Home 2014 March (Page 2)

Month: March 2014

Real Estate Transactions

By
Departments Real Estate

The following real estate transactions (latest avail­able) were compiled by Banker & Tradesman and are published as they were received. Only transactions exceeding $115,000 are listed. Buyer and seller fields contain only the first name listed on the deed.

FRANKLIN COUNTY

BUCKLAND

119 Charlemont Road
Buckland, MA 01338
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Todd Seavey
Seller: Vicky Seavey
Date: 01/29/14

CHARLEMONT

57 Warner Hill Road
Charlemont, MA 01339
Amount: $156,000
Buyer: Thomas M. Pariseau
Seller: Academy At Charlemont
Date: 02/04/14

COLRAIN

21 Heath Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: Heather Staas
Seller: Mutch, Duncan D., (Estate)
Date: 02/07/14

DEERFIELD

Greenfield Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Deerfield Academy
Seller: Richard W. Wilby
Date: 01/28/14

72 Mill Village Road
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $117,500
Buyer: Mark E. Gilmore
Seller: Griffith, Pauline E., (Estate)
Date: 02/04/14

GREENFIELD

177 Conway St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $116,616
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Elissa Rose
Date: 01/30/14

52 Country Club Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $242,000
Buyer: David W. Britt
Seller: Nancy J. Baldwin
Date: 01/31/14

186 High St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $193,987
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Ricardo A. Fernandes
Date: 02/07/14

219 High St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $184,000
Buyer: Kimberly J. Zabek
Seller: Clifford B. Long
Date: 01/31/14

93 High St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $391,000
Buyer: Benegan LLC
Seller: Freehigh LLC
Date: 01/31/14

9 Holland Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Lawrence Channel
Seller: Jocelyn M. Barnes
Date: 01/31/14

85 Phyllis Lane
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $137,900
Buyer: Brooks A. Mostue
Seller: Szulborski, Rudolph W., (Estate)
Date: 02/07/14

5 Verde Dr.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Angelo L. Thomas
Seller: Govind R. Patel
Date: 01/31/14

HEATH

52 Burrington Road
Heath, MA 01346
Amount: $181,000
Buyer: Adam Ruhf
Seller: Jens Lindgren
Date: 02/07/14

LEVERETT

14 Lead Mine Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Marinos Vouvakis
Seller: Mary J. Kennedy
Date: 02/06/14

MONTAGUE

18 Winthrop St.
Montague, MA 01349
Amount: $146,500
Buyer: Abigail R. McGuigan
Seller: Roberta J. Billiel
Date: 02/07/14

NORTHFIELD

18 Hotel Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $450,000
Buyer: NGC Realty LLC
Seller: Northfield Mt. Hermon School
Date: 01/28/14

ORANGE

454 East River St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Donald F. McHugh
Seller: Jeffrey K. Mosher
Date: 01/31/14

118 Eagleville Road
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Brian Linstad
Seller: William A. Spooner
Date: 01/27/14

420 Mayo Road
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $299,900
Buyer: Joshua A. Page
Seller: Robert A. Goodine
Date: 01/31/14

44 Meadow Lane
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $167,516
Buyer: MHFA
Seller: Alan Notre
Date: 01/28/14

SHELBURNE

240 Colrain Shelburne Road
Shelburne, MA 01370
Amount: $608,500
Buyer: Graham Lawes
Seller: David Crutcher
Date: 02/03/14

SHUTESBURY

450 Pelham Hill Road
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Kasey J. Grant
Seller: Laurie J. Doubleday
Date: 02/07/14

WARWICK

216 Old Winchester Road
Warwick, MA 01378
Amount: $173,600
Buyer: Justin Costa
Seller: Nicolas J. Melvin
Date: 01/31/14

HAMPDEN COUNTY

AGAWAM

83 Horsham Place
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Ashley E. Cote
Seller: Romano M. Daniele
Date: 01/27/14

102 Lealand Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Katie A. Johnson
Seller: Eugene S. McLean
Date: 01/27/14

50 Primrose Lane
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Nico A. Connor
Seller: Francis A. Connor
Date: 02/07/14

19 Royal St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Vadim Nazarets
Seller: FNMA
Date: 01/31/14

7 Ruth Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Carol A. Skorupski
Seller: Heather M. Staas
Date: 01/29/14

94 Senator Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $228,000
Buyer: Sherry Goyette
Seller: Thomas Fountain
Date: 01/29/14

BLANDFORD

17 South St.
Blandford, MA 01008
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Thomas J. Ryan
Seller: Richard A. Peloquin
Date: 01/27/14

BRIMFIELD

25 Warren Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Thibeault Properties LLC
Seller: Robert H. Murray
Date: 01/31/14

CHICOPEE

127 Blanchwood Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Krzysztof A. Smolucha
Seller: Larry J. Davis
Date: 02/07/14

388 Broadway St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: North Harlow 2 LLC
Seller: Sharon I. Riley
Date: 01/27/14

352 Chicopee St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $187,000
Buyer: Jennifer L. O’Grady
Seller: Virginia M. Bateman
Date: 01/31/14

43 Dallaire Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $159,500
Buyer: Domingo M. Martinez
Seller: Paul E. Martel
Date: 01/30/14

1191 Grattan St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $174,500
Buyer: Joseph A. Heckman
Seller: Theresa A. Lamothe
Date: 01/31/14

75 Ludger Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: John O. Menard
Seller: Norman A. Belisle
Date: 02/07/14

55 Nash St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $116,236
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Michelle A. Taylor
Date: 01/27/14

76 Rzasa Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $239,900
Buyer: John S. Godin
Seller: Jorge Morgado
Date: 02/07/14

161 Vadnais St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $155,048
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Herman C. Mendez
Date: 02/03/14

EAST LONGMEADOW

52 Allen St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Mark Piotrowski
Seller: Michelle Daley
Date: 01/29/14

97 Bayne St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Casey Christensen
Seller: Beverly J. Midwood
Date: 01/28/14

17 Harris Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $178,500
Buyer: Derek R. Samble
Seller: USA VA
Date: 01/31/14

51 Schuyler Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $143,988
Buyer: Cori L. Savio
Seller: Leon A. Osborne
Date: 01/29/14

157 Smith Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Bilal Khalid
Seller: Daniel K. Saia
Date: 02/03/14

15 Wilder Lane
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Shane R. Saunders
Seller: Irene C. Bernacki
Date: 01/30/14

GRANVILLE

910 Beech Hill Road
Granville, MA 01034
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Gary E. Ransom
Seller: William J. Winn
Date: 02/07/14

HOLLAND

3 Causeway Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Jessica Hilyard
Seller: Norman T. Godard
Date: 01/27/14

HOLYOKE

701 Kelly Way
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $2,140,000
Buyer: KWHP LLC
Seller: 701 Kelly Way LLC
Date: 02/06/14

23 Magnolia Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Austin W. Ballard
Seller: John P. Cadigan
Date: 01/29/14

69 Portland St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Mildred Hernandez
Seller: Ryan, Margaret E., (Estate)
Date: 01/31/14

214 Southampton Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $316,000
Buyer: Michael T. Clark
Seller: Miguel A. Rivera
Date: 02/04/14

29 Upland Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: John J. O’Connor
Seller: Donald A. Cooper
Date: 02/07/14

122 Waldo St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $138,000
Buyer: Kelly L. Moore
Seller: T&Y Enterprises Inc.
Date: 01/31/14

LONGMEADOW

30 Clairmont St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $455,000
Buyer: Morris M. Fontenot
Seller: Glenn E. Lafountain
Date: 01/29/14

201 Converse St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $214,000
Buyer: Catherine C. Lafountain
Seller: Padruig P. Anderson
Date: 01/29/14

29 Franklin Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $201,000
Buyer: Jonathan M. Zobel
Seller: Patricia L. Hannon
Date: 01/31/14

1596 Longmeadow St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $227,000
Buyer: Elizabeth A. Dimeo
Seller: Philip N. Clark
Date: 01/30/14

190 Nevins Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $174,000
Buyer: Jeffrey Cohen
Seller: Over Bars LLC
Date: 01/27/14

LUDLOW

69 Massachusetts Ave.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: James D. Kurtz
Seller: Raymond S. Suleski
Date: 01/28/14

12 Moody St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $134,000
Buyer: NND LLC
Seller: Norman S. Belben
Date: 01/29/14

17 Parker Lane
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Christopher B. Chutkowski
Seller: Whitetail Wreks LLC
Date: 02/07/14

229 Parker Lane
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $361,600
Buyer: Alan R. Aubin
Seller: Mark J. Rodriquenz
Date: 02/03/14

124 Prospect Gardens
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $127,900
Buyer: Ronald L. Schneider
Seller: Daniel D. Pereira
Date: 02/07/14

260 Prospect St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $133,000
Buyer: Krista L. Ouimette
Seller: Harry C. Madsen
Date: 01/29/14

MONSON

15 Green St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $163,000
Buyer: Peter F. Matrow
Seller: Paul A. Matrow
Date: 01/31/14

18 Robbins Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Gary L. Depace
Seller: Gaj, Max T. Jr., (Estate)
Date: 01/31/14

9 Silva St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $143,190
Buyer: Mary Curran-Lima
Seller: Joseph S. Bolduc
Date: 01/31/14

65 Stafford Hollow Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $198,186
Buyer: JP Morgan Chase Bank
Seller: Janet Langelier
Date: 02/06/14

PALMER

6 Carriage Dr.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $284,500
Buyer: Roger Kuneyl
Seller: James J. Rocha
Date: 01/30/14

376 Rondeau St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Dorota Cygan
Seller: Colette R. Wesolowski
Date: 02/07/14

RUSSELL

77 River St.
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $152,000
Buyer: Frank J. Figueroa
Seller: James Vansickle
Date: 01/30/14

SOUTHWICK

24 Birchwood Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Holly L. Johnson
Seller: Michael T. Clark
Date: 02/04/14

SPRINGFIELD

719 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $124,000
Buyer: Couture Partners LLC
Seller: Phyllis A. Fedor
Date: 01/30/14

827 Armory St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $117,500
Buyer: Vladimir Buynovskiy
Seller: 827 Armory Street LLC
Date: 02/07/14

14 Bacon Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Richard E. Holmes
Seller: David Slora
Date: 01/31/14

305 Bicentennial Hwy.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $5,200,000
Buyer: Practice Properties Springfield
Seller: Pearson Cooley Development Co. LP
Date: 01/29/14

155 Brittany Road
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $117,000
Buyer: Matthew F. Whitehouse
Seller: Lanzetta, Kathleen F., (Estate)
Date: 01/31/14

55 Burton St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $224,658
Buyer: JP Morgan Chase Bank
Seller: Jorge A. Rivera
Date: 01/30/14

541 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $116,000
Buyer: Hipolito Resto
Seller: Paul Santolini
Date: 01/28/14

228 Dayton St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $198,000
Buyer: Robert W. White
Seller: Kristy M. Hess
Date: 02/07/14

185 Dickinson St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $118,000
Buyer: Shaaheen Rashad
Seller: Sonia Lopez
Date: 02/03/14

65 Glenvale St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $119,070
Buyer: USA VA
Seller: Tonya M. Izzo
Date: 01/27/14

14 Junes Way
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $267,000
Buyer: Robert S. Sanville
Seller: L. P. Audette Builders Inc.
Date: 01/31/14

56 Juniper Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $141,000
Buyer: Malwina Kukwa
Seller: Pamela J. Harpin
Date: 01/31/14

63 Kensington Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Josue Velney
Seller: Eduard Donskoy
Date: 01/30/14

30 Lynwood Terrace
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Jose R. Rolon
Seller: Matthew D. Campagnari
Date: 02/03/14

31 Northampton Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $122,000
Buyer: Marangely Ortega
Seller: Tina Nguyen
Date: 01/31/14

48 Park Edge Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Vana N. Nespor
Seller: Julia A. Powers
Date: 01/27/14

86 Paulk Terrace
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Keith P. Diaugustino
Seller: FNMA
Date: 01/29/14

16 Powell Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $119,000
Buyer: Norman F. Gagnon
Seller: Gagnon, William E., (Estate)
Date: 01/29/14

131 Ramblewood Dr.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Sean M. Walsh
Seller: Sandra M. Fielding
Date: 02/07/14

Rollins St. (SS) #104
Springfield, MA 01101
Amount: $122,000
Buyer: Keshawn S. Hines
Seller: Gregory F. Deangelo
Date: 01/31/14

17 Skyridge Lane
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Rosanna Greening
Seller: Amy Hoggard
Date: 01/31/14

40 Stony Brook Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $118,000
Buyer: Eric A. Rosa
Seller: Dorothy R. Proulx
Date: 01/27/14

172 Talmadge Dr.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $118,500
Buyer: Karen L. Lackman
Seller: Bruce C. Davidson
Date: 01/29/14

57 Wilson St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $159,000
Buyer: Juan J. Cruz
Seller: Maribel Colon
Date: 01/27/14

WEST SPRINGFIELD

59 Beech Hill Road
West Springfield, MA 01030
Amount: $279,900
Buyer: Wayne L. Morris
Seller: Beech Hill Construction Inc.
Date: 01/31/14

219 Great Plains Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $242,500
Buyer: Richard A. Peloquin
Seller: Joanne M. Kennedy
Date: 01/27/14

35 Houston Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $134,500
Buyer: Paul M. Synan
Seller: Louis J. Demaio
Date: 01/31/14

170 Lower Beverly Hills
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $186,000
Buyer: James M. Korbut
Seller: Tracy M. Demaio
Date: 01/31/14

165 Monastery Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $181,000
Buyer: Jeffrey M. Lenahan
Seller: Brian D. Berchulski
Date: 01/29/14

32 Moseley Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Ali Al-Janabi
Seller: Alliance Associates LLC
Date: 01/30/14

188 Riverdale St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $124,500
Buyer: Sergiu Malancea
Seller: Tallage IMP LLC
Date: 02/07/14

78 Rogers Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Tracy M. Demaio
Seller: Charles L. Gullett
Date: 02/03/14

WESTFIELD

63 Beveridge Blvd.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $146,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Debra Milczarski
Date: 02/07/14

29 East Bartlett St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $182,500
Buyer: Willard J. Kopatz
Seller: Caroline Hill
Date: 01/30/14

7 Hawthorne Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Larry D. Faulhaber
Seller: Robert A. Catuccio
Date: 01/31/14

175 Pontoosic Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Jessica L. Merati
Seller: Mark R. Jachym
Date: 01/29/14

24 Reed St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $226,000
Buyer: Patrick Moody
Seller: Aspen Properties Group LLC
Date: 01/31/14

22 Rosedell Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Caitlin E. Fields
Seller: Richard M. Fields
Date: 01/31/14

467 Russellville Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Marshall S. Harris
Seller: Jill C. Burckhardt
Date: 02/07/14

225 Sackett Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Rebecca L. Clark
Seller: Marci A. Kramer
Date: 01/30/14

100 Steiger Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: John C. Guagliardo
Seller: John C. Macleod
Date: 01/31/14

88 Westwood Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $155,805
Buyer: Dewayne R. Devos
Seller: John S. Szpila
Date: 02/07/14

WILBRAHAM

2 Bonair Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Peter R. Carmichael
Seller: Anthony M. Gomes
Date: 02/07/14

4 Briar Cliff Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $445,000
Buyer: Phillip B. Clawson
Seller: Arthur J. Abrahamson
Date: 01/29/14

330 Glendale Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $299,000
Seller: Walter J. Kwiecien
Date: 01/31/14

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY

AMHERST

20 Beston St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $298,400
Buyer: Shirley L. Griffin TR
Seller: Lisa S. Scott
Date: 02/07/14

180 College St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $167,500
Buyer: Joseph D. Dasco
Seller: Roberts, Theresa, (Estate)
Date: 01/29/14

