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History Lessons

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Sections Travel and Tourism

The Big E Continues to Be an Economic Engine

Eastern States Exposition CEO Gene Cassidy and the man who inspires his work, fair founder Joshua Brooks.

Eastern States Exposition CEO Gene Cassidy and the man who inspires his work, fair founder Joshua Brooks.

Joshua L. Brooks was a man who got things done. And Gene Cassidy, CEO of the Eastern States Exposition, doesn’t let anyone forget it, hanging a large portrait of Brooks, the fair’s founder, at the front of the conference room where he meets with his staff.

“Mr. Brooks was concerned about agriculture,” Cassidy told BusinessWest. “He was an industrialist, but he saw that agriculture was losing ground in New England at the turn of the last century, with so much agriculture being produced out of the Midwest and South Central estates. So he established the Eastern States Agricultural and Industrial Exposition.”

Specifically, he got the National Dairy Show to move its annual event from Chicago to West Springfield in 1916, but only after he transformed a bare plot of land into a property where the expo could be staged.
“There’s a great story of how he capitalized the fairgrounds and got people to donate incredible sums of money,” said Cassidy, citing, as an example, the night of Feb. 1, 1914, when a major blizzard hit the Pioneer Valley. A fund-raiser was scheduled for that night, and Noyes Fisk, owner of Fisk Tire Co. in Chicopee — which later became Uniroyal — was given the responsibility of raising $750,000. “Even in that blizzard, with limited attendance, he was able to raise $450,000. That was the initial capital providing resources to build these facilities, including A Barn, B Barn, and C Barn.”

All three of those barns, including several other structures built in the early years of the fair, still stand today, while the fairgrounds has added many others over the years. More importantly, however, the fair — its name eventually shortened to the Eastern States Exposition and known colloquially as the Big E — has built a nearly century-old legacy that’s measured by more than its impressive regional economic impact (more on that later).

“The impact of Eastern States is dramatic, and it’s important to the region,” said Cassidy, who joined the Big E 20 years ago as chief financial officer and took the reins from longtime CEO Wayne McCary. Cassidy’s first two fairs as CEO set records for attendance, but he has been equally successful with another mission: bringing the expo’s history to life, partly by decorating the expo’s offices with dozens of posters, documents, and artifacts from the past 98 years, including more than one celebrating the work of the man he respectfully calls Mr. Brooks.

“Since I became CEO, my goal has been to reconnect and resurrect, if you will, the spirit of our founder, Mr. Brooks,” Cassidy said. “This building was pretty sterile before, but I think the history is important, and it’s important for all of us who work here to be reacquainted with why we’re here — and what, really, is the purpose of the Eastern States Exposition.”

As the 99th edition of the Big E gets set to roll out in two weeks, Cassidy sat down with BusinessWest to answer that question in a number of ways.

Animal Attraction

Although the words ‘agricultural’ and ‘industrial’ are no longer in the fair’s name, Cassidy said, it would be a mistake to underestimate their importance to what the Big E is all about.

“Yes, entertainment drives people’s interest, and we make a big deal about food; that drives people’s interest as well. And certainly the midway is an attraction, so making sure we have a good, clean, safe, attractive midway is key,” he explained. “Behind the scenes, though, we’re engaged in producing an event that serves the agricultural industry and the commodities industry for all of New England. Those are less exciting things for some people, but we get very excited about them.”

He said the fair has become known over the decades as a prime showcase for what he called the “bovine, equine, and swine” categories of livestock shows, as well as for produce and other food products. “If you win a blue ribbon at the Eastern States Exposition, whether it’s for cheese or cattle or goats, whatever it is, that gives you national cachet, national attention. Most fairgoers aren’t cognizant of that, but it’s very important for both the agriculture and industry that drives a large part of the New England economy.”

The fair has always educated people about livestock and agriculture, and Cassidy feels that mission is more important than ever, with so many Americans, particularly of the younger generations, unaware of what goes into putting their food on the table.

“So much time has passed from 1916 to today, and people are so distant from production agriculture. In many cases, animals [at the show] are viewed as if they’re domestic pets and not domestic food products. Youth today have no connection, no understanding of where their food actually comes from,” he said, adding that this disconnect isn’t limited to the agricultural side, and he’d like to see more fair offerings that teach people about food processing as well.

In addition, “it’s a continuing battle with animal-rights organizations,” Cassidy noted. “We get blowback from rogue groups that raise money on the Internet, anonymously, and they influence our programs in a way that’s detrimental to the general public.”

For example, “my office is two miles from the house where I was born and raised,” he continued. “When I was a kid, the Eastern States Exposition had a carcass exhibit, and a butcher butchering beef cattle and explaining the different cuts of beef. People would be mesmerized, and would learn where the loin comes from, the shoulder, and so on. In this day and age in New England, you could never have an exhibition like that, and it’s sad.”

Just like today, fairgoers have long been able to peruse and buy the latest products at the Big E.

Just like today, fairgoers have long been able to peruse and buy the latest products at the Big E.

While maintaining as much of the expo’s agricultural focus as possible, Cassidy said he would like to strengthen the connections the fair has to other notable industries, such as machine tools, using the fair as a platform to grow those businesses and generate jobs as well. He also believes promotion of consumer products still has a place.

“Companies used to use fairs as a means of promoting their new products,” he noted. “With the advent of television, fairs became less attractive for, say, Westinghouse or General Electric to launch their latest washing machine or other product. But we’re working very hard here to create opportunities for companies to re-engage people on the one-to-one level.”

This year’s fair will showcase the Ford Mustang, which made its debut at the New York World’s Fair 50 years ago. The Big E will display one of the Mustangs that was actually on display in New York in 1964, and Sarat Ford has produred a few rare special-edition Mustangs to display as well. “In many ways, we’re celebrating the World’s Fair,” Cassidy said. “It’s a throwback feature, which I’m really excited about.”

Eat, Listen, Love

Cassidy told BusinessWest that he fully understands the fair’s appeal to tradition and nostalgia that repeat visitors enjoy — everything from the livestock shows to the parades and circuses to the state buildings, where the six New England states promote their most popular foods, crafts, and other products. The challenge, of course, is maintaining those traditions while keeping the fair fresh.

Entertainment is a large part of that, and the Big E has long offered free concerts to visitors — this year’s extensive lineup features up-and-comers like The Voice winner Cassadee Pope and veterans like Eddie Money — while mixing in a few bigger-name shows that require an extra admission fee, including Darius Rucker, Little Big Town, and ZZ Top.

“I’ve been trying to get ZZ Top for 10, maybe 15 years, and I finally got them, so I’m very excited,” Cassidy said, adding that financial changes in the entertainment-booking world have made charging for some acts necessary.

“You’ve got to have good entertainment — that’s the thing that puts the buzz in the air. But that’s extremely difficult to do, and every year, it’s harder and harder. When I started here in 1994, we could book the biggest acts in Las Vegas for $40,000 or $50,000, and they would do two shows a day. Now, in the current age, we can’t afford these acts,” he said, noting that booking Reba McEntire in 2011 cost $335,000. “So we’ve been forced to charge now for the biggest acts, and we do our best to find solid acts we can give away.”

He credited John Juliano, the long-time special-events director for the Big E, with always being able to book talent on the rise, from Beyoncé before Destiny’s Child was popular to Hunter Hayes last year to Pope next month.

Still, for many fairgoers, music isn’t the number-one attraction; they’re more interested in finding out how many foods can be successfully deep-fried.

“Talent is such an important way of keeping people interested, but the other way is gastronomically,” Cassidy said of the Big E’s extensive selection of fair food. “I love cheese curds, and this is the only place in the world I get cheese curds. But we also have to continually discover new products and find means by which to bring new products to the fairgoing public.”

After all, the vitality and continuing popularity of the Big E has a direct economic impact on the region. According to a report the Eastern States Exposition produced this year, the 17-day Big E, plus all the other events that take place on the fairgrounds each year — which feature exhibitions for animal lovers, car enthusiasts, gun owners, campers, and dozens of other groups — benefit the region with an annual economic impact of $479 million.

The tax revenues alone include $3 million in income tax, $1.4 million in sales tax, $427,000 in hotel tax, and $3.3 million in food and beverage tax. More significantly, events generate $299 million in gross regional product and account for 3,000 jobs in Hampden County that generate $91.9 million in personal income. The exposition’s impact on the rest of New England and New York include 2,000 jobs generating $134 million in personal income. In all, 2.5 million visitors stop by the fairgrounds each year, well over 1 million for the Big E alone.

“We need all the stakeholders — which include the fair patrons, business leaders from throughout the region, and our own board of trustees — to be able to draw a direct link toward the Eastern States as a mechanism to drive the economy and jobs,” Cassidy said. “The fair has a broad impact on agriculture worldwide, but has its most important role in this region. It plays a very important role in generating business on a grand scale, and that ripples throughout the economy at many different levels.”

