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Daily News

HADLEY — Westmass Area Development Corp. announced that American River Nutrition, founded by former UMass Amherst Professor of Food Science and Nutrition Barrie Tan, has begun construction of a 25,000-square-foot office and manufacturing building at the Hadley University Business Park. With the coordinated permitting efforts of the Hadley Planning Board and Conservation Commission, construction is able to commence.

American River Nutrition manufactures vitamin E, a dietary supplement, from plant material through a proprietary distillation process that produces no toxic or harmful byproducts. Its vitamin E product is known as DeltaGold. The company is also involved in research that may lead to the introduction of pharmaceutical versions of its products. The company was launched in 1998 in Hadley in response to the market need for innovative products that are natural, have little to no known side effects, and positively affect conditions associated with age-related and/or degenerative disease states.

Many people take vitamin E in the rapidly-growing vitamin and supplement industry in hopes that the vitamin’s antioxidant properties will help to prevent diseases and build a strong immune system. American River Nutrition has also recently qualified its vitamin E product as a food supplement, opening new avenues for this growing company. American River Nutrition currently employs nine people, and, according to Tan, up to 20 people will be employed when the company opens its new manufacturing operation later this year on its 16-acre site at Hadley University Business Park.

“We are happy to be able to bring our manufacturing operations to Hadley, where our home office has been located since we began the company,” said Tan. “And we look forward to a continuing role as a strong member of the local business community.”

According to Westmass President Kenn Delude, “Westmass is pleased to make this announcement today. We believe that American River Nutrition is on an exceptional growth track and is exactly the type of innovative company that our region needs to support and retain. It is the combination of the quality job growth that the company offers coupled with the extraordinary focus and purpose of their efforts to promote good health that makes Westmass proud they chose the Hadley University Business Park for their new facility.”

Delude said one site remains available for new development in the Hadley Park. The remaining site can accommodate a 20,000- to 25,000-square-foot building on a 3.5-acre, developable parcel. Westmass is seeking interested businesses for that parcel. In addition to Hadley University Business Park, Westmass is developing available business sites at Chicopee River Business Park, Deer Park Industrial Center in East Longmeadow, and its latest development at the Ludlow Mills.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — On Thursday, Feb. 5 from 5 to 8 p.m., the Springfield Museums will present its next Culture & Cocktails event of the season, “Indulgence: An Evening of Wine and Chocolate.” The event will take place at the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, and is sponsored by FieldEddy Inc.

The event has become an annual favorite because the admission includes the chance to taste a variety of wines and enjoy chocolate samples. As an added treat, artist Gloria Garfinkel will be on hand to discuss her exhibit, Origami Interpretations, which is currently on display at the GWV Smith Museum. The exhibit has received positive reviews from the Hartford Courant and the Huffington Post. The Ross Novgrad Jazz Trio will also provide live jazz for the event.

Catering at all eight Culture & Cocktails events this year is by Log Rolling Catering, with hors d’ouevres and other treats at chef-attended stations included with admission. There will also be a cash bar and additional food options available for purchase from the deluxe Log Rolling Food Truck.

Tickets cost $15 for non-members and $5 for members. Due to the popularity of the event in the past, purchasing advance tickets is strongly encouraged. Tickets may be purchased at the Welcome Center or visiting www.springfieldmuseums.org and clicking on the February Culture & Cocktails listing under “Featured Events.” All attendees must be at least 21 years old.

Culture & Cocktails are monthly after-5 events held at one of the four museums on the Quadrangle campus. Each month’s theme is inspired by the Springfield Museums’ extensive collections, special exhibits, and holiday celebrations. The series continues with “Above The Fold: New Expressions in Origami” at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday, March 5. More event information is available at springfieldmuseums.org and facebook.com/culturecocktails.

Daily News

AMHERST — The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art announced that Ellen Keiter has joined the staff this month as the museum’s new chief curator. Keiter is replacing H. Nichols Clark, the museum’s founding director and chief curator. Clark, who retired in December after more than 13 years with the Carle, will continue in an emeritus role as a visiting lecturer and guest curator for the museum.

Keiter brings to the Carle more than 20 years of professional museum experience. Most recently, she was the director of exhibitions at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, N.Y., specializing in contemporary art. Among the many exhibitions she curated are “Jasper Johns & John Lund: Masters in the Print Studio,” “Eye to I: 3,000 Years of Portraits,” and “Shattering Glass: New Perspectives.”

During her 13 years at Katonah, she also met and worked with numerous children’s-book illustrators through the museum’s Children’s Learning Center, which is dedicated to the display and celebration of original picture book art. Prior to her work at Katonah, Keiter was the curator of exhibitions at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y. She has a bachelor’s degree in art history from Muhlenberg College and a master’s degree in art history from American University.

“Ellen brings tremendous energy, warmth, and experience to this important role and will be an exceptional leader for our growing exhibition program and collection,” said museum Executive Director Alexandra Kennedy. “She has a great interest in collaboration and partnership. She will work closely with the board and both the collections and education teams to continue the tradition of quality and innovation that Nick began.”

As chief curator, Keiter will oversee all aspects of the Carle’s exhibition program, including the acquisition, care, research, and interpretation of the museum’s art collections and special-exhibitions program. She will also manage staff and work regularly with the public, donors, artists, students, and professional colleagues to expand the audience for the Carle and for the larger field of picture-book art.

“I am honored to join the talented team at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art,” said Keiter. “I’m eager to extend the reach of the museum through a robust travel program, while continuing to celebrate picture books with our local, national, and international audience. Just as I vividly recall Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder from my childhood, the Carle creates meaningful connections between art and stories that resonate for a lifetime. I am indebted to Nick Clark for his groundbreaking scholarship in the field and for assembling a world-class art collection. He has adeptly built the solid foundation from which the Carle now soars.”

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Robinson Donovan, P.C., announced the promotion of two attorneys to partner: Jeffrey Trapani, Esq. and Michael Simolo, Esq.

Trapani concentrates in civil litigation, including insurance defense, employment law, municipal liability, business litigation, and professional malpractice. He also represents landlords in summary-process actions and housing-discrimination claims, and insurance companies in unfair-settlement claims and coverage issues.

“Jeff is highly deserving of this designation,” said Nancy Pelletier, Esq., head of the Litigation Department at Robinson Donovan. “His expertise in civil litigation — both in the courtroom as well as in mediations and arbitrations — is a true asset to our firm.”

Simolo, who specializes in corporate and business counseling, estate planning, and litigation, plays a number of roles at Robinson Donovan, including supervising the organized transfer of wealth from clients to their beneficiaries.

“Michael has deep knowledge of our shared practice areas and is a constant source of insight,” said Jeffrey Roberts, Esq., managing partner at Robinson Donovan. “He forms great relationships with his clients, getting to know their circumstances and helping them develop the kind of foresight that is beneficial for them in the long run.”

Simolo joined the firm in 2009, and Trapani in 2007.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — MGM Resorts International announced that Seth Stratton has been named vice president and general counsel of MGM Springfield. Stratton, a Springfield native and Longmeadow resident, will be responsible for overseeing legal affairs and government relations at the casino resort.

“From day one as one of our local counsel, Seth has been a steady sounding board for the entire MGM Springfield team,” said Michael Mathis, MGM Springfield president. “At MGM, we feel fortunate that he is not only a respected lawyer but also cares deeply about the future of this area and the city of Springfield. His advice is always informed by his concern for local issues. I am thrilled he will be with us to provide his valuable counsel during the next important phases of this project and beyond.”

Added Stratton, “I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to play a part in Springfield’s comeback story working with a company like MGM. I am constantly impressed by the professionalism and dedication MGM has shown throughout this process and am honored to join the team. To be able to support the team at MGM Resorts on legal issues in a new area of the law, all while working on an important project that allows me to help build the future of my hometown, is a remarkable opportunity. I take this responsibility seriously and look forward to the work ahead.”

Stratton has worked on MGM Springfield for almost three years, negotiating agreements with the city of Springfield and surrounding communities as well as advising on permitting and real-estate acquisitions. He has become a familiar face at the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, as he regularly presents on legal issues relevant to MGM Springfield.

Stratton most recently worked at Fitzgerald Attorneys at Law, P.C. in East Longmeadow, where he maintained a diverse litigation and dispute-resolution practice focusing on a wide range of corporate, commercial, and personal disputes. Prior to that, he held a counsel position in the Financial Institutions Litigation Group at Bingham McCutchen LLP in Hartford. Before joining Bingham, he served as a litigation associate at Brown Rudnick LLP in Boston.

Stratton holds a law degree from Suffolk University Law School, a master’s degree in public affairs from UMass Boston, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colgate University. He is admitted to the state and federal bars of Massachusetts and Connecticut. He is a member of the Hampden County Bar Assoc., the Massachusetts Bar Assoc., and the Connecticut Bar Assoc.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD —Springfield College and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame recently presented the third annual Hoophall Classic Leadership Award to Springfield College sport management students Eric Pouliot and Emily Vance. Springfield College President Mary-Beth Cooper and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame President and Chief Executive Officer John Doleva made the formal presentation during the 2015 Spalding Hoophall Classic at Blake Arena. Both Pouliot and Vance served as head supervisors for the 2015 Hoophall Classic, the leading high school basketball tournament in the country showcasing the nation’s top recruits. As part of their responsibilities, Pouliot and Vance created and developed work schedules for more than 75 student event staff workers and more than 30 student liaisons; created and conducted training sessions for volunteers of the event; collaborated with Springfield College Office of Conferences & Special Events, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and ESPN to ensure schedules of events; and supervised all event operations during the five-day tournament. Pouliot is a member of the Springfield College Sport Management Club. In 2014, he worked as a supervisor during the Hoophall Classic, helping to direct in-game operations and operational procedures. Along with working toward a degree in sport management, Pouliot also has a double minor in business management and economics. He is a member of the Springfield College Business Club, and also works on the campus as a student assistant for the Springfield College Office of Conferences & Special Events. Currently a dean’s list student, Pouliot continues to volunteer for the Special Olympics assisting basketball teams with scheduling and coaching. Vance is the president of the Springfield College Sport Management Club. She recently served as the club’s director of social media and marketing preparing agendas for all executive board meetings, and ensuring that on-campus events were being promoted using all social media outlets. In 2014, Vance worked as a supervisor for the Hoophall Classic, and served as head supervisor for the Junior Hoophall Classic. Currently a dean’s list student, Vance remains an office assistant in the Sport Management and Recreation Department, assisting faculty members with marketing tools for prospective students. Vance maintains a minor in business management and has volunteered at events for the Special Olympics and the Doug Flutie Foundation. The Hoophall Classic Leadership Award is presented annually to both a male and female junior majoring in sport management who has demonstrated a combination of service to Springfield College, the Hoophall Classic, and who has maintained a successful grade point average. Each recipient is awarded a $2,500 scholarship to be used during their senior year at Springfield College.

Daily News

LONGMEADOW — Maestro Kevin Rhodes, Springfield Symphony Orchestra director and conductor, will lead an informal discussion about classical music, composer’s inspiration and some favorite moments of his acclaimed career on Jan. 26 at 2 p.m. at the Leavitt Family Jewish Home’s Gloth Family Auditorium. The program is open to residents, families, and staff at the Jewish Home and Ruth’s House. Rhodes has been music director and conductor of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra for 13 seasons. During that time he’s created world-class performances that have brought internationally acclaimed soloists to the stage at Symphony Hall, and has entertained and educated adults and children from across the Pioneer Valley and beyond. Rhodes has had an exceptionally varied career spanning concerts, opera and ballet across the globe, and having conducted in 15 different countries with approximately 50 different orchestras. He is one of the most sought-after conductors by the world’s major ballet companies and their orchestras. During his presentation at JGS, Rhodes will share highlights of his career, and classical musical experience.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Falcons will honor the 40th anniversary of the 1974-75 Springfield Indians Calder Cup team when the Falcons host the Providence Bruins on Jan. 24 at the MassMutual Center at 7 p.m. presented by Boston Medical Center. The Falcons will honor the team with a pre-game introduction and ceremonial puck drop. Returning Indians players include captain Mark Heaslip, assistant captain Jimmy Peters, Jim Witherspoon and Lorne Stamler along with the family of Steve Rexe, General Manager Eddie “Ted” Shore Jr. and equipment manager Ralph Calvanese. Additionally, the 1974-75 team photo will be given to the first 2,500 fans, courtesy of the Springfield Hockey Heritage Society. While on their way to claiming the 1975 Calder Cup, this team set a new American Hockey League record, while tying two other marks, which have since been surpassed. With 72 goals, the Indians set a record for the most goals scored by a team in one playoff. The Indians also tied the record for the most games won by the champion with 12, while becoming only the second fourth place team to claim the Cup. In addition to honoring the 1974-75 team, the Jan. 24 game will be highlighted with a national anthem performance by TD Garden legend Rene Rancourt. Boston Medical Center and Springfield College will be holding concussion safety demonstrations on the concourse throughout the game, as well. The contest will also feature a t-shirt toss, courtesy of King Ward.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Skoler, Abbott & Presser, P.C., an employment law firm serving employers in the Greater Springfield area, today announced an upcoming “Lunch ‘n Learn” program, focused on the new Massachusetts sick leave initiative. The event will take place Jan. 28 in the Dodge Room of the Flynn Campus Union at Springfield College (263 Alden St., Springfield) from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Partner Timothy F. Murphy will co-host the event with the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS). Murphy is a member of the Executive Committee of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, the former chair of the ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee, and the chamber’s leading resource on the issue of mandated sick leave. The new Massachusetts law regarding sick leave entitles all employees to accrue up to 40 hours of sick time each year; for businesses with 11 or more employees, this sick leave is paid leave. The state’s attorney general is expected to announce interpretations of the law before it takes effect. Skoler, Abbott and Presser is available as a resource for employers to stay abreast of interpretations. “Voters spoke this past November and passed the ballot question approving mandated sick leave,” said Murphy. “Massachusetts is only the third state in the nation to guarantee sick days for workers, so there is a lot of confusion about what employers are legally responsible for when the law takes effect July 15. I look forward to clarifying nuances within the law and setting employers up for success.”
At the Lunch ‘n Learn Program, Murphy will address core concepts including:
• Who is eligible for sick time and who is not;
• What the new law means for the workforce; and
• The subtle nuances of the law

Attendees must register in advance for the event, admission fees include lunch. ACCGS members are eligible for a reduced admission fee of $25, but the event is open to the public with a general admission fee of $35. Register online at myonlinechamber.com or contact Sarah Mazzaferro at (413) 755-1313 or [email protected].

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — American International College (AIC) is embarking on an $8 million renovation of its dining commons.

The new, state-of-the-art facility will occupy the existing dining-commons space and include a building expansion, a wider variety of seating, and a more abundant variety of food options and services, including customized food preparation, an exhibition kitchen featuring hands-on cooking classes, a wood-fired oven, and more, presented in a contemporary, dynamic, and open setting.

Construction is expected to be completed in time for the beginning of the fall semester. In the interim, the existing dining commons will be closed for the spring semester, and transitional dining has been set up in the Schwartz Campus Center. Chartwells, AIC’s dining-services vendor, will continue to provide the same quality of food and service throughout the process. AIC will provide additional benefits and flexibility to those students with current all-access meal plans that will allow them to expand food venues and options to include the Hive and the Yellow Jackets Express food truck in addition to the transitional dining commons.

While there was a cosmetic remodel of the dining room in 2007, the last complete renovation of the dining commons took place in 1966, nearly 50 years ago. The new facility will be a place for students to come together in a much more comfortable and modern setting. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for early spring.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Dawn Henry of has been installed as president of the 1,700-member Realtor Assoc. of Pioneer Valley at the organization’s 100th annual installation ceremony held Jan. 15 at Twin Hills Country Club in Longmeadow.

Henry, a Realtor since 2001, represents Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Longmeadow. As association president, she will oversee activities and operations including meetings of the board of directors, and act as a liaison to the association’s various committees. She is the official spokesperson of the association on issues related to the real-estate industry and the regional housing market.

The other 2015 officers include Lou Mayo, president-elect; Richard Sawicki, treasurer; Janise Fitzpatrick, secretary; and Patrick Nolan, immediate past president. Directors include Elias Acuna, Edward Alford, Kelly Bowman, Shawn Bowman, Suzi Buzzee, Susan Drumm, Susan Rheaume, and Russell Sabadosa.

Daily News

GREENFIELD — The Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC) is one of seven partners receiving a $10 million federal grant funded through USDA’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program. This new project brings together seven partners to improve the health of Long Island Sound. The funding will be matched dollar for dollar by other local, state, and private funding sources.

Excess nutrients have been identified as the primary driver of hypoxic conditions (lack of oxygen) in Long Island Sound and are also impacting upland water resources within the watershed, which encompasses areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. This project will develop a comprehensive, whole-farm, management-certainty program for farmers in the area and use both working lands and easement programs to improve soil health and nutrient management, establish community resiliency areas with a focus on enhancing riparian areas, and institute a land-protection program to protect agricultural and forestry areas.

“The council is very pleased to be one of the many partners on this important project to improve the health of both the Connecticut River basin and Long Island Sound,” said CRWC Executive Director Andrew Fisk. “Funding will allow CRWC to continue working with landowners on restoration projects on their land that will improve our rivers and protect their investment in productive farm and forest land.”

The Connecticut River contributes more than 70% of the freshwater to Long Island Sound and plays an important role in the health of the sound.

“We are proud to be working with landowners to help them do their part to restore and protect the public’s water,” noted Fisk. “Many individuals working together across the entire watershed will have a great impact to improve the health of our rivers and Long Island Sound.”

The Connecticut River Watershed Council works to protect the watershed from source to sea. To learn more, visit www.ctriver.org.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Garvey Communication Associates Inc. (GCAi) announced the appointment of Darcy Fortune as SEO PR analyst and David Bohl and Peter Spotts as digital marketing assistants. GCAi is increasing its digital marketing staff after landing a leading medical specialty practice in Connecticut and a global precision-manufacturing client in Kansas in 2014.

Fortune comes to GCAi with experience as an assignment desk editor, production assistant, video reporter, and producer, having worked previously at WGGB and MPACT-TV. In her new position, she will supervise the production of SEO PR projects and related social-media dissemination. Fortune is a cum laude graduate of Westfield State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communication.

Bohl already had a start in communications before arriving at GCAi. He previously worked at Baystate Health in Health Information Management and served as a social-media marketing intern at Western New England University. At GCAi, Bohl will serve as a digital marketing assistant – platforms, and will distill and analyze web and social-media data as well as coordinate e-mail marketing campaigns for GCAi and clients. He will also assist in social-media marketing campaigns. Bohl will graduate in May from Western New England University with a bachelor’s degree in public relations. He is a member of the Lambda Pi Eta Honors Society and the Alpha Lambda Delta Honors Society.