80 Cowls Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $322,500
Buyer: Holden House LLC
Seller: Susan S. Holden
Date: 02/07/14

287 Grantwood Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $173,200
Buyer: Paul C. Roud
Seller: FNMA
Date: 01/29/14

14 Gray St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $750,000
Buyer: Barbara L. Guidera RET
Seller: Gerald G. Guidera
Date: 01/29/14

60 Hobart Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: John J. O’Connell
Seller: Joel A. Feinman
Date: 01/31/14

43 Jeffrey Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Matthew W. Dufresne
Seller: Robert J. Dufresne
Date: 02/04/14

95 Larkspur Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $516,000
Buyer: Carlos Suarez
Seller: Hana Rivkin TR
Date: 02/07/14

50 McClellan St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Craig Gibson
Seller: Craig Gibson
Date: 01/31/14

70 Red Gate Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $530,000
Buyer: Anita M. McGahan RET
Seller: Colleen M. Osten
Date: 01/27/14

Shays St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $182,500
Buyer: Elizabeth N. Gummere
Seller: Fawkner, Margaret B., (Estate)
Date: 01/28/14

Station Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Western Development Corp.
Seller: Gregory J. Firman
Date: 02/07/14

474 Station Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $410,500
Buyer: Neal C. Crago
Seller: Gregory J. Firman
Date: 01/31/14

515 Station Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $440,000
Buyer: Leah C. Schmalzbauer
Seller: Marilyn C. Dahl TR
Date: 01/31/14

2 Teaberry Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $370,000
Buyer: Ashley R. Carter
Seller: Rene Reyes
Date: 01/28/14

559 West St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $236,524
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Daniel R. Martin
Date: 01/27/14

559 West St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Christina G. Salgo
Seller: FNMA
Date: 02/03/14

BELCHERTOWN

76 Dana Hill
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $263,000
Buyer: Matthew J. Tudryn
Seller: Smith, Louis W., (Estate)
Date: 02/07/14

9 Eastview Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $306,000
Buyer: Anthony E. Ceria
Seller: Cindy-Lee Jenks
Date: 01/31/14

624 North Washington St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Ellyana S. Stanton
Seller: Gina M. Forbes
Date: 01/31/14

20 Springfield Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $182,976
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Judith C. Dudek
Date: 02/03/14

CHESTERFIELD

203 Main Road
Chesterfield, MA 01012
Amount: $166,500
Buyer: John L. Prystowski
Seller: Hinds, Marguerite H., (Estate)
Date: 01/30/14

EASTHAMPTON

103 East St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: J. P. Gillio
Seller: Michael R. Chevrette
Date: 01/31/14

1 Lexington Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $337,100
Buyer: James Sheehan
Seller: Craig R. Bartolomei
Date: 02/07/14

GRANBY

104 Munsing Ridge
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: John C. Pelham
Seller: UB Properties LLC
Date: 01/28/14

HADLEY

344 Russell St.
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $2,600,000
Buyer: Hadley Corner LLC
Seller: Gator Pearson LLC
Date: 01/31/14

2 Sylvia Hts.
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $405,000
Buyer: Matthew Dlbartolomeo
Seller: Valley Bulding Co. Inc.
Date: 01/28/14

HATFIELD

42 Old Stage Road
Hatfield, MA 01088
Amount: $425,000
Buyer: David F. Bressem
Seller: E. R. Stevens
Date: 01/31/14

NORTHAMPTON

48 Chapel St. #GG
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Frances A. Risinger RET
Seller: MHC NT
Date: 01/31/14

242 Florence Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $198,500
Buyer: Jaspal Singh
Seller: Frances Sarazin
Date: 01/30/14

266 Florence Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: HSBC Bank
Seller: Shelly A. Neumann
Date: 02/07/14

61 Hawley St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Martin V. Espinola
Seller: Lisa Orenstein
Date: 02/04/14

62 Laurel St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $127,000
Buyer: Rachel Ehrlich
Seller: Birk, David R., (Estate)
Date: 02/04/14

31 Winterberry Lane
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $441,500
Buyer: Frank J. Hurley
Seller: Gloria P. Ferber
Date: 01/31/14

SOUTH HADLEY

37 Michael Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Anthony C. Pierno
Seller: Pauline A. Jacek
Date: 01/30/14

20 North St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Scott L. Mead
Seller: MR Realty Inc.
Date: 01/31/14

154 Old Lyman Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $227,000
Buyer: Wells Fargo Bank
Seller: Eileen P. Campbell
Date: 02/07/14

67 Pearl St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Scott J. Fournier
Seller: Robert H. Mongeon
Date: 01/31/14

WARE

32 Vigeant St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $153,500
Buyer: Shane E. Ryan
Seller: New England Equities LLC
Date: 02/03/14

WORTHINGTON

196 Prentice Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: David S. Hill
Seller: Robert F. Llamas
Date: 02/07/14

Recognizable Impact

By
Cover Story
Mike Mathis Has Become the Face of MGM Springfield

MikeMathis600x200A year or so ago, Mike Mathis could walk the streets of downtown Springfield in relative anonymity.

These days … well, not so much.
He said he was buttonholed recently by a business owner on Worthington Street who gave him a tutorial on the wide range of musical talent that resides in this region and advised him to exploit it. And a few days ago, he was recognized by the person working behind the counter at a car-rental agency, who asked about job opportunities — not for himself, but for family members who had left the area and were interested in coming back.

There have been many similar episodes over the past several months, and there will certainly be exponentially more for what everyone expects will be years to come.

That’s because Mathis is the face of the $800 million casino project proposed for Springfield’s South End, and, increasingly, that face is being recognized, a development he doesn’t mind at all.

Indeed, Mathis, whose business card now reads ‘president, MGM Springfield,’ likes talking with people about what could be called his project, although there is already a sizable team working on it. And more than that, he loves hearing from individuals about how this initiative could dramatically change things for the city and the region — and in positive ways.

‘Transformative’ was the word he said one state official used to describe the MGM Springfield project, and he’s not at all shy about borrowing that term.

Actually, he’s not shy about much of anything, a character trait he says is one of many necessitated by, and also honed by, life as the son of an Army officer who moved his family a number of times during his career.

“It was a wonderful childhood,” Mathis told BusinessWest, listing stops in Atlanta, Monterey, Calif., Frankfurt, Germany, and Huntsville, Ala., among many others. “The nature of moving around that often, and the whole culture of military kids and schools, is that you make friends really quickly. It forces you to be outgoing, and you need to be open to a lot of different cultures, because you’re going to experience them. So I give a lot of credit to my dad and my mom for helping me to get there in terms of my personality.”

Those qualities he listed have served him well in a career that started with a New Jersey law firm just after he earned his juris doctor at Georgetown University, but soon saw the dateline shift to Las Vegas, where he would become involved in one of the biggest projects in the industry’s history — that is, until the recession stopped it in its tracks (more on that later).

He would eventually be recruited by MGM Resorts International, where he would rise to the title of vice president of the Global Gaming Department, a position that would take him from Vegas to Macau, Japan, countless other stops, and eventually to Springfield, which, by the fall of 2012 had become ground zero in the fight for the coveted Western Mass. casino license.

MGM’s proposed casino

Mike Mathis made frequent use of the word ‘transformative’ to describe the impact MGM’s proposed casino will have on Springfield and the surrounding region.

By last fall — Nov. 4, to be exact, the day Palmer voters said ‘no’ to Mohegan Sun’s plans to build a resort casino just off turnpike exit 8 — the MGM proposal was the proverbial last plan standing.

That phrase has been used quite extensively in the press, and Mathis doesn’t like it at all. He told BusinessWest that it conveys the sense that MGM will win this license — if that’s what happens — seemingly by default.

Instead, he said, MGM will have triumphed because it had the best plan, one that prevailed over Penn National’s bid to build a gaming complex in Springfield’s North End in what became the first stage of the license competition, and one he believes is a potentially groundbreaking concept for an urban gaming facility — what the company calls the ‘inside-out casino.’

“I think this project is going to set the bar for any other opportunities that a gaming company has to develop in a downtown urban environment,” he said, making reference to this plan’s focus on melding with its surroundings and putting the emphasis on family entertainment, not gaming. “If all goes well, people will look back at what we did in Springfield as the standard.”

For this issue and its focus on the casino era, BusinessWest talked at length with Mathis about everything from his career in this industry to the state of MGM’s proposal to the nagging presence of a referendum initiative that could undo everything that’s transpired since the gaming legislation was passed in the fall of 2011.

And in keeping with his character, he wasn’t shy about speaking his mind.

In the Background

Mathis remembers that it was a dark February day, one when the mercury barely touched 20 degrees. Those were the conditions when he and his wife, Lisa, whom he met while both were pursuing law degrees at Georgetown, boarded a plane at New York’s JFK airport to take up a fellow classmate’s advice to explore job opportunities in Las Vegas.

“It was 75 and perfect when we landed,” he said with a broad smile, adding that the weather was just one of many factors that would entice the couple to pack up and move roughly 2,500 miles west.

The bigger factor was that Las Vegas was at what would later be identified as the early stages of a massive building boom, one that this entrepreneurial couple wanted to be a part of.

MGM’s planned ‘inside-out’ casino

Mike Mathis says MGM’s planned ‘inside-out’ casino could set the standard when it comes to urban gaming facilities.

Backing up a bit, Mathis said his childhood spent moving from base to base, and the character traits it generated, definitely had an impact on his eventual career track and made it much easier to pick up and move across the country.

“My upbringing in a military family helps define my in a lot of ways,” he explained. “It’s not surprising to me that I’ve been attracted to hospitality and international development, because I’m very comfortable traveling, and I like experiencing new environments.”

He saw many environments in his youth, starting with the desert in Arizona, where he was born. Over the next decade and a half, his father’s work would take the family to the Southeast — Atlanta and Huntsville — and then to the West Coast and Monterey, a somewhat lengthier stint that was perhaps his favorite.

“We were there for four years,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how great that assignment was until we moved to New Jersey for middle school and high school.”

There was also a lengthy stay at a base near Frankfurt, one that afforded the family opportunities to travel throughout Europe, experiences that made a lasting impression on the young Mathis.

“My parents have always been great about exploring our environments and surroundings,” he said. “This was a working-class family, but my parents always put a priority on traveling. And my wife and I really go out of our way to make sure our kids see the world.”

Mathis probably couldn’t have imagined just how much of the world he would eventually see when he was wrapping up his law degree at Georgetown. He did a clerkship with a firm in New Jersey and a summer internship with a large Wall Street firm, experiences that exposed him to trial work and sophisticated corporate practice, respectively.

He eventually opted to return to New Jersey and spend more time in the courts.

Meanwhile, Lisa, who was in the same class with him at Georgetown, took a job with a Wall Street firm. Their schedules didn’t allow them to spend much time together, he said, and soon there was discussion about whether she would seek opportunities in New Jersey or he would do likewise in Manhattan.

Instead, they would both go to Las Vegas.

“We both got jobs with two of the top law firms in Las Vegas, who were happy to recruit some professionals from the East Coast because they were looking to broaden their practices,” Mathis recalled, adding that, within that first year, they both represented clients in the gaming industry; he worked with Las Vegas Sands, and Lisa with Caesars. Those stints eventually led to offers for in-house positions, which they both accepted.

Mathis spent the six years working with Las Vegas Sands, which he called a great learning experience, one in which he worked on not only the Venetian and Palazzo resort casinos, but also an expansion into Macau and the process of taking the company public.

“It was a really intense period with a lot going on, and I was right in the middle of all of it as a junior lawyer,” he explained. “It was just an incredible experience.”

He later accepted an offer to join Boyd Gaming and be general counsel for its flagship development on the Las Vegas strip — Echelon Place, at the site of the historic Stardust casino. The $4 billion venture would have included four hotels, a 140,000-square-foot casino, and the 650,000-square-foot Las Vegas ExpoCenter, but construction was halted in August 2008, roughly a year after it started, just as the effects of the Great Recession, which would devastate the Las Vegas economy, were starting to be felt.

While work at the site never resumed, Mathis considered his time at Boyd another key learning experience.

“Bill Boyd, who’s a legend in this industry, was an attorney who transitioned into an operator, so he was a great role model for me,” he said. “He was a very hands-on individual, very successful, very wealthy, but famous for working every day and knowing everyone’s names at each of the properties. I really respected that, and wanted to model my career after that type of engagement with the business, and with the people. He had a big impact on my outlook.”

Mathis described the demise of Echelon Place as the low point in his career — “I had only experienced the boom” — but he stayed with the Boyd group until 2011, when he accepted a position with MGM as vice president of Global Gaming Development for MGM Hospitality.

In that capacity, he has been one of the key players in advancing MGM’s latest developments — resort casinos in Macau, Delaware, and Springfield. And late last year, that focus was narrowed when he was made president of MGM Springfield.

Solid Bet

As he talked with BusinessWest in MGM’s offices in the TD Bank building — facilities crammed with architectural renderings and an elaborate model of the Springfield proposal — Mathis made it clear that he wasn’t taking anything for granted as the race for the Western Mass. license heads for the finish line. Nor was the company doing any coasting — another word he hears often — because there is no competition left.

“We’ve continued to work as if this were a five-operator race,” he said, referring to the number of companies that were bidding for the Western Mass. license in the final days of 2012 before the attrition started. “That’s what has helped make it such a detailed project; we felt a need to nail down a lot of specifics so that we could distinguish ourselves from our competitors. And that’s pretty unique to have as complete a design and as complete a program as we had early on.

“And we’ve continued to follow the Gaming Commission process, which is a very specific process,” he continued. “It requires engagement with surrounding communities, which has been ongoing, and it requires engagement with different entertainment venues. We’ve had a series of hearings in front of the Gaming Commission, and we passed suitability earlier in the year. We continue to keep our heads down and work and not take anything for granted.

“We’re at the point now where, from a development-operations standpoint, we can’t be arrogant about it, but we have to assume that we’re going to win the license,” he went on. “And we need to be ready to implement the project on day one.”

Overall, there are many aspects to the work being undertaken by the company at this juncture, roughly three months before the five-member Mass. Gaming Commission (MGC) is expected to decide the fate of the Western Mass. license.

There are some design elements to be finalized, he explained, as well as work to line up vendors (see story, page 19), secure tenants for the large retail component of the gaming complex, and ensure that a trained workforce will be in place when the doors open — sometime in 2017, if all goes according to plan.

But there are other, perhaps less obvious matters to contend with, he went on, using the broad term ‘education’ to categorize them.

Elaborating, he said that the gaming industry has been entrenched in Las Vegas and Macau for decades. Elected officials and the public at large are familiar with the concept and understand the business and what it brings to a community.

But in Massachusetts, it’s all foreign territory.

“And because of that, we need a lot of engagement at the local level,” he explained. “I feel the need to continually educate people not only in Springfield but across Western Mass., and make sure that everyone understands that this is a project that we think benefits not only the host community, but the region as well.

“This is unique for me personally,” he went on. “Prior to MGM, I just developed projects in Las Vegas, and it’s an entirely different process there.”

Locally, the process has a new and quite intriguing wildccard — an effort to repeal the state’s gaming legislation via a statewide referendum that would appear on this November’s election ballot. State Attorney General Martha Coakley ruled that the petition to put the matter on the ballot was unconstitutional because it would “impair the implied contracts between the [gaming] commission and gaming license applicants” and illegally “take” those rights without compensation.

Backers of the referendum then took their case to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which is expected to rule on the matter this summer, a few months after the Gaming Commission is likely to have awarded licenses for Western Mass. and the Boston area.

MGM has joined a coalition, which also includes other gaming companies, host communities, and backers of casino gambling, that was created to fight the repeal effort, which Mathis said could have a “chilling effect” on his company’s plans for a few months until the matter is decided.