Into the Next Century

At one point, Cassidy pulled out an old, worn book filled with stock certificates that Brooks sold to some of Greater Springfield’s most notable citizens in the fair’s early days — then later bought back so that no individual or group could set the event’s agenda.

To continue Brooks’ legacy for the next 100 years, Cassidy knows that the fairgrounds need some attention, starting with those century-old buildings. Renovating the large B Barn, otherwise known as the Coliseum, is a $60 million endeavor, and that’s just one structure. Last year, the fair generated about $5 million in profit — a success, of course, but not the kind of revenue flow needed to sustain multiple improvement projects.

“We need to continue to grow, not just because we’re a 100-year-old facility with a great deal of deferred maintenance, but to re-educate the fair-going public,” he said. “I think we’re the most successful fair in the country; we’re recognized nationally as a best-practices organization. We’re one of the largest fairs, and the largest fair that’s not state-subsidized, which is really remarkable. But we need to put a lot of attention into this 100-year-old plant.”

To do that, Cassidy says it’s crucial to generate regional philanthropy, like Brooks did when he reached out to his wealthy friends to launch the exposition in 1916. “We’re a 501(c)(3) public charity, and financially, we’re a very stable organization, but we need to reinvigorate our stakeholders — not just to sustain ourselves, but we owe it to the region to grow, so the region grows.”

As board treasurer of the Regional Employment Board of Western Mass., Cassidy is keenly aware of the region’s need to retain talent to grow a number of its industries, and he feels like the Big E and its myriad activities can play a role in that, if only by improving quality of life in the Pioneer Valley.

“We have access to the best education in the world, and we’re exporting our graduates. Any company executive who scoffs at that is not being responsible in their duty to grow the economy and make their mark on the general citizenry,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s all about quality of life. My hope is that the Eastern States Exposition adds to quality of life for people in West Springfield and all of Greater Springfield.”

It’s an easy thing to get excited about, Cassidy added. “People pay to get in, and they’re predisposed to happiness. There are very few jobs in the world where the person coming through the gate is coming in to have a good time. You go to the grocery store because you have to, or go to the tire store because you need tires. You don’t have to come to the Big E.

“Our job,” he concluded, “is to deliver a product that makes you want to be here. If we can take our presence here and use it as a multiplier to drive industry in the local economy, we’ve succeeded.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Dennis Group Stays True to Its Process

By
Architecture Special Coverage

Food for Thought

Dennis Group project

This aerial photo is of a large Dennis Group project under construction in Ohio.

 

At any given time, the Dennis Group is working on 400 to 500 projects around the world. But you wouldn’t know it by looking around New England.

Sure, it’s worked with Agri-Mark in West Springfield, Pepperidge Farm in Bloomfield, Conn., and a host of other companies locally over the years, but food-production plants — and that’s exclusively what this design-build engineering firm works on — tend to be bunched in certain pockets of the country, and for good reason, said Mike Damiano, head of the company’s process engineering group.

For example, “Pennsylvania supplies the Northeast. That’s a big distribution corridor. All the major players like to be within a stone’s throw of each other,” he noted, adding that other clusters are located in Ohio (serving the Midwest), Georgia (the Southeast), Texas (the South), and California (the West Coast). “We have a lot of work local to our Utah office, which seems abnormal, but it’s a growing area. A lot of it is about logistics, and where they can get to as many places in the U.S. as economically as possible.”

In addition, food-production companies find labor, taxes, and utilities less expensive outside New England, said Chris Siart, head of the firm’s civil, structural, and architectural group.

“We basically design and build food and beverage facilities. We started off doing food and beverage, and we’re still doing food and beverage, for a wide range of products and clients,” he told BusinessWest. “We work with small startup companies all the way up to top-100 companies — Nestlé, Kraft, Pillsbury, and all those other big guys.”

Damiano said the Dennis Group performs full-service engineering for the facility side of the production systems. That involves detailed design work, procurement of equipment and workforce, and management of the construction of the plant. “We don’t self-perform any construction activities, so we’re design-build in the sense that we do construction management.”

 

Up from the Attic

The Dennis Group has witnessed explosive growth since it was launched by founder — and still president — Tom Dennis in his attic in 1987. It now boasts about 200 employees in its headquarters in the Fuller Block building in downtown Springfield, and another 400 in seven satellite offices: in California, Georgia, Michigan, Utah, Brazil, and two in Canada.

Some of this success can be traced to timing — specifically, an explosion in the popularity of convenience-based foods and the recession-proof (and, as it turns out, pandemic-proof) nature of the food industry.

“A lot of it is about logistics, and where they can get to as many places in the U.S. as economically as possible.”

Each project begins with a concept, Siart said — a new product a company wants to develop or an existing product for which it wants to ramp up production. After a definition study, which is a report defining project scope, scale, cost, and schedule, the study is handed off to the food manufacturer for approval, with projects ranging anywhere from $1 million to $1 billion in cost.

“Then we set the engineering — we have all disciplines in house. We have civil engineers, architects, structural engineers … we have everything to do with the building, but also all the internal engineers as well — mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, control engineers, electrical engineers, basically designing all the equipment inside.”

One reason for the Dennis Group’s sustained success — it has topped Engineering News Record’s annual rankings of the top food and beverage engineering firms by revenue in numerous years — is due to its ability to tackle new industry trends, which constantly drive the design and construction of new plants.

For example, Damiano said, “we’ve been doing a lot of vertical farming, which is kind of new — it’s like a warehouse with an indoor greenhouse.”

That has helped stores keep ever-popular bagged salads on shelves longer because they’re arriving in stores sooner, particularly in the Northeast, said Nathan Marcucci, a process engineer and head of the firm’s project management group.

Mike Damiano and Chris Siart

Mike Damiano and Chris Siart say continual innovation in food trends drives robust production of manufacturing facilities.

“Bagged salads were always field harvested, and you had only a few days to get that salad from the field to somebody’s house,” he explained. “Now, with an indoor vertical grow facility in the Northeast in the wintertime, you can get that bagged salad to the consumer in the Northeast quicker, so it lasts longer. So it’s a combination of new technologies that invigorate some of these older products.”

The Dennis Group has also worked with the Impossible brand on alternative meats, ridden a wave of Greek yogurt and alternative milk production when those products became popular, and worked with Ocean Spray on Craisins.

“That used to be a byproduct; they used to pay to have it hauled away,” Damiano said. “Then they turned it into a product that was more profitable than the juice. The juice became a byproduct on the Craisins line. They basically flipped the table.”

Much of the product innovation in supermarkets begins with smaller companies and gets picked up by larger ones when products become popular. Larger companies are often hesitant to step out of their comfort zone, like J.M. Smucker, a repeat client that has long focused on peanut butter and jelly — and premade Uncrustables sandwiches — as well as a line of pet food. The Dennis Group is currently working on its third Smucker factory; a recently opened facility in Colorado was named Food Engineering’s Plant of the Year for 2020.

Sometimes innovation in the way food is packaged drives plant production as well, Marcucci noted, such as a move toward squeezable containers some years back for everything from peanut butter to yogurt.

 

No Slowdown

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Marcucci said, some jobs got put on hold, but the Dennis Group experienced no real downturn. In fact, demand soared for certain food products, like those aforementioned Uncrustables when kids were largely stuck at home.

“When the economy gets tough, people have less money to buy food at restaurants, so they want pre-made grocery food,” Siart said. “That’s when our clients’ orders go through the roof; they can’t keep up with the orders.”

And that’s when they call on the Dennis Group, which has developed a worldwide reputation in its engineering niche.

“There’s nobody with the title ‘salesperson’ in the company,” he added. “The way we look at it here is that everybody’s a salesperson. You’ve got to do good work to bring in repeat customers, and 80% to 90% of our work is repeat customers; basically, large food manufacturers come back to us and do multiple projects.

“A smaller percentage is new clients that are finding us through different ways — people moving from one company to another,” he went on. “Someone might have been working for Nestlé and is now working for another food company, and work comes to us through word of mouth from former clients. Some of it’s cold calling. Some of it’s someone doing a Google search and finding Dennis Group that way. That’s how our sales work: repeat business and word of mouth.”

It’s business the company’s leaders don’t expect to slow any time soon, if the way people shop — and the convenient products they desire — is any indication.

“Food is essential,” Damiano said. “If you go to the grocery store, you have that one section of fresh produce; everything else is processed. The minute people stop buying processed food, we’re in trouble.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Ecosystem Helps Entrepreneurs Navigate the Pandemic

By
Nicole Ortiz, founder and president of Crave Food Truck
Cover Story Special Coverage

The Business of Pivoting

Nicole Ortiz, founder and president of Crave Food Truck

Nicole Ortiz, founder and president of Crave Food Truck

Nicole Ortiz remembers a lot of people having some serious doubts about whether she should go forward with her plans to put a food truck into operation late last spring.