Spotts is an experienced freelance reporter and has covered stories for some of the area’s largest publications, including the Republican, MassLive, and Reminder Publications. He has also written for his hometown newspaper, the Belchertown Sentinel, a Turley publication, and served as a marketing journalist intern at Western New England University and WAMC Northeast Public Radio. At GCAi, Spotts will serve as a digital marketing assistant – content, conducting PR research, creating organic content, and assisting with the planning and implementation of content-marketing campaigns. He will graduate from Western New England University in May with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Spotts has also started work in the MBA program, which he expects to complete in 2016.

Daily News

STOCKBRIDGE — Main Street Hospitality Group has announced a new addition to its management team, appointing sommelier Dan Thomas to the position of wine and bar director.

Main Street Hospitality Group is a hospitality-management company based out of Stockbridge. The group owns and manages the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, where Thomas has held the role of sommelier since 2007.

Over his seven years at the inn, Thomas has expanded the wine list to include more than 400 selections and 50 half-bottle selections, with a focus on international artisan producers and local and regional wines. The Red Lion Inn was awarded the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for the 16th consecutive year in 2014.

Thomas possesses an extensive knowledge of oenology and has completed the first level of the Court of Master Sommeliers. Inspired by advancements in food and wine over the last decade, he is passionate about introducing guests to new wines, beers, cocktails, and unexpected combinations.

“Dan has been an integral part of the food and beverage operation at the Red Lion Inn since his start. He is a great fit for Main Street Hospitality Group. We’re excited about his expanded role,” said Main Street Hospitality Group CEO Sarah Eustis.

In this new role, Thomas will oversee all Main Street Hospitality Group wine and bar programs, working directly with wineries, breweries, and distilleries. He will also search for new products and collaborate with local producers on fresh libation projects.

“Dan’s knowledge of all things bar and wine is a great compliment to the MSHG food philosophy. I’ve enjoyed seeing Dan grow the Red Lion Inn beverage program over the past seven years and look forward to working with him on future food and beverage projects,” said Brian Alberg, Red Lion Inn’s executive chef and Main Street Hospitality Group’s vice president of Food and Beverage Operations.

In addition to the Red Lion Inn, Main Street Hospitality Group manages the Porches Inn at MASS MoCA in North Adams and the Williams Inn in Williamstown. The group will manage a Pittsfield property, Hotel on North, upon its opening this spring.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield JCC Kehillah Special Needs Department’s Fitness Buddies Program is the recipient of a $10,000 grant from Ronald McDonald House Charities of Connecticut & Western Mass. for a wellness project that will significantly improve quality of life for young people with special needs.

Recognizing the need in the Greater Springfield area for a fitness center with adapted equipment for teens with special needs, the JCC established a Fitness Buddies program with seed money from the Doug Flutie Foundation in 2013. As the popularity of the program increased, additional specialized equipment was needed to accommodate individuals with Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, and autism-spectrum disorders.

Ronald McDonald House Charities stepped in to underwrite the cost of two Expresso S3Y youth bikes, which are safer than a conventional treadmill or elliptical machine. This type of bike is also being used in a pilot program with Harvard School of Public Health. Adding modified equipment puts special-needs individuals on a par with their friends and gives them access to aerobic and fitness equipment that otherwise would be excluded from their workout.

“Innovations such as these accessible bikes for teens and young adults with special needs opens up yet another opportunity for profound self-development — in this case, exercising in a typical fitness center,” said Stocky Clark, executive director of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Connecticut & Western Mass. “RMHC is honored to partner with the JCC to bring this innovation to individuals with a range of special needs participating in the Kehillah Special Needs Department of the JCC.”

Increased social interaction between the special-needs community and general members helps create healthy relationships and empowers individuals with special needs. Best Buddies matches teens and young adults who have social challenges with teens and adults in the community. Together, they work out at the Springfield JCC, and participants make new friends while learning healthy habits.

Research shows that exercise yields a range of physical and mental-health benefits for children. The Springfield JCC serves the Greater Springfield and Northern Conn. communities, offering hundreds of programs for all ages with a strong commitment to individuals with special needs.

Daily News

HOLYOKE — With sales at an all-time high, a modern headquarters, and a new, national business alliance focused on IT network infrastructure and unified communications, VertitechIT is celebrating with the launch of its new, interactive website, www.vertitechit.com. The site uses humorous, black-and-white photography and poignant headlines to draw in visitors, poking light fun at what can be a very staid and highly technical profession.

“IT industry websites tend to be rather formulaic,” said VertitechIT Principal Partner Greg Pellerin. “It was important for our new site to reflect our corporate culture, one that promotes fun and creativity along with cutting-edge technical expertise.”

The privately held company, which caters to the business and healthcare industries, just concluded its most successful year ever and recently moved into its new national headquarters in a converted 19th-century paper mill in Holyoke.

“We’re a different breed of IT infrastructure consultant,” said Vice President of Marketing Steve Shaw, who oversaw the website redesign. “We have a unique understanding of how IT has a bottom-line financial impact on a business or healthcare institution, and that knowledge and approach, combined with a little personality, hopefully comes through in our new site and marketing materials, separating us from our competitors.”

VertitechIT also recently announced the formation of a national IT-solutions coalition with Microsoft platform provider Software Logic and unified communications expert Partner Consulting. The new Stability Alliance (www.stabilityalliance.com) is focused on building IT network infrastructures that allow businesses and healthcare systems to increase capacity, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Applications are now being accepted for the 2015 session of Leadership Institute, Rethinking Leadership: Sharpening Skills for Organization and Community Service, sponsored by MassMutual Financial Group with scholarship support from the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation.

The Leadership Institute is a unique collaboration between the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield (ACCGS) and Western New England University (WNEU) aimed at teaching mid- and upper-level managers the crucial thinking and problem-solving skills needed to enable them to be effective leaders in service to the community and in their workplaces, and designed to develop high-energy and high-involvement leadership.

“As a CEO, I know that I need to engage my team and energize their strategic thinking,” said John Weiss, a 2014 graduate and president of Ormsby Insurance Agency. “Leadership 2014 provided me with the invaluable opportunity to not only continue on my own personal path of learning, but to learn from some of the most respected faculty in the region and learn from my colleagues in the program; gain new ideas, new perspectives, and new experiences; and be able to bring it all back to my team, my business, and my clients.”

Since 1982, the program has developed members of the business community for volunteer service to community organizations. Institute alumni represent many accomplished and distinguished leaders in business, education, government, and nonprofit communities, including U.S. Rep. Richard Neal; former state Sen. and Hampden County Clerk of Courts Brian Lees; Henry Thomas, president and CEO of the Urban League of Springfield; and MassMutual Financial Group Vice President Carol Demas and Community Responsibility Consultant Glenn Davis.

Directed by WNEU Dean of the College of Business Julie Siciliano and Executive-in-residence Jack Greeley, Leadership 2015 will challenge participants to think in new ways and to analyze their own strengths and organizational challenges within a dynamic economy. Taught by Western New England faculty, participants will focus on problem solving, learning to ask the right questions, and implementing creative solutions for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations.

Participants will actively explore best practices of leaders; analyze their own leadership, learning, and problem-solving styles; and experience the synergies that come from high-performing teams. Emphasis will be on experiential activities that identify, develop, and refine skill sets for effective leadership.

“By exposing me to the faculty local experts in their field and providing the opportunity to spend time with such a diverse group of fellow students, Leadership Institute has given me information and contacts that might otherwise have taken years of networking to accumulate,” said 2014 graduate Nicole Sweeney, marketing manager for Eastfield Mall. “Each class leads to valuable introspection, which, with the help of suggested follow-up materials by each instructor, I will be able to build upon for years to come.”

The Leadership Institute runs for seven consecutive Thursdays from 1 to 4:30 p.m., Feb. 12 through March 26. The Feb. 12 opening session will be held at the Sheraton Springfield, One Monarch Place, Springfield, with the remaining sessions held at the TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. The program culminates in April with the ACCGS Beacon Hill Summit, the chamber’s annual trip to Beacon Hill, and a graduation ceremony and dinner.

Tuition is $885 per participant and includes all materials, several learning and personality inventory tools, the summit, and the graduation ceremony and dinner. Not-for-profit organizations interested in participating may apply for scholarship funding provided by the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation.

Interested participants must complete an application, obtain a letter from a sponsor supporting the application, and provide a written letter of interest with background. Information and applications are available by contacting Kara Cavanaugh at the ACCGS at (413) 755-1310 or [email protected]. The deadline for applications is Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Daily News

PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Bank has announced it will honor 30 high-school seniors in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont through its annual scholarship awards program.

The bank will award $45,000 in total scholarship dollars to students who have demonstrated community service through their volunteer efforts, have been successful academically, and demonstrate a financial need. Additionally, students must attend a high school that is located in a community with a Berkshire Bank office or in a community primarily served by Berkshire Bank.

Lori Gazzillo, director of Berkshire Bank Foundation, said the scholarship program has grown in popularity each year. “We believe that one of life’s most exciting moments is going to college, and Berkshire Bank wants to do our part to help make college more affordable for students in need. This program exemplifies our support of education and commitment to promoting volunteerism in our communities. Each year, our employees rally around this program, volunteering their time to review the hundreds of applications to help select the recipients.”

Through the program, 30 $1,500 scholarships will be awarded to high-school seniors who will be attending a two- or four-year college in the fall. Applications are evaluated based on their record of volunteerism in the community, academic standing, and financial need. Applicants must have a minimum GPA of a 3.0 and a family household income under $75,000 to be eligible to apply. Students must apply online by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25.

An independent team of bank employee volunteers will review all applications and select this year’s winners. Scholarships will be awarded in the regions where Berkshire Bank branches are located, with 14 available in Massachusetts, 11 in New York, two in Connecticut, and three in Vermont.

Students can apply online at www.berkshirebank.com/scholarships. Additional information about this year’s program can be obtained on the bank’s website or by contacting the Berkshire Bank Foundation at [email protected].

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — On Monday, Jan. 26, Chef Hubert Gottschlicht of the Munich Haus will conduct a cooking class and demonstration to benefit the Gray House. The event will take place at the Munich Haus from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets cost $50 and can be purchased through PayPal at bit.ly/1AciOLh. Tickets must be purchased in advance, as seats are limited.



“This is a great way to enjoy a night out with friends and eat some fabulous food, all while benefiting a good cause,” said Dena Calvanese, executive director of the Gray House. “We’re planning on holding these events on a monthly basis, if possible, with different area restaurants. We held our first chef fund-raiser in November with Samuel’s Sports Bar at the Hall of Fame, which was a success and sold out quickly.”

Participants can watch the master chef prepare several German delicacies and join in or sit back and enjoy the presentation. A light buffet will be provided in addition to a cash bar.


The Gray House is a small, neighborhood human-service agency located at 22 Sheldon St. in the North End of Springfield. The Gray House mission is to help its neighbors facing hardships to meet their immediate and transitional needs by providing food, clothing, and educational services in a safe, positive environment.
 For more information about the chef fund-raiser, visit www.facebook.com/thegrayhouseinc or call Calvanese at (413) 734-6696, ext. 100.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced that MassMutual has been named a community partner for the 2015 Spalding Hoophall Classic. The high-school basketball tournament, now in its 14th year, will feature 52 local and national teams at Springfield College’s Blake Arena on Jan. 15-19.

Other supporting sponsors for the Spalding Hoophall Classic include Nike, Gatorade, Springfield College, the U.S. Marines, Florence Bank, MassLive, and the Republican.

“MassMutual has always shown a great commitment to our community, and we are extremely pleased to have them on board for such a tremendous youth event,” said John Doleva, president and CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “This year’s Spalding Hoophall Classic will make an impact on hundreds of aspiring basketball players from near and far.”

Eight Massachusetts teams will face off at the Hoophall Classic on Thursday for a day of local hoops presented by MassMutal. After each matchup, the MassMutual Most Outstanding Player of the Game will be awarded. Tickets for the Thursday games will be available for purchase on site at Springfield College for $10.

The Jan. 15 local games presented by MassMutual are:
• 4 p.m.: Cathedral High School vs. Pittsfield High School;
• 5:30 p.m.: Chicopee High School vs. Northampton High School;
• 7 p.m.: Sabis Charter School vs. Longmeadow High School; and
• 8:30 p.m.: Springfield Central High School vs. Putnam High School.

In addition to the local games, this year’s Hoophall Classic will feature a number of elite matchups from schools across the country. A total of 34 players out of the ESPNU Top 100 class of 2015 will participate, including six of the top 10 seniors. For more information, visit the official website at www.thehoophallclassic.com.

Daily News

WESTFIELD — Noble Hospital is the major sponsor the Springfield Falcons’ “Pink in the Rink” event on Feb. 21 against the Portland Pirates. This annual event helps to raise funds for and awareness of breast cancer.

Falcons players wear special pink jerseys that will be autographed and auctioned off after the event. Visit www.ebay.com/usr/springfieldfalcons to bid on the pink jerseys after the game. In addition to the hockey game, breast-cancer survivors will be honored, there will be giveaways and raffles, and Noble Hospital will provide an information booth. Members of a support group, the Pink WAY, will also attend.

Noble Hospital’s Center for Comprehensive Breast Health, under the direction of Dr. Steven Schonholz, provides a wide range of options and services in a single location. Pink bracelets will be available for donations at the Noble table; funds raised will go towards Noble’s breast-cancer awareness programs and to help local patients going through treatments.

Area residents can support Noble Hospital by purchasing tickets to the game at give.noblehospital.org/pinkintherink. For more information, contact the hospital’s Community Development Office at [email protected] or (413) 568-2811, ext. 5520.

Noble Hospital’s Center for Comprehensive Breast Health encompasses aspects of women’s health from mammograms and bone-density testing to lumpectomies and cancer treatments. The center features a complimentary-medicine therapy room offering massage, Reiki, and other alternative treatments for those going through cancer treatments and recovery. In a new partnership with the YMCA of Greater Westfield, the center also offers a healthy-living and exercise program.

In addition, Noble Hospital has a partnership with Hartford Hospital to treat early breast cancer quickly with a procedure called accelerated partial breast irradiation, which takes a period of five days instead of many weeks. Money raised at the Falcons fund-raiser may help patients in any of these programs receive the treatment they need but may not be able to afford.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — Springfield College has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as one of a select group of colleges and universities throughout the country to earn its community-engagement classification. This classification recognizes Springfield College for its curriculum, which involves students and faculty addressing community needs, as well as outreach and partnerships that benefit the external community and the campus community.

“This classification is highly respected and valued by the higher-education community,” said Springfield College Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jean Wyld. “The essence of a Springfield College education is preparing students for careers and personal lives that improve the lives of other people, and this classification attests to that mission.”

Springfield College is one of 361 institutions that now hold the community-engagement classification. This honor represents a higher-education institution’s excellent alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement.

There are many examples of community-engagement initiatives sponsored by Springfield College in Springfield on the main campus and at nine regional campuses. One of the largest such efforts in Springfield is the AmeriCorps program, through which students serve as academic coaches for schoolchildren, as well as counselors and health-case managers for community agencies.

The Carnegie Foundation introduced the community-engagement classification in 2006 as part of restructuring the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The basic classifications rely on national data to categorize all U.S. colleges and universities by what they teach, characteristics of their student body, size, and location. It is popularly known as the source of categories in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “America’s Best Colleges” issue.

Unlike the foundation’s basic classifications, the community-engagement classification is elective. Institutions may apply by documenting the nature and extent of their involvement with the community, local or beyond. The category enables the foundation to address characteristics of the institution’s mission and distinctiveness that are not represented in national data.

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — A new exhibit at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History traces the journey of Big Y Supermarkets from a small neighborhood grocery store to one of the largest independently owned supermarket chains in New England. The exhibit, titled “The Big Y: From Neighborhood Grocer to the Modern Supermarket,” is now on permanent view at the Wood Museum. In close proximity are displays honoring other local success stories like Friendly’s Ice Cream and Smith & Wesson.

The Big Y exhibit details the founding of the company in 1936, when Paul D’Amour, a Wonder Bread salesman, decided to be his own boss. He purchased one of the stores on his route at the intersection of Chicopee and Meadow Streets in Chicopee’s Willimansett Village, known as the ‘Y’ section of town. It was there, at the “Y Cash Market,” that Paul, along with his brother, Gerry, began their legacy.

At that time, orders were taken door-to-door and delivered later that afternoon, usually by bicycle. Using advances in food technology and a drive to exceed expectations, the brothers soon expanded their reach beyond that first location through the development of innovations like prepared and frozen foods, in-store pharmacies, electronic ordering systems, and shopper-friendly store design and services.

Through a combination of photographs and memorabilia, the exhibit helps illustrate the growth of the company from these modest beginnings to a company that now employs more than 10,000 associates at more than 60 stores across Massachusetts and Connecticut. Highlights of the exhibit include a replica of the original storefront at 726½ Chicopee St. along with a vintage shopping cart, delivery bicycle, and grocery items from Big Y’s earliest days.

“We feel confident that our loyal customers and wonderful fellow employees will be rightfully proud of their contribution to the success and growth of this locally owned and family-oriented company, committed to serving the nutritional needs of our communities,” said Donald D’Amour, Big Y chairman.

Added Guy McLain, director of the Wood Museum of Springfield History, “this exhibit helps to underscore the often-overlooked story of how supermarkets like Big Y helped to develop quick and efficient food-delivery systems and refrigeration technology, advances that are such key components of modern life.”

Daily News

AMHERST — UMass Amherst has contracted with Amazon.com to replace its traditional on-campus textbook store with a virtual bookstore expected to save students about 30% compared with current prices on course materials and provide free, one-day shipping to the campus and nearby communities. This will be Amazon’s first online university store in the Northeast and its third nationwide, with potential annual savings of $380 per student.

“We know students struggle with the high cost of textbooks and other course materials, and they have been moving to online purchasing. We are delighted to help them get the most competitive prices and first-rate service,” said James Sheehan, UMass Amherst’s vice chancellor of administration and finance. “By seamlessly linking our online campus information system to Amazon, we will make it convenient as well as economical for students to get the items they need for their classes, delivered in one day with no shipping charge to campus and nearby addresses.”

Beginning in May, students will be able to order new, used, rental, and digital textbooks and other course materials through Amazon or through personalized links in SPIRE, the university’s online student-information system. To make finding UMass textbooks easier for students, Amazon will integrate relevant course and section information on customized Amazon product pages.

In June, Amazon will also open a staffed customer pick-up and drop-off location in the Lincoln Campus Center. For several years, students have been turning from traditional textbook stores to online sources to save money. The university’s five-year contract with Amazon will accelerate the online-purchasing trend and save UMass Amherst students money, particularly through free shipping either to campus or to addresses in Amherst, Hadley, Northampton, Pelham, South Deerfield, and Sunderland.

