Get to know

Who: Gary Johnson, president of Zoom Imaging Solutions

Lives: Granite Bay

Age: 47

Family: Wife, Bonnie; daughter Crystal, 15; son Tyler, 13

Hobbies: Golf, travel, family motor home trips.

Activities: President of the Board of Governor's for the Granite Bay Golf Club and active Rotarian nearly 20 years.

Here’s your dose of good economic news for the week.

A corporate move will bring 60 jobs to a commercial building in Roseville that has sat empty for more than a year.

Zoom Imaging Solutions, a Sacramento-based copier, fax and printer sales and service provider, plans to open shop at the former Roseville Athletic Club building in the fall.

Crews are almost done transforming what was once the city’s oldest gym into a gleaming 16,000-square-feet service center and showroom for the 22-year-old business, said Zoom president Gary Johnson, who lives in Granite Bay.

“It all kind of all fell into place at the right time, Johnson, 47, said. “It was a matter of we had outgrown this space and then that building became available.”

FROM GYM TO OFFICE

On a tour of the space last week, Johnson showed off where the old racquetball court now gives way to a showroom (scuff marks are still visible). The sales pit was a swimming pool.

“It’s pretty bizarre when you’re pulling out a pool and a Jacuzzi to put in an office space,” Johnson said.

It was also a hefty task, said general contractor Jeff Holland of Granite Bay’s Holland Construction. Ceilings were too low and construction in the decades-old building wasn’t up to modern standards.

“The whole thing was in bad shape, and the cost of upgrading it was pretty high,” Holland, also a Granite Bay resident, said of the gym’s condition.

So rather than a basic interior gutting and exterior remodel, Holland proposed a major demolition. Essentially, the entire front half the structure is new construction.

“The footprint is exactly the same, and we just raised up roof on it,” he said.

RARE PIECE OF GOOD NEWS

Following a spate of acquisitions Johnson undertook several years ago, Zoom now employs 135 people working out of nine offices throughout central and Northern California. The new Roseville location will serve as the company’s headquarters, Johnson said.

That’s a rare positive sign for south Placer’s economy. Although significant new-tenant arrivals were once common in the city, the recession has seen scores of commercial buildings go vacant, with laid-off employees in their wake.

The Roseville-Rocklin area’s retail vacancy rate sat at 12.5 percent at the end of the second quarter, which ended June 30, according to CB Richard Ellis. Tenants gave back more than 230,000 square feet during that period, the most of any Sacramento-area community surveyed by the broker.

To be sure, Zoom, which specializes in Toshiba equipment, hasn’t been immune from the downturn.

Closures in businesses that are heavy document producers dragged on the company’s growth from 2008 through the first quarter of this year.

“It was really a bloodbath in real estate and mortgage industry and some of the support industries,” he said.

But Johnson – who often wears a button that says “We Refuse to Engage in a Recession” – is upbeat.

The growth from before the recession allowed the company to “tread water,” he said. And while the Roseville move was thought up prior to the bust, Johnson said he wouldn’t have changed it. For one thing, the downturn allowed the company to get a better deal on its lease. Zoom is even hiring for several positions.

“Business is down for us,” he said. “But the exciting news for me is the foundation is laid for some major growth when the economy does come back. And employees have kept their jobs.”

But these days, even that is an accomplishment.

“You have to take a much more aggressive approach in terms of your respect for the customer,” Johnson said. “Love the customer. You’ve got to go overboard in your attention to their needs right now.”