Acacia's new owners cut Eugene staff.

Byline: Christian Wihtol The Register-Guard

The new Portland-based owners of the Acacia International call center in Eugene's Riverfront Research Park have sharply cut staffing in Eugene and shifted much of the work to Portland.

The once-thriving call center, which handled customer service work for dozens of firms nationwide, has cut its Eugene staff to 38 employees, down from a high of about 80 in 2001.

The new owner, Springwater Acquisitions, has not yet decided whether to keep any operations in Eugene, general manager Mark Hollis said. The company has moved the customer-service work to Portland and has thus far kept the software development staff in Eugene, he said.

Acacia was part of Telecomm Services Inc., which is owned by veteran Eugene businessman Don Tykeson. Last December, Tykeson sold the Acacia business, which included call-center and answering-service operations. Tykeson wanted out of the business after revenues went sour in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and the top Acacia executive suffered from health problems and a replacement could not be found, said Thomas Palmer, treasurer of Telecomm Services.

"It was just a combination of events that made the business environment very difficult," Palmer said.

After the sale of the Acacia assets, Telecomm Services last month filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Eugene.

Tykeson is the main shareholder in Telecomm. The firm has assets of $386,000, mostly cash from the sale of its call-center and answering-service operations. It has liabilities of more than $1 million. The chief liabilities are $650,000 owed to Tykeson for loans he made to the company, and up to $319,000 owed to scanner maker PSC Inc. to cover a long-term lease. Telecomm Services in July 2001 signed a seven-year sublease to take over space PSC leased at the Riverfront Research Park.

The bankruptcy procedure will allocate the cash among the claimants, Palmer said.

Tykeson founded Telecomm Services in 1953 as a telephone answering service. In 1996, he expanded by creating Acacia, which grew from a few dozen employees to 80 by 2001. At the time Acacia moved into the research park space, the firm was expecting to grow to 200 or 300 employees within several years.

Then came the economic downturn. Revenues dropped from $1.95 million in 2001 to $1.42 million in 2002, according to the bankruptcy filing.

"We had not been able to build the business like we had planned, and we had significant overhead with the new space," Palmer said.

Telecomm in December 2002 sold the call-center assets to Springwater for $185,000, according to the filing. Springwater didn't take over Telecomm's long-term sublease at the research park, Palmer said.

Also in December 2002, Telecomm sold its answering-service business to Business Connections Inc. of Salem for $237,000, according to the filing. Business Connections shifted the work to Salem, Palmer said.

Tykeson had bankrolled Telecomm with loans in 2001 and 2002, and the firm still owes him $650,000 in principal plus $19,500 in interest, according to the filing.

Telecomm is disputing the long-term lease obligations to PSC. PSC is based in Portland and has a scanner factory in west Eugene. PSC had moved out of its research park space in order to cut costs.

Tykeson is a prominent local businessman and philanthropist. He's the former president of Liberty Communications, which owned 33 cable television stations and six television stations in 11 states. Tykeson oversaw the sale of Liberty in 1983 for $186 million to Tele-Communications Inc. of Denver.