UMass Amherst officials said Amazon was chosen from six companies that submitted proposals because of its low prices and its ability to deliver superior customer service. Based on a sample of more than 1,500 course materials used in UMass Amherst classes during the 2014 spring semester, Amazon estimates it can offer UMass students a savings of 31% versus current bookstore prices, or around $1.4 million based on sales of textbooks at the existing UMass Bookstore. The College Board estimates that a student at a four-year state university spends $1,225 per year on textbooks and supplies, but that number varies across courses of study. Based on this rough estimate, UMass Amherst students could save about $380 annually.

“For years, we’ve offered students low prices on everything from textbooks to electronics to dorm essentials on Amazon.com,” said Paul Ryder, vice president of media and student programs for Amazon. “We’re excited to team up with UMass to bring a new bookstore experience to campus that saves students money and makes it more convenient to get the course materials and other school supplies they need.”

Daily News

WORCESTER — Doctors Express, the largest independent urgent-care provider in the Commonwealth, announced a partnership with one of the largest independent cooperative physician groups, the Central Massachusetts Independent Physicians Assoc. (CMIPA). This first-of-its-kind partnership will offer more resources for patients, better communication between providers and patients, as well as continuity of care.

Doctors Express operates under parent company Medvest, LLC, which serves as the master developer of the urgent-care franchise throughout Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In particular, this will be an opportunity for patients in Worcester to find accessible and affordable care. Doctors Express and CMIPA plan to launch their first site in Worcester (115 Stafford St., late spring) and another Worcester location (address and date to be announced shortly).

This announcement comes on the heels of a successful partnership between Doctors Express and the Steward Health Care System, based in the Greater Boston area. Through the partnership, urgent care provided by Doctors Express is now available to all Steward patients. As Doctors Express continues to grow with more locations, affiliations between urgent-care providers and major medical systems is the way of the future, said Jim Brennan and Rick Crews, CEO and president, respectively, of Medvest, LLC.

“Our partnership with CMIPA continues the objective at Medvest to redefine how patient care is delivered,” said Brennan. “We are partnered with Steward Health Care System, the largest fully integrated community care organization and community hospital network in Eastern Massachusetts, and now CMIPA, one of the largest physician cooperative groups in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

Existing urgent-care locations have not completely satisfied the need for affordable and accessible care, said Gail Sillman, CEO of CMIPA. “We thought about setting up our own urgent-care center while evaluating our options. We even hired a consultant and became familiar with all the urgent-care providers nationally and locally.”

With the help of a consultant, Sillman identified Doctors Express as the most viable option. “Together we saw the benefits of a true partnership where other urgent-care providers did not,” she said. “Doctors Express will honor our patient relationships and extend patient care on nights and weekends for a true, mutually beneficial partnership. Furthermore, Doctors Express has the name brand and market recognition that we were looking for, largely due to the quality of their patient care.”

Doctors Express currently has Massachusetts locations in Braintree, Burlington, Dedham, Malden, Marlboro, Natick, North Andover, Saugus, Springfield, Waltham, Watertown, and West Springfield, with several new locations in development. In addition to the two Worcester locations to be opened this year, the company plans to open a location in New Bedford later this month. The Marlboro location is the most recent addition to the Massachusetts-based operations of Doctors Express, having opened on Dec. 5 under the leadership of Managing Director Bing Yeo.

Features
Tattoo Shops Thrive as Industry Gains Acceptance

Tattoo Afterlife co-owners Timmy Barnes and Matt Olivieri

Tattoo Afterlife co-owners
Timmy Barnes and Matt Olivieri

When Timmy Barnes was busy drawing on his friends in high school, he never considered making a career out of tattoos.

But it wasn’t long before he was making a more permanent impression, tattooing customers out of his basement. Licensed in Massachusetts since 2005, he’s now known widely — internationally, actually — as Timmy B, and co-owns Tattoo Afterlife in Northampton.

“Most people get tattooed for the same reason they buy a certain type of clothing or get plastic surgery: it’s an expression of themselves,” he told BusinessWest. “When you see a tattoo, you instantly know a little more about that person without them having to say anything.”

At the custom shop he opened with business partner Matt Olivieri, customers don’t pick images from a book; the artists who work there, in a converted auto garage on Pleasant Street, are aiming for something more unique.

“You come in and tell us what you like, things about your life that you want to showcase, and we will make you something we feel best represents you,” Barnes said. “This is a shop that people seek out, rather than walk in and wing it.

“A lot of people can mimic what we do, but it’s not the same,” he added. “It’s like a pair of shoes you really like — you’re not going to pay for a knockoff; you’ll pay for the version you really want. There is a difference.”

Olivieri, who also owns a line of organic skin-care products (more on that later), isn’t a tattoo artist himself, but has long loved the craft.

“I’m somebody who gets tattooed because I like the art. Some of mine have personal meaning, but I’d say 80% don’t. I like to get tattooed by friends, people I trust, and I let them run with the art. Then again, some people only want something on their body that has meaning. It’s really all about you and how you want to express yourself.”

Scot Padgett, the resident artist at Living Art Studio on Main Street in Northampton, has been practicing body art for decades, and has seen attitudes toward tattoos shift dramatically over the years.

Scot Padgett

Scot Padgett, whose work is seen here, says custom tattoos have become increasingly popular as clients have become more savvy.

“Make no mistake, there was a lack of social acceptance years ago,” he said. “Today, if you walk down the street here, it’s not unusual to find arm sleeves and body pieces and even people with work on their faces, which a lot of us in the businesses don’t necessarily agree with. There is a level of social acceptance now. For that reason alone, there’s a whole additional clientele who, maybe 20, 25, 30 years ago, wouldn’t have even considered it.

“We used to deal with the 18-to-25, male demographic,” he continued. “Today, the median age is around 40, and 70% female. Before, people were covering stuff up so they wouldn’t give their mother a heart attack; now they’re coming in with mom — or grandma. I definitely think there’s been a lessening of the social stigma.”

Mary Bowen, shop manager of Off the Map Tattoo in Easthampton, sees the same, ever-widening range of customers.

“We have lots of 18-year-olds getting their first tattoos, and 75-year-olds getting their first tattoos … someone working on a full body suit to someone pretty committed to getting just one,” she said.

Bowen recalled a three-generation appointment, where a woman came in with her mother and her 89-year-old grandmother for matching tattoos. “When we say you’re never too old, we mean it literally.”

Padgett welcomes the new openness to tattoos, which first became legal in Massachusetts in 2001. “People ask how long I’ve been doing this, and I say, ‘since before it was cool,’” he said. “When I got into this, you were just as likely to be ostracized by your own family members than by the community at large.”

Moving the Needle

Padgett tattooed in Connecticut for more than a decade before the Bay State came calling in 2001, and he worked with Northampton’s Board of Health on the language regulating tattoo shops, which vary from community to community.

“Unlike many states, there’s no statewide regulation,” he said. “I think there should be a federal mandate that, if it’s legal in one state, it should be nationwide. Not only is that not the case, but our state has put the onus on individual municipalities.”

Like Barnes, he emphasizes custom tattoos, a philosophy that has gained a significant foothold in the industry.

“In the old days, you’d have what was known in the vernacular as ‘flash’ on the walls,” he said, referring to stock art that tattooers would reproduce on clients. “There would be commercially available flash that people would buy and sell and circulate around the industry. When you’d go into a shop, you’d see the same designs hanging on the wall, and typically people would come in and choose from the commercially available product. It was not unusual to see the same eagle or sailing ship on other people — hundreds of people.”

Not only are custom tattoos more gratifying for him, they also allow the customer to fully embrace the experience, which results in fewer regrets.

“You’re less likely to make an error in judgment if you take the time to think about it, make an appointment, show up for the appointment, talk about it, as opposed to walking in off the street on a whim and pointing to a piece of art,” Padgett said, noting that he emphasizes the education and information aspect of his trade. “I’d rather you call me Tuesday and say, ‘I’m not sure about Wednesday’s appointment’ than call me Thursday and say, ‘I’m not sure about Wednesday’s appointment.’”

After all, he added, “it’s not like getting a bad haircut.”

Padgett, a widely recognized artist, recently tattooed a customer from Iceland, and attracts repeat business from far-flung tattoo enthusiasts. “I have clients from all over the place. That’s not a ‘hooray for me’ thing; it’s just that people have a comfort level for certain people. We try to provide an experience. I think that’s what brings a lot of people back.”

Tattoo Afterlife is a much newer presence in Northampton, having opened just five months ago.

“Business has grown every single month,” Olivieri said, adding that the shop will soon offer the services of six artists. The other side of the business is Tranquillity Massage, with two full-time massage therapists offering five types of massage, for customers who want to relax before getting inked. “We try to take care of our clients, make it a whole experience for them. We want them to feel as comfortable as possible while they’re here.”

Tattoo Afterlife has also made connections with local businesses — a hotel, restaurants, a neighboring bar — to offer discounts to customers, especially those traveling to Northampton from far away. And many do — the weekend before speaking with BusinessWest, Barnes tattooed clients from New Jersey and Australia, who had come specifically to seek him out.

“It’s a huge thing, with people from all over the world seeking out their favorite artists and turning appointments into vacations,” Olivieri said. “At the end of the day, it’s permanent, so if you’re going to fly across the world, you might as well check out the scenery and what’s going on locally. We try to be a part of that whole process when people come to town. We want to bring something to the table.

“At the end of the day, this is a service industry,” he added. “We’re all about customer service.”

Global Outlook

Gabriel Ripley, who opened Off the Map nine years ago and has since expanded it to shops in Oregon and Italy, got into the field via a different type of customer service: by using his computer-programming expertise to launch tattoonow.com, which develops and designs websites for tattoo artists. From there, he branched out by opening a tattoo shop, which features seven artists in Easthampton alone.

Mary Bowen

Mary Bowen says today’s tattoo enthusiasts often seek out favorite artists, and appreciate the fact that Off the Map brings in guest artists regularly.

“We’ll also bring in guest artists regularly — from all over the country and overseas as well,” Bowen said. “It’s great for the tattoo artists here because everyone can continue to learn from each other, and it’s great for the clients, who get access to these artists close to home. As custom tattooing is becoming more popular, people are becoming collectors of tattoo artists. The old-school way was to buy from the same person forever; now people seek out a specific style for each tattoo.”

She said the people have myriad rationales for wanting body art. “Oftentimes it’s a celebration, or people get a memorial tattoo to deal with life changes, whether it’s dealing with grief or getting a new job or getting divorced. Everyone has their own personal catalyst.”

Olivieri tells a similar story. “The other day, we had a guy who fought in Vietnam, 60 years old, who had never gotten a tattoo but was intrigued by it. Timmy has tattooed rock stars, medical doctors, and kids who turned 18 and just wanted a tattoo. It used to be that, if your were tattooed, you were looked at as a certain genre of human being, but that has now vanished. It’s now mainstream and socially acceptable to get tattoos, so all those people who were on the fence all those years are making appointments. They know they won’t be frowned upon or looked at differently.”

Bowen agrees. “They might have been thinking about this for years, if not decades. But reality shows have brought tattooing to the forefront, and it’s become more socially acceptable; at this point, it’s almost more unusual to meet someone who doesn’t have a tattoo.”

Still, she added, it’s a decision that shouldn’t be rushed. “It’s important for people to look at websites, do some research, check out the quality of the work, call the studio or stop in. I’ve gotten comments here like, ‘you’re nicer than I expected; you’re not scary at all!’ There’s this old-school perception of bikers in leather and jeans, smoking cigarettes and doing tattoos.”

Though the reality, in most cases, is far more pleasant — and sanitary — “the anxieties about getting a foot in the door are pretty significant for people,” she continued. “It’s a lifelong choice, so we don’t want them to feel pressured.”

That said, “we’re definitely growing. We’ve officially maxed out our space. Most of our artists are booked out weeks, if not months, ahead of time. A lot of times, it’s the guest artists who take walk-ins. We have a large clientele and huge support in the Valley,” Bowen said, citing several best-of citations in Valley Advocate reader polls. “It’s wonderful to hear that positive reinforcement. And we’re certainly not slowing down.”

Piece in the Valley

Olivieri and Barnes opened their first venture on Long Island, but weren’t happy with the lifestyle there, so they opened Tattoo Afterlife in Northampton, not far from Barnes’ hometown of Belchertown, and put the custom nature of the shop’s art front and center.

“You can’t come in here with a photocopy and say, ‘put it on my body,’” Olivieri said. “Every single person here is an artist. Tattooers understand the trade and can take anything and put it on your body, but here, everyone has an art background; they strive to give you something 100% original and custom, one of a kind. They’re trying to create art every single day.”

Olivieri focuses most of his energies on running the business end of the shop and selling products, particularly Redemption Aftercare, an organic, vegan, petroleum-free balm designed to be applied during and after a tattoo. A New Yorker named Bili Vegas created the formula, and he and Olivieri own and market the product. He also sells tattoo and skin-care products from other companies, including Eternal Ink and Stencil Stuff.

Redemption Aftercare, Olivieri said, “is the only balm in the world that’s USDA-certified organic and contains no chemicals and no petroleum — both things that stop the healing process. There’s a huge niche for us, as people are starting to become more aware of what they’re putting in their bodies.”

That’s particularly true in progressive Northampton. “It’s a very liberal town, and it’s open to new ideas,” he said. “And, frankly, there are five colleges with 65,000 students within a 15- to 20-mile radius. With tattooing becoming more popular, kids want to get tattooed, and lot of kids here are well-off. It’s a very good market for what we do.”

Northampton, Barnes added, “has everything you want from a big city, but mom-and-pop versions of it. All the businesses know each other, and all the employees downtown know each other. It’s an easy place to market and cross-promote. Everyone is on each other’s team.”

In that spirit, Barnes wants Tattoo Afterlife to become known for more than body art, as he and Olivieri plan a series of community events and fund-raisers to boost the profile of their craft.

“Tattooing has always had this stigma, but it’s getting harder to stereotype us,” Barnes said. “How can you call us a bunch of gnarly drug addicts and bikers when we’re raising money for children’s charities? I want to take this thing to the next level, to push the boundaries. We’ll always do tattoos, but what else can we do?”

Cost and Effect

Bowen admits that tattoos can be a significant financial investment, but added that enthusiasts are willing to pay the artists they admire. “You have to keep your budget in mind, of course. But the choice shouldn’t be made solely on price; if someone is very inexpensive, there’s probably a good reason why.”

The other big anxiety, beyond price and permanence, is pain.

“Lots of people get nervous about the pain; it’s not a pain-free process,” Bowen said. “A lot of times, people have nerves, but in the end, it’s not nearly as bad as they thought it would be. The mental is often far more significant than the physical pain of it.”

Usually, a glass of water or coffee is enough to calm a new customer’s nerves, Olivieri said, but for others, “we have a good rapport with the bar across the street. If they need a couple of hours to think about it, they can go there and have a drink. There’s no pressure here. Our job is to make the client feel as comfortable as possible.”

That said, “people are more excited than nervous,” he noted. “Timmy has a six-month waiting list, and some customers have been waiting years to see him, so when they get here, it’s like Christmas morning. They say, ‘you don’t know how long I’ve waited,’ and we say, ‘no, we get it.’”

Bowen likes to quote Ripley, her shop’s owner, in explaining that kind of excitement.

“One of the phrases Gabe uses is ‘making the world better, one tattoo at a time.’ We hope, by creating art, we’re positively impacting people’s lives — helping them move their lives in a more positive direction.”

Making art, in other words, that’s much more than skin deep.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Community Spotlight Features
In Holyoke, Municipal Investments Pay Dividends

Mayor Alex Morse

Mayor Alex Morse says Holyoke has been a leader among area communities in efforts to build a creative-economy sector.

When Alex Morse was elected mayor of Holyoke in 2011, he was determined to revitalize the city and alter the way people thought about it.

“My number-one job was to change the perception that Holyoke’s best days were behind us,” he said.

His efforts have been largely successful, and dedicated planning and teamwork have led to major investments in infrastructure and noteworthy projects.

“Good things have happened in the last year, and there are a lot of shovels in the ground. People can see things moving forward, which is a sign that the economy in Holyoke is getting better, and we will continue to put more shovels in the ground this year,” Morse said. “The city is on a positive trajectory.”

The most significant undertaking is the new, $3.5 million passenger-rail platform being built on Dwight and Main streets. “We broke ground on Dec. 22, and when it is finished in September, it will be the first completed rail platform in Western Mass.,” the mayor said.

The project is a reflection of foresight, because when Morse took office, there were no plans for a commuter-rail stop in Holyoke. “But it was a huge economic-development opportunity, and although there were times when funding was short, we were able to get $4 million in state and federal funds for it through MassWorks grants; it has been paid for without taking any money from local sources,” Morse said, adding that Marcos Marrero, the town’s Planning and Economic Development director, worked closely with the state Department of Transportation, “and we made it a priority project, as it is integral to the revitalization of our downtown.”

In addition, Morse said new businesses have opened and apartments are under construction (more about that later) that will help to reinvigorate the city.

“We see ourselves as part of the Springfield/Hartford metro area, and have a lot of space available that is very affordable. People are recognizing that, and folks from as far away as San Francisco are investing here,” he told BusinessWest, citing the purchase of the Wauregan building on 384 Dwight St., which is co-owned by San Francisco artist Scott Reilly, and adding that Vertitech IT moved its national headquarters to Holyoke last year, and the city helped the company work with Holyoke Community College to find employees.

Expanding the creative-arts community has been a cornerstone of the city’s economic-development strategy, and Morse hired a creative-economy coordinator shortly after he took office. “We’re the first community in the state to have a full-time person dedicated to bolstering the creative economy. It is a job creator that generates a lot of revenue, and we have seen an uptick of artists moving here, and a spike in the development of makers spaces,” he said.

They include Gateway City Arts on 91-114 Race St., which was founded in 2012 by artists Lori Divine and Vitek Kruta with a cash incentive from the city. “The business provides space in which craftspeople work, teach, and hold events. It has become an incubator space for artists,” Morse said.

“People are amazed at the amount of talent we have in Holyoke, and on any given night, you can see cars parked on Race Street for an art gallery, opening show, or performance,” he added. “We’ve taken it very seriously.”

He also pointed to the Brick Co-workshop Co. on Dwight Street as another example of success. Artists representing 10 different trades have made it their home and are helping to promote the city as a center for arts and crafts. Plus, the Holyoke Creative Arts Center, which provides classes at a minimal cost, has plans to move from 400 South Elm St. into the three-story, red-brick Wauregan Building, located in the newly designated Art and Innovation District, later this month.

Time and effort has also been spent to encourage people in the community to open businesses, and Holyoke was one of six cities named as a winner of the Working Cities Challenge. It was sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which identified 21 working cities whose median income was lower than the state average, then challenged them to create innovative proposals that would help provide employment.