“If we’re fortunate enough to win the license in May, to have the potential repeal hanging over our heads as an industry makes it difficult to do certain things,” he said, listing as examples some of the early financial commitments related to construction and other capital-intensive expenditures. “And that’s unfortunate; there will be a two-month window where we’re going to have to watch and see what the court does. It’s certainly not the way you want to kick off the project.”

For the immediate future, the company will be an interested spectator as Penn National Gaming, the recently announced winner of the contest for the state’s lone slots parlor license, decides how it will proceed with the repeal matter looming.

“The Commonwealth has invited our industry into this jurisdiction, and we’ve made a substantial investment in terms of time and money,” Mathis said. “We have other lines of business, and MGM will survive if this is repealed, but I think about the host community and all the potential that we promised them with this project, all the employment. These host communities will be impacted as much as anyone if this whole process is overturned.”

Odds Are

While monitoring the repeal effort and awaiting what everyone expects will be the green light from the Gaming Commission, the MGM team, and Mathis in particular, continue a dialogue with Springfield officials about the project, while also talking with and listening to area residents about this huge endeavor.

“What’s really great about this opportunity, and fairly unique because of the statute, is how much of a partner the city is through the host-community agreement,” he explained. “We always want to stay on the same page about all the things that we’re working on, and with other things that are happening in the city as well.”

And there are many initiatives on the drawing board or already underway, he went on, which makes the casino project even more intriguing.

“Even before we arrived in Springfield, [Chief Development Officer] Kevin Kennedy and the Economic Development office had been doing some really great things to make sure that Springfield continues to grow and improve its economic foundation,” he told BusinessWest. “There were a lot of great things happening in Springfield before we came on board, and we’re catalysts for future growth.

“Whether it’s Union Station or the UMass satellite campus moving in, I think Springfield is on the verge of a renaissance,” he went on. “And we’re excited to anchor that.”

And while there are a number of people involved with the MGM Springfield project, including several working in the downtown Springfield office, Mathis is the point person.

That’s why he’s far less anonymous than he was a year ago, and also why he’s hearing, and answering, a wide variety of questions — in the press, on the street, in the line at the breakfast buffet at the Sheraton, and, yes, at the counter at the car-rental agency.

And as might be expected (or not, as the case may be), a good deal of these queries have to do with employment opportunities — this project is expected to create 2,000 construction jobs and nearly 3,000 permanent jobs — and that makes Mathis feel even better about it.

“It’s really about jobs, and I wasn’t prepared for that,” he explained. “I’m sort of humbled by the idea that I walk around and people see the opportunity for a career in me; that’s a tremendous responsibility.

“People are really focused on when we’re going to open, when we’re going to start hiring, and what’s required for hiring,” he went on. “There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not approached in a very respectful way by citizens wanting to know about those opportunities. I’ll have an encounter with someone where it’s not about them getting a job, but about their brother, who’s an ironworker, or it’s about their daughter, who’s graduating next year, and they want to keep her home and interested in a career here.”

This return-to-Springfield aspect to this project is one of the more surprising, and also inspirational, story notes to date, said Mathis, and one of the many reasons why he makes use of that term ‘transformative,’ which he attributes to Jim Rooney, head of the Mass. Convention Center Authority, while noting that others have used it as well.

“I find it ironic that Springfield and Western Mass. are in the middle of the Knowledge Corridor, and it’s very difficult to keep that talent in state,” he went on.

“I think we have the ability to give some of the local talented young people a career opportunity and give them a reason to stay, and that will have a spin-off impact on other industries that will be able to tap into that growing labor pool.”

A Winning Hand?

When he and Lisa moved to Vegas, Mathis said, it was with the expectation that it would be a relatively short stay, like many of those stops from his youth.

But it lasted more than a dozen years, and thus provided ample evidence of how it’s difficult to forecast how one’s career path, or life in general, will unfold. So he’s not making any predictions about how long this assignment in Springfield might last.

What he does know, though, is that, if this project proceeds as planned, anonymity will become increasingly elusive.

That’s what happens when you’re the face of something transformative.


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

Looking Down the Road

By
Environment and Engineering Sections
With the I-91 Viaduct, Future Prospects Are Up in the Air

91ViaductDPartNick Fyntrilakis, vice president of Community Responsibility for MassMutual and frequent spokesperson for the financial-services giant, urged the state to hit the ‘pause’ button when it comes to a planned $260 million project to replace the stretch of Interstate 91 that runs through the center of Springfield and is known as the ‘viaduct.’

He used that term at a well-attended public hearing on the massive public-works project late last month, and in reference to another, much broader possible plan for the stretch of I-91 that slices through the very heart of the city’s central business district — taking it down to street level or perhaps even below street level, thus facilitating the process of reconnecting the city with the Connecticut River for the first time since construction of the highway began a half-century ago.

“We see this as a possible game changer, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix a 60-year-old problem in the city of Springfield — being disconnected from the riverfront and the access to economic-development opportunities that exist there,” he told those assembled, and especially Michael O’Dowd, project manager for the Mass. Department of Transportation (DOT). “If this [repair] project proceeds as proposed, it’s going to be very difficult to see $260 million of work just go away based on another design that comes up through the planning effort.

“If we go down this road,” he went on, again referring to the repair project, “we’re going to miss an opportunity, and we’re going to have this viaduct for the next 40 or 50 years, which I don’t think the majority of the community is looking for.”

And therein lies the problem, or controversy, arising at a time when most would expect public officials and business leaders to be thrilled, or at least happy, with the prospect of the federal and state governments spending a quarter of a billion dollars to fix a very tired stretch of road.

repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 cannot wait

Officials with MassDOT say the proposed repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 cannot wait due to the deteriorating condition of the roadway and cost of continually patching it.

But there are other concerns as well. They include logistics — the proposed repair project, even on a planned accelerated construction schedule, would take probably three years to complete, and prolonged closings of several off-ramps and partial closures of the parking garages under the highway would be unavoidable — as well as timing. Indeed, the project could coincide with the now-likely construction of an $800 million casino between State and Union streets, just a block or so from one of those aforementioned off-ramps.

But the pause that Fyntrilakis and others are seeking — to study a potentially bolder endeavor involving the viaduct — is not likely, or even advisable, said O’Dowd.

That’s because this section of I-91 is deteriorating rapidly, and the state is spending about $2 million a year annually on what amount to patch jobs that do little but buy the city some time. And, in his opinion, it can’t buy any more.

“This is something that needs to be done now,” he said at the public hearing, putting the accent on that last word as he talked about the financial and safety considerations that he believes should deter any delays in getting started.

But beyond those aspects of hitting ‘pause’ on the viaduct work, there are also economic-development concerns, said Jeffrey Ciuffreda, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.

He told BusinessWest that discussions about an extensive ‘repair-in-place’ project involving the viaduct have been ongoing for some time. But they took a far more serious tone — and the initiative moved into a faster lane, if you will — after the second level of the I-91 South parking garage had to be closed for an extended period due to falling concrete from the deck above.

“That convinced people that this was serious — it really showed the economic impact upon Springfield,” he said, adding that there are several buildings downtown that don’t have attached parking and rely on the I-91 lots. “When they closed that floor of the parking garage and told everyone to park in I-91 North, that overloaded that system, and we started realizing how dependent downtown Springfield is on two or three parking facilities.”

Frank DePaola

Frank DePaola says accelerated bridge construction, or ABC, should allow crews to complete the repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 in three construction seasons.

So it appears that the repair project will proceed as planned, with a contract slated to be awarded later this year and work to commence possibly next spring. This will be a long and likely painful period for those who live, work, and do business in the downtown area, said Ciuffreda, adding that it will be his agency’s goal to help minimize the disruptions through planning and communication.

For this issue and its focus on environment and engineering, BusinessWest focuses on those steps and many other aspects of what is turning into a controversial project long before any work actually begins.

Concrete Examples

It’s called ‘accelerated bridge construction,’ another term simplified to the acronym ABC.

And, as the name implies, it involves processes and materials — such as pre-fabricated sections of highway decking — that enables projects such as the proposed I-91 initiative to be completed in less time than under more traditional methods, said Frank DePaola, MassDOT highway administrator.

Before elaborating on just what’s involved, he told BusinessWest that the state has already had some experience with ABC, and it’s due to get quite a bit more in the years to come, because there are many elevated sections of highway like Springfield’s I-91 viaduct, most of which were built about the same time — the mid- to late ’60s, as the Interstate Highway Project was reaching its zenith — and they’re in generally the same condition: poor.

A partial list would include the I-90 (Mass. Turnpike) viaduct in Boston, the Route 79 viaduct in Fall River, the McCarthy Overpass in Sommerville, and a section of I-93 North that also passes through Sommerville, he said, adding that some have been repaired and others are awaiting work.

Reiterating O’Dowd’s comments, he said the work in Springfield cannot, and should not, be put off much longer.

“Over the years, the water, the salt, and just the weather elements have weathered the deck, so that without predictability, sections of the deck fall out, and we have to go out there and patch holes in the deck,” he explained. “We’ve spent, on average, $2 million a year patching the holes in the deck.”

Beyond this cost, and the safety element driven home by the closing of the upper level of the parking garage, there is a “nuisance factor” as well, he said, noting these patch jobs he described entail shutting down lanes of the highway for sometimes long stretches at a time.

Rather than continue with this frustrating, Sisyphean approach, the state has proposed an ambitious, and expensive, plan to replace the decking on the 67 spans of northbound highway within the viaduct and the 62 spans on the southbound section.

If all goes as planned, the contract for the repair project will be awarded later this year, and work is expected to commence late this fall. The plan is to keep two of the three lanes in both the north- and southbound sections open at all times, said DePaola, noting that, while 14 sections of I-93 were replaced in 10 weeks by shutting that section of the highway down completely, a similar strategy is neither necessary nor recommended for Springfield’s viaduct.

Keeping two lanes of traffic open on both the north- and southbound sections of the highway will reduce the overall inconvenience from the project, but there will undoubtedly be an impact on commuters as off-ramps are closed and traffic is detoured onto East Columbus and West Columbus avenues and other arteries, said O’Dowd at the public hearing.

Exits 6 and 7 on I-91 South will be closed, and traffic detoured to a temporary ramp to be constructed north of exit 8 to provide access to downtown Springfield via West and East Columbus avenues. The on-ramps to I-91 North from both State and Union streets will also have to be closed, he went on. I-91 northbound access will be provided via East Columbus Avenue, with I-291 access provided via a detour off East Columbus Avenue to Liberty and Dwight streets.

Ramping Up

Ciuffreda, who has many not-so-fond recollections of the I-91 ramp-reversal project that accompanied the opening of the new Basketball Hall of Fame, said residents, business owners, and those who work downtown couldn’t be blamed for being skeptical about vows to minimize the disruption from the planned I-91 project.

Indeed, the ramp project took far longer than originally estimated, and the impact was considerable. And those same things can be said about the Memorial Bridge reconstruction that took place 20 years ago, and the more recent repairs to the South End Bridge.

But Ciuffreda believes there is also room for optimism with regard to the I-91 initiative.

“The state has come a long way with how they go about construction projects like this one,” he said, citing the I-93 repairs as one example. “It’s going to be a major, major construction project, but they feel pretty comfortable — and I feel pretty comfortable — that they can minimize the downside of it.

“Clearly there will be disruptions — you can’t do a major construction project without them — but I think they’ve learned enough to expedite it and to minimize the adverse effects.”

But the 17-day run of the Big E each fall will severely test the patience, and the abilities, of those trying to keep the traffic flowing, he added quickly, noting that construction might have to be shut down during the fair’s run, and other steps, such as shuttling visitors from remote locations, might have to be undertaken.

And if a license is granted for MGM’s proposed South End resort casino, as expected, and construction begins later this year — that’s the current timetable — two of the biggest construction projects in the region’s history would be going on at the same time, and within a few hundred feet of each other.

Overall, effective communication with the public about the project, specific phases, lane and off-ramp closings, and other considerations are vital to efforts to minimize disruptions and the impact on commerce, said Kevin Kennedy, Springfield’s chief development officer.

“My issue is to make sure there’s enough communication so that we know where they’re working so we can tell people who work and come to downtown Springfield and use our parking facilities what’s going on and what the best route to get here is going to be,” he said. “It’s going to uncomfortable for a while, and no one likes that, but the idea that we can get a good fix, rather than a patch job, is good for Springfield in the long run.”

As for that broader vision for the viaduct and improved access to the river that Fyntrilakis mentioned, there is a study, being conducted independent of the repair project, that is exploring options.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno has repeatedly called for something “bold and visionary” in his public comments on the matter, and State Transportation Secretary Richard Davey said it might be possible to take some sections of the elevated highway down to grade level or just below.

But there are myriad questions that will be need to be answered, about everything from what the soils can handle to how other barriers to the riverfront, such as East and West Columbus avenues  and the rail line just east of the river would be negotiated; from how such a project would be funded to whether the state and federal governments would invest heavily again in a road they just paid $260 million to fix.

“Once the repair project starts, it will take some of the options off the table for getting to the riverfront, but I’m not sure it takes all of them off the table,” said Ciuffreda. “We may have to settle for a lesser connection than we ideally would like. That’s just the hand we’ve been dealt. It’s a crumbling road, and if it ever went down to one lane, that would just cripple the economy.”

Bottom Line

How that hand will be played remains to be seen, but it appears that the pause sought by Fyntrilakis and others is not in the cards.

And for that reason, projecting down the road, for the short and long term, will be difficult. That’s why, when it comes to Springfield and its controversial, half-century-old viaduct, so many things are still up in the air.

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

Touchy Subject

By
Business of Aging Sections
Rise in STDs Among Seniors Prompts Calls for Education, Compassion
Suzanne McElroy

Suzanne McElroy says the proliferation of advertising promoting senior relationships comes with little education regarding the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.

‘Do you have protection for safe sex?’

That’s certainly not an uncommon question to ask these days, given the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the widespread awareness of these afflictions.

But when Suzanne McElroy asks the same question of her clients, “they look at me with this shocked expression and ask, ‘why would I need that? I’m too old to get pregnant.’”

And that’s a big part of the problem when it comes to a growing — and alarming — trend that has emerged in recent years: a surge in the number of reported STDs among what would be considered older populations, those age 50 and up. Indeed, most of these individuals are probably too old to get pregnant, but they’re definitely not too old to contract STDs and the various health issues that accompany them.

As a franchise owner of Home Instead Senior Care, based in Springfield, McElroy knows the reality of what is happening behind closed doors with her clients, who range in age from the mid-70s to over 90, and the many issues that the aging process brings. But she also knows the disturbing statistics regarding STDs in seniors.

One of the most notable published reports is the American Assoc. of Retired Persons’ “Sex, Romance, and Relationships,” released in 2010. It surveyed a nationally representative sample of middle-aged and older people about their sex lives. These are the major findings:

• Three out of 10 respondents said they had sex at least once a week, including almost half of those who were single but dating or engaged, and 36% of those who were married;

• 85% of men and 61% of women said sex was important to their quality of life; and

• Just 12% of single men and 32% of single women who were dating reported always using condoms during sex.

That last bullet point is the really disconcerting stat, said McElroy, and just one of the reasons the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone be tested once for HIV, and those who engage in risky sexual behavior should add chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis to their yearly screening tests.

Elaborating, McElroy said there are two myths concerning this subject. One is that seniors don’t have sex, which is untrue, and the other is that they can’t contract sexually transmitted diseases, which is equally false. “We started an initiative around seniors and STDs, and true, it was a little shocking, and some didn’t want to be associated with it because they saw it as ‘unseemly,’ but we have to dispel these myths.”