After all, it was the middle of a pandemic, people were staying home, the economy was tanking, and the restaurant business, perhaps more than any other, was suffering mightily.

But Ortiz, a graduate of the Culinary Arts program at Holyoke Community College, was determined to make her dream, which she would call Crave, become reality — pandemic or not.

She had already acquired the vehicle itself, and her experience in the accelerator program operated by EforAll Holyoke had given her the confidence (and technical know-how) to get her show — a food truck specializing in Puerto Rican cuisine — on the road … literally.

Problem was, it was not business as usual when it came to securing the needed approvals and permits from city officials.

“It was even difficult to speak with officials from cities because people weren’t working as much, and you couldn’t even get into city halls,” she said. “Everything has to be mailed in, which takes … as long as that takes. Meanwhile, a lot of cities don’t have ways to do this online; you can’t e-mail them or submit a form online. You have to mail it in, and that took a while.”

But Ortiz persevered, and opened for business just over a month ago. Her truck, usually parked on Race Street, not far from the Cubit Building and just a few blocks from the computing center, is actually exceeding goals set higher than most everyone she knows thought were reasonable.

Successful launches in the middle of COVID-19 are certainly rare, and for most area entrepreneurs, especially those trying to get a concept off the ground or to the next level, these are challenging times, when the focus is on pivoting and adjusting to meet changing needs and changing ways of doing things.

Juan and Elsie Vasquez, owners of 413 Family Fitness

Juan and Elsie Vasquez, owners of 413 Family Fitness, are like many small-business owners in that they have had to pivot during the pandemic and create new revenue streams.

In most all ways, the same can be said of the region’s entrepreneurship ecosystem itself, which specializes mostly on programs focused on people gathering in large numbers or sitting across a table from one another — things that can’t be done during a pandemic. Agencies within the ecosystem have been pivoting and adjusting as well.

This is especially true of Valley Venture Mentors (VVM), the nonprofit based in Springfield’s Innovation Center, which is in the midst of what interim Director Chris Bignelli, a partner with the Alchemy Fund, calls a ‘reset.’

That’s the word he chose to describe a retrenching after most of the agency’s staff members left within a week of each other last spring, and after COVID prevented it from staging any of the large gatherings for which it became known — not only here, but across the state and beyond.

“Our mentors advise entrepreneurs about the importance of pivoting and changing directions when needed, and we’re doing the same,” he said, adding that the pandemic and other forces are compelling the agency to look inward and find new and perhaps different ways to provide value to entrepreneurs while also providing support to other agencies and initiatives within the ecosystem.

“For a while there, it really felt like we were kind of providing therapy to small-business owners.”

As VVM resets and reinvents, though, work within the ecosystem goes on during these trying times — despite COVID, and in many cases in an effort to help business owners survive it.

People like Juan and Elsie Vasquez. They operate 413 Family Fitness in Holyoke, a business that, like most all gyms, was devastated by the pandemic. With help from those at EforAll Holyoke, the couple has pivoted to everything from outdoor classes to staging quinceañeras, or sweet-15 birthdays (a tradition among Hispanics), and leasing out their space to third parties (more on that later).

Meanwhile, another initiative within the ecosystem, WIT — Women Innovators and Trailblazers — is continuing its mentoring program despite COVID, and is preparing to embark on its third cohort of matches.

Leah Kent

Leah Kent says the mentor she’s been matched with through the WIT program, Melissa Paciulli, has helped her set firm goals for her business and move out of her comfort zone.

The second cohort, featuring 45 teams, up from 20 in the first, was started just before the pandemic shut things down, noted Ann Burke, vice president of the the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts and one of the architects of the program, adding that she had some concerns about whether those matches could withstand COVID and its highly disruptive nature.

But for the most part, the partnerships persevered, and many have the legs to continue even after the formal program is over.

“We were really trying to see what would happen with the cohort and how they would respond with all that was happening,” said Burke. “I thought most of them would just throw up their hands and say, ‘we can’t do this’ amid all the business issues, personal issues, and issues at home. But for the most part, that’s not what happened.”

For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the local entrepreneurship ecosystem and how it is carrying on through the pandemic, providing more evidence of its importance to the region.

Keep on Trucking

Flashing back several months and then fast-forwarding to today, Ortiz described the process of opening with a single word — ‘crazy.’

That sentiment applied to everything from getting her truck outfitted for the road — meaning wrapped with her logo and fully equipped — to buying all the supplies she needed (which meant going to the grocery store a number of times), to getting those aforementioned permits and approvals. Work started later than she wanted, and everything was made more difficult by the pandemic.

“Most of March and half of April, I called a halt to everything,” she said, noting that she bought the truck in February, but, because of the pandemic — and also the fact that she was still in school, which was also more complicated — she wasn’t able to advance her plans. “And then I started to feel more comfortable, and by the end of the April, I was going full speed.”

Or at least the speed at which City Hall would allow her to travel.

Now that she’s open, all that craziness seems like a distant memory, and business is, as she noted, exceeding expectations.

“We’ve been busy every day, and we usually sell out by the end of the day,” she said, noting that Craze features tacos, rice bowls, vegetarian and vegan dishes, and more, and uses social media to connect with potential customers. “COVID might actually be helping because people don’t want to go to restaurants.”

She credits EforAll — she was the first-place winner in its recent winter accelerator — with helping her get the doors open, especially with such matters as insurance and accounting, but also focusing on the model she wanted and the service she wanted to provide.

And such work is carrying on in the COVID-19 era, although it’s somewhat different and also in some ways more challenging, said Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, executive director of EforAll.

“We’ve been really fortunate that we can continue to offer a lot of the services that we provided before the pandemic in a virtual format,” she explained. “And we made that pivot very quickly, out of necessity.”

Elaborating, she said the agency was in the final stages of its winter cohort when the pandemic hit, and quickly shifted to not only a virtual platform, but a somewhat different purpose as it helped both those cohort members and other small businesses cope with everything that was happening.

“For a while there, it really felt like we were kind of providing therapy to small-business owners,” she explained. “We felt like there were a lot of things out of our control, but what we did want to do was support them, whether it was with help navigating PPP loans or even just applying for unemployment. We were doing a lot of one-on-one support and just helping people however we could.”

“It gives people a place to come and brainstorm as a group and impose that accountability that can sometimes be missing when you’re running your own venture.”

And such help was certainly needed, she said, adding that, in the case of PPP, many small businesses didn’t know if they were eligible, and if they were, they certainly needed assistance with paperwork that most established businesses turned over to a seasoned accountant. Meanwhile, a number of local, state, and federal grant programs emerged, and small businesses needed help identifying which ones might be appropriate and then navigating the application process.

Beyond that, EforAll also helped some businesses identify ways to pivot and find new revenue streams in the middle of a pandemic, Murphy-Romboletti said, adding that such assistance was provided to restaurants — helping them move beyond takeout and Grubhub, for example — and to other kinds of ventures, like 413 Family Fitness, which is one of those businesses that just ‘graduated’ from the most recent accelerator.

Like all fitness centers across the state, this operation had to shut down back in the spring, said Elsie Vasquez, forcing the company to pivot. It did so by offering classes online, then a shift to outdoor classes, more one-on-one personal training, and finally a reopening of the studio in July, with a host of restrictions.

“We’ve even done some space rental to bring in some revenue,” she told BusinessWest, adding that EforAll has been invaluable in helping to not only identify ways to generate business, but make them reality.

“The biggest thing we learned is that we have to pivot our business,” she explained. “We came in with an idea of what we wanted to do, and it’s been working out OK, but EforAll really opened our eyes to the fact that we have to think differently, and that your beginning result may not be your end result.”

In Good Company

While companies are pivoting, so too are some of the agencies within the ecosystem that serves them. And VVM is probably the best example.

Hope Gibaldi, who was serving the agency in a part-time role when the pandemic hit and is now full-time, serving as engagement manager, told BusinessWest that the agency has had to readjust as a result of the pandemic and its inability to stage the large gatherings it became known for.

Meanwhile, is doing what its mentors advise entrepreneurs to do — assess needs within the community and go about meeting them.

“There were listening sessions prior to the pandemic,” she noted, “and we’ve been taking the priorities identified during those sessions with an eye toward addressing them, while also trying to figure out how we can continue to provide value to entrepreneurs during COVID and what programming might look like when we come out of COVID.”

Elaborating, she said hybrid models blending in-person and remote programming are being considered, while, in the meantime, the agency is creating ways to bring people together on a remote basis to share ideas and work through common problems.