Holyoke’s winning program is called the Stimulating Potential and Accessing Resources or Knowledge Initiative (SPARK). Its goal is to link the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center with the city’s innovation-economy strategy and increase the number of businesses owned by Latinos. The initiative is being led by the city in partnership with the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, and is supported by other partners in the public, private, and nonprofit realms.

Morse said the idea is to create a pipeline that will help Latinos who are interested in the creative arts see themselves as entrepreneurs and open businesses. “We want to continue to build on our local talent and have hired a director for the program,” he said, adding that the city will receive $250,000 over three years to implement the program.

Plethora of Projects

When a city invests in itself, Morse said, it sends a message that it is willing to partner with businesses to grow the economy.

To that end, Holyoke boasts a new library and senior center, and also kicked off Phase 2 of a $4.3 million Canal Walk project on Race Street over the summer. Phase 1, which runs between Dwight and Appleton streets, is complete, and the second section of the walkway will include a foot bridge over the canal.

“This is just one of the improvements we’ve made to catalyze retail businesses along the canal and make our downtown walkable,” Morse said.

Vibrant metropolises also contain residential living space, he added, noting that the city is making progress on this front as well. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in August for a $20 million project that will transform the former Holyoke Catholic High School into 55 one- and two-bedroom apartments. The city has been working with Denis Walsh, who owns Weld Management, for several years on his vision to create the new residences in the 74,000-square-foot building, which is set on 2.3 acres.

“The prospect of getting more people to live downtown is exciting, and this is a great example of a public/private partnership,” Morse said, noting that the city contributed $750,000 toward the project. He added that a $1.4 million renovation of Veterans Park, which can be seen from the building, was completed last year.

The Holyoke Transportation Center also overlooks the park and contains a café on the first floor operated by the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House. Holyoke Community College holds classes in the building, and it is also home to a Head Start program.

“The conversion of Holyoke Catholic High School will complete that block and bring more life to the neighborhood,” Morse said, adding that Walsh is also developing high-end, market-rate apartments on the upper floors of a few other buildings.

One challenge the city faces, however, is a lack of eateries downtown. Attracting restaurateurs has been difficult because liquor licenses have not been available. In order to mitigate the problem, Morse put together a proposal that received approval from the City Council and the state, which will give Holyoke 13 additional liquor licenses.

“The caveat is that they can only be used for full-service restaurants in the downtown urban-renewal district,” the mayor said. “Although a liquor license can go for upwards of $100,000 on the open market, these will only cost $10,000 because they’re being offered as an economic incentive. We plan to hold an event later this month to explain what is involved, and have invited people in town as well as restaurant operators from places that include Worcester, Hartford, Amherst, and Pittsfield.”

Plans have also been made to address the former Parsons Paper Co. site, which has been an eyesore since a fire devastated the property in 2008. Northeast Utilities has provided $250,000 to assess the contamination, demolish what remains of the buildings, and clean up the brownfields, as part of a mitigation agreement connected to a former electric plant near the dam and canal.

When the work is complete, the property will be put on the market, and Morse said a business has already expressed interest in the site.

Meanwhile, Divine and Kruta, who opened Gateway City Arts, also purchased the Steam Building on Race Street last year and are turning it into office space.

“The city and Holyoke Community College recently announced that HCC is moving its entire culinary-hospitality department downtown, and the Steam Building is being considered as one of the potential sites,” Morse said. “We are hoping to pair the college program with a full-service, privately owned restaurant.”

Private-sector growth is also occurring, and Marcotte Ford on Main Street recently broke ground on an $8 million expansion. “We worked hard to keep them here,” Morse said. “They were landlocked, but were able to purchase an old dealership next to them. We’re working to help them get some city land between the properties as well as negotiating a tax incentive.”

Bright Future

Morse said a number of other projects are on the horizon, among them the redevelopment of the old Lynch Middle School.

The project was put out to bid last spring, and the city chose Frontier Development from the firms that responded. It will create 25,000 square feet of retail space in the building with the opportunity for expansion, which will lead to jobs and turn a non-taxpaying property into one that generates taxes, Morse told BusinessWest. “Plus, we think it will bring people to the city, as it’s right off the highway.”

In addition, the recently decommissioned Mt. Tom coal plant will be assessed to determine what it would take to clean it up and reuse the property.

The mayor said the projects that have come to fruition have not happened overnight, and the effort and thought that have gone into them will continue.

“Today,” he concluded, people see Holyoke as a city on the rise.”

Holyoke at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1850
Population: 40,135 (2012)

Area: 22.8 square miles

County: Hampden

Residential Tax Rate: $19.04
Commercial Tax Rate: $39.74
Median Household Income: $33,030
Family Household Income: $36,262
Type of government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Holyoke Medical Center; Holyoke Public Schools; Holyoke Community College; Amica Mutual Insurance Co.
* Latest information available

Opinion
A Role Model on Many Levels

Two decades ago, BusinessWest launched a new recognition initiative. We called it our ‘Top Entrepreneur’ award. (We would have called it ‘Entrepreneur of the Year,’ but that phrase was, and still is, copyrighted.)

And besides, most of the people we’ve honored over the years weren’t recognized for accomplishments in a given year, but instead for what they’ve done over a lifetime — or at least to that point in their career.

We started this award to honor those who are continuing what would have to be a called a tradition of entrepreneurship, not only in Springfield, but across the region. It’s a tradition started by people like Milton Bradley, gunmakers Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson, Everett Barney, inventor of the clip-on ice skate, and many others, and continued by people like Peter Rosskothen, co-creator of the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House (honored by BusinessWest in 1997) and the extended Sandri family in Greenfield (honored just last year for the expansion and diversification of their energy business).

In the process of telling these stories, what has become clear is that the winners, while entrepreneurial at heart, are committed to much more than making money. Each one has been passionate about giving back, and in a number of ways.

This year’s honoree, Delcie Bean, is no exception. He’s being honored, in large part, for his exploits with Paragus Strategic IT, a company that can essentially trace it roots to when Bean was 14 years old (that was just 14 years ago, by the way), and is now a fixture on Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing technology companies in the country.

But his story goes much deeper, and it should serve as an inspiration to all business leaders in this region — and well beyond.

Indeed, Bean made it clear in his wide-ranging interview with BusinessWest (see page 14) that, while he’s passionate about growing his companies and taking them to the next level, that energy also applies to his desire to play a large role in the revitalization of Springfield and the region as a whole.

He’s off to a very solid start, not only through the creation of Tech Foundry, a unique educational facility designed to address the Valley’s nagging skills-gap problem, but also through his involvement with Valley Venture Mentors and other groups and initiatives focused on creating what’s been called an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.

As part of these efforts, Bean mentors young entrepreneurs, both formally and informally, and helps individuals (especially young people) determine if they have the many skills and attributes needed to be a successful entrepreneur.

As he mentioned to BusinessWest, Bean has a number of mentors himself, or business leaders who inspire him. Chief among them is Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, who is committed not only to continually growing his company, but also to playing a direct part in efforts to revitalize sections of Las Vegas, which was devastated by the Great Recession and its aftermath.

“It’s rare that somebody with that much money, where there’s so little that he’s going to gain from this personally, is so passionate about a city and its revitalization,” Bean said of Hsieh.

Rare indeed, but this is the philosophy that also drives this year’s Top Entrepreneur.

Who knows where and to what levels his business exploits will take him in the years and decades to come? As he mentioned, to continue growing at its current and profound rate, Paragus will certainly need to expand its footprint well beyond Western Mass.

What seems apparent, though, is that, when it comes to returning this region to its status as a center of entrepreneurship, innovation, good jobs, and vibrancy, Bean is in it for the long haul.

And the Valley will certainly benefit as a result.

Opinion
A Big Blow to Cape Wind

Last week, two power companies, National Grid and Northeast Utilities, terminated their contracts with the developers of the controversial, $2.5 billion offshore wind-farm project known as Cape Wind.

Analysts immediately began speculating that the action taken by the two utilities, which cited missed deadlines contained in the 2012 contracts outlining this bold initiative as the reason for their decision to terminate, could put the future of the turbine project’s future in serious doubt.

We certainly hope they are right.

Indeed, while we’ve opined on numerous occasions that this state and this region, in their efforts to secure new sources of jobs and economic vibrancy, must aggressively pursue renewable-energy sources as one means to that end, we’ve come to acknowledge that, while Cape Wind might help the state accomplish those goals — that’s might — it will come at too steep a price.

That price, in the form of some of the highest prices for electricity ever negotiated, would certainly constitute a serious burden to both taxpayers and the state’s business community at a time when neither constituency needs another one.

We have said on a number of occasions that, while Massachusetts has made some progress in recent years to shed itself of that old ‘Taxachusetts’ moniker, it still has a lot of work to do in that regard.

From higher-than-average rates for unemployment insurance and workers-comp insurance to its highly regulated business environment, to high energy rates stemming from its location at the end of the supply lines, the Bay State has historically been a very expensive state in which to do business, and it still is.

And this is an extreme handicap at a time when the competition for businesses and jobs is truly global, and it becomes more intense with each passing year.

Now-former Gov. Deval Patrick made renewable energy one of the priorities of his administration, and he was right to do so. Such a philosophy makes a degree of sense from an economic-development standpoint (jobs) and an environmental one as well.

But renewable-energy initiatives often do not translate into what would be considered reasonable rates for electricity, and that is certainly the case with Cape Wind.

Officials leading that initiative are already making the case that missed deadlines with regard to the start of work on this project are the result of “extended, unprecedented, and relentless litigation by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound,” a leading opponent of the project, and they will fight to see that the utilities hold off on voiding their contracts.

They face an uphill battle, and that’s a good thing for the Commonwealth.

Advances in the state’s renewable-energy and efficiency policies have lessened the importance of Cape Wind when it comes to the overall energy landscape, and the expensive power that it would produce would be a burden to the state’s business community as it strives to make a full recovery from the recession.

Cover Story Sections Top Entrepreneur
Paragus Founder Reflects on Life in the Very Fast Lane

DelcieEntrepreneur2014DPartYou know you’re getting somewhere in life when your first name is all anyone really needs to make an identification.

That was the case with people named Elvis, Ringo, and Tiger (OK, his real name is Eldrick). And, to a lesser extent, it’s working for the 29-year-old that BusinessWest has chosen to be its Top Entrepreneur for 2014 — Delcie Bean.

Or just ‘Delcie,’ because that’s all that’s generally required when he becomes the subject of conversation. That’s true in part because, well, let’s face it, there are not many Delcies out there. But it’s also because Bean, in just a few years, has become a dominant force in the business community — and also with regional initiatives in the broad realm of economic development, education, and even office design.

By now, most everyone knows the story of how he first started selling things, like Creepy Crawlers and Ozark Lollipops, to classmates in the second grade, and started his own computer-repair company at age 14, when he was too young to drive but had no shortage of clients willing to pick him up and drive him to their home or business.

Most also know that he shaped what was named Valley Computer Works and later renamed Paragus Strategic IT (after asparagus — well, sort of) into one of the fastest-growing IT firms in the country, a fixture on Inc. magazine’s lists of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies, now boasting $4.25 million in annual sales.

They also know that he was the driving force behind Tech Foundry, a nonprofit, launched last year and still in the midst of a one-year pilot program, with the goal of training unemployed and high-school-age individuals and matching them with the precise needs of area companies. It’s an undertaking that’s drawn the praise of local and state officials alike for addressing one of the business community’s most perplexing, and persistent, problems — the dreaded skills gap.

Some might also know that Bean is a principal with a second business venture. Called Waterdog, it’s what he called a “tech-distribution company,” which partners with companies that make technology products and helps them find markets for those products. The enterprise, based in downtown Springfield, is closing on a $500,000 angel-investment round involving the Springfield Venture Fund and River Valley Investors, and is expected to add another 10 employees over the next year.

But less is known about what drives Bean and fuels his many passions. During a wide-ranging, quite enlightening interview, it became abundantly clear that Bean is very serious about:

• Entrepreneurship and fostering more of it;
• Careful and precise allocation of what has become a precious commodity — his time;
• A business philosophy that goes way, way beyond simply making money;
• Work-life balance;
• Getting unplugged much more than most could imagine given his success, his line of work, and the age we live in; and
• Playing a very significant role in the revitalization of Springfield and this region as a whole.

In short, his answers to BusinessWest’s many questions were quite revealing, and what emerged from this Q&A was a sentiment that Bean wants to be, and in many respects already is, a leader on several fronts, but especially when it comes to the growth and maturation of this region as a center for innovation, entrepreneurship, and jobs, something it was a century or more ago — and that he believes it can and will be again.

“If I can serve any benefit to inspiring others to get stuff done and to get motivated, then to me, that’s what’s ultimately worth it,” he said. “We have to continue to prove to people that you can do stuff, and that these things are possible. And I think the more people that have that positive spirit and get in the right perspective … that’s what’s going to change the Valley and bring us back to the glory days. Springfield was one of the biggest cities in the Northeast at one point, and there’s no reason why we can’t return to those days, just in a different way.”

In Good Company

As he settled back into one of the comfortable chairs in the conference room at Paragus’ recently opened, ‘outrageous green’-dominated headquarters in Hadley, Bean started the conversation by relating an exercise he recently undertook with some colleagues.

“We started talking about all the things that happened just in 2014,” he explained. “Within about 12 hours, I’d thrown up this website called springfield99.com where we started listing all the things that happened just in Springfield and just in 2014. And it’s amazing just how many things happened in this one year alone, some of which I was part of, some of which I would have loved to have been part of, but all of which I’m just proud to say are going on in the Valley.”

Delcie Bean

Delcie Bean says that a vibrant Springfield “is something I really want to play a role in.”

When asked for a list, he mentioned everything from the formal launching of Tech Foundry to the success enjoyed by Valley Venture Mentors; from TechSpring, the initiative launched by Baystate Health to foster entrepreneurship within the healthcare spectrum to the innovation center being built downtown; from Barbara Walters speaking at Bay Path University’s annual leadership conference to an American Pickers episode taped in the city that involved old Indian motorcycles.

“We got to item 45, and then we remembered that MGM got approval to open a casino,” he went on. “It was so cool to see that there was so much going on that isn’t necessarily in the shadow of the casino; it’s not a footnote to the casino — the casino is just part of this movement that’s going on.”

Before elaborating on the many aspects of that movement, BusinessWest first asked Bean about his various business ventures and what’s likely to happen next.

We started with Paragus, the IT-solutions company that now boasts more than 40 employees. The coming year shapes up to be an intriguing one, with Bean initiating an employee stock-ownership program (ESOP), and the Paragus team eyeing a host of avenues for expansion — in a variety of forms.

BusinessWest: Talk about the ESOP. It’s a big step, and there are risks involved. Why take this step now, and what does it mean for Paragus for the short and long term?

Bean: “In a lot of ways, this transition to an ESOP is a gamble on my part. I’m betting that the company will grow even faster and net even bigger returns in the hands of the employees than it would have if I had continued to remain as 100% owner.

“The employees will own 51% of the company, and I’ll own 49%, and the hope is that, by being owners and thinking and behaving differently, they will drive better results. It has to not only happen, but it has to happen at a multiple big enough to offset the growth I would have gained on my own if I had retained 100% of the shares.”

BusinessWest: How are you preparing your employees for what will be a dramatic shift in their role — and also in their outlook about the company and where it can go?

Bean: “We’ve spent that past 18 months preparing employees for that transition, because it is a big change. I led a class recently called ‘What Does it Mean to be an Owner?’ and we went through the process together of defining what are the characteristics of a truly great owner. I then challenged them to identify one characteristic that they had room to improve upon, and work with me one on one to develop an action plan for how they could make progress on improving on that characteristic.”

BusinessWest: Talk about your own role moving forward. Will it change, and if so, how?

Bean: “One of my goals and objectives is to create businesses that are not dependent upon me. Another way that I define success is getting people to be self-reliant, or empowered, or in a position where they’re not dependent on me. Every day, Paragus is less and less dependent on me personally, and that’s a huge mark of success.

“It means that we have a strong leadership team, it means that we have empowered employees, it means that we have good systems and processes. It means we have a healthy business. It’s great seeding companies and getting them started, but then empowering and finding just the right people, the right mix, and the right plan so they can grow and thrive and succeed on their own.”

BusinessWest: What is your long-term vision for the company, and how does the ESOP affect that? Is this a company that you envision someday being sold to a much larger entity?

Bean: “I decided a few years ago that Paragus was never going to be that company — it was never going to be the company that we grew to sell externally, and the ESOP is putting a nail in that coffin. By making an ESOP, we’re very publically saying, ‘this is a company that’s going to remain here in the Valley, owned by the Valley, and here to support and contribute to the Valley.’

“But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have big, aspirational goals. They want to look at some acquisitions, they want to open up some other offices, they want to expand into some other markets. They want to make this company big, and they want to be the ones who own it and do it. We don’t want to grow it to sell it.”


BusinessWest: Can Paragus meet all those lofty goals you mentioned by remaining a Western Mass. company, or just a Western Mass. company? There are some competitive disadvantages to being in this region, and it can’t be easy to recruit top talent to this region. Will Paragus still be a fixture here in five, 10, or 20 years?

Bean: “I think Paragus can always be here and will always be here. But if Paragus wants to continue to grow at 30% a year, as it has for the past five years, at some point, and probably not too far from now, they’re going to have to expand their market, and that might mean opening up a Paragus in another market. But that won’t mean leaving Western Mass.

“I can’t imagine a future where Paragus abandons Western Mass., but I can imagine a future in which we have a branch anywhere from Denver, Colorado to Hartford, Connecticut. In fact, there has been a lot of talk, probably just because people love the area, about Denver — it’s a really cool city going through some exciting times, and a place where the Paragus team members can see themselves having a lot of fun. There’s been nothing serious, but there has been some talk about how maybe, someday, that would be a cool place to put some new roots.”

Bean says the employee stock-ownership program

Bean says the employee stock-ownership program he’s initiating should enable the company to grow even faster and net bigger returns than if he remained sole owner.

The Future Is Now

BusinessWest: Let’s switch gears and talk about your participation in economic-development-related initiatives and your thoughts on Springfield and the region as a whole. If we were doing this interview 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, what would you like to have said you’d accomplished beyond success with your businesses?


Bean: “Right now, I have become so excited about the prospect of a revitalized, rejuvenated Springfield that I’d like to be able to say that, not only has Springfield accomplished that, but some actions that I took part in contributed.

“What that looks like is so hard to define, but I think it’s one of those things where you know it when you see it, whether it’s the energy or the excitement or the pure quantity of people on the street. But a vibrant Springfield is something I really want to play a role in.”


BusinessWest: You sound quite upbeat about the Valley’s prospects. What is the basis of that optimism?

Bean: “Things are coming together in many ways, especially in Springfield. Through Valley Venture Mentors, the innovation center, the accelerator program, and other initiatives, we’re creating entrepreneurial energy, and the possibilities are very exciting.”