McElroy said older Americans account for a relatively small percentage of new STD diagnoses overall, and diseases in general are escalating in the Baby Boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) because there are simply more of them. However, the rate of STD diagnosis in those ages 50 and over has doubled over the last decade, and that constituency includes a large portion of the Baby Boomers as well as what is left of the Silent (1925-1944) and GI (1905-1924) generations.

“Also, many seniors may have married at, say, 19, and never had any other partners, and the only thing they know is that condoms prevent pregnancy,” McElroy continued, adding that it’s the reason her company offers a conversation-starter booklet called The 40/70 Rule, designed to stimulate dialogue between seniors and their children on a host of issues, including sex (more on that later).

Leslie Kayan, Healthy Aging Program coordinator at the Franklin County Home Care Corp., is a strong supporter of any conversation that opens seniors up to talking about sexuality. As a community health educator, she’s taught sex education to teens, parents, teachers, church leaders, and healthcare providers.

A Baby Boomer like McElroy, Kayan grew up during the ‘free love’ generation, a culture with an openness and knowledge about sex and STDs, which she said will carry over to her senior years. “But anyone who is older than I am is extremely unlikely to ever have had any formal sexuality education,” she said. “Many of them have been married for years, and now they are widowed and out there, at risk for the first time. And safe sex isn’t even on their radar.”

“If you look at sexuality as part of the human condition from puberty till the day we die, it just doesn’t stop,” McElroy added. “It goes through cycles, but it doesn’t stop just because we reach a certain age.”

McElroy pointed to the proliferation of senior online-dating services like www.ourtime.com, www.seniorpeoplemeet.com, and www.findseniorsonly.com; the enormous revenues for erectile-dysfunction (ED) drugs like Pfizer’s Viagra ($2.5 billion in 2012) and Eli Lilly’s Cialis ($1.93 billion in 2012); and the growth in senior and assisted-living facilities that promote socialization. The messages are tantalizing, with little education to go with them, she said.

Don’t Sleep on This Problem

McElroy has 35 employees who are fully trained in all aspects of non-medical care of seniors. To keep that training up to date and relevant, she does extensive research into a variety of subjects, including sex and the older populations.

And in many national publications that have addressed that topic, she’s seen the words ‘seniors’ and ‘frisky’ together in the same sentence, and this juxtaposition does not amuse her.

“How demeaning that readers are totally picturing two white-haired people having ‘fun,’” she said in a voice tinged with a mix of anger and frustration. “How about two white-haired people who are lonely because they lost their spouse?”

Dr. Stephen Levine

Dr. Stephen Levine says the issue of STDs is far from the surface, and it’s usually a difficult subject for seniors to bring up with family members.

Her staff knows that respect is to be shown to senior clients’ behaviors because many are living in retirement communities that facilitate socialization among eligible, but also lonely, seniors, McElroy said.

“Maybe it’s romance and maybe they’re just ‘hooking up,’ but it’s not something that is funny or temporary, and it’s certainly not something that is perverse or wrong.”

McElroy’s staff does not diagnose, but rather observes any minute changes in clients like variations in appetite, urination, odors, rashes, etc., that may suggest further investigation by a doctor. According to McElroy, the biggest issue that seniors face is how the outside world sees them. It’s the widespread assumption that they don’t have sex that she said is dangerous.

“Because there is no talk about it, no education, there’s a lot of embarrassment,” she told BusinessWest. “Children will talk about healthcare proxies and living wills, and whether dad can still drive, but don’t think about asking dad about his dating or sex life now that mom is gone.”

Dr. Stephen Levine, who has practiced since 1979 in his Holyoke-based family practice and is affiliated with Holyoke Medical Center, agrees.

“The issue of STDs is far from the surface, and it’s usually the last thing that’s brought up,” he said. “It’s not something that can be allowed to be mistaken or overlooked, and needs to be discussed with the practitioner who is seeing the individual.”

Routinely, said Levine, his elderly patients have questions about physical changes that come with age and ask about ED treatments or lubrication for dryness, albeit somewhat indirectly. “A woman or a man may ask, ‘is there anything you have that can help me?’ and they know what they’re talking about, and I know what they’re talking about, and then the discussion goes in the direction of things that can be helpful, so it’s definitely on the majority of seniors’ minds that I see.”

Times are different, Levine went on, because the advent of ED drugs like Viagra for men and estrogen creams for women over the past decade has solved some of the issues of sex and aging. Now, with medical intervention, seniors are able to perform physically, with little effort, via a ‘little blue pill,’ a tube of cream, or hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

But the conversation has to start somewhere for these seniors when it comes to new sexual partners.

“Having sexual relationships is normal, expected, and OK, but it’s clear that this group is exposing one another to the possibility of STD risks,” said Levine.  “Bottom line, at the start of a life-changing situation like a new relationship, testing for everything one can think of that could be transmitted sexually is a good starting point.”

Ignoring the threat of STDs, especially if they go undiagnosed, can be detrimental, Levine said, because several types of STDs can be harbored without symptoms, including syphilis, chlamydia, HIV, and hepatitis B. Syphilis, in later stages, he explained, could cause dementia, which brings up one of the difficult issues in diagnosing STDs in the elderly: many STD symptoms are similar to the normal aspects of aging.

McElroy admitted that some of her clients who normally have issues with urinating — very common in older ages — would never identify that issue as a symptom of an STD, yet it could be one.

Elaborating, Levine added, “if something doesn’t appear to be anything other than a typical aging problem, the patient will probably have no intention of being tested, but they could be infected and unknowingly be spreading infection to one or multiple partners.”

Conversation Starters

Sherill Pineda, president of Care @ Home in East Longmeadow, has become very familiar with both the concept that seniors need a healthy sex life, and the issues related to STDs.

She started a volunteer Zumba dance group for seniors called Groove and Learn, which offers exercise as just one way to stave off Alzheimer’s disease, but to also learn about other aging issues. At a certain point, the more than 25 participants, mostly senior women, wanted to talk about sex, and Pineda realized there was a definite need for more openness and awareness regarding seniors and their inability, for whatever reason, to find answers for themselves. She also realized that awareness had to spread to the senior healthcare community, which was not nearly as open as it should be, for all the other seniors in the Western Mass. region.

Last May, Pineda staged a seminar called “Never Too Old for Love” at the Western Mass. Eldercare Conference at Holyoke Community College. The symposium, crafted for nurses, social workers, and the public, drew more than 350 people, and 66 of them were seniors. (This year’s event will be held on May 29).

Pineda explained that depression is a big issue with many of her clients, largely due to the loneliness and isolation that seniors feel, especially after losing a spouse. “When I talk about ‘Never Too Old for Love,’ it’s not purely about sex; some people just want companionship, and wherever that leads, that’s their private business. As healthcare professionals, we need to be mindful about what is causing depression and other unusual changes in seniors. They are still longing for the one-on-one emotional needs and the physical aspect of it, and they’re just like us; they don’t think of themselves as old.”

Pineda has found that seniors typically won’t talk about their sex lives with their grown children, “but they are more than willing to open up to healthcare professionals, because sometimes their kids will say, ‘you’re too old for that.’”

McElroy agreed, noting that Home Instead has a resource called The 40/70 Rule, a booklet that contains suggested conversation starters concerning myriad issues in the aging process. “It means that if you’re 40, and your parents are 70, then conversations about all sorts of things should start happening.”

She said the publication has realistic ways of opening that door to at least promote a conversation between a senior and his or her physician.

Her best advice for the children of seniors, their caregivers, and doctors is to not assume anything. Financial issues, end-of-life wishes, questions or concerns about sex … no one knows unless they ask, or at least open up the opportunity for real discussion.

Spread the Word

Research, news articles, education on the part of healthcare providers, and acceptance within immediate families is what McElroy, Kayan, Pineda, and Levine say will help remove the barriers to talking openly about seniors and their sexuality.

McElroy even sees this STD issue as a trend that will likely evolve over the next decade in the form of a welcome decline in prevalence because the more open-minded individuals in their 50s, 60s and early 70s have already integrated the Internet into their lives from their work life, and information and more education will make a huge difference in their knowledge of STDs and the concept of healthy sex.

“It’s all about respect and dignity,” she said, “which dictates that, if something isn’t hurting someone, I don’t care how old you are, you should be allowed to participate in it, safely.”

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Painful Loss

By
Business of Aging Sections
Breakdown of Cartilage Between Joints Leads to Osteoarthritis

Dr. Leonard Wagner

Dr. Leonard Wagner says the most noticeable symptom of osteoarthritis is joint pain, but people also experience tenderness, stiffness, and loss of flexibility or range of motion.

More than 27 million Americans suffer from stiff joints and/or pain caused by osteoarthritis, or OA. It is the most common form of arthritis, and although growing older does not cause it, 50% of people over age 65 have some form of OA and suffer from degenerative changes in their joints. Still, the condition is not inevitable, and the pain it causes can often be alleviated.

“There are a lot of people who never develop arthritis, and there are others who do have it whose lives can be markedly improved with appropriate attention,” said orthopedic surgeon Dr. Leonard Wagner of Springfield.

Dr. James Schumacher agrees. “Osteoarthritis a very common disorder, and if you look hard enough, you can find it in everyone 40 or older, particularly in the spine,” said the rheumatologist from Riverbend Medical Group in Chicopee. “But the progression of the disease is very slow and takes place over decades.”

OA can affect the neck, back, hip, knee, shoulder, feet, thumb, or fingers. “Arthritis means inflammation of the joint, and osteoarthritis can affect just one or two joints, compared to other types that can involve the entire body,” Wagner said. The most noticeable symptom is pain in or around the joint, but people can also experience tenderness and/or stiffness and loss of flexibility or range of motion. Some also report a grating sensation or sound in the joint when they move.

The problem is caused by a breakdown of cartilage, which is a tough, elastic, fibrous connective tissue between the bones in the joint that provides them with cushioning. When it becomes too thin, the bones rub together, which leads to inflammation, stiffness, pain, and loss of movement.

But Schumacher says pain increases gradually and is dependent on many factors, such as a person’s weight and how much stress is put on the joint. In addition, what doctors find on X-rays or magnetic-resonance imaging does not necessarily correlate to the degree of pain people experience, he told BusinessWest.

However, some factors, such as obesity, make the problem worse, especially when the knees are affected. Wagner says every extra pound translates to three to four pounds of extra stress on the knee in people with OA. “So if you gain 10 pounds, the knee thinks you gained 40 pounds.”

Keeping active is important, but can be difficult because the more pain a person has, the less likely they are to exercise. “It’s a downward spiral,” Schumacher said. “If you can’t exercise, it’s easy to gain weight, and the more you gain, the more it hurts to exercise.”

Dr. James Schumacher

Dr. James Schumacher says the progression of osteoarthritis can be very slow, gradually worsening over decades.

However, exercising in a pool is a viable compromise and especially useful for people with OA in their knees, hips, or back. “Even walking in a pool will help,” Schumacher said, adding that some people use college or hotel pools rather than joining a gym. “You don’t have to be a lap swimmer. All you have to do is walk around. But it’s hard to get people interested in going to a pool in the winter.”

Progressive Condition

In addition to obesity, which can make OA worse, other factors put people at risk for the condition. “We don’t really know why osteoarthritis develops, but it is believed that genetics may play a role,” Schumacher said.

There is also a correlation between past injuries and symptoms. They include sports mishaps, car accidents, or a bad fall. In fact, the Arthritis Foundation says researchers have determined that 10 to 20 years after a traumatic injury to the knee — such as an ACL or meniscus tear — about 50% of patients will develop OA.

“The knee is very prone to injury,” Schumacher said. “But any joint can be involved, and if there is a deformity or slight variation in normal structure, it may lead to osteoarthritis.”

The condition occurs over time, and is often referred to as ‘wear-and-tear’ arthritis. Wagner explained that cartilage has a very slippery surface. That surface, combined with a small amount of fluid, keeps the joints lubricated.

However, as the cartilage degenerates or thins out, its surface becomes more like sandpaper, which prevents the bones from gliding easily. As the thinning progresses, they can begin to rub together. “It leads to inflammation, and as the body produces more inflamed cells, there is more and more pain and stiffness,” he said.

At first, pain may be infrequent and only occur with weather changes or when engaging in a strenuous activity. “But as time goes on, the symptoms become more of an issue,” Wagner said, adding that knees tend to be particularly painful because they are weight bearing and people cannot avoid using them because they need to walk.

However, there are measures people can take to help prevent OA. They include maintaining a healthy weight, taking care of injuries when they happen, and staying active. “You don’t need to go to the gym four times a week,” he said. “People just need to keep moving. Every walk you take or every time you take the stairs will help.”

Schumacher agrees. “All exercise counts, even walking from the far end of a parking lot. People who do this are actually getting good exercise. If you only do it once in a while, it will be more difficult, but a small amount is better than nothing, because the body does remember.”

Treatment Options

Wagner says there are a number of modalities used to cope with disabling pain. Many people use canes or walkers. “They can also get injections which decrease inflammation. And certain anti-inflammatory medications can also help to decrease inflammation and discomfort and may make your life more enjoyable. A lot of people take ibuprofen or Aleve and find it is beneficial. But it is important to pay attention to the directions because there is a potential of irritating the stomach.”

Schumacher agreed, and said people who take prescription medications or have other medical conditions should check with their doctor before embarking on a self-treatment plan of over-the-counter medications, as drug interactions and stomach inflammation can occur. “The doctor needs to look at the whole picture and decide what is a reasonable risk.”

Both physicians also urge people with pain that continues over time to visit their physician. “It’s useful to talk to your doctor about your symptoms, get a diagnosis, and find out what treatment is best,” Schumacher said. “A physical exam can detect changes in function, range of motion, and tenderness. We also use X-rays and MRIs to test the severity and extent of osteoarthritis, although there is a lot of variation in symptoms compared to these studies. But our aim is do what we can through medical management.”

However, Wagner says many people fail to schedule a doctor’s visit because they assume they know what is wrong with them and what the physician will prescribe.

“But just because you have pain in a joint doesn’t mean it’s arthritis or you need a particular treatment plan,” he explained. “For example, it’s possible to have pain and swelling in a knee from torn cartilage, even though the person may not remember getting injured. Or someone may have worked too hard in the garden and have tendinitis, which rest and over-the-counter medication will take care of.”

Surgery provides relief for many people, but is not scheduled until other treatment options are exhausted. “Joint replacement is usually the last option,” Schumacher said. “It is a big procedure, and it’s expensive, but for those who are barely able to get around, it can be quite helpful.”

Future Outlook

Osteoarthritis stems from a variety of causes, but is definitely associated with aging. “It is seen in younger people, but that is usually the result of injury or previous trauma to the joint,” Schumacher noted.

And although there is a lot of interest in what makes cartilage deteriorate, it is hard to study.

“Our understanding of why and how osteoarthritis happens is not very good, so even when it is detected early, we don’t have a treatment to change the outlook,” he told BusinessWest. “But it definitely pays to protect your body from injury, control your weight, and stay active.”

Trendy Living

By
Business of Aging Sections
Glenmeadow Renovates, Responds to Lifestyle Changes

Tim Cotz, president and CEO of Glenmeadow

Tim Cotz, president and CEO of Glenmeadow

A few weeks ago, Tim Cotz, president and CEO for the past 20 years at Glenmeadow, noticed one of his housekeepers wished an elderly resident ‘happy birthday’ on Facebook.

Of course, he’s impressed with an octogenarian who is active on Facebook, but he said he’s even more pleased to see one of his staff reaching out to her, because it’s the personal bonds among the staff and residents that make Glenmeadow — an independent- and assisted-living complex in Longmeadow — feel like home.