One such program is the introduction — or reintroduction, to be more precise — of ‘Entrepreneurial Roundtables,’ a peer-led “accountability group,” as she called it, that meets via Zoom.

“It’s a place where mentors and entrepreneurs can come and address their challenges,” Gibaldi explained. “It gives people a place to come and brainstorm as a group and impose that accountability that can sometimes be missing when you’re running your own venture.”

Other initiatives already in place or in the planning stages, she said, include everything from the agency’s once-thriving Community Nights (now handled remotely) to expert-in-industry mentorship, to a book club, to be launched in January, focusing on offerings in entrepreneurship, marketing, personal and professional growth, and more.

Overall, VVM looks a little different, but its mission hasn’t changed, Gibaldi said, adding that it is working to partner with other agencies and initiatives within the ecosystem to help them succeed.

One example is WIT, and helping to recruit mentors for that program, which has thus far created dozens of effective matches.

Leah Kent and Melissa Paciulli comprise one such match. The former is a writer and book designer who also helps other writers with the process of getting published, while the latter is director of the STEM Starter Academy at Holyoke Community College. Kent described the relationship as an intriguing, and effective, collision of science and creativity.

“We can understand each other quite well, but we bring different strengths,” she explained. “That complementary pairing has been so fantastic. In my work, she’s really honed in on the way that I help readers finish their manuscripts and get their work published.”

The two were part of the cohort that launched last March; the kickoff gathering was on March 12, and the next day, schools were shut down, and much of the business world ground to a halt. Kent’s original mentor was not able to continue participating because of the pandemic, so she was reassigned, if that’s the right word, to Paciulli, whom she credits with taking her outside her comfort zone and helping her set the bar higher professionally and personally.

Paciulli said Kent is her second match through WIT, and one of many business owners and students she has mentored over the years. She finds the work invigorating and rewarding, especially when the mentee is coachable and open-minded — like Kent.

“When you’re working with entrepreneurs and they’re coachable, and they take action on your direction, because it’s an iterative process of finding your product, getting it to market, and pivoting when you need to … it’s a super-cool experience to be part of one’s journey in that way,” she said. “When they’re coachable and they’re action-oriented — and she is — it’s awesome.”

Where There’s a Will…

Summing up what the past seven months or so have been like for entrepreneurs and small businesses, Murphy-Romboletti said it’s been a continuous run of challenges that have tested them — and her agency — in every way imaginable.

In many ways, COVID-19 and everything it has thrown at these businesses only reinforces what she pretty much already knew.

“What always inspires me about entrepreneurs is that, if you tell them ‘no,’ they just say, ‘OK, let me find out a way to make this work,’” she said.

Many have been doing just that, providing more evidence of their resiliency and more reminders of the importance of the entrepreneurship ecosystem to this region and its future.

The pandemic has slowed some things down and added to the already-long list of hurdles entrepreneurs have to clear, but it certainly hasn’t stopped people like Nicole Ortiz — and countless others — from getting down to business.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Northampton’s Downtown Faces New Reality

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Amy Cahillane says the DNA’s advocacy work has surpassed its events programming this year
Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight

Amy Cahillane says the DNA’s advocacy work has surpassed its events programming this year

Amy Cahillane says the DNA’s advocacy work has surpassed its events programming this year — because advocacy is needed, and events are few.

For the past four years, Amy Cahillane has led the Downtown Northampton Assoc. (DNA) in its many efforts to boost vibrancy in the city’s center.

The DNA typically handles such things as city plantings and holiday lights, and sponsors events that bring visitors to downtown, like Summer Stroll and Holiday Stroll, Arts Night Out, and sidewalk sales.

Note that word ‘typically.’ Because this hasn’t been a typical year.

“The pandemic changed it completely,” said Cahillane, the DNA’s executive director. “We usually focus heavily on events — it’s sort of our centerpiece. In light of COVID, I’d say 98% of our events were unable to happen. Arts Night Out is a monthly gathering where we invite lots of people into a small space to share food and drinks. That was one of our first COVID casualties — there’s no way to do that safely.”

But the DNA’s second major role is advocacy, making sure the downtown community has a voice at City Hall and that people feel their voice is heard, through public meetings and community forums on issues that impact businesses. That function was magnified in this unusual year.

“As everything changed, we were forced to change our focus because our small-business community is in desperate need of help, as is every other downtown in this area,” she told BusinessWest. “Even had our events not been canceled, it became clear pretty quickly we’d have to change our focus to advocacy at both the state and local levels, just to keep businesses afloat.”

Much of that advocacy came in the form of pushing for state and local aid, while other efforts were narrowly targeted, like making sure downtown parking was altered so restaurants could expand outdoor seating — “anything we could think of that could help them carry on through this trying to time, until we see some light at the end of the tunnel.”

And the city’s leaders have been responsive, Cahillane said, from a round of direct emergency grants to the business community to making the changes needed to bolster restaurants.

“They stepped up right away to work with our organization and downtown restaurants to make it possible to have outdoor seating, and make it last as long as possible. They got that up and running pretty quickly, and the License Commission was very fast turning around approvals for those who wanted to serve liquor outside.”

Debra Flynn, who owns Eastside Grill, was among the first downtown restaurateurs to pivot to curbside takeout and delivery once eateries were forced to shut down in early spring. “We had no idea how to do it,” she said, adding that it was important to buy the right containers to keep food warm and make sure meals were presented with care, even in the boxes.

“I can’t complain right now; we’ve had such wonderful support from our community,” she said, noting that she was able to set about 30 seats outside and eventually bring patrons back inside as well. “But I’m nervous going forward.”

“It’s definitely remained slower than the pre-COVID days, but each month, we have been seeing a smaller margin in the percentage we were down from last year. That’s helped me stay optimistic.”

That’s because the weather is getting colder, and while regulars are comfortable with the safety protocols being taken inside, she worries that folks who haven’t visited recently might not want to do so during flu season. And while the governor’s new mandate that businesses need to close by 9:30 p.m. doesn’t affect Eastside, it does impact the operations of other downtown restaurants. “They’re very nervous and upset about this whole thing,” she noted.

 

Shifting Winds

Alana Traub, who owns Honey & Wine, a clothing shop in Thornes Marketplace, has had a worrisome time this year, too.

“Everything changed for my business with the pandemic, when all businesses closed for quite a while,” she told BusinessWest. “When it finally did reopen in June, it was extremely slow going; I think people were really nervous to go out, and maybe they didn’t even know if we were open or not.

“Since then, it’s definitely remained slower than the pre-COVID days, but each month, we have been seeing a smaller margin in the percentage we were down from last year. That’s helped me stay optimistic.”

If there’s a downtown that’s well-positioned to rebound after the pandemic, Cahillane said, it’s Northampton.

“Even among my circle of friends, we are dying to go back out to restaurants, go bar hopping,” she said. “I think these businesses downtown are doing everything they can to hang on.”

Perhaps the economic shakeup — and some business closures that have followed in its wake — will present opportunities for some new faces to enter the downtown scene, she added. “A pandemic seems an odd time to start a business, but we’ve seen several open up; we might see a new round of creative, exciting businesses downtown.”

Lindsay Pope made the jump over the summer, purchasing Yoga Sanctuary, also at Thornes, from former owner Sara Rose Page on Aug. 1. A former member at the studio, Pope said she decided to become a business owner in this uncertain time because she feared Page may not have found another buyer.

“I feel like this time is incredibly liberating,” Pope said. “What do I have to lose? The alternate was that we could have lost this space, and instead, we’re going to give it another shot.”

With the times in mind, she launched not only reinvigorated studio programming in September, but also new online programming and an online video-library platform. “We’re going to try to evolve to meet the needs of the times and the next generation. That’s what we’re all being called to do right now in the chaos that’s happening.”

Cahillane said many other businesses have pivoted as well — although she admitted she’s a little sick of that word.

“Restaurants that never did curbside were nervous to try it, but our community showed up and started ordering curbside. Stores that never did local deliveries wondered if people would take advantage of it, but they did. People definitely have been incredibly supportive of downtown — the question is whether that’s enough.”

 

Holding Pattern

Before the pandemic struck, the DNA — which cites beautification among its top goals, along with programming and advocacy — was coming off a couple of years that saw a series of major projects on the Pleasant Street corridor, from a $2.9 million infrastructure upgrade to make the street safer and more navigable for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians to the completion of the roundabout at Pleasant and Conz streets and a number of residential and mixed-use developments along the thoroughfare.

To say 2020 has been a different sort of year is an understatement, although traffic has returned to some degree in recent months, and many businesses, including those in the retail marijuana trade, continue to do well. But anxiety lingers for many.

“I think everyone is concerned,” Cahillane said. “There is certainly more traffic than there was in March, April, or May, for sure. But winter is coming. It’s easy right now to park your car and walk outside, or enjoy some coffee on the sidewalk, when it’s sunny and pretty and the leaves are changing.