BusinessWest: Beyond Tech Foundry and its mission of helping to create a large, talented workforce, what are some of the other ways you’ve become involved in economic-development efforts?


Bean: “I sit on two EDC [Economic Development Council of Western Mass.] boards, the Entrepre-neurship Committee and the Homefield Advantage Committee, and I really enjoy that work. I also get involved in other ways, such as mentoring entrepreneurs.”


BusinessWest: Mentoring entrepreneurs? Do you do a lot of that?

Bean: “I do, either through a program like Valley Venture Mentors or separately on the side. I also take phone calls … I don’t know how I got signed up for this, but people will come to me and say, ‘hey, I’m thinking of moving to the Springfield area, and someone gave me your name as somebody I should talk to before I move there.’ I’ll give them an idea about jobs and positions and what I think the economic landscape looks like and how awesome and exciting it is to be here right now. Maybe once a week I’ll get a call like that, and it’s great to know that, once a week, someone’s thinking about moving back here.”


BusinessWest: Many economic-development leaders are bullish about improved rail service between Vermont and Southern Connecticut. Do you believe such service can change the equation in this region, and if so, how?

Bean: “The Tofu Curtain drives me crazy, and I’m hopeful that maybe Northampton, Holyoke, and Springfield start working better together. Maybe the ease of getting from one place to another because we don’t have to deal with the car … maybe it makes the communities more connected and work more synergistically.

“That’s my most aspirational hope for this train; we call it ‘the Valley,’ but it’s really two very distinct sections, and you could argue there’s three because of Franklin County. Look at Holyoke and Springfield — it is amazing how little those two cities work together, and they’re so much alike; they’re both Gateway cities within a stone’s throw of each other with similar problems and similar challenges, and they’re not working collaboratively as they should be, and I’m hoping one stop on the rail line changes all that.

“I’d love to see the Valley function as one neighborhood, and if you look at Silicon Valley and so many other parts of the country, they’re the same size as our valley, but we’re so much more insular. And people complain that it takes 20 minutes to get from Northampton to Springfield. Look at Boston — it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, and they’re doing just fine.

“That’s my hope, that maybe this rail service gives us one less excuse to not do business with each other, or have lunch together, or have meetings together and not fight about whether it’s in Northampton or Springfield.”

BusinessWest: What about the casino? This is not exactly innovation, but it is economic development and jobs. Will this be a positive force in the city and the region?

Bean: “I have very positive feelings about the casino’s impact and what it’s going to do for the city, but I think’s it’s important that it doesn’t define us — and it doesn’t sound like it is. It sounds like we’re defining ourselves.”

Time and Space

BusinessWest: Considering the many types of demands on your time, you have probably become adept at how that resource is allocated. Talk about how you distribute the hours in your day and find time for everything you want to do.

Bean: “It’s definitely challenging. There are a lot of things competing for my time, and I’m one of those people who has a hard time saying no to things I’m passionate about or that I think are good and worthy. But there are plenty of things I do say no to; for example, I’m not an advocate for long meetings where there’s no clear purpose and the dialogue isn’t going to result in any clear action items. I’ve been to more than a few of those, and I’ve learned my lesson; those meetings do have a purpose, just not a purpose that I’m able to contribute much to, so I’ve learned that they’re not a good investment of my time.”


BusinessWest: Talk about those occasions, and those causes, for which saying ‘no’ is not an option.

Bean: “There are three different buckets that I put my time into right now, and maybe one sub-bucket. For starters, there’s Paragus and Waterdog; I work from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. most days, and in that 12-hour span, Paragus gets six of those hours, and Waterdog probably gets two of those hours. But what’s nice is that still leaves me with four hours a day, and that’s where I would put my outside interests or economic-development interests, or giving back, or however you want to classify that.

“A big piece of that goes to Tech Foundry, but that still leaves plenty left over to be a speaker at various events, to attend different meetings, to mentor entrepreneurs, to go to city planning meetings, and a lot of other things.”

BusinessWest: Time management is a critical assignment for all business leaders. Talk some more about your approach to it and how you get the most out of each hour in the day.

Bean: “I have a very, very full calendar — every minute is booked between 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., and two nights a week I work late, and that usually means I have some event I need to attend. That’s where I’m really selective; there are so many great events in the Valley to go to at night, and I only pick two a week. And if I’m going to do a late night, I’ll try to do two or three things that night.

“I live an hour and 15 minutes away in New Hampshire, and a few years ago I hired a driver, so I use my commute time to do all my e-mail so that during the day I don’t even look at my computer — I just go from meeting to meeting as my phone instructs me to, and then I have two hours at the beginning and end of each day to catch up on e-mails, get proposals, or correspond with people.

“Hiring a driver was an economic decision. I ran the math and looked at how productive I could be with an extra two hours a day and what it cost to pay someone for those four hours, and decided it made perfect sense. This gives me a guaranteed two or two and a half hours a day when no one can walk into my office, call me on the phone … it’s just a guaranteed two hours of e-mail and going over proposals.”

Investments in the Valley

BusinessWest: You must get a lot of requests to serve on boards and take part in economic-development-related initiatives. How do you decide where to put your time and energy?

Bean: “We get a lot of those requests, and they all go to Margie, my assistant. She’s gotten to know really well what I’m passionate about, what I’m interested in, and what I’m not, so she will vet them, send me to ones that she thinks are worth me at least looking at, and then I’ll figure out what the commitment is going to be.

“For example, I’ve been very good about not getting on the boards of nonprofits, only because there are so many of them, it would be hard to choose, and I have my own nonprofits for which I’m president of the board, and I don’t want to distract from those energies. But there was an opportunity that came along where an organization is going to be forming a charter school in Springfield, and that organization, Up Academy, has a track record that’s just mind-blowing. It will take over an existing Springfield middle school, serve the same students and use the same money, but run it privately.

“I started hearing about that, and I started researching the track record and learning more about that organization, including the work they did in Lawrence, the work they did in Boston. It was so impressive that I did agree to join their founding board because I feel that education in Springfield has got to be a priority, and what it needs right now are some new, fresh perspectives, some new minds, and some new thoughts. So this was one where I broke my own rule and got involved.”

BusinessWest: You also get a number of requests to speak to different groups and offer keynote addresses at events. First, do you like public speaking — is it something you’ve become good at? And, second, how do you decide which speaking requests to accept?

Bean: “Speaking is always something I’ve enjoyed, and it’s always something I thought came naturally to me. I don’t know; I’ve never sat in the audience, so I don’t know how I come off. But it’s never something that’s made me nervous or uncomfortable.

“And what I really like about public speaking is having the opportunity to use that platform to energize an entire group of people at one time around a thought, an idea, an interest, an excitement level, and really get people to leave that room thinking differently and feeling differently. If I accomplished that, then I’m thrilled.”

BusinessWest: What have been some of your recent assignments, and did you feel you’ve been able to energize the room, as you mentioned?

Bean: “One of the most exciting ones I got to do recently was the Grinspoon Foundation entrepreneurship dinner, where they asked me to be the keynote speaker. What I liked about it was that here were 300 to 400 college kids who had a demonstrated interest in entrepreneurship, and were asking themselves those questions in their heads: ‘can I do this? Is this right for me? How would I even get started? Am I really cut out for this?’ And being able to share my story with those kids and talk to them about my experiences and my perspective on the situation and give them the confidence and encouragement to go off and do it … I certainly left that night feeling energized and excited.

“At least when compared to when I spoke at the Massachusetts Developers Conference. That was certainly fun and exciting, but I don’t think I changed a lot of hearts and minds that day. It will be the same when I speak at a Federal Reserve Bank event in Boston in January. That will certainly be fun, and it will be a great audience, but I don’t think I’ll change a lot of hearts and minds. Hopefully I will, because that’s when I really enjoy it — when I get a bunch of people really excited.”

Managing Expectations

BusinessWest: Let’s talk about your management style, your thoughts on running a business, and your opinions on what makes a true business leader. And maybe the logical place to start is by asking if you’ve had any mentors or any business owners you’ve borrowed from or tried to emulate.


Bean: “I personally like to draw on the best of everybody, so I have a handful of mentors, and there are things about them that I emulate and maybe things about them I’m not so keen on. I try to pull the best characteristics from everyone I know. But if there was one person I had to point to … I really like what [Zappos founder] Tony Hsieh has done, not just with that company, but his philosophy, his mindset, his personality.

“He’s someone who’s really gotten the economic-development bug and is trying to rebuild the entire city of Las Vegas, which was worse off than the city of Springfield was, and turn it into a vibrant, functioning city again. And that’s inspirational, because it’s rare that somebody with that much money, where there’s so little that he’s going to gain from this personally, is so passionate about a city and its revitalization. To see him dedicate his time and energy to that project definitely gives me encouragement to know that’s there’s nothing wrong with not spending all of your time trying to make money.”

BusinessWest: Can you elaborate on that thought, because making money is what has driven most entrepreneurs throughout history.

Bean: “There are some people who go from one enterprise to the next one to the next one, and it’s always about ‘how big can I make the coffers?’ There’s nothing wrong with that — that’s capitalism — but there’s a lot of room for also making sure you understand what makes you happy, what you enjoy, and for me, that’s seeing things happen. And if I can make things happen, even if those things don’t directly correlate back to some financial interest of mine, I get joy from the act of seeing them happen.

“Seeing Tech Foundry launch … maybe it helps Paragus someday with workforce — maybe. But there are many things I could do that are a lot less expensive and a lot less time-consuming, but seeing it happen, seeing those kids show up, seeing the impact on the community, that, to me, totally justifies the time, the money, and everything else.”


BusinessWest: Who else inspires you, enough for you to want to emulate them?

Bean: “There are so many people, it’s hard to narrow it down. I’m certainly inspired by (long pause) even Bill Gates to a certain extent. It’s a tough one — he’s very controversial; there are a lot of things you can say about him. But I’ll say I’m inspired by the fact that, despite all the money he’s made, he’s dedicated so much of his time to giving it away — but not just by writing big, fat checks.

“He’s trying to figure out how to make a meaningful impact on the world, whether it’s through the malaria work they’re doing or … he’s got a project where he’s trying to use spent nuclear rods to create clean electricity. It’s so much easier for him to write a check, but for him, as it is for me — not that I’m comparing myself to Bill Gates — he’s taking his time, his energy, and his passion and using it for more than creating wealth for himself.”


BusinessWest: Anyone in this region who has been a mentor or a source of inspiration?

Bean: “There have been many. The Davis Brothers [John and Steve, former third-generation owners of American Saw, now Lenox] are a good example. Those are guys who don’t have to be here; they can be doing a lot of other things, but they’ve chosen to spend their time, money, and energy impacting the community that they’re in, and in ways that are really inspirational.

“They could be doing financial investing in areas that are probably going to net them better returns, but they’re committed to everything from for-profit investment to not-for-profit investment, but also giving their time. The fact that Steve Davis is chair of the Entrepreneurship Committee, and John Davis has his Springfield Business Leaders for Education, another group I decided to join, shows they’re dedicating more than their time; they’re here every day, they’re giving their money, their effort, and they don’t have to be. And that’s inspiring. Watching them almost makes me feel obligated; if they’re doing it, how could I not do it?”

BusinessWest: You’re 29 years old, but you’ve been the boss your entire life. Most people have the opportunity to learn and grow by watching and drawing out those on the higher rungs on the ladder. You’ve never really had that opportunity; do you feel that maybe you missed out on some learning opportunities?

Bean: “That’s a good question. ‘No’ is the short answer. I had never been taught that who you learn from are the people above you in your own organization, because I’d never been in an organization big enough to do that. I was naive in the sense that I didn’t know that’s how it’s supposed to work.

“So I learned from everybody. I learned from my clients, from my vendors, from my banker, my lawyer, my accountant — I wouldn’t just let them do stuff for me, I’d make them explain it to me; I’d look over my accountant’s shoulder while he’s doing my tax returns and my books, asking him mind-numbingly boring questions, because I really wanted to know, and I needed to see the big picture.
“I learn from my staff, I learn from community leaders, and I read a lot. I’ve learned a lot from the books I’ve read; I can’t understate the amount of knowledge I’ve accumulated from reading some phenomenal business books.”

Hanging in the Balance

BusinessWest: We’ve talked about business, economic development, mentoring, community service … what do you do when you’re not doing any of that?

Bean: “When I’m really not working, I love just being with my family. We moved to New Hampshire because I love the outdoors and I love being in a rural environment. I’ve got two young kids — a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old — and I love just being out with my wife and kids.

Delcie Bean, seen here with his wife, Julia

Delcie Bean, seen here with his wife, Julia, and sons Delcie Bean V (Jack), left, and James, says he values work-life balance and has a strict no-work policy on weekends.

“We live on 16 acres that abut 16,000 acres of state land, and so we just love going on hikes in the woods — endless trails where you can never walk the same path twice. I love that stuff. I love just being at home with my family, just taking it really easy and relaxed.

“One of the reasons I moved up there is I spend so much time around people all day long, so it’s really nice being up somewhere where the only thing you can hear are the birds and the trees; it’s so quiet and peaceful up there.”

BusinessWest: Can you really just put aside the various kinds of work you have like that?

Bean: “I don’t really have much choice. It’s also very unplugged up there — we barely have Internet; I have a crappy DSL connection. Even if I wanted to work. it would be miserable.”

BusinessWest: Somehow, you don’t seem like the type who could be unplugged for very long.

Bean: “You’d be surprised. I work almost a 12-hour day, but then when I do get home, especially on the weekends, I have a very strict no-work policy. That time is for me and for my family. It takes a lot of energy to do what I do, and I need to kind of recharge and regroup, and part of that is being unplugged and not being ‘on.’

“When my wife and I go on vacation, we go to these really, really secluded destinations where we don’t do anything — we’re just vegetables where we just spend time with each other and there’s no other people.”

BusinessWest: Where do you go?

Bean: “My favorite place … there’s this villa in Jamaica on the other side of the island from where everyone else goes, in a tiny little fishing village. We rent it out, and the only people there are a cook, a maid, and a pool guy; those are the only three people you see the entire time you’re there. They make all your meals for you, and you live in this beautiful house with your own private beach and your own swimming pool. You can completely just unplug and relax; there’s no Internet, no TV. I just read and read and read, and enjoy disconnecting.”

BusinessWest: Where else do you go?

Bean: “I make a clear distinction between vacationing and traveling. We try to commit to a system where every other trip we travel — we’ll go to some city and walk around, like we just got back from Quebec City this past summer — and the alternating trip is what I call vacationing, where we don’t do anything.”

BusinessWest: Do you think you have a proper balance between life and work?

Bean: “I do, and that’s because I work hard at it. I decided to hire a driver around the time I had my first kid. It allowed me to get home an hour earlier because I wasn’t staying at work that extra hour doing my e-mail. So, except for those two nights I work late, those other three I make it home in time to put the kids to bed, and that’s important to me.

“And two days a month I go into work late so I can drive my kid to school. I really enjoy it, and it means a lot to him. Finding a balance was tough, and I’m very fortunate that my wife is able to stay home with the kids; that has helped a lot. And my no-work-weekend policy makes a huge difference, because those two days are 100% about being with the kids and the family.

“And that also speaks to my point earlier about how one of my objectives is to create businesses that are not dependent upon me. That gives me the flexibility to go to that Little League game when my kids get a little older, or that school play, and not feel like the whole world revolves around me being at my desk. I don’t want people so dependent on me I’m handcuffed.”

He Gets IT

To say that Bean has been successful in remaining un-handcuffed would be a huge understatement.

By carefully managing time, empowering people, and putting effective systems in place, he’s found the hours, the energy, the will, and the freedom to be a force in the Pioneer Valley on a number of levels.

And at 29, and with a firm commitment to remain at the forefront of efforts to both grow his businesses and be a part of the efforts to revitalize the region economically, he’s certain to be a force for years and decades to come.

Stay tuned.

Previous Top Entrepreneurs

2013: Tim Van Epps, president and CEO of Sandri LLC
2012: Rick Crews and Jim Brennan, franchisees of Doctors Express
2011: Heriberto Flores, director of the New England Farm Workers’ Council and Partners for Community
2010: Bob Bolduc, founder and CEO of Pride
2009: Holyoke Gas & Electric
2008: Arlene Kelly and Kim Sanborn, founders of Human Resource Solutions and Convergent Solutions Inc.
2007: John Maybury, president of Maybury Material Handling
2006: Rocco, Jim, and Jayson Falcone, principals of Rocky’s Hardware Stores and Falcone Retail Properties
2005: James (Jeb) Balise, president of Balise Motor Sales
2004: Craig Melin, then-president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Hospital
2003: Tony Dolphin, president of Springboard Technologies
2002: Timm Tobin, then-president of Tobin Systems Inc.
2001: Dan Kelley, then-president of Equal Access Partners
2000: Jim Ross, Doug Brown, and Richard DiGeronimo, then-principals of Concourse Communications
1999: Andrew Scibelli, then-president of Springfield Technical Community College
1998: Eric Suher, president of E.S. Sports
1997: Peter Rosskothen and Larry Perreault, then-co-owners of the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House
1996: David Epstein, president and co-founder of JavaNet and the JavaNet Café

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

Banking and Financial Services Sections
Farmington Bank Makes Its Move into Massachusetts

John Patrick Jr., president and CEO of Farmington Bank

John Patrick Jr., president and CEO of Farmington Bank

John Patrick Jr. says Connecticut-based Farmington Bank’s foray into the Western Mass. market, starting with a commercial-lending office and two anticipated branches, wasn’t exactly planned.

By that, he meant this decision to cross the border — which is becoming far less of a boundary seemingly with each passing year or quarter (more on that later) — was definitely not a line item on a detailed strategic plan penned years or even months ago.

Rather, it was “an opportunity seized,” said Patrick, the institution’s president and CEO, who has presided over a number of well-planned and executed initiatives, including everything from taking the now-$2.5 billion bank public in 2011 to an elaborate territorial expansion effort marked by 10 new branches over the past three and a half years.

Elaborating, he said the merger of equals between United Bank and Connecticut-based Rockville Bank eventually left Farmington with an opportunity to hire a number of seasoned commercial lenders who know the Western Mass. market and have served customers here for years, if not decades, and establish what amounts to a foothold — specifically a small commercial-lending office on Memorial Drive in West Springfield.

“I’d be a fool if I said I knew everything that was going on in Springfield, and that we could manage that market from this area,” he told BusinessWest, referring to Greater Hartford. “That’s why it was important for us, when the opportunity came, to hire the team that we did. We hired a team that lives in Western Massachusetts, grew up there, and has worked for a long time there.”

The bank intends to move forward from its beachhead with branches in West Springfield and East Longmeadow, said Patrick, adding that these locations were carefully chosen — the former for its central location and proximity to major highways, and the latter because of the community’s rapid growth rate, proximity to other high-income towns, and location next to the Connecticut border.

