly through acquisitions until that money dried up.
“The returns that we get within our industry typically aren’t the returns that you would get with other investments and other types of industries. And I’m not sure if Riverside fully understood that when they got into it.”
Sedig said it’s an open question whether Riverside anticipated the proposed changes, but noted none has taken effect. “Let’s say tomorrow those changes are enacted, it’ll still take months before any of that starts to trickle down to the business at hand,” he said. He added that the Phoenix office had recently won another $500,000 contract for a project on federal land.
Sedig told Inc. private equity is a recent arrival in the cultural resource management industry, a field that for most of its history since the National Historic Preservation Act passed in the 1960s was made up of smaller, family-owned companies.
Chronicle Heritage did not respond to Inc.’s multiple requests for comment.
REFERENCE: https://www.chronicleheritage.com/
SOURCE: https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/...0-plus-layoffs-arent-biggest-concern/91416381
The archaeology megafirm Chronicle Heritage has abruptly shut down its offices. It was the largest cultural resource management company in the country.
Jakob Sedig, a senior archaeologist with Chronicle Heritage who served as the principal investigator for the company’s Phoenix and Tucson offices, confirmed the closure to Inc.
Science first reported the closure on Tuesday, but rumors have circulated online since the beginning of this month. The move, which has not been announced publicly by the company, came on October 1, when employees were told at a town hall meeting. According to Sedig, the executive team informed office principals the night before.
More than 600 employees were blindsided by the closure
Chronicle Heritage was a large, for-profit cultural resource management and heritage consulting firm. It was responsible for conducting archaeological surveys, excavations, underwater archaeology, historic preservation, architectural history, ethnographic consultations, and paleontological studies.The company was a major player in the for-profit cultural heritage industry, with more than 20 offices, approximately 600 employees, and an estimated annual revenue of $100 million, according to Science. Companies such as Chronicle Heritage are often hired to conduct legally required archaeological surveys and other reviews before major development projects.
According to Science, some observers have estimated that Chronicle Heritage conducted up to 90 percent of the archaeological research performed in the U.S. last year.
Christopher Dore, president of the Society for American Archaeology, told Inc. that the industry’s first concern was for the employees being laid off with little notice. However, Dore, who said he has no inside information about the company’s decision, noted that demand for archaeological work remains.
“The people aren’t going away, and the amount of work isn’t going away. It’s just simply that you have one fewer companies to do that, and other companies are taking advantage of great people who are now on the market looking for jobs and hiring up those people.”
Many former Chronicle employees have already been hired elsewhere, Dore told Inc., describing the closure as spurring a hiring frenzy across the industry. Sedig told Inc. that most of the company’s Caribbean division had already been rehired by a new company.
One of the bigger concerns is what will happen to the materials and projects Chronicle leaves behind.
“We have… the ethical responsibility for dealing with collections, the collections of artifacts, archaeological materials, that the company has within their laboratory system for projects that were underway, as well as…paper records and things like that related to the research that the company did,” Dore said.
He told Inc. that these heritage artifact collections are nonrenewable, spurring fears that materials will be thrown out.
“That’s the million-dollar question, and for a lot of us, that’s our main concern,” Sedig told Inc. “A lot of us do archaeology because we want to protect cultural resources and cultural heritage, and there’s no real plan, as far as we’re aware, of what’s going to happen to these resources.”
According to Sedig, Chronicle CEO Mel Gordon said at the firm’s last meeting that the company had allocated $1 million to rehouse or re-curate the hundreds, if not thousands, of boxes of artifacts in its care, some of which contain human remains. But Sedig added, “If you ask any museum professional, that’s a tenth of what it’ll take to rehouse all the materials.” He said a small crew had been brought back as on-call contractors to help close out office spaces, but that employees knew of no plan for the collections held in offices across the country.
Sedig said staff knew the company was struggling. At an all-hands meeting earlier this year, Gordon told employees the company was spending more money than it was making. At the time, between nine and 12 people were laid off, and restructuring was promised, but there was no mention of closure. The same financial reasoning was given at the final meeting.
That explanation surprised some employees, Sedig said, because several offices, including Phoenix, were profitable, and some offices had even posted job openings as recently as two weeks before the closure.
“We sort of knew that the company was not in great financial shape, but the immediacy of this is what was shocking,” Sedig told Inc.
Phoenix Business Journal reported that a WARN letter was filed on Monday. The Journal reported that the Chronicle was pursuing new financing to avoid a closure. “The company believed in good faith that announcing a potential closing earlier would have prevented it from obtaining such support,” the letter read. “Unfortunately, the company’s efforts to secure financing ultimately fell short, necessitating this immediate closure announcement.”
The archaeology industry was already facing profound uncertainty
The mass layoffs come at a time when the industry is facing uncertainty. The Trump administration has proposed several changes to preservation laws that would reduce the number of federally funded projects requiring archaeological reviews.Some in the field have connected Chronicle’s closure to those proposals. Dore disputed that, adding that they “haven’t affected the marketplace yet.” He pointed to Chronicle’s private-equity owner, Riverside, which grew the company rapidly through acquisitions until that money dried up.
“The returns that we get within our industry typically aren’t the returns that you would get with other investments and other types of industries. And I’m not sure if Riverside fully understood that when they got into it.”
Sedig said it’s an open question whether Riverside anticipated the proposed changes, but noted none has taken effect. “Let’s say tomorrow those changes are enacted, it’ll still take months before any of that starts to trickle down to the business at hand,” he said. He added that the Phoenix office had recently won another $500,000 contract for a project on federal land.
Sedig told Inc. private equity is a recent arrival in the cultural resource management industry, a field that for most of its history since the National Historic Preservation Act passed in the 1960s was made up of smaller, family-owned companies.
Chronicle Heritage did not respond to Inc.’s multiple requests for comment.
REFERENCE: https://www.chronicleheritage.com/
SOURCE: https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/...0-plus-layoffs-arent-biggest-concern/91416381
Upvote
0