“But I think the first sign of snowfall will change that picture pretty dramatically,” she went on. “Are people going to be comfortable shopping indoors in the winter? I don’t know. Or sit inside a restaurant in the winter? I don’t know. And because so much is unknown about COVID, are people going to be extra anxious during flu season, when they don’t know if the person next to them has a cold or something more? There are so many unknowns. People are definitely concerned.”

Yet, Traub senses optimism from other business owners in Thornes and downtown in general, not because the pandemic is close to ending, but because Northampton is a strong enough business community to fully rebound once it does.

“That’s the general consensus,” she said. “I think everyone is also being realistic because no one knows what’s ahead. This is so unprecedented.”

Still, she moved her five-year-old business here from Franklin County for a reason. “I would call this the shopping destination in Western Mass. It’s definitely been a lot of fun, and I’ve been happy with my move to Northampton.”

And waiting for a time when the city is truly on the move again.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Mark Fulco Takes the Reins at Mercy Medical Center

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coverfulcofeature
Cover Story

Mission Control

Mark Fulco

Mark Fulco

Roughly 21 months ago, Mark Fulco left Mercy Medical Center for a position with the hospital’s parent company, Trinity Health, one that would groom him for a leadership role somewhere within the vast Trinity system. As it turned out, somewhere became Mercy Medical Center.

Mark Fulco called it the “president track.”

Formally, he was carrying out a role within the Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health system, specifically that of ‘vice president, Health Ministries & System Office Communications Interface.’ While doing that, though, he was learning and essentially being groomed for a leadership position in one of the system’s many hospitals and medical centers.

“The idea behind this role was to bring in what they considered a high-potential executive for advancement to come here, work for the system office, learn some new things about how the system worked, and help set the operating model and the agenda for some of what the organization was going to do moving forward,” he explained, “and then return back to the regional help ministries at a level higher than they left the field at.”

He called it providential — a word he chose very carefully because of the significant meaning it carries — that the later stages of his 18- to 24-month tenure on this president track coincided with a presidential search at his former place of employment, Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, part of the Sisters of Providence Health System.

He became a candidate and prevailed in what became a nationwide search. Thus, he’s essentially coming home, as he put it, to a hospital and a system with a somewhat unique mission, one he came to fully appreciate during his tenure there, which included work in everything from fund development to marketing; new-business development to operations of the accountable-care organization and clinically integrated network.

Fulco said the Mercy presidency was essentially the first job at that level that he applied for, and it’s one he sought enthusiastically, because of what he experienced there and was part of.

Mercy Medical Center

Mark Fulco says one of the items at the top of his to-do list is to make Mercy Medical Center’s high-quality care far less of a best-kept secret.

“In this role [at Trinity], I’ve had the opportunity to see how healthcare is delivered across the country,” he told  BusinessWest. “And from that, I can say that the people of Western Mass. are really lucky to have such a talented and caring team at Mercy. And this is what really called me back to Springfield.

“It’s a great community,” he went on, referring to the Greater Springfield area. “But the real driving factor for me was the Mercy team; I’ve seen 94 or 95 different hospitals in our system, and I’ve met great caregivers from across the country, but Mercy has among the best I’ve seen, and the legacy of the Sisters of Providence … that’s a calling, it’s an honor, and it’s also a big responsibility to carry on that healing legacy.”

Fulco returns to Mercy at what he acknowledged was an ultra-challenging — and uncertain — time for the hospital, the system, and seemingly every healthcare provider in the country, with the uncertainty coming in many forms but especially the unknown fate of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

Fulco said all providers are operating in an environment where reimbursements from most payers, and especially Medicare and Medicaid, do not fully cover the cost of providing care. This is not a recent phenomenon, but the situation has grown steadily more precarious in recent years.

In response, systems and individual providers must become ever-more efficient, he said, and, in a word, they must innovate.

To do to that effectively, he said he intends to take full advantage of the know-how, resources, and, yes, buying power of the Trinity Health system and its New England region. As an example, he cited a project that is in some respects already underway — conversion to a new electric medical record (EMR) system known as EPIC.

“This is something Mercy would not be able to do on its own,” he said of the EMR conversion. “If we weren’t able to rely on our colleagues in the region, this is something we couldn’t afford to do, and that’s just one example of taking full advantage of our regional resources.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Fulco just days before his formal return to Springfield about his new role and that big responsibility he accepted to carry on the work of the Sisters of Providence.

Back to the Future

It’s not listed on his résumé, but Fulco still considers it one of his more important career stops.

He was referring to his time as an advanced-life-support EMT roughly 30 years ago, while he was in graduate school.

“That was my first job in healthcare,” he recalled, adding that, like all those that followed and especially his most recent assignment in Michigan, it was quite a learning experience. “That time as an EMT gave me some unique experience as a caregiver, and it gave me an appreciation for the clinical side of healthcare and incredible respect for physicians and nurses and the work they do.”

Mark Fulco, seen here with team members at Mercy Medical Center

Mark Fulco, seen here with team members at Mercy Medical Center, says that, in this challenging time, Mercy, and all healthcare providers, must be focused on innovation.

Over the next three decades, Fulco would move off the front lines in healthcare and take a series of management positions, with each one bringing new and different responsibilities.

After a stint as president of Masonic Management Services Corp. in Wallingford, Conn., a nonprofit affiliate of Masonicare, he became senior vice president of Cardium Health Services in Simsbury, Conn. From there, he took the role of vice president of Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Saint Francis Care in Hartford, another member of the Trinity Health system.

In 2005, he took the position of ‘chief transformation officer’ for the Sisters of Providence Health System. This was a broad role with a host of responsibilities that included strategy formation, accountable-care organization and clinically integrated network operations, and business-development activities, including marketing, communications, and fund development.

And as transformation officer, he helped oversee a good deal of, well, transformation in many areas, including formation and operation of an accountablecare organization, one of many areas where Mercy was out front and in many ways ahead of other providers within the Trinity Health system.

It was roughly 21 months ago that he joined Trinity Health in that aforementioned ‘interface’ role, and he described his time in Michigan as invaluable when it comes to meeting the challenges he will face as he leads Mercy Medical Center.

But as much as he enjoyed working behind the scenes, if you will, he was anxious to get back to a hospital setting.

“Healthcare is not necessarily delivered in the boardroom,” he told  BusinessWest. “Here in Michigan, I have an opportunity to see how the large healthcare system boardroom works, and how the large healthcare system team works in support of what’s delivered at the local level. But care is delivered at the bedside, and while this work here at the system office was exciting and invigorating, and it was wonderful to work with some of the best and brightest in healthcare, the hospital is where hope and healing occurs, and I wanted to be part of that again.”

He said he will bring to that role a management style grounded in the fundamentals of servant leadership, something he says comes to him naturally, because it has been his style throughout his career. And it’s also something that fits nicely with the missions of SPHS and Trinity.

“It dovetails with being a people-centered healthcare organization,” he explained. “And a lot of this was my upbringing — my father was a career public servant, and I was taught to be of service to others. It’s ingrained in me; it’s part of my DNA.”

Bringing it Home

As he talked some more about what made a return to Mercy so attractive to him, Fulco got his message across by relating the reactions he got from others when he would talk about the system.

“People here [in Michigan] are impressed when they hear about what the sisters have done, how they’ve served that community, and what that legacy is,” he explained. “But it’s interesting … they also tell me that me that, when I talked about the Sisters of Providence Health System and Mercy Medical Center, I had a twinkle in my eye that told them there was something special there. And I told them that you couldn’t help but have that if you spent any amount of time within that organization.”

mercy-exterior-front

Fulco will now get to spend considerably more time within that system, and he is already compiling a to-do list of sorts, or what he called a game plan for his first 100 days, one that came together through input gathered during the interviewing process, discussions with Interim President Beth O’Brien, and his decade of experience in the system.

And at or near the top of that list is doing a better job of telling Mercy’s story, he told BusinessWest.

“When I look at the challenges at Mercy, I think the care provided there is one of the best-kept secrets in Western Massachusetts,” he explained, adding that no business or organization, especially a hospital, needs or wants that particular quality, if that’s what a best-kept secret is.

“It’s been the organization’s culture to serve and be humble — that’s how the sisters taught us to be,” he went on. “But I think the community needs a better understanding of the physicians, the nurses, and the comprehensive services that are provided at Mercy and through the Mercy network.”

As he goes about working with those providers to better communicate Mercy’s services and mission, Fulco said he will put a heightened focus system-wide on the need to innovate, especially amid reimbursements that do not cover the full costs of providing care.