While acknowledging that these specific communities, and the region as a whole, is likely overbanked, Patrick believes there is certainly room for another player, especially one with Farmington’s size — at $2.5 billion, it’s large enough to handle most deals but small enough to be more personal than the regionals and super-regionals — and track record for customer service.

Summing it up, he employed three words that he would return to often — people, technology, and franchise — and said the bank’s recent organic growth has come about directly from investments in each of them.

And he firmly believes that the name of the small Connecticut town (population roughly 25,000) will not be a hindrance to gaining market share in Western Mass., where some brands have been in existence for more than a century.

“Look at TD Bank — most people don’t even know that stands for Toronto Dominion and that this is a Canadian bank,” he said, using that $220 billion institution to get his point across. “It’s not the name on the bank that matters; it’s the people behind it, and we’ve got great people.”

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest examines Farmington’s foray across the border while explaining Patrick’s confidence that the move will be another positive step forward for the institution.

FarmingtonBankLogoBlueGreenHoriz

Branching Out

Patrick said Farmington Bank can trace its roots back to 1851. For most of its existence, its footprint was Farmington — an affluent suburb of Hartford that is home to Otis Elevator and Carrier Corp., among other major businesses — and surrounding communities.

Patrick joined the institution as president and CEO in the summer of 2008, just as the nation’s economy was heading into freefall and the financial-services industry was entering a period of profound change and challenge.

“I joined the company the day after Bear-Stearns collapsed,” he said, referring to the Wall Street investment bank whose demise and government-backed sale to JPMorgan Chase triggered several months of turmoil and bailouts for the banking sector and the start of a new era for institutions of all sizes.

“During that time, we were in the beginning throes of a very significant financial crisis,” he told BusinessWest. “We recognized, as an organization, that the world had changed, not because of anything we had done, or that community banks had done with regard to subprime lending and those types of things. But things had changed dramatically; liquidity in the markets dried up, and it was a very challenging time.

“I thought that, in order for banks to be relevant in the marketplace, or at least in the marketplace that we were playing in, size mattered,” he went on, “and that it was important for us to have a growth strategy, and the board thought the same thing.”

Elaborating, he said it became clear that the bank, then with roughly $950 million in assets, needed to diversify its customer base and expand geographically beyond those roots in Farmington.

As part of that strategy, the bank went public in 2011, raising roughly $180 million in capital, which it has used for what Patrick called smart, controlled growth aimed at making the bank “an economic driver” in the communities it served.

“We recognized that, if we were going to make these investments we needed to make, especially in technology, you need capital — it’s the key to success, especially on the regulatory side of things” he said, while explaining the move to go public. “But we also wanted to make sure we were raising capital for the right reasons — to take that capital and invest it back into loans and the marketplace, which we did.

“We’re not growing just for the sake of growing,” he went on. “The core of our business of lending has to be good assets because, at the end of the day, that’s one thing that can really crater a bank.”

Overall, Patrick said Farmington’s growth strategy will be the same in Western Mass. that it has been in Connecticut, meaning that the goal is to not merely to have a presence in a community or market, but to be that economic engine he described.

“We want to be a good community player — we’re not up there to take; we’re up there to be a partner in the marketplace,” he explained. “I’ve reached out to several leaders and asked how we can do that. I’ve said, ‘tell us how we can help and be a significant partner with you in the market. How can we make a difference in that market?’”

Points of Interest

As he talked about Farmington’s foray into the Western Mass. market, Patrick said it is similar in almost all ways to the bank’s expansion efforts in the Nutmeg State.

Over the past several years, the bank has essentially extended its reach on both sides of the Connecticut River, with 22 branches that reach about 20 miles south from its original base in and around Farmington, he explained. The bank’s latest gambit will effectively do the same, except the direction is north and across a state line that has been all but erased over the past decade or so as institutions on both sides of the border have ceased viewing the state line as a stopsign.

“There’s a border 20 miles to the north of where our headquarters are here,” he explained. “If I go 20 miles to the south, I’m still in Connecticut, and it’s just another geographic and economic region of our state that is contiguous to where we are in Hartford County. There’s no reason in my mind why I can’t think of Western Massachusetts as the same kind of thing.

“To go to West Springfield and Western Massachusetts, I don’t look at that as necessarily another state type of thing,” he went on. “I look at it as being contiguous to our market; that market is very similar to ours.”

That said, Patrick acknowledged that Western Mass. has its own personality, for lack of a better term, and its own business community, and serving it effectively requires knowledge of the market and its players.

And this brings him back to that notion of seizing a unique opportunity— specifically, the hiring of local commercial lenders and other banking professionals well-versed in this market and also with deep portfolios of clients they’ve served, and could potentially serve in the future as representatives of Farmington Bank.

The new additions include Mike Moriarty, senior vice president of Commercial Lending, Joe Kulig, vice president of Commercial Lending, Joe Young, vice president of Commercial lending, Catherine Turowski, vice president of Cash-management Services, Candace Pereira, assistant vice president and commercial loan officer, and all previously with United.

“The professionals we have on board with us have been imbedded in the community and the marketplace and have a tremendous reputation in that marketplace,” he explained. “And their ability to help their customers day to day, provide value-added service for those customers and businesses, and understand where they are today and what their objectives are for the future … those are things that will enable us to be successful.

“They don’t need me telling them who to call, how to do business up there, or those types of things,” he continued. “What I do is reach out to the community to get an understanding of where and how we can be a good community partner and be an economic driver in those marketplaces, in the same way that we’ve been doing it down here.”

And as he surveys the scene in Western Mass., Patrick believes the timing is good for a move into this region.

He noted that, while the planned $800 million casino to be built by MGM in Springfield’s South End and has garnered most of the attention and the press in recent months, there are other encouraging developments across the region.

“There are a lot of positive things happening in Western Massachusetts,” he said. “Set aside the casino piece; there are still a lot of things that are happening there relative to business expansion. It might not be double-digit growth, but there are still positive things taking place.”

The phrase ‘good timing’ also relates to the state of the Western Mass. banking community, said Patrick, noting that recent spate of mergers and acquisitions, including the announced acquisition of Hampden Bank by Berkshire Bank, should create opportunities, especially for smaller community banks.

“Obviously there is some disruption in the market up there, and that’s OK if we are the beneficiary of that disruption — that works,” he said. “Also, we have four new team members who have been entrenched in lending with some of the same borrowers for 10 or 15 years in that marketplace. And, in many cases, borrowers and businesses follow their lenders, as long as the organization they’re working for gives them the tools to succeed.”

Patrick said locations for the first two branches are still being scouted and should be finalized later this month. He said these initial branches will provide solid opportunities to introduce the bank, exemplify its commitment to the market, and begin the process of gaining market share.

“You don’t just throw some people in an office and say, ‘we’re open for business.’ If we’re really committed to the community and committed to the marketplace, we’re going to make other strategic investments,” he said. “We’re going to invest in a physical plant and start out with two hub branch offices, in West Springfield and East Longmeadow, and then grow around those as the marketplace dictates where the growth opportunities can be.”

Patrick said it’s difficult to project if, how, and where Farmington Bank will expand within the Western Mass. market in the years to come. For now, his focus is on the present and building a firm foundation for growth.

“We need to earn our stripes, and we need to prove ourselves; that’s the first order of business,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the institution has been quite successful at doing that within its broader footprint in Connecticut, and he believes that same pattern can be duplicated north of the border.

Although, as he said, it’s not really a border, or boundary, any longer.


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

Banking and Financial Services Sections
ESB’s Acquisition of Citizens National Will Create Needed Efficiencies

Matt Sosik

Matt Sosik says ESB’s acquisition of Citizens National Bank is a response to the challenging conditions within the financial-services sector.

“The status quo will eat you alive — if you allow it to.”

That was the blunt, yet very effective, short answer offered by Matthew Sosik when asked why Easthampton Savings Bank (ESB) took advantage of what he called a rare and unique opportunity to acquire Putnam, Conn.-based Citizens National Bank last month for $51.3 million.

His much longer answer not only addressed the question but summed up what has become an ever-more-challenging operating climate for banks in this region, while also explaining a surge in mergers and acquisitions within the industry, one that he expects will continue in the new year.

“What you’re seeing in the industry right now is simply a response to a confluence of a number of things,” he told BusinessWest. “First, we’ve been in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment, and the margins in the industry have been shrinking for some time now; this is a really hard time, generally speaking, to produce profitability in this business.

“Then you overlay that on a regulatory-compliance environment that is very expensive,” he went on, “and it’s not just those costs. It’s the cost of doing business today; banks are facing the same rising expenses as other industries — healthcare insurance, attaining and retaining top-level performers … there are a lot of increasing costs in this business. Put it altogether, and you’ve got an industry that’s in flux, and also in a never-ending search for efficiencies.”

That search has led to a number of recent mergers, acquisitions, and territorial expansion efforts, including the merger of equals between United Bank and Rockville Bank completed last spring, the announced acquisition of Hampden Bank by Berkshire Bank, a deal expected to be finalized in the second quarter of this year, and the expansion of Connecticut-based Farmington Bank into the Western Mass. market with planned branches in East Longmeadow and West Springfield (see related story, page 23).

And it led ESB to explore and then seize the opportunity to acquire Citizens National, a roughly $330 million bank that essentially put itself up for sale to the highest bidder last summer.

Sosik said he doesn’t know how many suitors there were for Citizens National (that information has been kept confidential), but he believes there were quite a few. ESB eventually prevailed, and its triumph will enable it to expand its presence into Connecticut with five branches, in Putnam, Woodstock, North Grosvenordale, Brooklyn, and Danielson.

More importantly, said Sosik, the gambit will enable ESB to gain needed size and additional regional market share — it will be roughly 33% larger when the deal closes several months from now — without greatly increasing costs.

In short, the deal gives ESB a greater chance to achieve that elusive profitability Sosik mentioned.

“We see this as an opportunity to do a couple of things,” he explained. “First, create an efficient, combined organization — we’re trying to broaden our asset base and keep our expenses controlled; that will produce efficiencies — and also, this is a means to geographic diversification.”

Most importantly, it gives ESB a much-needed opportunity for growth when standing pat is simply not an attractive option, he went on.

“I don’t think you can sit idle in this industry, in the same way that you can’t in any other business,” he explained. “Because every year, our costs go up 4% to 5% or more, and if you’re not growing at that same pace, you’re going backwards. For us, this is an attempt to keep that status-quo wolf from the door.”

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest takes a look at how and why this acquisition came about, and what it means for ESB moving forward.

Checks and Balances

Given ESB’s aversion to the status quo, Sosik said, the institution has long been examining potential opportunities for expansion and growth, both organically and through acquisition.

But organic growth is a considerable challenge in what all those in the industry consider a no-growth region — one that has also seen some new players enter the fray, with more on the way, such as Farmington.

And acquisition opportunities are few and far between for a bank of ESB’s size — it only recently surpassed $1 billion in assets — and geographic playing field, where many players, both publicly owned and mutually held, are considerably larger, or smaller, but still too big to acquire.

So when Citizens National hired a firm to execute a sale last summer, a rare opportunity presented itself.

“We’re always looking at opportunities to continue to grow and prosper, but this particular opportunity was definitely rare and somewhat unique in that we were able to acquire a stock bank of a size that we could afford,” he explained. “We can’t go out and buy a $600 million, $700 million, or $800 million bank, because of simple mathematics; our capital ratio just doesn’t support it.

“So this was a rare opportunity for us, and we treated it as such — we took this very seriously,” he went on. “It really represented a rare combination when you consider the size of the bank and the geographic location; it all made sense.”

Efficiencies will be created as a result of the acquisition, he said, because the institution that will emerge, with roughly $1.4 million in assets, can eliminate redundancies with regard to staff and operations.

“We’re going to look at how we’re going to do each of the functions we need to do,” he explained, “and you can simply do those more efficiently over a wider asset base. You’re going to clearly have operational efficiencies when you consolidate two departments into one in each of the operational areas of the bank.”

Sosik said ESB’s plan is to keep the Citizens National name on the five Connecticut branches because that institution is a known commodity and respected brand in that region, and also because that name will almost certainly resonate more in the Nutmeg State than the name of a small Hampshire County city that most people in Connecticut have never heard of.

“We’re going to try to take advantage of the franchise value they have in that market area — they’re a very well-known and well-respected organization, and we don’t want to lose their identity,” he said, adding that regulatory approval would be needed to keep the name on those branches.

Looking ahead, Sosik said the acquisition of Citizens National will enable Easthampton Savings to build on some momentum generated in 2014, despite those difficult conditions he described earlier.

“This past year turned out to be better than our best-case scenarios,” he said, referring to measures such as assets, deposits, and loan growth. “And that’s because we just grinded it out, doing all the little things you need to do to succeed in this environment.”

The move will also enable the bank to be more competitive at a time, and in a region, where many players are taking similar steps, with further activity possible, if not probable, in the near future, simply because those challenging conditions are not expected to change for the better, at least anytime soon.

“The perfect storm is not likely to abate,” he said. “Given that, the pressures are going to exist on our income statements, and we’re going to continue to have revenue issues on the margin side, and we’re going to continue to have expense pressures. And when you put all that together, you’re going to see certain banks struggle.

“The trend is here for a while — you’re going to see more consolidation in that marketplace,” he went on, adding that such consolidation will improve the overall health of the industry, while also creating opportunities for the remaining community banks in the market because of their smaller size and ability to serve customers in a more personalized fashion.

Bottom-line Improvement

Sosik said he’s not sure if additional acquisitions like this one are in ESB’s future.

That uncertainly stems in large part from the rare nature of such opportunities and an inability to predict just when and how they might come about.

Overall, the bank is not seeking out such opportunities as much as it is reacting to them when they do arise, he told BusinessWest, adding that this approach will continue, because it must, out of necessity.

As he said, the status quo will eat you alive — if you let it.

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

Sections Security
Companies Need to Stay Vigilant Against Hackers

Charlie Christianson

Charlie Christianson says small companies should not assume their size protects them from hacker attacks.

It turns out Target wasn’t the only … well, target.

A year ago, Target announced that hackers had stolen personal information from some 110 million customer accounts. A handful of similarly high-profile breaches followed, including the breach of some 83 million JPMorgan Chase accounts in August and financial data from 56 million Home Depot customers in September.

Other high-profile victims of cybercrime in 2014 included Staples, Healthcare.gov, Neiman Marcus, and, of course, Sony, which endured the release of e-mails that strained relationships across the entertainment industry.

But those are major corporations, household names. The smaller companies that dot Western Mass. don’t have to worry about such attacks, right?

Think again.

“Small to medium-sized businesses tune out because they think, ‘I’m just too small; no one’s going to want to attack me.’ The reality is, attacks on soft targets are going up astronomically every day,” said Charlie Christianson, president and CEO of Peritus Security Partners and CMD Technology Group.

“We want businesses to understand that there’s no magic bullet, no one product or solution that’s going to eliminate all the security risks,” he added. “Defenses need to be layered, and you have to include your people in the process. You’ve got to educate the people using your systems and make sure the culture in your organization is security-centric, and that everyone understands the risks that are out there.”

James Baker, lead security consultant for Peritus, agreed.

“Those are extreme cases,” he said of cases like Target and Sony, “but people shouldn’t have the attitude that ‘it won’t happen to me.’ A lot of hackers go after low-hanging fruit; they’re not focusing on a specific company or organization. Maybe your firewalls are misconfigured, and someone’s doing a scan, looking for certain ports open, and all of a sudden you pop up. It can be done fairly easily. It’s not a direct attack on your organization — it’s about low-hanging fruit, and your fruit is exposed.”

Although awareness is growing of the threats, he added, smaller companies often figure it’s not worth investing scarce resources into hiring a full-time cybersecurity professional or using a consultant.

“They think, ‘we don’t find a significant need for this. Why would we want to budget money on something we don’t feel we need?’” Baker told BusinessWest. “But once people do get compromised, they become very reactionary. Target did not have a CISO [chief information-security officer]; they did not have a security representative in the executive organization. Since this happened, they hired a brand-new CISO and compliance officer, who have that voice in management.

“But at smaller companies, where budgets are tight and personnel are overworked, they just go to the IT person whose responsibility is to keep the organization running, thinking, ‘he understands security.’

“We see that a lot,” Christianson added, “especially in small companies, where one person in the house has a little tech savvy and they’re the guy or woman who handles everything, who wears a whole bunch of hats. They put out the fires as they exist, and although they give it their best shot, security is not what they do. They don’t understand what the best practices are; they don’t understand all the things you need to do to secure an organization.”

For this issue’s focus on security, BusinessWest explores the reasons why that mindset is changing at many companies — sometimes, unfortunately, after the damage is done.

Head in the Cloud

One major change that has complicated cybsersecurity is the fact that so much data is stored in the cloud and shared among remote devices, said Dave DelVecchio, owner of Innovative Business Systems in Easthampton. He believes companies need to take a hard look at how data is shared and where, with the goal of “letting the good guys in and keeping the bad guys out.”

For example, “if you’re a 40-, 50-, or 100-person company, whether you have an internal IT department or outsource to a company like us, what are the appropriate safeguards to put in place if you want to allow remote access on company-owned devices?” he asked. “Now that employees have more technology in their hands, and they want to store their calendars and contacts on their smartphone, what if a device is stolen or falls into the wrong hands?”

Mark Jardim (right, with James Baker)

Mark Jardim (right, with James Baker) says that, when it comes to remote access, companies must strike a balance between employee convenience and protecting data.

The question companies need to ask is what benefit they’re getting from allowing remote sharing of data. “I think it’s important to go back and see what people are trying to accomplish. The goal of working with technology in any business is to improve efficiencies and be able to get more done with less. That goal hasn’t changed in 40, 50 years, since ENIAC, in fact,” he said, referring to the first computer, built in the 1940s.

“Ultimately, what really matters is providing a secure and stable user environment to allow users access to technology to allow them to do their jobs,” he went on. “Employers need to decide whether allowing sensitive data on [remote] devices helps them achieve those efficiencies, and if so, they need to make sure employees understand how to protect that data.”

Baker agreed. “Years ago, there was a perimeter around your infrastructure to protect you. But that perimeter is gone. With the cloud and mobile devices and the need for businesses to virtualize and have information in the cloud, the idea of having a perimeter around your infrastructure to protect your assets is going away,” he told BusinessWest.

More important, he said, is the human element — educating employees in best practices to protect data, whether that’s creating strong passwords and storing them properly or restricting company-wide access to certain records. “Whether they work for a hospital dealing with patient records or they’re handling credit-card information, your employees have got to understand the data they’re working with, how to protect it, and what are the tools in their repertoire to assist in that.”

Mark Jardim, lead engineer for CMD, said companies can’t secure data without knowing where it is. “We see laptops out in the field, and they have Dropbox, and the person is saving all his stuff there, maybe synching the laptop to work, and it’s not encrypted. Now he has all this data, not encrypted, not backed up. What happens if someone steals or hacks the computer?”