In fact, Cotz can be found pouring coffee every weekday morning at 7 a.m., walking around opening shades for more light, and pouring glasses of chardonnay at a late Friday afternoon cocktail hour; his daily, hands-on style is a physical illustration of what he expects of his 110 employees in all their different roles. This philosophy, and an open ear to requests for change, have helped Glenmeadow grow successfully over the past 20 years, weather the Great Recession, and recently complete a $4 million renovation (more on that later).

Cotz describes Glenmeadow as “unique” in the business of senior living because it’s a stand-alone, nonprofit facility, while most of its competition is religious-based, for-profit, owned by private entities, or merged into large conglomerates.

He told BusinessWest that, while he’s always worked to enhance services and meet the expectations of his residents and their families, it’s a much more vocal demographic these days.

“I don’t think we can ever be a place where we say, ‘this is what we do, this is what we offer, that’s what it is,’” said Cotz, who noted that the organization’s original managers, which became a board in 1985, was long run by a group of ladies; in its 130-year history, Cotz is the first male to have the leadership role in Glenmeadow. “We’re ever-evolving.”

As another example, he mentioned a new addition to the staff, whose role is to help residents with their technology needs. Requests for assistance with iPads, iPhones, laptops, and the general need to keep up with social media is as important to residents, he said, as it is to everyone else today.

When Glenmeadow opened its new facility 17 years ago, “we had one person here with their own computer,” Cotz explained. “Now we have wi-fi throughout the building, and a majority of the folks have computers, so we’re looking at how we continue to enhance those services.”

For this issue’s focus on the business of aging, BusinessWest toured Glenmeadow to learn more about an elder residence with a long history in Greater Springfield, and how that nonprofit is catering to a demographic requesting amenities and programs reflecting a younger mindset than ever before.

Welcome Home

Working in long-term care since 1970, Cotz started as an orderly in college, and graduated from Hartwick College with a bachelor’s degree in healthcare before earning his master’s from George Washington University.

From 1982 to 1988, he served as executive director of the Geriatric Authority of Holyoke, then led Berkshire Health Systems in Pittsfield for five years, before transitioning to Glenmeadow, which at the time was located in downtown Springfield.

Doorstop Café

Tim Cotz said the $4 million in recent renovations includes the Doorstop Café, a popular meeting place for residents as well as visiting friends.

Explaining Glenmeadow’s history, Cotz said the nonprofit was founded in 1884 with donations and bequeaths, making it the oldest residential nonprofit for the elderly in Springfield. Originally named the Springfield Home for Aged Women, it was created to provide shelter and care for female seniors.

“Every city at the time had a ‘poor farm,’ and that’s where old people went,” Cotz told BusinessWest.  “But the citizenry of Springfield felt that they deserved a better option.”

The first structure was a home behind the current Red Rose Pizza in Springfield’s South End, which then moved to a mansion on the corner of Chestnut and Carew streets (the building is now used for alcohol and drug rehabilitation services), and by the 1960s the name was changed to Chestnut Knoll.

When the facility needed more space, it purchased a 20-acre plot of land from Daniel O’Connell’s Sons in 1993, just over the Springfield line in Longmeadow, and construction for the current facility was completed in 1997. The richly landscaped campus and buildings now boast 113 independent apartments (14 more were added in 2000 to the original 89 units), boasting full kitchens and baths, plus 34 assisted-living apartments with kitchenettes.

Demand for units has been fairly consistent over the past two decades, Cotz said. The recession impacted the nonprofit a bit in 2008 and 2009, causing the waiting list to shrink, but residents have consistently filled the apartments. After the recession, not only did the waiting list fill up again, the changing style of how seniors want to live created demands of a different sort.

Great Expectations

Specifically, Cotz pointed out two societal shifts that have affected Glenmeadow over the past decade. First is the trend toward ‘aging in place,’ which the facility turned into a revenue generator in 2001 with the introduction of Glenmeadow at Home, a non-medical, private-duty, home-healthcare company for those living there.

“People are living so much longer and living healthier, and typically there are periods where they need some additional support. So now we can hire our own staff, train them, do the background, and supervise them,” he explained. Residents also have the option to hire outside workers for those extra services, if they so choose.

The goal is to provide non-medical services that help elders stay comfortably in their home, which includes companionship, handyman service, transportation, meals, dog walking, and more. By 2003, Glenmeadow at Home expanded to caring for anyone 62 and older in the Greater Springfield community. Calls to clients’ personal physicians for medical attention are part of the services, and that eventually evolved into care management in the home to coordinate all the services that an elder would need as their medical care requirements increase. Today, Glenmeadow at Home employs 80.

The second trend Cotz has observed is a renewed focus on fitness and lifestyle programming.

“The population we’re serving is clearly looking for more options for wellness, so much so that 83% of the people in this building exercise regularly,” he explained, which has led to an expansion of wellness services on site.

“When we opened 17 years ago, we had a room about this size, and if people brought an exercise bike, we’d store it in there,” Cotz said, pointing around his office, which comfortably holds a desk, a table, and two easy chairs. “Well, now we have three trainers on staff, Nautilus equipment, and numerous exercise classes each day, from stretching to balance to Tai Chi, PiYo [a blend of Pilates and yoga], and aquasize.”

This attention to physical and mental wellness, Cotz told BusinessWest, is due to behavioral differences among three generations: the Silent Generation (born 1925-1944) and the GI Generation (1905-1924), which together which make up a large portion of Glenmeadow’s older residents, and the older edge of the Baby Boom Generation (1945-1964), who are now entering the facility or on the waiting list.

“They are very different populations; the expectations of people we’re serving are changing,” said Cotz. “My parents’ generation, the GI population, were kind of ‘give me a cot and a cup of coffee, and I’m good to go.’ But the people in their early 70s coming in clearly have higher expectations in terms of amenities, programs, and services.”

The standard independent-living facility — with individual living units, one large dining room, and some separate rooms for a lounge, library, puzzles, and crafts — are from a bygone era. Now, the demand for more contemporary open space and more choices for meal times has changed the entire look and feel of Glenmeadow’s first floor.

The complex recently invested $4 million in renovations to tear down interior walls, open up meeting rooms, add more windows for natural light, expand the wellness area, and split the formal dining room to create the casual Doorstop Café, as well as more administrative space for the growing Glenmeadow at Home.

Living Social

Another concern is the alarming trend of cognitive loss, ranging from general senility to vascular-related dementia to Alzheimer’s disease. Both Glenmeadow and Glenmeadow at Home aim to identify the first signs of impairment and the supports necessary to keep people independent for as long as possible.

While Glenmeadow is a private-pay business, the nonprofit accepts donations through requests and estates, and has an investment portfolio of $15 million. Those investments can help those that outlive their resources; Cotz said the facility has never discharged anyone due to inability to pay.

In addition, a few years ago, Glenmeadow began offering the use of its facilities to non-residents for only $25 per month. With little advertising, membership escalated to more than 80 people after renovations were completed last fall. Members take advantage of the pool, use the fitness programs and equipment, and grab soup or coffee at the Doorstop Café, Cotz said. “It allows the public to realize first-hand what could be their next home.”

That’s certainly worth a Facebook ‘like’ or two.

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Their Time in the Sun

By
Environment and Engineering Sections
WNEU Team Chosen to Compete in Prestigious Solar Decathlon

E-Board members, from left, Garrett Bieksza, Samuel McLaren, Adison Vanina, Tiffany Behuniak, and Justin Parlapiano

E-Board members, from left, Garrett Bieksza, Samuel McLaren, Adison Vanina, Tiffany Behuniak, and Justin Parlapiano, will have leadership roles in the biathlon project.

Samuel McLaren was talking about anxiety, a few sleepless nights, 16-hour days, and the pressure of meeting tight deadlines.

And that was just the application process.

There is certain to be much more of all of the above as he and more than 100 other students at Western New England University, which will lead one of 20 teams that prevailed in that application phase, take part in something called the Solar Decathlon.

Over the next 22 months or so, students across a number of disciplines, from environmental engineering to mathematics to mass communications, will design, fund, and build a completely solar-powered, net-zero home, then test it, disassemble it, transport it to Irvine, Calif., where it will compete with those 19 other entries, disassemble it again, and ship it back to Springfield.

“This is an enormous task, obviously,” said Kenneth Lee, professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at WNEU, who was on hand for the 2013 Solar Decathlon, and pronounced it a working display of energy innovation in action. “It’s going to require teamwork, lots of hard work, and a strong focus on innovation.”

McLaren, a junior who transferred to WNEU from Housatonic Community College, and one of several students on the project’s leadership team, or Engineering Board, or E-Board, agreed.

“It’s already been a lot of work — we worked on this tirelessly last semester, getting our application ready,” he said, adding that those long days and sleepless nights, which extended into the intersession, were obviously worth it.

Indeed, on Feb. 13, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which stages the decathlon, announced that WNEU and two collaborating partners, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama and Universidad Tecnologica Centroamerica in Honduras, would be competing against the likes of Stanford, Yale, California Polytechnic State University, Vanderbilt, and many other top schools, in this country and abroad.

The winning team will receive a cash prize, said Lee, adding quickly that the more important rewards — which will go to all of the more than 2,000 contestants — include the experience of working with others to plan and execute the project, and also working on the cutting edge of innovation in energy efficiency.

The biannual event is called a decathlon because, as the name suggests, there are 10 contests within the larger competition. Teams will be judged on architecture, market appeal, engineering, communication, and affordability — components that will be juried — as well as ‘comfort zone,’ hot water, appliances, home entertainment, and energy balance, which will be measured (home entertainment will also be juried).

For this issue and its focus on environment and engineering, BusinessWest talked with Lee and several of the students who will be leading WNEU’s participation. They all described it as a unique opportunity to take what is being taught in the classroom and put it to work in a real world that is searching for ways to become more energy-efficient.

Bright Ideas

The scope of the Solar Decathlon became clear at a meeting involving many of the students who will participate.

The auditorium on the ground floor was packed with more than 100 students across a number of disciplines. More than a dozen would move to the front of the room to discuss specific aspects of the project that they would lead, and essentially recruit members for those teams.

These specific assignments ranged from planning and design to public relations; from interior design (led by a young woman who admitted she knew nothing about engineering, but didn’t need to) to fund-raising and soliciting sponsors.

And Lee summed up the principle that will drive each of these tasks, but especially the design phase, when he told those assembled, “we need innovation, innovation, innovation. We’re going to have to separate our house from everyone else’s, and the only way to do that is to apply innovation to everything we do.

“This is going to be the experience of a lifetime,” he went on,” he went on, during what could be described as an informational session presented in the form of a pep talk. “This is probably the best experience you’re going to get in your undergraduate career. You’re going to work hard — I’m going to make sure of that — and you’re going to have to earn your way on this team.”

Innovation has been the watchword since the Solar Decathlon was first staged in 2002. Since then, a total of 192 teams and nearly 17,000 students, representing 33 countries, have taken part.

Those numbers will increase with the 2015 competition, which will include eight returning teams and 12 new squads; four of the teams will have partners from international schools. The field looks this this:

• California Polytechnic State University;

• California State University in Sacramento;

• Clemson University;

• Crowder College and Drury University;

• Lansing Community College, Kendell College of Art and Design, and Ferris State University;

• Missouri University of Science and Technology;

• New York City College of Technology;

• Oregon Institute of Technology and Portland State University;

• Stanford University;

• State University of New York, Alfred College of Technology, and Alfred University;

• Stevens Institute of Technology;

• University of Florida, National University of Singapore, and Santa Fe College;

• University of Texas at Austin and Technische Universitaet Muenchen;

• University of California Davis;

• University of California Irvine, Saddleback College, Chapman University, and Irvine Valley College;

• Vanderbilt University and Middle Tennessee State University;

• West Virginia University and University of Roma Tor Vergata;

• Western New England University, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, and Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana; and

• Yale University.

Those teams will looking to duplicate the success of Norwich University in Vermont, which took home the Byron Stafford Award of Distinction (named after one of the event’s original organizers, who passed away last year) for something called the Delta T-90 House, which, according to last year’s program guide, “is guided by the beliefs that high-performance, solar-powered dwellings should be available to all and that good design is not a function of cost.”

Seeing the Light

At present, the WNEU team’s entry doesn’t have a name, a design, or even a budget, said Tiffany Behuniak, a sophomore studying civil and environmental engineering and project engineer for the decathlon bid, noting that these pieces to the puzzle will fall into place over the next several months.

She conjectured that the WNEU team’s application struck a chord with those reviewing the entries because of the international partners, the fact that the school had committed $24,000 to the project and raised another $26,000, and other tangibles and intangibles.

And since word came from the Department of Energy that WNEU’s team had been chosen to compete, the process of filling out that team and assigning work has commenced with the necessary degree of urgency.

“We’re getting all of members together and splitting people into groups based on what they want to work on,” Behuniak explained. “And then we’re going to start all of our training and design work, getting more sponsorships and doing more fund-raising. There is a lot going on all at once.”

Students at the partnering international schools will be working with those at WNEU on individual projects, mostly via skype, said Lee, adding that, when the endeavor reaches its final stages, some of these students will come to the Springfield campus for actual hands-on involvement.

Adison Vanina, a sophomore electrical engineering major and project manager for the decathlon bid, said that, for all those involved, this will be experiential learning of the highest order, and an invaluable experience that could help open doors to careers in the green-energy field.

“When Dr. Lee first introduced this to us, it seemed like a great opportunity to build our experience in engineering,” he said, “and also take what we’ve learned in the classroom and put it to practical use, while also working in a team environment.”

While many of the aspects of the project involve science, architecture, and engineering, there are other components that make it a truly campus-wide initiative, said Lee.

He cited, for example, the communications segment within the decathlon. In that competition, a jury of communications professionals evaluates Web content, an audio-visual presentation and information, the quality of on-site graphics, the delivery of messages to target audiences, and the use of innovative (there’s that word again) methods to engage audiences.

And then, there’s the fund-raising aspect to the project, which, while it is not scored as part of the actual competition, is obviously vital to its success. The Department of Energy provides some funding, as does the university, said Lee, but the team must pound the pavement and be creative to cover the full cost of building the home (projected to be $250,000 or more) and also additional expenses, especially those involving getting the house — and the students who built it — to California and back.

All those we spoke with said this project is at its very earliest stages and there are many unknowns ahead, which is one of the more intriguing aspects of this effort.

What is known is that there will be many more of those long days and possibly sleepless nights in the months to come.

Whether the WNEU team can take the top prize in the 2015 competition remains to seen, but one thing is clear: this will be a well-earned day in the sun for all those involved.


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

Different Schools of Thought

By
Education Sections
Willie Ross School for the Deaf Emphasizes Flexibility in Learning

Bert Carter both signs and speaks with teacher Laura Chagnon

Bert Carter both signs and speaks with teacher Laura Chagnon — much like teachers and students communicate at the school.

The Willie Ross School for the Deaf was born out of tragedy. In the 47 years since, however, it has crafted a striking legacy of helping children overcome hardship.

Specifically, the Longmeadow-based school was founded in 1967 by a group of concerned parents who were struggling in the aftermath of a rubella epidemic that swept the East Coast and deafened thousands of children.

During that era, residential placement of all deaf children was virtually the only option for families. But these parents had a vision of a day placement program for their sons and daughters. Since existing programs did not provide such an option, they established their own day school.

“A group of concerned parents made the effort to put the school in motion,” said Robert “Bert” Carter, who took over as president and CEO last year. “I think we offer an alternative, and a big difference from other schools for the deaf, in that we’re not residential. We really are about serving the local region; we’re not interested in serving kids from the Boston area or Vermont. And we believe those kids should go home at night to their families.”