“Anyone who manages a household budget knows that you can’t spend more than you earn,” said Fulco. “So Mercy and Trinity Health New England are continuing to innovate with some of these approaches to deliver the absolute best and highest-quality care, but also deliver that care at the highest possible efficiency.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “But no matter where it goes, we’ll need to continue providing the very best care we can for people, and it needs to be done in a more efficient way at a lower cost year over year.”

There will be several initiatives in this broad realm, and some are already underway, he said, putting the EMR project in this category.

Improved EMR makes a system more efficient, he explained, because it allows for improved communication between providers across the region, giving physicians and nurses immediate access to information, an ability that often eliminates redundancies and mistakes in treatment, thus enabling Mercy, and the healthcare system as a whole, to reduce costs.

“When a test is done, other specialists don’t necessarily have to redo that test, so we’re able to save the system and, ultimately, all of us, as the payers for care, quite a bit of money,” he explained. “If a lab test is done, another physician isn’t redoing that lab test; when an X-ray is done or an MRI, you don’t necessarily have to redo that.”

Putting in the new EMR system is a massive undertaking with a lot of moving parts, said Fulco, adding that such enhancements have been undertaken at several facilities under the Trinity umbrella, and he intends to take full advantage of this accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

“We have a great team on the ground both at Hartford that has had experience implementing these systems, and the incredible team at Mercy that will help with the heavy lifting done,” he said. “It will be a process, and a big process, for us to undertake, but we’ll do that and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

“One of the best things about being part of a system like this is that we’ve done this several times before,” he went on. “And with each one, you do you learn some things; we can now avoid the bumps in the road that others have encountered.”

Mission: Statement ‘Providential.’

That adjective, which Webster defines, variously, as ‘destined,’ ‘divine,’ and even ‘preordained,’ certainly works when Mark Fulco talks about coming home and all that goes with that territory.

He told BusinessWest that carrying on the work of the Sisters of Providence is an honor, but also a very big responsibility. It is all of that and more.

But it’s an assignment he’s looking forward to — as much as he is having still more people recognize that twinkle in his eye when he talks about not just where he works, but where he carries out the sisters’ mission.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Company Notebook

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Company Notebook

Florence Bank Breaks Ground on New Springfield Branch

SPRINGFIELD — Florence Bank broke ground recently on its second Hampden County branch, at 1444 Allen St. in Springfield, and leaders said the full-service location will open later this year. “We’re coming to Springfield,” John Heaps Jr., Florence Bank’s president and CEO, told a crowd of roughly 50 people who gathered for the celebratory event. “Our focus is on our customers and on helping to reinvigorate the community.” Last September, Florence Bank opened its first branch in Hampden County at 1010 Union St. in West Springfield. The Springfield branch marks the second of an anticipated four branches in the region. Like the West Springfield banking center, Heaps said, the Allen Street branch will have an open floor plan with a full-service teller pod and innovative technology for quick cash handling. The location will also feature a drive-up ATM with SMART technology for easy depositing and a comfortable waiting area inside with a coffee bar and free internet. Florence Bank has nearly 3,800 customers living in Hampden County, including 700 business customers.

People’s United Financial to Acquire First Connecticut Bancorp

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — People’s United Financial, Inc., the holding company for People’s United Bank N.A., announced an agreement to acquire First Connecticut Bancorp Inc., the holding company for Farmington Bank, in a 100% stock transaction valued at approximately $544 million. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals and the approval of First Connecticut Bancorp shareholders. Established in 1851, Farmington Bank is a community bank with 28 branches throughout Central Conn. and Western Mass. With $3.1 billion in assets, the bank has built a strong balance sheet by focusing on commercial and retail banking. “People’s United Bank is a premier brand with a rich, 176-year history in the state of Connecticut,” said John Patrick, chairman, president, and CEO of Farmington Bank. “Our customers will benefit from their broader array of products, enhanced access to technology and digital capabilities, as well as the bank’s seven-day-a-week Stop & Shop branch locations.” The transaction is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2018. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both companies’ boards of directors, First Connecticut Bancorp shareholders will receive 1.725 shares of People’s United Financial stock for each First Connecticut Bancorp share. The transaction is valued at $32.33 per First Connecticut Bancorp share.

State’s First Solar Cooperative to Be Built in Wendell

WENDELL — Northeast Solar, in cooperation with the Wendell Energy Committee, is offering residents of Wendell and surrounding communities the opportunity to become owners of the state’s first solar cooperative. The co-op will be owned by community members who become member-owners of the site by purchasing part of the community solar array. Owners will receive all of the solar benefits generated at the site, located at 97 Wendell Depot Road. Solar panels are typically mounted on rooftops, but close to 60% of residential buildings are not suitable sites for solar due to shading or roof condition. The solar cooperative will allow any resident to purchase solar power for their homes by buying into the centralized array.  Owners in this system will receive a lower purchase price than standard residential installations. The Wendell Solar Cooperative will return more than $1.3 million back into the local economy over the life of the array. The site is expected to take between six and eight weeks to build. The co-op will accept 50 members, but Northeast Solar is planning more solar cooperatives in other communities to allow more residents the chance to go solar.

Greenfield Cooperative Bank Announces 2018 Performance

GREENFIELD — Michael Tucker, president and CEO of Greenfield Cooperative Bank and its parent company, Greenfield Bancorp, MHC, announced the operating results of the bank’s latest fiscal year as reported at the 113th annual meeting of the bank on June 19. Tucker reported that FY 2018, which ended March 31, was successful, with and the assets of the bank growing by $24.9 million (up 4.3%) over the prior year. In addition, GCB originated more than $124 million in loans of all types, and saw an increase of $28.4 million in deposits over the past year. Total equity grew to $67.4 million. The pre-tax operating income for Greenfield Cooperative Bank was up to $5,078,000 for the year ended March 31, 2018, and the net income after taxes was $2,773,000. The bank also paid its fair share of federal and Massachusetts income taxes ($1.5 million) and local property taxes (more than $129,000) in the cities and towns where it has offices. As a result of these earnings and the fact that Greenfield Cooperative Bank targets its charitable and civic giving at 5% of the prior year’s pre-tax operating income, the bank and its employees were able to contribute more than $200,000 to more than 200 charities, community groups, school events, youth teams, and cultural events throughout Hampshire and Franklin counties during the past fiscal year.

HCC, Holyoke Schools Receive Grant for Early College Program

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College (HCC) and Holyoke public schools have been awarded a $131,600 state grant to establish a new program to help high-school students get an early start on their college educations. The program was one of only five such partnerships — and the only one outside the Greater Boston area — to receive an official  “Early College” designation from the state. The Early College Program will enable participating Holyoke students to earn a minimum of 12 college credits before they graduate from high school. Beginning in their sophomore years, students enrolled in the program will complete college courses in fields of study that align with academic majors at HCC and transfer pathways to four-year colleges and universities in Massachusetts. There is no cost to participating students. Like other dual-enrollment classes, the Early College courses will be taught by HCC faculty at Holyoke High School or on the HCC campus. The program is designed for 100 students each academic year, beginning in the sophomore year. At full capacity, in fall 2020, up to 300 students in grades 10-12 will be part of the program. Sophomore students will take their first college courses at Holyoke High School. In their junior and senior years, they will take courses on the main HCC campus on Homestead Avenue. According to studies, dual-enrollment courses and early-college programs boost college-completion rates for low-income students, minorities, and first-generation college students.

Colony Care at Home Donates $500 to Rotary Club’s Cambodia Project

SPRINGFIELD — Alan Popp, president of Colony Care at Home, a home-care agency in Springfield serving Western Mass. and North Central Conn., recently presented Dr. MaryAnne Herron of the Rotary Club of Springfield a check for $500. The donation was to kick off a fundraiser for the Springfield Rotary Club’s participation in an international water project for the Lvea Em District in Cambodia. “The villagers presently use the very polluted river water that surrounds their six small communities,” Herron said. “The Springfield Rotary Club has a goal to raise $600,000 to build a generator for 10,000 families who have no clean water to drink. We are applying for grants to Rotary International but need to raise some of the funds ourselves. This check is very much appreciated and a great start to our cause.” Added Popp, also a Springfield Rotarian, “I have always been especially drawn to the international service aspect of Rotary and have a particularly high regard for MaryAnne’s passion, energy, and personal sacrifice on behalf of villagers in Cambodia. As a Vietnam veteran, I also appreciate having this opportunity to give something back to Southeast Asia.”

Community Bank N.A. Donates $2,500 to MSBDCN

SPRINGFIELD — Community Bank N.A. recently presented the Western Regional Office of the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network (MSBDCN) with a $2,500 donation to support the organization’s various programs for 2019. MSBDCN’s Western Regional Office provides free and confidential one-to-one business advice to prospective and existing small businesses in Western Mass. The office provides a variety of services to startups and existing businesses in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties. Areas of assistance include business-plan development, preventure feasibility, conventional and non-conventional financing, cash-flow analysis, organizational and personnel issues, and marketing. In its last fiscal year, MSBDCN conducted 36 events and workshops, which were attended by more than 300 participants. Throughout the first six months of this year, MSBDCN has met with 261 small-business clients seeking to start and grow their businesses and helped secure close to $2 million in funds for those clients.