One common hacker ploy is to break into a device, encrypt important data, and extort the victim for money — often hundreds or thousands of dollars — to unencrypt it. “A police department in Massachusetts got infected with malware and actually paid the hacker money to get the data back,” Jardim said.

Christianson said his company recently tested a client’s employees by creating an e-mail that looked like it came from an internal source but was actually a faux phishing scam. “When they clicked the link, it took them to a bogus webpage that looked like the organization’s webpage, where they were asked to enter their name and password.” Thirty percent of the recipients gave up their data.

“People opened the e-mail thinking it was from a trusted resource,” Baker said. “That is where education and awareness come into play. You can explain to them what happened and how they were tricked and how they can protect themselves in the future.”

Because of the sophistication of hackers and phishing scams, Jardim concedes that today’s environment is much more of a minefield for companies. “Before, you had a firewall, and everything was behind the firewall. Now you have data everywhere, and you have to find a good balance between user convenience and protecting that data.”

Compliance and Common Sense

DelVecchio noted that companies in regulated industries, like finance and healthcare, face a strict regulatory environment that guides their cybersecurity decisions and, in many cases, forces them to employ compliance and security personnel. But for other types of business, it’s a gray area.

“The industry is a big determining factor in how they define their security and remote-access plan,” he said. “But for any business, regardless of industry, there should be a plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail — it’s an old, silly line, but it’s true in this case.”

Even with the Sony hack, which didn’t necessarily threaten regulated data, “they got into sensitive e-mails,” Christianson said, “and now all these stars are getting this information about what people are saying behind their backs. It affects contract negotiations and all kinds of things.”

Jardim said the fundamentals are still strong passwords, strong firewalls, and lots of education. “The easiest way to get a lot of the risk out is to have good practices in place. When JPMorgan recently got hacked, basically, one of their servers didn’t have two-factor authentication. What’s scary is, JPMorgan spent $250 million on secure systems. But, because of one small mistake, they got violated. Best practices were overlooked.”

Christianson agreed, noting that the security of an entire system is only as good as the weakest point.

“Security companies have to be right 100% of the time,” Baker added. “A hacker only has to be right 1% of the time.”

And the threats come from everywhere, he noted. “Somebody from Canada can hack you as easily as a 15-year-old in the Philippines practicing his hacking skills, or the guy next door. There are no boundaries. And to think you can call some sort of law enforcement to assist in this is a bit naïve. If you’re a Home Depot where billions of dollars are involved, the federal government will get involved, but otherwise, it’s not significant enough in cost. They have much bigger fish to fry.”

For the hacked organization, however, it’s a very big deal. The Target attack cost the company $148 million and affiliated financial institutions $200 million. In Home Depot’s case, those figures were $62 million and $90 million, respectively. For small companies, the cost of cleaning up a breach can be even greater, even though the numbers are much smaller, because budgets are already stretched thin.

“The culture starts at the top, with management or the board of directors,” Baker said. “They play a key role in this. They need to realize this is an important aspect of their organization, that there are consequences if you don’t protect sensitive data.”

In other words, don’t make yourself a target.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Sections Security
Serv-U Locksmiths Knows the Nuts and Deadbolts of This Business

Steve Horowitz

Steve Horowitz says he deals with both clients making long-term security plans and those facing an immediate crisis.

The phone rings at all hours of the day and night, 365 days a year.

Many callers have an immediate crisis, which might range from a business owner who just terminated an employee and needs to have the locks on their building changed, to a supervisor who misplaced the master key to an apartment block that opens hundreds of units, and fears it could get into the wrong hands.

There are also new store managers who want to change the combination to a company safe, and others who discover their door won’t close properly due to damage or wear and tear, and thus cannot be locked.

“About 80% of our business is commercial, and our customers call us whenever they have a security issue and need help resolving it — we’re on the road every day,” said Steve Horowitz, owner of Serv-U Locksmiths in Springfield, adding that the company’s fleet of six mobile vehicles allows it to respond quickly.

But selling and servicing security products is not all Serv-U does. Educating clients is critical to its success because the security industry has changed significantly over the years and continues to evolve. So, in addition to selling locks, keys, and devices, and replacing, rekeying, or repairing them, the company’s employees spend time talking to clients to determine what products will best meet their needs.

Solutions can range from something as simple as a deadbolt doorknob with a key lock to a highly sophisticated security system, to a fire-resistant or burglar-proof safe.

Horowitz told BusinessWest that specific types of security devices, locks, or systems are used in certain industries.

“For example, retail storeowners often have shoplifters leave through their back doors with merchandise,” he explained. “They need a lock with an alarm built in that will go off if someone opens the door, but still allow them to maintain the door as a fire exit. We have products to solve every security issue and fit every situation.”

Hospitals also require special security in areas such as rooms or closets where medications are stored. “If a hospital gave an employee a generic key, it could be copied at any hardware store,” Horowitz said. “So, we have several high-security lock systems that are exclusive to our store.”

He added that, whenever a key to these systems is issued, the person who gets it must sign a registration form. The forms are kept in the store, and a key can be duplicated only by a Serv-U employee after the person requesting it shows their driver’s license and re-signs the registration form, to ensure the signatures match.

“It makes it impossible for them to go to any other locksmith to get another key. It’s a very high level of security used to prevent stealing or ensure safety,” Horowitz went on, noting that special keys are also used in areas that contain hazardous materials within a factory or hospital.

Seven of Serv-U’s 12 employees have worked for the company for more than 20 years and continually take classes to stay current with changes within the industry.

“There is a lot more to security than buying a lock or having a key made, and a lot of customers come to us after they purchase a product and find that it doesn’t resolve their problem,” he added.

Business Evolves

The first Serv-U store was opened in 1954. “My father, Sam Horowitz, and two of my uncles, Ben Horowitz and Jordan Rosenkrantz, opened Serv-U Hardware in Springfield. The original store was part of the True Value Home Center chain, and in addition to other products, they duplicated house and car keys and sold locks to homeowners,” Horowitz said, as he recounted the history of the business.

In the ’70s, the trio recognized the growing demand for security and hired a locksmith, which allowed them to expand their line of products.

During the next decade, Horowitz, his brother Lenny, and four of their cousins took over from their fathers and expanded the operation. “We opened hardware home centers in Northampton, Westfield, and Enfield, which all included full-service lock shops,” Horowitz said. They also added a number of specialty sections, including a home-decorating department that carried everything from paint and wallpaper to unfinished furniture; an automotive supply department; and a Baby Castle that sold infant furniture and accessories.

However, by 2001, big-box stores made it difficult to compete, and the family closed everything except the Springfield store. “My brother Lenny and I owned it, and we kept the lock shop and the decorating center open,” Horowitz said.

Things changed again three months ago, when Lenny moved to Florida and Horowitz became the sole owner. He closed the home-decorating department in October and made the decision to dedicate the business entirely to locksmithing.

Today, Serv-U Locksmiths has a fleet of six fully equipped service vehicles and a long list of commercial customers who have been with the business for decades. “They include banks, hospitals, colleges, manufacturing facilities, property-management companies, federal and state agencies, and housing authorities,” Horowitz said, adding that the company also provides products and services to homeowners.

Its mobile team serves clients within a 30-mile radius of the store, which extends into the Berkshires, Northern Conn., and even south of Hartford. “People call us with a variety of problems, and if someone needs us, we are there, which is how we have built our business and our reputation.”

One thing that sets Serv-U apart from other area locksmiths is its large showroom. “It makes us unique and gives customers the opportunity to talk to a locksmith, see how different products work, and get advice,” said Horowitz. “It also allows them to bring their locks here to be repaired, which can save them money.”

The number of security systems Serv-U carries is extensive, he added. “Originally, locks were only used with keys. Today, keys are still very prevalent, but there are also locks that use combinations or key fobs.”

He explained that the key-fob system is used frequently by businesses due to its sophistication.

“A fob can be programmed to only allow a person to enter a building or area at a certain time or certain day of the week,” Horowitz said. “The idea is to give a company more control over which employees have access to certain parts of their building. For example, someone with a fob who works third shift may not be able to enter the building at other times of the day. Plus, the person managing the fobs can delete them at any time and can also print out an audit trail, which shows not only who entered the building, but what door they used and the time they entered.”

He added that, when a company purchases this type of system, a Serv-U employee goes to their office and trains designated staff members in how to use the software.

“The fobs can be reprogrammed from a computer, which gives a manager control over security even when he or she is not there,” Horowitz went on, adding that many hospitals, banks, and colleges use this type of system.

Educated Choices

Safes are another important security product, and Serv-U sells, services, delivers, and installs models that range from $100 to $3,500. Some are made to secure guns, while others are fire-resistant, burglar-resistant, or both.

But they are not all created equal, and Horowitz said people frequently purchase models that are inadequate for their needs.

“People think ‘safe’ means secure. But it depends on the type of security they are seeking,” he told BusinessWest, noting that, although most safes have undergone testing by Underwriters Laboratory, the length of time they can withstand fire, water, or other elements can differ greatly.

In fact, the materials used to make the safe, as well as the way it is constructed, play an enormous role in whether or not it is likely to protect against theft.

“Although they have locks, fire safes are not constructed to keep burglars out, and safes that protect against burglary have a hole drilled into the floor of the unit that allows the safe to be bolted to the floor of the building, so once the door is closed, it can’t be removed; the materials need to be strong enough to resist drills and other power tools,” Horowitz said. “We see a lot of commercial customers using safes that are not appropriate for their needs. It all goes back to education. There are answers to things people don’t know to ask about and solutions to every security problem.”

In addition, Serv-U also installs and repairs commercial doors. “We carry far more than locks. We also sell door closers, hinges, doors, door viewers, and weather stripping,” Horowitz said, adding that these products are also necessary to ensure security.

The business also serves the public, and the demand for car keys with embedded computer chips is on the rise. “In most cases, we can cut them for less than the car dealers,” Horowitz said. “But since these keys contain anti-theft devices, they typically cost between $25 and $200. And although some people say they don’t want to spend that much, we inform them that, if they lose all of their car keys, we can make new ones, but it will be much more expensive if we have to generate a key from nothing.”

Keys to the Future

Times have changed since Serv-U Hardware first opened its doors. “But our locksmith business has survived for 60 years and will continue to do so; it’s satisfying because we solve problems every day,” Horowitz said, adding that his employees take a proactive stance in continuing their own education as well as educating the public about changes in the industry.

“Our business keeps growing,” he added, “and although I am not sure where the locksmith trade will be in the next 15 years, I can assure you that Serv-U Locksmiths will be there too.”

Health Care Sections
Pediatricians Adjust to a Changing Landscape

Dr. John O’Reilly

Dr. John O’Reilly says communicating with parents about their concerns is one of the most important parts of his job.


Years ago, pediatricians were authority figures, and new parents reverently followed their instructions. But now, these doctors consider themselves partners with parents.

“Thirty years ago, pediatricians told mothers what to do; today, we give advice, but we also have true conversations. We are the experts in medicine, but parents are the experts on their child,” said Dr. Laura Koenigs, interim chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Baystate Children’s Hospital and a pediatrician who specializes in adolescent medicine. “It’s a change that has been good.”

Dr. John O’Reilly agrees. “Most of what happens to children takes place in the home,” said the general practitioner at Baystate Pediatric Associates and assistant professor at Tufts University. “The environment a child lives in has a profound impact on their health, and there are many areas to deal with in addition to medical care. Pediatrics is not just about giving shots. It’s only a small part of what we do.”

Indeed, the relationships that pediatricians form with families are critical to a child’s health, and Dr. Robert Leavitt says knowledge about a family’s history can help pinpoint concerns that may not be overtly expressed. For example, if a child has a persistent cough and the pediatrician knows their grandparent died of lung cancer that started with a cough, it allows them to alleviate fear that the parents may be harboring. “The more we know, the easier it is to help,” he said, adding that he opened Meadows Pediatrics, L.C. in Longmeadow in 1994 after working for Baystate Medical Center and a practice affiliated with the University of Rochester.

Many pediatricians see patients from birth through age 18, while others care for them until they graduate from college or are in their early 20s. “Young adults don’t always know where they will be living, and it can be difficult for them to find a primary-care doctor,” Koenigs explained.

But whether they are dealing with infants or young adults, education plays a critical role in their work as medical advances in areas such as brain development yield new information about topics ranging from the effects of screen time on children (see related story, page 38) to the ways in which poverty impacts health. In addition, doctors discuss developmental and behavioral issues that can be hard to deal with.

“Parenting is not a natural skill. It’s complex, difficult, and stressful, and different kids have different personalities that can be seen from day one. So we talk to parents about appropriate discipline, routines, and other things they are concerned about,” O’Reilly said. “Sometimes we can put a spin on problems that makes it easier for them to deal with. For example, when we explain that a tantrum is a way of showing independence, it helps parents get through the terrible twos.”

Leavitt says it’s also important to realize that children are not small adults.

“Things can be a big problem for them that would not bother adults. If an adult gets the respiratory syncitial virus, they will usually feel like they have a cold. But if a child under age 2 has the virus, they can develop bronchiolitis and may need to be hospitalized,” he said, explaining how it affects their tiny airways. “But kids are a lot of fun and are pretty healthy. They usually get better if they are sick, while adults tend to have more chronic problems and may have self-inflicted conditions.”

Koenigs concurs, and says children are a joy to work with. “I love what I do. It’s interesting, and it keeps me young. Kids have a wide-open outlook on life that makes you look at the world differently.”

Justifiable Concerns

One problem pediatricians face is educating parents who don’t want their child to be immunized against disease.

“Since we haven’t seen most of the diseases we vaccinate against for a very long time, people forget how horrible they are. They don’t remember tetanus and diphtheria or understand that a child can die from chicken pox or pertussis [whooping cough],” Koenigs said.

“Anyone who has seen these diseases would never want their child to get them, and with the exception of smallpox, they are all on the rise,” she went on, adding that a child with measles was treated at Baystate Medical Center last year, and a number of players in the National Hockey League were recently diagnosed with mumps.

Leavitt agrees. “These diseases are preventable, and parents who refuse the vaccinations are not making decisions based on scientific facts,” he said, citing the now-disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent study suggesting a link between vaccines and autism has contributed to plummeting vaccination rates.

O’Reilly agrees that immunizations are more important than ever as the world becomes more interconnected.

Dr. Robert Leavitt

Dr. Robert Leavitt says pediatricians deal with issues ranging from irrational vaccine fears to childhood obesity to decisions about antibiotic use.

“A case of measles in Ireland can result in cases in Massachusetts due to travel between the countries, and parents who refuse to get their children immunized are putting others at risk,” he said. “But if they read scary stories on the Internet that are not scientifically based, it becomes difficult to have a conversation, as you are dealing with fear instead of facts.”

Koenigs said liberal state laws in Massachusetts also play a role in the problem. Although children are required to get certain immunizations before they can attend school, if parents sign a form saying they object to them, the requirement is waived.

Another pressing issue called ‘toxic stress’ can range from domestic violence to child abuse or a contentious divorce with ongoing conflict. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University says prolonged activation of stress-response systems in the body (especially the brain) have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across a person’s lifespan, but the effects often don’t show up until adulthood.

“We don’t understand why this happens, but studies show there is a direct correlation between toxic stress in childhood and high blood pressure, strokes, and obesity in adults. It’s also hard on the heart, even if children appear to have adjusted to the situation,” Koenigs said.

O’Reilly cited other, equally important research on the brain. “Some studies show that language develops rapidly during the first year of life, and the more words a child hears during that time period, the better they do in elementary school,” he told BusinessWest. “We do simple things in our practice such as giving every baby a book and explaining to parents that sitting with a child and reading not only helps with language development, but also helps them to focus, improves their fine motor skills as they turn the pages, and helps them with visual tracking and hearing. Many people think that education happens when children get to kindergarten, but parents can do things to build their child’s brains long before that.”

Environmental Factors

Diet is another issue that can certainly impact health, and Koenigs asks parents if they have enough food to last each month, because many don’t. “Nutrition is a problem for a lot of children who are not getting enough food or the right kind of food,” she said.

Play is also critical to development, and doctors are concerned that many children are falling short in this arena. “Children need to burn off energy, and kids are active in their natural state, which helps them to build muscle and focus better in school,” Koenigs said. “But many schools have gotten rid of recess.”

She added that exercise is also important for teens, and activities such as swimming, kayaking, hiking, bicycling, and kickboxing may interest them.

“If a child is very sedentary, it makes it difficult for them to become physically active when they get older. Exercise and eating habits are often established when children are young, and a lot of that depends on the parents,” Leavitt said, acknowledging that socioeconomic factors play into the equation, and some parents don’t live in neighborhoods where it is safe to let their children play outside.

Gun safety is another problem that affects children’s safety. “Seven to eight children in this country die every day from gunshot wounds,” Koenigs said. “You cannot educate children about guns. They need to be locked up because children are naturally curious.”

Overall, the relationship that parents form with their child’s pediatrician plays a critical role in whether they feel free to share concerns about their personal situations. For example, O’Reilly says many mothers suffer from postpartum depression, and it’s important for them to share how they are feeling because it can affect a baby’s development.

“If a baby is cooing and trying to get an adult to engage in an interaction and the parent is depressed, they may not notice or may have an abnormal response,” he said. “It’s also important for people to tell us if they don’t have enough food or money because things that happen in early childhood can lead to chronic disease in adulthood.”

He added that pediatricians can make referrals and help families access help, which ranges from family therapy to community support groups to early-intervention programs for children who are developmentally delayed.

Springfield suffers from a high rate of asthma, and housing in poverty-stricken neighborhoods can be related to the disease, as children can develop reactions to dust mites and become sensitized to antigens produced from exposure to cockroach droppings.

“Baystate has a program that sends home health workers to people’s apartments to help them improve the environment,” O’Reilly said. “Being a pediatrician involves far more than medicine. We have to do many other things. We are educators, but we are also coaches.”

Leavitt says partnerships mean shared responsibility, and doctors take parents’ requests seriously. “We used to routinely treat ear infections with antibiotics. If it’s a toss-up and the parent really wants the antibiotic, we can give it to them unless it is medically inappropriate,” he said, citing just one example. “But if you have developed a good relationship with the parents, they are more likely to agree to a let’s-wait-and-see approach.”

Moving Forward

Trust also comes into play when patients reach their teenage years. As children mature, pediatricians typically talk to them alone to provide them with the freedom they need to ask questions.

“It’s my job to help them navigate their way through adolescence and give them factual advice,” Koenigs said, explaining that, unless it becomes clear that someone is hurting them or they are in danger of hurting themselves or another person, these conversations are kept confidential. “Our job is not to drive a wedge between them and their parents. We are simply another link in their support system.”