The school’s stated philosophy, in fact, is that it’s primarily the responsibility of the family, before the school, to make sure no child is left behind.

“We think families should be involved in the day-to-day lives of their children, and that they should have the opportunity to go home in the evening,” Carter added. “That’s not a criticism of residential schools; there’s a reason for those, too. But we offer this alternative.

“It’s a team educational approach,” he continued. “Again, there are several schools for the deaf in Massachusetts, and it’s good for parents that the approaches differ, so there’s some choice.”

Led by the late Gene and Barbara Ross — and named after their son, Willie, who resides in Southern California these days — the parent group sought to establish a program that would further their children’s abilities in an inclusive setting. Almost a half-century later, it has built a reputation and a track record that more than validate their decision.

Talk to Me

Betsy Grenier

Betsy Grenier sits with her young students on the floor, an intimate setting made possible by the small class size.

The non-residential nature of the Willie Ross School isn’t the only way it differed from established educational models. Another is the way students and teachers communicate and learn.

Specifically, the school began as an oral-only school, built on speech and lip reading, but over time parents and teachers saw limitations in this approach. Rather than abandon it completely, sign language was integrated alongside speech, and the school adopted a simultaneous approach known as ‘total communication.’

Over time, the school has integrated a number of communication approaches to enhance student learning, including advancements in the use of ‘residual hearing’ through digital hearing aids, FM systems (in which the teachers wears a microphone and transmitter and the student wears a receiver), and cochlear implants. These technologies, working in concert, maximize speech and understanding in a way that cannot occur when only a single method is available.

“With total communication, we use both speech and sign language to address the individual strengths of the child, Carter said. “We have students that use a variety of listening technologies, such as cochlear implants and the use of FM systems in the classroom. Again, we’re looking at each child’s strengths and needs and addressing those accordingly.”

In short, the school recognizes that instructional models must evolve along with the needs of the students it serves, and this extends well beyond how they communicate at school, but also encompasses where they learn. A case in point is the development of a dual-campus model. In addition to the 62 students based on the Longmeadow campus, other students are ‘mainstreamed,’ to some degree, at public schools in East Longmeadow.

“We have this campus here, which functions like a lot of schools for the deaf, but we also have classes in the East Longmeadow schools, at all levels — two classes in elementary school, two in middle school, and two in high school,” Carter said. “Students are served over there by our teachers and our staff, and they have opportunities to mainstream where it’s appropriate.”

This model, known as the Partnership Campus, is a good fit with many students whose families appreciate the mainstreaming opportunity but still want the benefit of an education overseen by Willie Ross-affiliated specialists. Whether through that program or learning at the Longmeadow campus, he explained, deaf students have the opportunity not to feel isolated among their hearing peers.

“Language access is important,” he said, noting that public schools offer diversity in a number of beneficial ways, but communication is critical. “For a student to be in a public school, even with a sign-language interpreter, it can be socially stifling.”

Forging Connections

Even in area public schools that aren’t part of the Partnership Campus — 17 of them, to be exact — the Willie Ross school is helping students feel less isolated through a consultation program, helping educators and staff understand the needs of deaf students and offering technical expertise and support regarding listening equipment.

“It can make a huge difference,” Carter said. “We have an audiologist go out to public schools with listening devices a student might benefit from. Technology changes constantly, so we help them stay ahead of that — we manage equipment, make sure it’s in good, working order, repair it if necessary, teach staff how to clean it, all those things.

“Along with that,” he added, “they work with students and remind teachers of simple things like having deaf or hard-of-hearing students sit in the front of class, and how to manage group situations — it’s hard to follow what’s going on when there are multiple speakers. We just provide consulting to school staff.”

The Willie Ross School also established its Outreach Division to provide services from infancy through age 22, encompassing everything from newborn screening to tutoring for high-school students.

“We have staff that go out to families at home and work with them around developing skills with the child and getting them ready to go to school,” Carter said, adding that the school’s philosophy of parental choice extends here as well. “We always go with what the parents are thinking. If they’re saying, ‘I want my child to speak and go to public school,’ we help them move through that process. If they’re saying they want the child to learn sign language, we help them do that.

“It can be a difficult process for the family,” he added. “They don’t necessarily expect that they’re going to have a deaf child; it’s usually a surprise, and you have to adjust expectations around that. Not that you don’t expect the child to be successful, but the process looks different. You have to be prepared for that. We help a lot of parents work through that and recognize the success their child has along the way.”

The Outreach Division also sponsors the Laurin Audiological Center, located in Pittsfield, so that public-school students in the Berkshires receive the same kind of audiological support available in Greater Springfield.

Personal Touch

Meanwhile, back at the main Willie Ross campus, small classes allow for plenty of individualized attention. Students are grouped by approximate age in most cases, but also by ability level, and many students have learning and physical disabilities in addition to deafness.

Laura Chagnon, who teaches a class of five boys, said most of them would struggle with mainstreaming, but at the same time, everything they experience at the school is preparing them in some way for mainstream life.

Carter understands that concept, having worked in some way with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals for more than 30 years, most recently at the Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vt. Having worked in adult social services as well as in education, he said, “it’s helpful to understand what happens to people after they leave school.”

These days, it’s his job to prepare them for that, and the Willie Ross School doesn’t cut corners on educational requirements.

“We have our own curriculum based on state standards, and our kids do well on state testing,” he told BusinessWest. “But even with all that, so many people in Longmeadow don’t know we’re here. Or, they know we’re here, but they don’t know exactly where.”

That’s not surprising, with the small, quiet campus tucked away on Norway Street, near the Connecticut border. But the impact of the school’s work, he said, radiates much farther out.

“The whole approach we take — with total communication, with the choice between two campuses — is based on what’s the most enabling environment,” he said. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s still considered an uncommon model.

“We’ve been asked to consult around the country on that, because it is an intriguing concept for people,” he continued. “Instead of looking at education as, ‘well, if you need this model, go somewhere else,’ we provide the whole continuum and can move fluidly between different modalities in our organization.”

Its students might be going places, all right, but for now, they’re staying close to home, learning and communicating in a variety of different ways. That’s something worth talking about. Or signing. Or both. Whatever works.

Joseph Bednar can be reached  at [email protected]

Change Agent

By
Education Sections
A Dynamic Principal Has Given New Meaning to the Phrase ‘Putnam Pride’

Gilbert Traverso

Gilbert Traverso, principal of Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy

There’s an axiom printed in bold black marker, and in capital letters, on a whiteboard in the principal’s office of the new Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy. It reads, “DO NOT ACCEPT, NOR BE PART OF, INSTITUTIONAL MEDIOCRITY.”

That last phrase is among many, most all of them with negative connotations, that have been summoned over the past decade or so in reference to the State Street institution. But those words and others like them are now used almost exclusively in the past tense.

Ray Lapite helped explained why. A Putnam Collision Department repair technician for 12 years, he points to Gilbert Traverso, principal at the school since July 2010, as the impetus behind a foundation-shaking and unwavering plan to trigger a positive cultural shift that has given new meaning to the phrase ‘Putnam Pride,’ a chant that is quoted often in the halls and on the playing fields.

The change in attitude is so profound that it actually dwarfs, in scope, the transition from the old Putnam high school to the sparkling, $114 million facility that opened its doors in the fall of 2012.

“Chaos reigned; it was a free-for-all, and the morale was so bad, there just wasn’t any at all,” said Lapite as he reflected, somewhat regrettably, on conditions before Traverso arrived. “But Gil came in, and he held us all accountable, because we’re here to do a job, and some people were acting back then like it was their retirement.”

The story of Putnam’s radical and swift turnaround has very little to do with the new school, said Lapite and others we spoke with. Its construction simply served as a rapidly looming deadline for Traverso in his new role making sweeping changes in every facet of a school that had low morale, low student scores, and little attention paid to the few policies and procedures that were in place.

“The majority of the change had to take place in the old school, because I didn’t want to bring old or negative habits into a new setting,” Traverso explained. “I don’t care what the façade is; it’s what the internal mechanisms are, and they have to be sound and effective.”

When Traverso arrived just before the 2010-11 school year was to begin, he was told that employees at neighboring MassMutual across the street were used to the regular sounds of sirens arriving at Putnam due to fights in the hallways and the 52 false fire-alarm calls in the previous year alone.

“I was not really welcomed by too many people when I came on board, and I had no connections here,” Traverso said, recalling that first school year. “I uncovered some issues, and then I was the bad guy.”

The issues that Traverso unearthed went far beyond weekly police calls. Indeed, he’d inherited a school with an internal systemic breakdown that prompted him — with seven unions to deal with — to restructure the grading policy and daily class schedules, and request an audit of his school’s books and procedures, which led to numerous lawsuits and hearings. He fully expected, and indeed received, tremendous pressure from administrators, teachers, parents, and students to essentially back off.

But he never did.

Peter Salerno

Peter Salerno supported Gil Traverso’s aggressive plan for Putnam’s culture change, with investment in students, not the new building, as the number-one goal.

What became an emotionally draining two-year reconstruction process required unwavering encouragement outside his supportive family, which he found with Superintendent Daniel Warwick and his office, and Peter Salerno, executive director of the Roger L. Putnam Technical Fund Inc.

“I told him that, five to seven years from now, nobody’s going to be talking about the new building; that’s not the story,” said Salerno. “The story is you and the kids, and the children are going to be new each and every year; we’ve got to reinvest in ourselves in making it work for them.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at what Traverso has accomplished and, more importantly, how. In doing so, we’ll shed light on how the phrase ‘new Putnam’ isn’t used exclusively in reference to the building.

Culture Clash

Traverso, an Hispanic, said he “came out of the ‘hood’” and had to work hard for everything he earned, a reality that has shaped his career, management style, and outlook on education.

Echoing Salerno, he said his mission is to provide a safe, fair, and equitable vocational and educational experience for those who are the intended beneficiaries — the students.

A former assistant principal of the Connecticut Department of Education’s Technical High School system, he was appointed to the Putnam position just two years before the opening of the new school. A visit early in the hiring process prompted some trepidation; he saw kids “hanging around,” and found little evidence to support the fact that there was a dress code in place.

The façade of the original Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy

The façade of the original Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy now serves as a grand entrance to the new, $114 million school.

“All I saw was that these urban kids weren’t being treated in an equitable manner, and I’m all about equality,” Traverso said as he pointed to a poster in his office printed with the Golden Rule. “I teach diversity training throughout Connecticut for the Anti-Defamation League, and if I want to live by that premise, why would I turn my back on an opportunity to address a situation that needed to be addressed?”

Elaborating, Traverso explained that many who are teaching these urban youths don’t live among them. “So there’s that misperception that maybe those kids can’t do it. But it’s not about lowering standards; it’s about providing multiple opportunities.”

It all starts with a belief gap, he went on, adding that there is a widely held belief that the students who don’t want to learn academically should be put in a vocational setting. “That doesn’t work,” Traverso stated.  “What that ultimately does is ruin their self-esteem.”

And it’s untrue to begin with, he said, because Putnam has 90 days of trade education and 90 days of academic classes, but with the latter, students have to cover the same amount of required content that other comprehensive high schools stretch over 180 days.

That initial visit just before he was hired convinced Traverso that very few within the school walls seemed to recognize the value in a quality vocational-educational setting; a balance between academics and trades had to be found.

But creating this balance, and inspiring change, would prove to be a challenging assignment, he said, adding that, from the start, there was animosity stemming from the perception that he was “the new guy that was coming in to fix us,” with the ‘us’ referring to both students and faculty alike.

In that environment, he decided there was no way he was going to get up, assembly-style, in front of 400 or more students at a time, as well as their equally skeptical teachers.

His method to change the perception of him was to “divide and conquer.” His class-by-class conversations and gatherings in very small groups of students, he can jokingly say now, had less chance of turning into a “synergistic meltdown.”

In his first year, Traverso found that several students had earned enough academic credits to qualify as 10th graders, but were recorded as seniors, or were making the grade in their academics but not in their vocational classes, and were still being passed upward. Making more friends by the day, Traverso and the teachers met with 60 quite upset parents, one on one, and explained that the credits would have to be made up, with the help of the school, or the student in question would have to transfer. But the recommendation was to stay at Putnam, and most students did.

With students randomly hanging out in the hallways, Traverso also had to make sure all could be easily accounted for at any given time of day. Two significant scheduling changes he made were to divide the lunch times by grade level, due to the many fights, and to split grade levels for academic and vocational classes. Previously, half the school’s students across all four grades (9-12) were in academic classes one week, known as A Week, while the other half was in vocations during B Week, a system that made it difficult to track where students were at any given time.  Traverso split the schedule to have ninth- and 11th-grade students traveling together to academics and 10th- and 12th-graders traveling together to their trades for the full five days of A Week, with both groups switching the next week.

Traverso and his team also created competencies for each grade level in each vocation, which provided more structure for the instructors and more accountability for the students, he said. During that analysis, he uncovered another alarming issue: each of Putnam’s 18 vocational programs, funded through Chapter 74 (Massachusetts Vocational Technical Education Regulations), are required to have advisory committees of two to 12 industry leaders from across the region. But most programs had no committee or, at best, one that was barely functioning.

The goal of each trade-advisory committee should be to identify new trends, skills, and technology required by the industry, and for those advisors to work with faculty and administrators to ensure that graduates are positioned for success in the workplace. When Traverso requested a meeting of all the advisory committees and vocational chairs, hardly anybody showed up to the first meeting.

“And I said, ‘that will not happen again,’” he told BusinessWest, adding that funding would stop for any trade without a fully functioning advisory committee. “From that day forward, we’ve had nothing but perfect attendance with active advisory committees.”

Looking back at the changes, Salerno added, “there’s a trait in Gil — he faces the brutal facts. Even if it’s a bad thing, you’ve got to face it courageously. You may not be applauded for every win, but you’ll know that you’ve won.”

Accountability Measures

But winning meant everyone had to feel that win.

Traverso recalled a teacher with many years of experience at Putnam who came to him at the beginning of this past school year, beaming and saying, “these kids are the best kids that I’ve ever taught,” an opinion he found intriguing.

“They’re the same kids — the same kids they’ve always been,” Traverso said with a laugh, adding that this episode is just one example of how much the attitudes, from the top down, have positively affected the feeling of being at Putnam, enabling people to say ‘Putnam Pride’ with conviction.

Four years ago, the pride was dead, Traverso explained, and “integrity-filled” instructors were in the shadows, lost in the shuffle during the audit phase. But as the smoke cleared, he created what became known as the Instructional Leadership Team for the purpose of giving more volume to those quiet voices throughout the old building to talk about the positive reality of Putnam’s transformation, as well as to learn what colleagues were doing in their core areas. Instructional rounds were formed, and teachers now run them every five weeks to observe, present feedback, and improve learning in the classroom.

Traverso also created an internal program called Implementation of Sustainable Change. It’s a simplistic flowchart of growth, showing where the school as a whole was in 2010, where it is at present, and where it is going as a team. His office whiteboard shows a graph in different-colored markers that breaks down the change process into four phases, all with traits that administrators, including Traverso, had to cultivate.

The phases include inception, incubation, inclusiveness, and interdependence.  Each phase closely follows each of the past four years of Traverso’s demanding schedule to right the sinking ship, including the few months of running room he needed that first fall. He told BusinessWest that Putnam is about 25% through the final phase, which is the chapter that speaks most to cohesive and consistent accountability, vision, and trust.

As they went through the phases, staff members were making data-driven decisions and analyzing, as a team, what was working, what was not, and how to make it all crystalize. By the inclusiveness phase around the start of 2013, the teachers were largely on board; there was far less pushback and far more teamwork, Traverso said.

“But it wasn’t me expanding; it was more people coming on board, and they were seeing change and facilitating these conversations themselves,” he recalled.

