Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 31

A weekly report on the local economy Newsday Cliff De Bear Employees will start moving into Computer Associates' new headquarters in Islandia next month. Welcome To Reality Computer Associates enters new offices, and a new era of diminished expectations By James Bernstein pand its Long Island work force to 1,500 in a STAFF WRITER few years and then to 2,000 the capacity of the new HEN COMPUTER Associates International an- building by the late 1990s. CA employs 7,000 people nounced headquarters plans in central years ago Suffolk to build County, a big many new The altogether. move from Garden City to Islandia is still on. Some Long Island political and business leaders had only one CA employees are to begin relocating next month.

The othproblem: They couldn't find enough superlatives to describe er upbeat predictions made for CA also might become realiwhat the move might mean for the region. ty someday. Companies would flock to Suffolk just to be near the gi- But the superlatives are heard less often now. Computant software company, some said. The move would mean er Associates is no longer as hot as it was in early 1989.

millions of dollars in new tax Its stock has lost more than revenue, others added. Mar- two-thirds of its value since tin Cantor, Suffolk's econom- then. Some analysts are ic development commission- "We see ourselves growing. If we criticizing the company's er, proclaimed, "Computer wouldn't be into slowing growth and what Associates is the Grumman of one called an "unexciting didn't, we embarking the 21st a building that houses 2,000 product line." And Long IsCA contributed to the air of land economists say hopes of optimism. Chairman and Charles Wang, CA's being a pace setter for chief executive Charles Wang chairman and chief executive said the company would ex- Please Turn the Page 29 As al Party Animal, He's a Pro ing HAVING enough, corporate but HIS the BEARD were saddest and traumatic decision dressfor Martin Greenstein was to kill Uncle Marty.

"We had hit the wall," Greenstein says. 'And when you can't grow, you know what It wasn't that the party business was bad. Greenstein's company had just reached a plateau that it couldn't pass, at a time when the economy was starting to get soft. But trading images in the name of marketing led to a quantum leap for Greenstein's company, which now is known as Enchant- BUSINESS ed Parties instead of Parties by UnDOING cle Marty. In BUSINESS three years, sales doubled, to more than $1 million this year.

'The name Uncle Marty took me very far," Greenstein says, "but it locked me in place. Would you call Uncle Paul Marty to do your Schreiber daughter's wedding, or would you call Enchanted Parties? That's the answer. It's unfortunate." But banishing the homespun symbol of Greenstein's 20-year-old business was as productive as it was necessary. "'It allowed major corporations who didn't know the quality of our presentation to call," he says. "And it opened up the wedding market for us Last year, Enchanted Parties designed or "imagineered," in Greenstein's phrase more than 500 events, ranging from a wedding breakfast for two to a company extravaganza involving nearly 11,000 people.

"The special events industry has become one of the most important industries in the country," Greenstein says. "Take the Super Bowl halftime. That's event planning. The Olympics. The Easter parade." And corporate America is realizing the value of events as tools, he says, whether to foster team spirit or launch a product.

"But show me a company that hasn't used an event he says, "and I'll show you a company that's going down the The industry has expanded dramatically in the last decade and now has its own magazine, Special Events, its own trade organization, the International Special Events Society, and the stirrings about oversight that generally follow exponential growth. Anybody with money for an ad in the Yellow Pages can be a party planner, Greenstein says, but that gives no clue about the capability of that planner. "With events becoming larger and more complex, with companies needing to be a lot more careful about the Please see PARTY on Page 35 PLUS Morgan Stanley's What's Happening ............34 New LI.