Leavitt concurs, and says teens have told him they are depressed. “We see a lot of mental-health issues in teens. There is a lot of peer pressure in middle and high school, and as their social world becomes more complex, it can lead to anxiety or depression.”

Local pediatricians say they enjoy watching their patients mature. “We get excited about helping children get a good start in life and watching them grow through good times and bad,” Koenigs said.

Leavitt agreed. “We get to see how proud their parents are of their accomplishments. Plus, it’s rewarding to see medical problems get resolved or watch a child overcome challenges. It’s also rewarding to watch kids graduate from our practice and return to us with their own kids or go out into the world and do big things,” he said.

But the road to adulthood contains many roadblocks, and parents bring a variety of issues to the examining table.

“Being a doctor is like gardening; we plant seeds to weed out things that will be detrimental and help parents to make good choices,” O’Reilly said. “Sometimes being a pediatrician is pure medicine, and sometimes it’s purely behavioral. But our goal is help families so their children grow into healthy adults.”

Health Care Sections
Child-development Experts Worry About the Effects of Screen Time

Dr. Jack Fanton

Dr. Jack Fanton says the increasing time kids are spending in front of screens may be coming at the expense of real-world social skills.

Television, computer, and smartphone screens shouldn’t replace human contact, doctors say, but increasingly, they are doing just that. And the results may be surprising to some.

“In our clinical practice, we definitely see an overrepresentation of children who have difficulty with handling limits on screen time, especially when parents aren’t enforcing them,” said Dr. Jack Fanton, medical director of the Child Partial Hospital Program at Baystate Medical Center.

“We see children who have too much screen time, or devices are being brought into their rooms and are at the bedside and interfere with sleep continuity,” he added. “And lots of anecdotal evidence and research suggests this increased screen time is coming at the expense of real-world social skills.”

He cited a study at UCLA, published recently in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggesting that sixth-graders who went five days without exposure to technology were significantly better at reading human emotions than kids who had regular access to phones, televisions, and computers.

The researchers studied two groups of California sixth-graders, sending one group to an outdoor education camp, where they had no access to electronic devices, and making no changes to the media diet of the other group.

At the beginning and end of the study period, both groups were shown images of 50 faces and asked to identify the feelings being modeled. The researchers found that the students who went to camp were significantly better at reading facial emotions and non-verbal cues than the students who had access to their devices.

“Even after just five days, there was a measurable decline in their ability to recognize the emotions expressed on the faces, compared to a group of kids without any screen time,” Fanton said.

The study’s senior author conceded that the camp experience itself, fostering personal connections with other people, probably boosted that group’s scores as much as ditching technology, and she would like to expand the study to retest the camp group again, after they went home and spent five days with their smartphones and tablets. But the implication is clear that there is a measurable difference between human interaction and screen time.

And that worries pediatric experts who worry that a generation of kids may be growing up lacking sufficient empathy or emotional maturity.

“We’re acutely aware of how important it is to promote healthy social skills, and that emotional intelligence predicts more favorable outcomes than academic or intellectual intelligence,” Fanton told BusinessWest. “With cultural trends toward decreasing recess, music, and art, and then increasing screen time, neuroscientists worry that children are not exercising the circuits in the brain that are involved in emotional regulation. When kids are not involved in independent play and creative activities, when they’re not responding to social nuances, cues, and direct feedback, they’re not exercising the circuits involved in helping them nurture emotion and self-esteem.”

Healthy Choices

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has long advocated that young people up to age 18 restrict their screen time — including TV viewing, Internet use, video games, tablets, and smartphones — to no more than two hours per day, and that children 2 and under have no screen time at all.

“It’s not that media itself is bad, evil, or a pox on society,” Fanton said. “It’s that it’s coming at the expense of social needs and developmental processes critical to later success.”

The AAP cites studies that connect excessive media use with obesity, lack of sleep, school problems, aggression, and other behavioral issues, although Fanton stressed that any one of these correlations does not prove causation. Still, pediatricians fret over statistics showing that the average 8- to 10-year-old spends nearly eight hours a day with different media, and older children and teens spend more than 11 hours per day — much more than the recommended two hours.

Meanwhile, children and teens who have a TV in their bedroom spend even more time with media, and about 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds own cell phones, with nearly all teenagers adept in text messaging. The key, according to the AAP, is not banning all this activity, but directing it into a considered strategy.

“A healthy approach to children’s media use should both minimize potential health risks and foster appropriate and positive media use. In other words, it should promote a healthy ‘media diet,’” said Dr. Marjorie Hogan, co-author of the AAP policy (see sidebar, page 39). “Parents, educators, and pediatricians should participate in media education, which means teaching children and adolescents how to make good choices in their media consumption.”

Dr. Robert Leavitt, a Longmeadow pediatrician, tells parents that it is not a good idea to put a TV in a child’s bedroom, and advises them to set limits on cell-phone use before they give the child their own device. If they don’t do this initially, he explained, it may become difficult to enforce rules later on, and their teen may become sleep-deprived as they respond to non-stop text messages from peers.

Some parents will no doubt argue that familiarizing their kids with the latest technology is only preparing them for the world they will inhabit as adults, but Fanton said this philosophy ignores more critical needs.

“I would remind parents that kids are not little adults. Kids are still developing, and it’s not automatic they will develop these social skills as adults; they acquire these skills through innumerable hours and exchanges with other people.”

And there are societal consequences to raising a generation of young people who lack the ability to empathize and relate emotionally to their peers — skills that come in handy when dealing with bullying, for example.

“No one’s saying that not spending time with devices will help kids treat each other better,” he told BusinessWest, “but we want to promote a culture of tolerance and respect, where kids spend time with each other, and screen time interferes with that.”

Media and Message

The amount of time spent with screens is one issue, but content is another. Positive media can educate children — not just with hard facts, but in empathy, racial tolerance, and a wide range of interpersonal skills. However, it can also desensitize them to sexuality, violence, and negative attitudes.

Fanton cited a study conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, claiming that less than half the time kids between 2 and 10 spend in front of media is spent on educational programming. “It’s still being used for entertainment.”

Dr. Victor Strasburger, co-author of the AAP policy on screen time, noted that, “for nearly three decades, the AAP has expressed concerns about the amount of time that children and teenagers spend with media, and about some of the content they are viewing. The digital age has only made these issues more pressing.”

Dr. Laura Koenigs, a Springfield pediatrician who specializes in adolescent medicine, notes that violent programs, including cartoons, create their own host of issues. “Children who are exposed to violence experience long-term effects from watching it, even if it is not real,” she said, adding it can lead to aggressive play.

Still, Fanton said, some parents willingly accept a heavy dose of media exposure to the negative influences just outside their door.
 

For children in urban neighborhoods, for example, “the parents figure, ‘they’re not out on the street, getting themselves into trouble, so what’s the harm?’ Parents see these devices as safe. We have lots of families here in Springfield in these urban settings, and they don’t want their children in the neighborhood after school. Yes, it’s tricky.”

On the other hand, social media has been a boon to families who have moved away from their extended social supports, and their devices become proxies for face-to-face interaction. That’s why parents need to set their own limits, Fanton said.

“The truth is, we’re all addicted. It’s not going away. Kids are modeling at a fundamental level what they see us doing,” he said, noting that singling out an obese child and cutting off unhealthy snacks is likely to be counterproductive if the whole family isn’t modeling good nutrition.

“The same is true for screen time,” he said. “On one hand, there has never been more content, more ease of access through all these different platforms. But it’s up to adults to say, ‘we’re modeling this for the kids, too.’ They’re not little adults; they have different developmental needs that parents need to monitor and police and promote.”

In other words, put down that smartphone and engage with your child. It’s never too late to make emotional development a priority.

Take These Steps to Create a Family Plan for Healthy Media Use

While media consumption can contribute to health risks, kids can still take positive lessons from media. The key is to teach children to make healthy choices.
To that end, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the following tips for creating a family plan for healthy media use.

• Take into account not only the quantity, but the quality and location of media use. Consider TVs, phones, tablets, and computers. The rules should be written down and agreed upon by all family members.

• Screens should be kept out of kids’ bedrooms.  Insitute a ‘media curfew’ at mealtime and bedtime, putting all devices away or plugging them into a charging station for the night.

• Excessive media use has been associated with obesity, lack of sleep, school problems, aggression, and other behavior issues. Limit entertainment screen time to no more than two hours per day.

• For children under 2, substitute unstructured play and human interaction for screen time. The opportunity to think creatively, problem solve, and develop reasoning and motor skills is more valuable for the developing brain than passive media intake.

• Take an active role in your children’s media education by co-viewing programs with them and discussing values.

• Look for media choices that are educational or teach good values, such as empathy and racial tolerance. Choose programming that models good interpersonal skills for children to emulate.

• Be firm about not viewing content that is not age-appropriate in terms of sex, drugs, violence, and language. Movie and TV ratings exist for a reason, and online movie reviews can also help parents to stick to their rules.

• The Internet can be a wonderful place for learning, but it also is a place where kids can run into trouble. Keep the computer in a public part of your home, so you can check on what your kids are doing online and how much time they are spending there.

• Discuss with your children that every place they go on the Internet may be ‘remembered,’ and comments they make will stay there indefinitely. Impress upon them that they are leaving behind a ‘digital footprint.’ They should not take actions online that they would not want to be on the record for a very long time.

• Become familiar with popular social-media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You may consider having your own profile on the social-media sites your children use. By ‘friending’ your kids, you can monitor their online presence. Preteens should not have accounts on social-media sites.

• Talk to them about being good ‘digital citizens,’ and discuss the serious consequences of online bullying. If your child is the victim of cyberbullying, it is important to take action with the other parents and the school if appropriate. Attend to children’s and teens’ mental-health needs promptly if they are being bullied online, and consider separating them from social-media platforms where bullying occurs.

• Make sure kids of all ages know that it is not appropriate or smart to send or receive pictures of people without clothing or sexy text messages, no matter whether they are texting friends or strangers.

• If you’re unsure of the quality of the media diet in your household, consult with your children’s pediatrician on what your kids are viewing, how much time they are spending with media, and privacy and safety issues associated with social media and Internet use.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Health Care Sections
Children’s Hospitals Begin Unique Clinical Collaboration

Dr. John Schreiber

Dr. John Schreiber says the collaboration between Baystate Children’s Hospital and Connecticut Children’s Hospital will create efficiencies and allow the hospitals to hire more specialists.

Dr. John Schreiber says that, while there’s some geography involved in the recently launched collaboration between Baystate Children’s Hospital and Connecticut Children’s Hospital — specifically the state border and roughly 22 miles between the two facilities — this somewhat unique initiative is much more about mathematics.

Elaborating, Schreiber, chief physician executive at Baystate Health, said this effort was sparked by numbers, specifically those involving the number of children on both sides of the border who need the services of a pediatric specialist, and the number of such specialists available to provide care.

Also, it’s about bringing the populations of the two areas — roughly 750,000 in Greater Springfield and about 1 million in Greater Hartford — together to create a patient pool that warrants the hiring of specialists in many areas.

“You could have specialists who live in between the two children’s hospitals who could serve both populations,” said Schreiber as he talked about how this collaboration could and probably will manifest itself. “And that would allow us to hire more specialists because the populations are bigger.”

Dr. Fernando Ferrer, chief physician executive at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, agreed. He said the collaboration will allow both facilities to maximize asset utilization while greatly improving access to care by essentially bringing the physicians to the patients instead of forcing the patients’ families to travel to the physicians.

“There is a driving force right now in the healthcare marketplace to look for economies and efficiencies in the context of patient- and family-centered care,” he told BusinessWest. “The reality is that one of the guiding principles in family-centered care is that you make the care readily accessible and that you care for families and children close to home.

“It is better to have the subspecialists travel to the kids than have the families travel to the subspecialists,” he went on. “When you put the families and kids first, that’s really the best thing, as opposed to the normal territoriality where you have a program, I have a program, and they’ll compete.”

The collaborative effort will begin with a combined pediatric neurosurgery department — an initiative still in its early stages, said Ferrer — and likely expand to other areas, including ophthalmology (specifically eye care for premature infants), pediatric pulmonology, and pediatric urologic surgery, all areas where current provider shortages can make getting care difficult for patients and families.

Although this collaborative initiative is in some ways unique because it involves hospitals in different states and also involves children’s facilities, it is reflective of a movement within the healthcare industry to more effectively allocate resources to improve population health and continue a paradigm shift in the provision of healthcare from treating patients (in this case, children) when they’re sick to focusing on keeping them well, said those we spoke with.

“All across the healthcare environment right now, there are efforts to see what we can do together to become more efficient and serve the patient better,” said Schreiber. “Those discussions are everywhere, all across the country.”

And in many cases, cross-state collaborations like this one are more effective, potentially, because the institutions in question are usually not in a competitive situation.

“If you’re close together, as we are, you can create collaborations that serve both populations of patients with greater breadth and depth,” he said. “That’s really our intent with Connecticut Children’s, and that’s what is so exciting about our affiliation agreement with them.”

For this issue and its focus on pediatrics, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the collaboration between the two hospitals and how it is expected to improve access to care — and overall population health — on both sides of the state line.

No Boundaries on Potential

Schreiber told BusinessWest that discussions concerning the collaboration between the hospitals began several months ago, as officials at both institutions simultaneously realized the need for — and the potential benefits from — an affiliation agreement.

“There had always been good connections between Baystate and Connecticut Children’s because some of the faculty here trained there, and we also send people down there to train,” he noted. “We had been talking about trying to grow some of the specialty services for children in the area, and Connecticut Children’s seemed so logical because they were so close.”

Those discussions eventually focused on ways to meld the patient populations in Western Mass. and Northern Conn. into one, and then devise the most effective ways to provide care to that population, and bring benefits to patients, families, and pediatricians alike, said Ferrer.

“By working together, we can guarantee these people access close to home to some very sophisticated care in some specialties, including some where there are shortages nationwide,” he explained, noting that this is the first significant attempt at collaboration between the facilities. “That was the driving force behind this. There is a cultural similarity between the faculty of both facilities, so it makes looking at this as a team approach very appealing.”

When asked how this relationship would work and how those various constituencies would benefit, Ferrer and Schreiber started with changes and improvements likely to come about in the field of neurosurgery.

Pediatric neurosurgeons are in short supply, said Ferrer, adding that some regions of the country don’t have any. The problem is compounded when service populations are not large enough, and demand for services not steady enough, to fully support such specialists.

Through the collaborative initiative, the two hospitals are essentially providing specialists for a region (the Connecticut River Valley) rather than an individual institution.

“Rather than hiring two people for Baystate, when, quite frankly, the volume might not be there, or vice versa, hiring two people to be at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center for coverage purposes but not having the bodies there, we can do something that makes better sense,” he explained. “The more efficient use of the resources is to look at the region as a whole. You say, ‘these are the resources we need to take care of this whole population, and let’s have these individuals work collaboratively, so their overlapping skill sets can contribute, rather than having them work separately.’

“This would be a two-site model, because this is not about moving children from one area to another,” he went on. “With the two-site model, children in Massachusetts can get care in the Springfield area, and children in Northern Conn. can receive care in the Hartford area. The neurosurgeons would be the ones to move to those clinical locations and provide the care there.”

Such an operation, for lack of a better term, is something that will evolve over the next several months, said Schreiber, adding that there are a number of logistical matters to be worked out. And while that evolutionary process plays itself out, the two hospitals will look to extend that model to other areas, such as urology, pulmonology, and ophthalmology.

In the meantime, the facilities will explore ways in which the planned collaboration can be extended beyond clinical care delivery through possible expansion of a new pediatric accountable-care organization (ACO) being developed in Western Mass. by Baycare Health Partners, Baystate’s affiliated physician-hospital organization.

“We’re looking to create an ACO that would give the primary-care pediatricians in the region a better infrastructure to manage complicated children, to improve quality of care, and look at a population of children with an eye toward better prevention,” he explained. “We’re looking to work with Connecticut Children’s to create that model across the entire Connecticut River Valley, and we need to join forces to have enough pediatricians in the network to make it work.”

Another area of potential will be developing research collaboration between the hospitals in order to expedite discovery and treatment of pediatric conditions, said Schreiber, adding that, as needs arise, new avenues for working together will be explored.

Not Child’s Play

When asked if there is a model that this collaborative effort is based upon, both Schreiber and Ferrer said there are similar affiliations, most of them involving care for adults, but in many ways, this initiative is unique.

“I think we’re creating our own model,” said Schreiber. “There are lots of models with adult hospitals, but there are fewer children’s hospitals, and we’re honestly trying to create a new model, one aimed at serving the children better and also serving the primary-care pediatricians better.”

If they are successful in their efforts, the two hospitals will essentially erase the state line, create one service region, and bring new efficiencies at a time when changing conditions are making them a necessity.


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

Building Permits Departments

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

AGAWAM

Corbin & Tapases Accountants
711 Silver St.
$19,000 — New roof

Friendly’s
19 Springfield St.
$32,000 — Interior renovation

Paul Martin
153 Bowles Road
$60,000 — Install new bathrooms and new breakroom

AMHERST

Brode Block, LLC
69 S. Pleasant St.
$20,000 — Install 71 replacement windows

Jones Property, L.P.
1 Pray Street Olde
$4,000 – Install commercial door into existing space

WD Cowles Inc.
68 Cowles Road
$47,000 — Interior renovations for new hair salon

CHICOPEE

City of Chicopee
274 Front St.
$11,000 — Slate repairs

Falls View Association
76-88 West Main St.
$20,000 — Strip and re-roof

GREENFIELD

Bryan Hobb
576 Leyden St.
$18,000 — Exterior renovations

O Ice, LLC
200 Mohawk Trail
$17,000 — Interior renovations

PALMER

Baystate-Wing
40 Wright St.
$10,000 — Alterations to conference rooms

Haley’s Grain Store
1103 Park St.
$4,500 — New roof

Sergio Dias
1 Shearer St.
$50,000 — Renovations to apartment building

SOUTH HADLEY

Bell Atlantic
Amherst Road
$18,000 — New cell tower

Verizon
274 Granby Road
$12,500 — New antennas

SOUTHWICK

Ralph DePalma
691 College Highway
$14,000 — Renovation for funeral home

SPRINGFIELD

Basketball Hall of Fame
800 West Columbus Ave.
$35,000 — Renovation to existing office space

Chestnut Street Middle School
355 Plainfield St.
$1,360,000 — New roof

Donna Bisson
175 State St.
$10,500 — Exterior renovations to fire escape

Edmund Etti
263/265 Union St.
$4,500 — Exterior renovations

Key Point Partners, LLC
1290 St. James Ave.
$625,000 — Dining and bathroom renovation in restaurant

Pynchon Associates
1380 Main St.
$7,200 — Interior renovations

WESTFIELD

FL Roberts and Company
90 South Maple St.
$10,000 — Exterior renovation

George T. Abdow
311 East Main St.
$20,000 — Interior renovation