Turning his sights to Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores, Traverso launched an internal assessment to find out what areas the students were struggling with, which in turn would help teachers across the board in their teaching process. The assessment is done four times a year and has been a “game changer,” he said.

“It’s provided a professional recognition to the teachers about their input for the students and the assessment of their abilities in their own teaching method.”

Other grade-level exercises included tracking disciplinary data by teacher, attendance of students as well as teachers, out-of-school suspensions, and a tougher Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS) program, which is comprised of grade-level teams, allowing teachers to benchmark students through all four grades and intercept at the first signs of dropout behavior.

When all was said and done, in just over a two-year period of time, Traverso and the re-energized teachers at Putnam instituted more than 80 different policies and procedures.

Shared Victory

After the audit, a few “troublesome” teachers were either fired or left of their own accord, but those remaining, and any new instructors, have a found a place that they truly enjoy coming to each day.

A 22-year veteran at Putnam, John Kennedy, Collision Department head, saw the cultural change happen before his eyes, and both he and Lapite are still shocked at how fast the transformation happened.

“It’s a whole new atmosphere now, and the kids absolutely love the new building,” Kennedy said.  “The culture here now … it’s a new vibe.”

Feeling that new vibe, Traverso recently spoke to 10 new students accepted from a waiting list of 1,000, to tell them that Putnam is very structured; there are expectations, there’s no drama, and nobody bends the rules. “There was a big sigh, and some of the kids even clapped,” he recalled.

Salerno looks back at the disturbing number of false alarms that were pulled before Traverso’s leadership; now there are none, not because the halls are policed, but because the students don’t want to do it anymore.

“The peer-to-peer relationship is a major, positive change under Gil Traverso and all the team,” Salerno said, adding that “victory has many fathers; failure has none. Gil has created the architecture of a successful organization and created a systemic change — it’s not just dependent on Gil — that will be in place for many years.”

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Piece of the Pie

By
Sections The Casino Era
Region’s Tradespeople Anticipate Casino Construction Opportunities

Jason Garand

Jason Garand says MGM has a track record of using local labor for its projects, and he expects Springfield to be no exception.

With a membership of 950 carpenters who work in Western Mass., the New England Regional Council of Carpenters Local 108, has, in many ways, its finger on the pulse of the region, said Jason Garand, business manager.

“We do almost all the big work — I would say 99% of the biggest work,” he told BusinessWest. “And this one is going to be the biggest of all.”

He refers, of course, to a plan by MGM Resorts International to develop an $800 million casino in Springfield’s South End, which is awaiting final approval by the Mass. Gaming Commission — and which, if it moves forward, promises to put thousands of the area’s construction tradespeople to work.

“MGM has been, from the beginning, very forthright and open about how they plan to build this,” Garand said. “They have a track record of construction in other states, and in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where they are committed to all the right things. And not only are they committed, but they’ve done so in writing, with the host-community agreement.”

That agreement, hammered out with Springfield municipal leaders last year, calls for the construction phase of the casino project to incorporate mostly local labor, potentially to the tune of 2,000 construction jobs, followed by 3,000 permanent jobs in the casino once it opens.

“Springfield —  and Holyoke, too —  have higher unemployment than other cities in the state,” Garand said, “so we want to create those jobs right here.”

Jeffrey Ciuffreda, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, praised the way MGM has reached out to the area’s unions, and suggested the project might incorporate a handful of large contractors from the eastern part of the state, but will source most of the subcontracted work locally.

The end result will be an uncommon style of casino, one that will face outward onto the streets of the South End, allowing tourists to enjoy its shops and restaurants without having to navigate through the gaming area or hotel. This design will encourage local business growth (see story, page 19), and link visitors to other Springfield attractions, including the MassMutual Center, Springfield Museums, and Symphony Hall.

“Their model is really unique,” Garand said. “And, if this model works, Springfield will be the first of many projects in the country with this new casino style. For example, they’re not building a convention center of their own; they’re tying it into the MassMutual Center.”

From the start, he said, local labor leaders, contractors, and tradespeople hope that community outreach begins with the construction phase. So far, they like what they’re hearing.

From the Ground Up

The level of expectation varies, however, between individual businesses and niches. For instance, landscape-architecture opportunities might be limited in an urban casino, said Stephen Roberts, president of Stephen A. Roberts Landscape Architecture & Construction in Springfield.

“There might be some exterior construction in regard to pavers and maybe water features, but I don’t see there being a lot of green space available to create pocket parks,” he said. “From the plans I’ve seen, there’s not a whole lot of landscaping — it’s mostly a kind of urban cityscape.”

He said landscape architects, perhaps more than any construction trade, are hurt by the Springfield project’s status as the last proposal standing for the Western Mass. license.

“If there were a casino like the one proposed in Palmer, on a large, open area of land, you’d see better opportunities for landscape architects, for planning, different plantings, and landscape features,” he added. “In Springfield, space is tight; the buildings will take up 90% of the site. I don’t see there being some huge, open landscaping there. I don’t see this as a huge opportunity, but I might be wrong.”

Still, opportunities abound across the construction trades when one considers the sheer scope of the MGM development.

“From the perspective of local contractors, it’s a little problematic,” Garand said. “Even large companies like O’Connell and Fontaine could never do a single project at $400 million, never mind $800 million. This is a monster.”

He said what Baystate Medical Center did recently, with its $250 million ‘Hospital of the Future’ expansion, is a good example for MGM to follow. Even though the main contractor for the 640,000-square-foot project was from the Boston area, Baystate crafted a project labor agreement with local unions to ensure that much of the work would be performed by local talent.

As a result, of some 300 workers on site daily at the project, which wrapped up two years ago, about 70% of them were based in Springfield or the Pioneer Valley. “We’ve been able to keep these jobs,” Stanley Hunter, Baystate’s project executive at the time, told BusinessWest back then. “Especially in these times, we know there’s an interest in keeping work local in such an important project for the area.”

That certainly hasn’t changed with the MGM development.

“There is a fear out there, because contractors here are smaller, that they would come in with basically big contractors from Boston or Eastern Mass., set up, then leave, without much in value locally,” Garand said. “MGM has said, ‘absolutely not; we are going to make sure we get as many contractors from the 413 area code as possible. We are maybe going to chop up some of the contracts, break them up so it’s feasible.’”

That means that, while no company is going to take on an entire $800 million project, a $5 million hotel wing or $50 million in electrical or plumbing work are big prizes in themselves, and there should be plenty of such opportunity to go around.

Holding Pattern

Not only is MGM committing to some 2,000 construction jobs, it will strive to ensure that 35% of those go to Springfield residents, and that no more than 10% of the workforce is made up of people who live outside the Greater Springfield area. In addition, it has set goals of hiring 15.3% minorities, 6.9% women, and 8% veterans on the construction phase.

These goals have produced anticipation in the local construction industry, but the project has also hindered companies in a significant way — by putting many Springfield landlords in a holding pattern.

“So far it’s hurt us,” said Peter Allum, president of McCormick-Allum Co., a Springfield-based HVAC firm. “There are projects that haven’t happened because of what might happen.”

That’s because many downtown Springfield property owners are in a kind of holding pattern, waiting for the casino to become official before making any moves involving their buildings.

“In several cases, landlords have not renovated their buildings because they’re taking a wait-and-see attitude,” said Allum, who recently saw two potential projects downtown pushed to the back burner. “One is a four-story building that needs a new heating system. Depending on the casino outcome, [the owner] might move out. Whether he renovates the space or moves out depends on what happens.”

Still, Garand believes the project is an overall benefit to the region, and his union has already begun to partner with MGM on job fairs and is promoting its apprenticeship program for teens at area vocational schools, so they can find work opportunities right after graduation.

“When Baystate did its $250 million expansion, they had a firm commitment to use a certain percentage of local labor, and they exceeded that number by almost 50%,” Ciuffreda said. “It’s clear from the finished project that the quality of local workmanship is high. I think MGM knows that was the last big building project done in the area, and my sense is, they’re committed to local labor.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Let’s Make a Deal

By
Sections The Casino Era
Local Enterprises Look to Do Business with MGM Springfield

Joe Frigo’s family has done business in the South End of Springfield for 65 years.

“We’ve seen a lot of good and a lot of bad, and the South End is in a bit of a lull right now,” said Frigo, owner of Frigo’s Foods, a restaurant and catering business.

That said, “I’m fully in support of MGM,” he told BusinessWest. “For the last 10 or 15 years, everyone has been saying, ‘we need some type of influx.’ We’re not going to get any type of industry down here at this point, so everyone is leaning toward entertainment, and it’s now in our lap. If we don’t take advantage, it’s going to be a big mistake.”

Frigo is one of a number of South End business owners who welcome MGM Resorts International’s plan to build an $800 million casino in their neighborhood — not just because of the expected street improvements and foot traffic, but because MGM offers an uncommon business opportunity.

“They have made a proposal to us, though nothing is written in stone,” Frigo said. “They did extend an invitation for us to open up a shop within the casino, and still have a store in the South End. Hopefully, we land the deal and make it happen.”

MGM’s host-community agreement with Springfield calls for, among many other concessions, a commitment to spend $50 million per year with local and regional vendors. “That represents about 50% of what we would spend annually,” said Mike Mathis, president and CEO of MGM Springfield.

Some business partnerships are national by nature, he noted. “We have our Coke and Pepsi deals; that’s something we can’t source locally.” But for providers of many other types of goods and services, the casino giant typically makes an effort to strike partnerships in its host communities. “That’s just good business.”

Local vendors run the gamut from food providers to accounting, legal, and engineering services; from office and industrial equipment to building maintenance and facilities; from cleaning to groundskeeping. “We do some of these things in house, but a lot of it is outsourced,” Mathis said. “In each of those categories, there are a host of line items.”

Frigo isn’t the only one who sees growth potential in this local commitment. Brent Bertelli, owner of Langones Florist, also welcomes the MGM development.

“There are opportunities for many businesses thinking outside the box,” he said. “If I were selected as a vendor, naturally, with the size of their resort, it would be a benefit to my bottom line and help me hire more local people, because I’d need extra staff.”

Game Changer

Bertelli said a casino will provide an economic and confidence lift for the entire downtown area. “It’s going to bring a cleaner image back to the South End, and some diversified retail. And, of course, it will lead more people to my front doors; that’s just common sense.

“I have heard they’re really open to using a diverse collection of local business, whether it be a florist or a tuxedo-rental place in the area or a few of the local restaurants,” he added. “But even if I wasn’t a vendor, I’d still get a boost from it, absolutely.”

Jeffrey Cuiffreda, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS), has been busy preparing chamber members to interact with casino decision makers.

“We’ve been working with MGM. We worked with all three applicants, actually, but more closely with MGM because they seemed, quite frankly, more outgoing with some of these things,” he said, noting that, in addition to the $50 million commitment, the casino has determined to use the chamber as a vehicle to reach out to businesses.

The ACCGS surveyed its members recently to gauge interest, and about 70 companies responded. “Without a whole lot of information, they were interested in pursuing those options — which range, literally, from sharpening knives to producing the meats and vegetables and the linen services. Conservatively speaking, there are about 60 different categories of goods and services.”

Mathis noted, however, that many local vendors will have to engage in capacity-building efforts to do business with MGM.

“As part of that, we’ve reached out to the Affiliated Chambers and the local chambers, and we’ve reached out regionally to the four counties, working with different organizations to assess the market.

“In addition, we’ll bring our procurement department out from Las Vegas and walk [businesses] through the different products and services we need, get them enrolled in the system, get them pre-qualified,” he added. “We want to make sure they understand we’re a Fortune 500 company with different requirements, compounded by the fact that we’re in a heavily regulated industry.”

Indeed, Cuiffreda said, doing business in the gaming industry requires clearing a number of hurdles, and part of his goal in sitting on a state advisory board is to try to minimize the hoops vendors will need to jump through. “The state came out with some draft regulations for procurement, and the chamber commented heavily on that,” he said, noting that some of the requirements are so onerous that many small businesses might not bother to apply.

“MGM is looking for quantity, quality, and price,” he said. “But the state is going to be looking for an awful lot of financial data and information that, quite frankly, could turn some vendors away. We’re hopeful that, when the final regulations come out, they turn out to be more user-friendly.

“We’re a relatively small-market city, and they are obviously a massive business that’s going to require large quantities of goods and services,” Cuiffreda went on. “Our concern is that they do not overlook the smaller businesses here.”

Ramping Up

Among the small businesses that intrigue MGM are local agricultural enterprises.

“On the food side, we’re really taking advantage of the farm-to-table movement, and we’ve reached out to different vendors in the region, particularly in the Berkshires, for some of the great things they’re doing with local food processing. That’s one area we’re really excited about,” Mathis said.

Cuiffreda said the chamber has already begun connecting companies of all kinds with programs to help them ramp up to do business with MGM.

“We do have concerns that some small businesses out there may not be ready right now — they have a product, but may need some capacity building, may need help with accounting or backroom work or whatever, and they need to comply with some of these regulations.

“The chamber is looking at that as well,” he continued. “If [MGM] needs 10,000 widgets, and someone has a capacity of only 8,000 or 9,000 now, we don’t want to see that contract go elsewhere. We want to work with those businesses. The chamber has some technical assistance programs in place, and we’re doing all we can to help these small businesses that might be a little too small, to get them to where they can get these contracts.”

He doesn’t think 70 is the ceiling on how many local businesses are interested in being MGM vendors, however. “I think a lot more are interested, but it seems to have taken a back burner right now. When it becomes more real and the license is awarded, a lot of people will jump off the sidelines and get involved. But we want to get them involved early.”

Mathis noted that companies that strive to build capacity and meet MGM and state requirements will be better off for the experience no matter how much business they do with the casino. “If you can meet our requirements, you’ll be well-positioned to meet the requirements of other blue-chip companies.”

Frigo is among those who expect to be in that position. “I’ve been to markets in other states that have riverfronts or a Faneuil Hall or market areas, where a well-established business opens in a high-traffic spot with signage saying, ‘visit our main location,’ or ‘this is a flavor of what we have; if you like it, visit our original store,’”  he said.

“I think it’s a way to expand my name to thousands of people coming through the casino every day, and we think that’s a positive thing all around,” Frigo added. “And it’s not just food; if you make pencils or linens, they want to do business with you. If you’ve got the right product and want to do business with MGM, they want to do business with you.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Editorial 2

By
Opinion
A Region Ramps Up for MGM

Mike Mathis can’t promise you a job, although that hasn’t stopped people from walking up to him, the incoming president and CEO of MGM Springfield, and asking. But he can promise a fighting chance at some very intriguing opportunities.

In fact, that word promise is the heart of why MGM Springfield’s planned $800 million casino is appealing to so many locals. Take, for example, the host-community agreement forged with the city’s leaders last year.

The financial commitments — $15 million to Springfield up front, during the construction phase, and $25 million annually after that — are only the beginning. What really has locals excited are the 2,000 construction jobs expected in the short term, then 3,000 permanent jobs in the complex once it opens, as well as a commitment to spend at least $50 million dollars annually with local providers of goods and services.

Together, that amounts to a real shot in the arm for the local economy. The question is, will area businesses and job seekers take advantage?

It’s a more complex question than it sounds. On the vendor side, doing business with MGM — whether that’s opening up a restaurant or retail shop inside the casino or striking a deal to provide cleaning or groundskeeping services, office equipment or hotel linens, or dozens of other things — means meeting the needs of a large, Fortune 500 company and simultaneously jumping over the state’s regulatory hurdles aimed at anyone who does business in the gaming industry.

Neither is something many area small businesses are used to, and building capacity and navigating gaming-industry rules won’t happen overnight. That’s why local chambers of commerce are beginning to ramp up workforce-development programs for employers interested in securing some of those contracts.