Berkshire Bank Named 2018 Halo Award Winner

BOSTON — Berkshire Bank announced it was awarded the 2018 Gold Halo Award for its XTEAM corporate volunteer program. The award recognizes the top corporate social-responsibility efforts in North America across multiple categories, including education, cause marketing, and employee engagement. Berkshire received the award in the Employee Engagement (Group Volunteering) category, which recognizes initiatives that meaningfully and measurably engage its employees in a cause-focused initiative to achieve both a social and a business impact. Berkshire’s Xtraordinary Day of Service, held in June 2017, mobilized 92% of its workforce across the country and impacted more than 400,000 individuals. In 2017, the XTEAM logged 306 projects benefiting 203 organizations and contributed 40,000 hours of service. This corporate employee-volunteer program boasts a 100% employee-participation rate, earning it the highest recognition in the Employee Engagement category.

Community Foundation’s New Leader Focuses on Equitable Economic Mobility

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Opening the Doors Wider

Community Foundation President and CEO Megan Burke

Community Foundation President and CEO Megan Burke

Megan Burke was taking a walk through downtown Springfield on a Sunday morning not quite a year ago, and found herself on Bridge Street, passing by the offices of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts (CFWM).

She stopped, looked in, and became immersed in what she was seeing, while also not quite believing her eyes.

“I looked in the conference-room windows, and I saw the papers lining the walls detailing their strategic-planning process and all their priorities for the next year,” she recalled. “And I actually took some photos, sent them to my boss in Hartford, and said, ‘look at how transparent the Community Foundation of Western Mass. is; we need to be more like this.’

“There were no secrets — they just put it right out there,” she went on. “I took pictures, I took notes … I said, ‘hey, they’re moving to the same database system we use, but more importantly, these are things they’re prioritizing for the community.’”

The ‘we,’ in this case, was the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, which Burke was serving as director of Community Impact Grantmaking. The amazing transparency she observed that morning was and is just one of the things Burke admired about the Community Foundation of Western Mass., and which she had come to respect from afar — or not really that far at all, depending on your take; she’s a resident of West Springfield.

And that helps explain why, when the agency’s long-time president and CEO, Katie Allan Zobel, announced in the spring of 2022 (just a few weeks after Burke’s walk in downtown Springfield) that she would be stepping down at the end of the year, Burke became interested in the position, at the same time she was being recruited for it.

After several rounds of interviews, during which she would see and hear more things that impressed her, Burke was tapped to fill Zobel’s very large shoes, thus beginning an intriguing new chapter in a career marked by more than two decades of work in nonprofit management, philanthropy, fundraising, and advocacy, with a particular focus on equitable access to economic opportunities and human rights.

Her career has included work on issues ranging from advancing LGBTQ+ rights in a Latin American country, Nicaragua, to continuing efforts to ban landmines globally, to the challenge of leveling the playing field between those in urban and suburban communities in Northern Connecticut.

“I looked in the conference-room windows, and I saw the papers lining the walls detailing their strategic-planning process and all their priorities for the next year. And I actually took some photos, sent them to my boss in Hartford, and said, ‘look at how transparent the Community Foundation of Western Mass. is; we need to be more like this.’”

Summing it all up, Burke said it has been invigorating and rewarding work, which she is anxious to take to the 69 communities served by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.

In a wide-ranging interview with BusinessWest just a few days after she began work in those offices on Bridge Street, Burke said her broad goal is to build on all that’s been accomplished over the past several years to take CFWM well past check writing and into a role as convener and catalyst for positive change.

“I really want to spend at least the next three months getting to know the folks who are involved in the Community Foundation and who’s not involved, and opening our doors even wider,” she explained. “And listening to people — I have a lot to learn. I think I bring a lot to the job, but I have a lot to learn from the community about what they think is important and what they believe we should be doing better.”

She said the Hartford Foundation has been able to mobilize resources and support efforts to more equitable economic and social mobility, and one of her goals is to amass similar forces and create momentum on that same front in Western Mass.

“In both Hartford and Springfield, and in pockets of the regions more generally, success for people is often more closely correlated to the zip code in which they were born than their own talents, creativity, and hard work,” she said. “And I think that’s where the experience I have is relevant to thinking about how we can change that together — not just the Community Foundation, not just our nonprofit partners or our donors, but all residents of the region.”

 

Questions and Answers

Burke recalls that it “almost felt like I was cheating.”

That’s almost.

In the run-up to the first of her interviews with CFWM for the president’s position last September, she noted that Zobel was the most recent guest on BusinessTalk, the weekly podcast hosted by this writer. She listened to the episode, not once but twice, and heard Zobel talk in vague terms about what might come next for her career-wise — and, in far more specific terms, about the many new programs and initiatives she and her staff introduced during her tenure, everything from Valley Gives to Valley Creates.

the windows of the Community Foundation offices on Bridge Street

Megan Burke was amazed by the transparency she witnessed when looking in the windows of the Community Foundation offices on Bridge Street. It’s a tradition she intends to continue.
Staff Photo

“It was such a helpful interview,” she recalled. “I was able to get a sense of what she felt was important and what she thought were some of the great successes here.”

Whether listening to the podcast had any impact on her performance during that interview is a subject for debate (Burke already knew a great deal about the Community Foundation, as we’ll see), but what isn’t — according to those doing the interviewing — is that Burke is a logical successor to Zobel, and this position is a logical next step for someone who has spent a career working to advance diversity, equity, and the inclusion of diverse perspectives.

It’s a career that has taken her from New York to Nicaragua to Hartford, and to remote-working opportunities long before they became the norm.

Our story starts with Burke — who earned her bachelor’s degree in political science at Wellesley and a master’s degree in international relations at Yale — working for the Ford Foundation in New York, where she served as program officer, U.S. Foreign and Security Policy, Governance & Civil Society.

In 2007, she and her family moved to Nicaragua for what she called “a different pace to her work” than what she found in New York. There, she worked first for the nonprofit Centro de Estudios Internacionales, where her efforts supported the emerging LGBTQ+ movement and the development of a nationwide campaign to advance human rights.

“My role was to support various representatives of the movement to create a platform for them to come together and establish some advocacy priorities and to really be a go-between with the funder to make sure of the direction it was moving in, and to really track the impact of the work,” she explained. “For me … I had not worked on that particular issue before; it was incredibly eye-opening. It was very humbling to be working in a second language and be the least articulate person in the room.”

“During my time there, we announced a new strategic focus on dismantling structural racism and promoting more equitable economic and social mobility. And while that work is by no means easy, it’s incredibly important, and I spent the past few years with a great team trying to figure out how to make that happen.”

Burke worked for the group for roughly three years, eventually transitioning to a new role with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She started working as a researcher in Latin America — Nicaragua was a country impacted by landmines from the war in the 1980s — and eventually became executive director of the campaign.

She was still in that position when she returned to Western Mass. nearly a decade ago, eventually to ease herself out of that role — while also downsizing the organization, as more countries addressed the problem of landmines.

“It’s kind of nice to be involved in something where we could see steady progress and say we were working ourselves out of a job; it’s not often that you get to say that,” she noted. “Every year I worked there, the casualty rate declined.”

In some respects, leading a coalition to ban landmines is a world apart from work with a local foundation, she said, but in Burke’s estimation, the work is very similar.

“Sometimes people say, ‘how did you go from this international work focused on advocacy at the U.N. and traveling around the world to working for a local foundation?’” she noted. “My feeling on that is that every issue is a local issue somewhere, and what we were really trying to do at the international level is raise up local issues that were impacting people in mostly post-conflict countries, and get international attention to redistribute resources — not totally unlike what a foundation does to help those with the greatest need.”

 

Vision Statement

In 2017, Burke joined the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving as senior Community Impact officer, a position with a broad job description, one that included everything from work creating career pathways to efforts promote civic engagement through grants and training to increase voter engagement and participation in the 2020 Census.

In September 2020, she became director of Community Impact Grantmaking, leading the foundation’s strategic grantmaking — there was an annual budget of $25 million to $30 million — to advance equitable economic mobility and address systemic racism in Greater Hartford.

“During my time there, we announced a new strategic focus on dismantling structural racism and promoting more equitable economic and social mobility,” she explained. “And while that work is by no means easy, it’s incredibly important, and I spent the past few years with a great team trying to figure out how to make that happen.”

Not long after Zobel announced that she would be stepping down from her position, Burke received a call from a search firm to gauge her interest in the position.