Meanwhile, the region already struggles with a persistent ‘skills gap’ that has left many businesses struggling to find qualified help for job openings. Bringing another 3,000 positions into the City of Homes, although an obvious plus for job seekers, only exacerbates the skills gap, not just for MGM, but for the companies that will be losing workers to the shiny new casino and must scramble to backfill those resignations.

Thankfully, MGM will have a hand in this effort, with plans to participate in job fairs to promote the construction work and the permanent positions, as well as helping to fund training and workforce-development programs to lessen the skills gap, including endeavors to assist minority applicants, the disabled, and the chronically unemployed and underemployed.

BusinessWest, which supports the MGM project, has long believed that a casino, by itself, cannot be a panacea that will end economic stagnancy, but needs to be seen as one — albeit major — piece of a city’s long-term growth strategy.

We still believe that to be the case, and have been heartened by some of the other pieces falling into place downtown. And, if the Gaming Commission gives MGM the license (and if casinos aren’t overturned in a possible state referendum in November), more dominos will start falling as vendors ink deals, construction tradespeople get ready to go to work, and real-estate activity heats up downtown. And, of course, as thousands of area residents angle for jobs.

MGM is ready to come to Springfield — but are job seekers and small businesses ready to take advantage? It seems there’s work to be done on both counts. Let the competition begin.

Editorial

By
Opinion
The Curse of I-91 Continues

Call it the ‘curse of I-91.’
Since about 20 minutes after it opened — and well before it was constructed, actually, when elected officials decided to build it on the east side of the Connecticut River rather than the west, as was originally planned  — this road has been a problem for the city of Springfield.

It slices through the downtown, effectively cutting it off from the river. It essentially destroyed much of the character and cohesiveness of the city’s South End neighborhood. And while it has helped this region promote itself as the ‘crossroads of New England’ — I-91 and the turnpike intersect here — the highway seems to have become more efficient at enabling people to pass through this area than stop here.

And now, the curse continues.

Indeed, at perhaps the most pivotal time in recent memory, a time when Springfield seems ready to shake off decades of stagnation and experience some real growth, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) has decided that the highway’s viaduct section must undergo a massive repair and reconstruction project (see story, page 32).

When we say massive, we mean it. At $260 million, this repair project will cost more than the entire highway when it was built in the late ’60s. That price tag is several times higher than the next-largest public-works initiative in the region’s history — the Great River Bridge project in Westfield.

And massive is also the word that will undoubtedly be used to describe the negative impact that will result from what the DOT says could be two or three constructions seasons of work, but will more likely be more — perhaps much more.

Anyone who lived through the reconstruction of the Memorial Bridge, the I-91 ramp project that coincided with the opening of the new Basketball Hall of Fame, or the South End Bridge repair initiative knows that projections about how long and painful such undertakings will be are generally well off the mark.

For this latest project, the DOT is touting the virtues of something called ABC, or accelerated bridge construction, practices. This involves use of pre-cast concrete sections of road, work that continues something approaching 24/7, and other steps designed to reduce the duration, and therefore the headaches, of this project.

For those tempted to be skeptical — and to borrow from the famous line in that old movie — ‘be skeptical … be very skeptical.’

This project has the potential to make the Memorial Bridge project look like a minor inconvenience — and that took six years to complete after construction crews started tearing up the deck and discovered that practically the entire bridge had to be reconstructed, while it remained open.

The I-91 project will lead to ramp closures and the funneling of traffic to East and West Columbus avenues, roads that cannot handle much more traffic than they’re already handling. And portions of the I-91 North and I-91 South parking garages will be closed, creating more inconvenience for people trying to get to downtown office towers, Symphony Hall, and especially the Hampden County Hall of Justice, which is due to be replaced, but certainly not in time for this project.

There’s also the matter of MGM Springfield, the $800 million casino planned for the South End. If all goes well — meaning the attempt to ban gaming via a statewide referendum fails — construction on those facilities should start just around the same time work begins on the highway. This means that two of the biggest construction projects in the region’s history will be going on simultaneously — and within a few hundred feet of one another.

And then, there are those 17 days in September when the Big E opens its gates. I-91 is already bumper to bumper through many days of the fair, especially the weekends. Now imagine the situation when two of the six lanes of traffic are shut down and ramps off the highway are closed.

But there’s another aspect to this curse. On top of all this uncertainty and inconvenience, the repair project, deemed necessary and not to be delayed, will essentially end any and all talk of doing something more dramatic with the highway, such as taking it underground or to street level.

Those who say that federal and state governments won’t do anything with a road they just spent at least $260 million to repair are right on the money with their analysis. If (it’s more like when, the way things look now) this project proceeds as scheduled, this city will have to live with the viaduct for probably another half-century.

And that’s why you could certainly call this the ‘curse of I-91.’

Community Spotlight: Pittsfield

By
Community Spotlight Features
Economic Transformation Continues in Pittsfield

Community Development Director Douglas Clark

Community Development Director Douglas Clark says diversity is the key to sustained growth in Pittsfield.

Mayor Daniel Bianchi says downtown Pittsfield is continuing to evolve, and the establishment of a new, multi-million-dollar Innovation Center is moving forward. In addition, a new vocational technical high school is planned as part of a workforce-development initiative, and the city is taking a regional approach to growth.

“We have a lot of good things going on and are progressing nicely,” he told BusinessWest.

Douglas Clark concurred. “We want to be diverse. You have to grow on multiple fronts,” said the city’s community development director.

The Innovation Center holds real promise, and $6.5 million has already been earmarked for the project as part of the Commonwealth’s Life Sciences Bond Bill. It will be built in William Stanley Business Park, which encompasses 52 acres on the grounds of the former General Electric Pittsfield Works. The park opened in the summer of 2012 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its first tenant, Mountain One Financial Center, but since that time, plans for the Innovation Center have taken center stage.

Clark said the original plan called for a ‘life science center,’ but the name was changed to reflect the fact that Pittsfield has more plastic and advanced-manufacturing companies than life-science companies.

The 20,000-square-foot center will provide space for the development of new products, support services, and specialized equipment. Companies will pay a membership fee to use the facility, and will be able to lease space for first-stage commercialization.

“It will provide them with access to new, expensive equipment such as a 3-D printer. Plus, we envision support services with intellectual-property rights, patents, and a range of other things a startup might need,” Clark said. “We also hope to foster connections with one or more research universities, such as UMass or RPI [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute], and become connected to high-speed computer service through the Mass Broadband Initiative. Our hope is that, if a company’s first-stage commercialization is successful, they might move into their own building.”

The center will contain a clean room with a controlled level of contamination, which advanced-manufacturing companies require to produce medical devices and other sensitive equipment.

However, Clark said the room will also offer educational opportunities. “Berkshire Community College could run training in the clean room and tie it into their curriculum.”

Progress has been fueled through a number of groups. Bianchi created a Life Science Task Force to develop ideas for the site, New England Expansion Strategies was hired to conduct outreach and feasibility studies, and Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA) is doing everything possible to move the project forward via loans and technical assistance. “We are not lying idle,” said the mayor.

Clark agreed. “The task force meets to discuss initiatives, including how Pittsfield can capitalize on life-science industries. They are a strategic focus of the Commonwealth, and we are hoping not to be left out of the discussion,” he said, adding that PEDA has commissioned a study of advanced manufacturing in the Berkshires.

An example of a success story is Nuclea Biotechnologies Inc., which develops and makes diagnostic tests for cancer and diabetes. It moved to Elm Street about a year ago, and recently received a $510,000 state tax incentive from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to develop more manufacturing in Pittsfield and create 25 jobs.

The city and PEDA have also joined forces to entice a rail-car manufacturer to the business park.

“The MBTA [Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] has issued a request for proposals for an $850 million contract to build railway cars for their Orange and Red Line trains,” with the stipulation that they must be assembled within the state, Clark said. “So a few weeks ago, the city put forth an offer of $1 million, and PEDA offered another $1 million incentive to try to bring a rail-car manufacturer here.”

Proposals are due in May, and any firm coming to Pittsfield will need to develop a parcel and erect a new building in the park, which could cost up to $20 million. But Clark said PEDA has a foundation suitable for construction, and the offer has led to meetings with a number of rail-car manufacturers. “It could bring 200 to 250 jobs to the city,” he added.

Potential for development also exists in Downing Industrial Park, and city officials are in discussion with a high-tech company about the former Meadwestvaco Resource building there, which has been unoccupied for years. If the company decides to settle in the city, Bianchi said, it will add about 100 scientifically oriented jobs to the area.

And although GE closed its transformer and aerospace operation in Pittsfield more than two decades ago, its presence is still evident. GE Advanced Materials, now owned by SABIC Innovative Plastics, has made Pittsfield its North American headquarters, and General Dynamics occupies many of the old GE buildings and is a major employer for the area.

Expanding Metropolis

The city’s downtown, which has undergone a transformation over the past decade, continues to evolve. Pittsfield has received $1.7 million to complete work on its main common, which Bianchi describes as “the largest, most centrally located urban block in the city,” and an additional $2 million in grants has been allocated for Phase 3 of the downtown streetscape-improvement project.

Community Development Specialist Laura Mick noted that infrastructure improvements have been ongoing since 2005, when a concerned citizens advisory committee told city officials the area needed more aesthetic appeal, better lighting, and improved pedestrian safety. “So we updated the master plan. We wanted to create a new image.”

To that end, new sidewalk treatments and LED decorative lighting have been installed; bump-outs were shortened, which makes it safer to cross the streets; and benches, bike racks, new trees, and a rain garden have combined to change the landscape.

Mick said Phase 3 of the plan, which will kick off this spring, will continue the improvements and include a bicycle lane.

The project has brought new restaurants and retail shops to the area, and Bianchi said there is not much vacant space left as developers continue to take advantage of tax credits and repurpose buildings that had sat abandoned for years.

They include the former Berkshire Bank building on 54 North St. Last month, NBT Bank opened a full-service location on the first floor, which will serve as the central location for its Berkshire County presence. Office space on the second floor has also been leased out and is being rented by attorneys. “The building is unique, and the bank fills a gap downtown,” Bianchi said.

A block away, Allegrone Construction is converting the old Goodrich House behind City Hall into about 20 market-rate apartments. That project is nearing completion, but Allegrone has plans for a similar makeover in the nearby Onota building.

In addition, Tierney Construction recently announced construction of a new boutique hotel with 43 rooms and space for meetings. It will occupy 68,000 square feet in two connected brick buildings that run from 273 to 297 North St. “Tierney will also maintain the two restaurants that are there now, and hope to get started on the hotel in 12 to 18 months,” Bianchi said.

Other efforts to promote vitality include a parking-management study commissioned by the city to ensure it is using available space wisely. “These things all work together to create a vibrant downtown,” Clark said.

Change is also occurring nearby. “We are seeing little restaurants, shops, and ethnic markets opening,” Bianchi said, adding that they offer Polish, Far Eastern, and Columbian products.

In addition, an architect hopes to put greenhouses inside the former Eagles building in the Morningside neighborhood, located a few blocks from downtown. “It would complement the farmers’ market that opened last year,” Bianchi said.

The arts community is also thriving. “Pittsfield used to be the ‘hole in the donut’ as far as the arts went, but with the Colonial and Berkshire theaters, Great Barrington Stage, the Beacon Cinema, and our First Friday Art Walks, we have filled that hole,” Clark said.

Bianchi said Barrington Stage opened a second venue about three years ago in a former Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, and the city’s newest art project, which is in the works, is a retrospective that will show how art and industry intertwined throughout Pittsfield’s history.

“The GE plant created glass bushings that were almost a crossover between art and industry,” the mayor said, citing one example. The undertaking will include televised interviews of residents who will recall the heyday of the mills.

In addition to arts and entertainment, Clark said the city offers recreation in the form of a state forest, a ski area, three golf courses, and two large lakes within city limits. But the arts overlay district and these venues are not enough to attract and retain skilled workers, so city officials are working in conjunction with other groups on workforce development.

To that end, a new vocational technical high school will be built on the grounds of Taconic High School, where enhanced programs to prepare people for careers in advanced manufacturing can be developed with partners such as Berkshire Community College.

Bianchi said the city is working with the Mass. School Building Needs Authority on the high school. DAR Associates in Waltham was selected to do the design, and it expects to have several concepts to choose from that will result in either a renovation and expansion of the existing building or a brand-new school. “The new school is integral to helping businesses grow,” the mayor said.

Moving Forward

Progress is expected to continue as people from many walks of life continue to join forces.

“We have a community that knows how to work together and really pull together for mutual purposes, and we are able to turn to the state and federal government and show them investments downtown which inspire them to invest in us,” Bianchi said. “We also have had good public and private partnerships for the last 10 years, and Mass Business Development is interested in helping us with a lot of these projects.”

Clark concurs. “Things don’t change in a linear, predictable fashion,” he said. “They spiral up or down, and right now, Pittsfield is in a good upward spiral.”

Pittsfield at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1761
Population: 44,737 (2010); 45,793 (2000)
Area: 42.5 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: 16.70
Commercial Tax Rate: 34.47
Median Household Income: $35,655
Family Household Income: $46,228
Type of government: Mayor, City Council
Largest employers: Berkshire Health Systems, General Dynamics Advanced Info Systems, SABIC Innovative Plastics

* Latest information available

Building Permits

By
Building Permits Departments

The following building permits were issued during the month of February 2014.

AMHERST

D’Angelos Inc.
48 North Pleasant St.
$99,000 — Renovations to existing restaurant space

James David Marley, et al
100 University Dr.
$59,000 — Remodel existing floor plan

The Common School Inc.
521 South Pleasant St.
$8,000 — Repair from water damage

Zbylut Realty
398 Northampton Road
$215,000 — New showroom construction

CHICOPEE

Abhas Hamdan
415 East St.
$71,000 — Interior remodel

AM Lithography
694 Center St.
$3,000 — New bathroom

Boston Bay Pizza
515 Montgomery St.
$8,000 — Install new commercial hood system

The Westmoreland Company
140 Lonczak Dr.
$2,640,000 — Office and warehouse addition to existing building

HADLEY

David Mill
100 Venture Way
$34,000 — Renovation of existing space for offices

Kidd-Luuko Corporation
20 North Maple St.
$204,000 — New roof

LUDLOW

Ana Capela
345 Holyoke St.
$12,000 — Commercial alterations

NORTHAMPTON

Arnold Levinson
176 Pine St.
$7,000 — Fabricate basement stairway

Messer Investment Inc.
306 King St.
$7,500 — Construct new entrance

Smith College
51 College Lane
$505,000 — Remodel foyer, reconstruct entrance terrace, and exterior renovations

SPRINGFIELD

1095 Main Street Trust
1095 Main St.
$200,000 — Construct new office spaces with elevator

Balise Automotive
500 Hall of Fame Ave.
$36,000 — Minor renovations

Balise Automotive
440 Hall of Fame Ave.
$75,000 — Minor renovations

WESTFIELD

71 Franklin Street, LLC
71 Franklin St.
$5,000 — Exterior repairs from car accident

Barnes Airport Commission
110 Airport Road
$86,000 — Remodel of 1,400-square-foot restaurant

Peabody-Westfield, Limited
126 Union St.
$400,000 — Total renovation

WEST SPRINGFIELD

1150 Union Street Corporation
1150 Union St.
$19,000 — Renovate 1,732 square feet of office space

Century Park, LLC
181 Park Ave.
$44,000 — Renovate four bathrooms

Robert Kelley
1305 Memorial Ave.
$97,000 — New office

Sam Patel
1080 Riverdale St.
$4,000 — Fit out for handicap accessible bathroom

News

Contact

Advertise

Events