It was quite high, she said, and for all the reasons she mentioned earlier — from the agency’s transparency with its goals and plans for the future, as evidenced by the uncovered windows facing Bridge Street, to its rapid and highly effective response to COVID, marked by a deep commitment to helping the region’s struggling nonprofits, along with many other successful programs in realms ranging from the arts to education.

Summing it all up, Burke said that, while she loved her work with the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the only thing she might like more is a chance to similar work closer to her home, something this opportunity at the Community Foundation provided her.

Still, while those on the other side of the interview table had questions for her, she had some for them, and the answers — especially with regard to a willingness to broaden efforts in the realm of equity — would ultimately determine whether this would be the right fit for her.

“I wasn’t sure where they were in terms of their own strategic vision to promote equity and opportunity,” she explained. “And I know that when you take on work like that, it’s important that everyone has bought in, feels that it’s important, and sees the value in that work.

“You never have a situation where every stakeholder is 100% all in from the very beginning,” she went on. “But from other areas of my work, I’ve seen what happens when there is great resistance, and it makes it really, really hard. I didn’t know if there was resistance, but I also didn’t know how much buy-in there was. So in many of my early conversations, I really tried to get a sense — ‘is there a serious commitment to moving this forward?’ And I got a resounding ‘yes’ from everyone I spoke to.

“It was clear that the commitment runs deep,” she continued. “And that excited me.”

Elaborating, she noted that, while Greater Hartford and Greater Springfield are different in some respects, they are similar in most, especially when it comes to disparities that exist between the urban centers and the more rural and suburban areas, and the manner in which those inequities impact opportunity.

“When everyone has an opportunity to fulfill their own potential, I think everyone wins,” she went on. “When people are held back due to the circumstances of their birth, I think everyone loses.”

Burke started at the Community Foundation on Jan. 18, the day of a scheduled board meeting. She joked that this would be the first and only time she would be at such a meeting with the primary mission of simply watching and listening.

Although she still has a lot of that to do in general, and with a number of different constituencies, she noted that she has already embarked on what she calls a “listening tour.”

Its underlying goal, as she stated earlier, is to enable her to learn about the region and the issues facing those living and working here and to generate some momentum on the broad issue of economic and social mobility and making it more equitable.

“We don’t plan to change our broader strategic vision — I think it’s a great vision,” she said. “And promoting equity and opportunity is not something that’s going to happen overnight; I think there’s a huge commitment to that, and I was brought on to help figure out how to make sure we can operationalize that as effectively as possible.

“I have to listen,” she said in conclusion, “and make sure I’m building on what’s already happening here that’s great.”

 

Bottom Line

When asked what she likes to do when she’s not working, Burke offered a hearty laugh as she said, “take walks in urban areas.”

She also likes to hike in more rural settings, partake in yoga, be a good ‘dog aunt,’ and keep up with friends scattered across the region and around the world.

What she really likes, though, is to work with others to address what she called “seemingly intractable problems” — meaning everything from inhumane weapons to access to healthcare and education for LGBTQ+ residents of Nicaragua to food insecurity for residents of Greater Hartford.

Throughout her long career, it has been her mission to take doors and open them wider to enable more to pass through. With her latest assignment with CFWM, the setting has changed, but that mission hasn’t.

Mark Tanner

By
40 Under 40 Class of 2007
Age 36. Attorney (Associate), Bacon & Wilson/Morse & Sacks

Mark Tanner has taken a circuitous route to the legal profession and his current role as president of the Hampshire County Bar Assoc.

Indeed, upon graduating from the New Mexico Military Institute in 1990, he enrolled at UMass Amherst (where he met his future wife and fellow Forty Under 40 honoree, Sarah) and majored in Hotel/Restaurant Management. After working in that field for a few years, he concluded that its fast pace and long hours were ideal — for someone else.

“I didn’t want to be 40 and working until 4 in the morning,” he said of his decision to first pursue an MBA (at the University of Colorado) and his Juris Doctor at the University of Wyoming. He served as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx before returning to Western Mass. and joining the Northampton firm Morse & Sacks, which merged with Bacon & Wilson in 2005.

Today, Tanner is making prudent use of all those hours he would have spent in the kitchen or the back office. While devoting much of that time to his family and especially his two young daughters, he is also building a law practice focused primarily on plaintiffs’ personal injury, land use and zoning, and general commercial disputes. Meanwhile, he is also very active in the community, starting with Dan, the 12-year-old to whom he serves as a Big Brother.

Other involvement includes work with the Hampshire County United Way, the People’s Institute, a nonprofit day care center in Northampton, and board duties with CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), a group that promotes the buying of produce from farmers in Hampshire and Franklin counties.

And then, there’s the U.S. Army Reserves, in which Tanner holds the rank of captain. “If you stay in, they just keep promoting you,” he joked, noting that he has not been called into service for some time. Years ago, however, he devoted considerable time and energy to the Reserves, serving as what’s known as a “chemical officer,” calculating the effects of a nuclear fallout.

As for the Bar Association, Tanner is wrapping up his one-year stint as president, more time that has been well-spent, he believes, adding that he has focused on re-invigorating the group’s committee structure and, overall, making the organization bigger — and younger.

In short, while he’s no longer in the restaurant business, Tanner has a lot on his plate.

George O’Brien

Opinion

By
Opinion
Can Springfield Learn from Cleveland?

By NANCY URBCHAT

Four years ago, I attended my first Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) Conference in Washington, D.C. It was thrilling to spend two days in the company of some very smart people who have dedicated their professional lives to reinvigorating cities. I came away so moved and armed with verifiable facts that I felt compelled to advocate for a more vibrant small-business environment in my own city — Springfield.
This year’s conference, held in Cleveland, Ohio, held a special attraction for me. Having grown up in Northeastern Ohio, I was particularly interested in reconnecting with a city that had, by most accounts, befallen a fate typical of Rust Belt cities. I knew I had to make the investment and attend.
I was not disappointed. Day one featured panelists from Cleveland. One discussion focused around the integral role the Cleveland Foundation has played in Cleveland’s recovery. The foundation’s top priority is strengthening the urban core, and, to that end, it has made economic-development grants totaling $85 million since 2006.
The Cleveland Foundation is also a power broker, bringing Case Western Reserve and competitors University Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic to the table. Today, these powerhouse players are transforming public transportation, the economic vibrancy of the region’s small businesses, and the health and well-being of several distressed neighborhoods.
Collectively, they have made significant investment in the city’s rapid transit, known as the HealthLine. Its tagline, “It’s not a bus. It’s not a train. It’s the future” provides a sense of the project’s magnitude. Travel down Euclid Avenue — a once-distressed, 9.8-mile thoroughfare — and see urban transformation at its best. Billions of dollars in economic investment have happened thanks to the combined efforts of this public/private partnership, a visionary transit authority, a willing city government, and federal and state public transportation dollars.
Another topic was the importance of buying local and developing a standard definition of exactly what that means. Consider University Hospital. The organization has completely redefined and restructured its purchasing policies. Any project with a value of $20,000 or more must include bids from local companies. Many of the revised policies now make it feasible for small businesses to successfully compete on, and win, business.
Cleveland Clinic has launched ‘Meet the Neighbor’ events in some of the most distressed adjacent neighborhoods. A homeowner is recruited who serves as host for a neighborhood gathering. The clinic provides refreshments and a facilitator. Neighbors are often meeting one another for the first time. The facilitator engages neighbors in an exploration of neighborhood problems.
Together, they identify a pressing problem and roll up their sleeves to solve it. Sometimes it takes more than sweat to solve urban problems. Cleveland Clinic provides grants of up to $5,000 to assist these local problem solvers.
Upon my return to the City of Homes, I asked myself, “why not in Springfield?” My opinion is that economic-development initiatives have largely taken a back seat to the casino proposal. Certainly, an $800 million project is sure to get people’s attention, but my guess is the casino was never intended as a panacea and the be-all, end-all of economic development. Yet, that is what it appears to have become. For the record, Cleveland’s new casino was never mentioned once during the conference.
Vision and leadership were also in evidence in Cleveland. Mayor Frank Jackson and members of his economic-development team also appeared on the conference roster. Smart, capable, and committed people are working in concert with the partners I listed earlier. People working in silos don’t transform cities.
Finally, there’s an intangible at work. Let’s call it the love factor. People who participate in the ICIC love cities. In particular, they have a passion for their work and the well-being of their respective cities. They also happen to have positions of power and authority. Somehow they have come to the realization that transforming cities requires one’s self-interest to take a back seat to the greater good.
That may sound a bit ‘pie in the sky,’ but that seems to be what’s at work in Cleveland and Detroit. And I, for one, would love to see that happen in Springfield.

Nancy Urbchat is a principal with Springfield-based TSM Design.

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