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How One Insurance Agency Has Benefited from Its Premium on Health and Wellness

From left, Bill Trudeau, Christine Rousseau, and Judy Davis

From left, Bill Trudeau, Christine Rousseau, and Judy Davis say employees of ICNE have embraced the challenge to change their lifestyles, from improved diet and exercise to smoking cessation.

It began as a way for the Insurance Center of New England to practice what it preaches when it comes to the subject of health and wellness. But the comprehensive initiative that involves everything from smoking-cessation efforts, to an organized walking program, to an ever-present bowl of fruit in the company’s kitchen, has become part of the culture at ICNE and a model for other businesses to follow.

By GEORGE O’BRIEN

Bill Trudeau calls it the “full Big Brother.”
That’s the Orwellian phrase he used to describe a company’s health and wellness plan that goes a little too far in terms of what it asks, or demands, of employees.
“You don’t want to go to extremes,” he said, meaning that employees don’t want to be made to feel as if they’re being watched, monitored, or judged by the way they respond to a plan.
Avoiding the Big Brother effect has been one of the goals set by the Insurance Center of New England as it implements a plan set in motion last fall, said Trudeau, partner and chief operating officer. Overall, the mindset is to keep things simple, he explained, and also make it easy for people and have the program become part of the culture at ICNE.
About eight months after the so-called Health & Wellness Journey started at the company’s offices in West Springfield and Gardner, all of that is being accomplished — and more. Or, as the case may be, less.
Indeed, there have been several recognized benefits: many people have quit smoking, and others are working on the problem and making progress; several employees are eating more fruit and walking regularly — and as a result are losing weight; and, already, there are some cost savings in terms of health-insurance premiums. But there’s something else, and it wasn’t exactly expected — a surge in employee morale that has paralleled the path taken by the program.
There are many components to the ICNE initiative, said Christine Rousseau, Human Resources Manager for ICNE. Some are rather involved, such as the creation of a smoke-free work environment (much more on that later), while others, such as the fruit basket placed in the kitchen, the walking program that many have joined, and efforts in the realm of education, such as a health and wellness library, are quite simple.
They are also relatively inexpensive (some require no upfront cost whatsoever), and they have been implemented to be minimally invasive on one’s work regimen and daily schedule.
“We run a business here, and service to our customers is very important,” said Trudeau. “I would say that 99% of this doesn’t interfere in our business in any way — it’s not a hugely invasive kind of program.
“There are some quick surveys, there’s fruit in the kitchen, some walking during lunch; it’s not like people have to say, ‘sorry, I can’t do that now, I have the health and wellness thing.’ Everything happens on the fringes, at lunch and in the regular flow of the office.”
For this issue, BusinessWest takes an indepth look at ICNE’s new program, and how it can be emulated by other companies to make their workplaces healthier and, in many respects, happier.

No Butts About It
Trudeau said the spark for ICNE’s program came last fall as the company was reviewing health insurance plans, both for its employees and its clients’ staffs.
It was decided, said Judy Davis, senior vice president of the company’s Employee Benefits Division, that it would be somewhat hypocritical of an agency that stresses the importance of wellness to those clients not to practice what it preaches.
Much of the early legwork came in the creation of a smoke-free work environment, said Rousseau, noting that the company worked in conjunction with Health New England — which had gone entirely smoke-free years earlier and has assisted many other companies with taking that route — to put a program in place.
There are several components to the smoke-free initiative, said Rousseau, including a new policy template stating that there is no smoking on company-paid time, and also a non-smoking affidavit to be signed by all new hires. There would be smoking-cessation reimbursements ($300 annually), and existing employees would be given a year to kick the habit.
Both Rousseau and Trudeau were anticipating some resistance from the dozen or so long-time smokers at the company (despite their best efforts to avoid the Big Brother issue), but to their surprise and relief, there was none. Indeed, a survey of employees revealed not only a lack of opposition, but the strong sense that employees were ready and willing to quit.
“This was scary; I thought there were a few people, diehards, who would really flip out,” said Trudeau. “But they didn’t. I think there was one person who said he just wasn’t going to quit smoking; the rest were ready.”
Creating a smoke-free environment not only made good common sense, but it was a big part of that ‘practice what you preach’ mindset, he continued.
“We sell health insurance … and if you happen to come to our back door and cross paths with three smokers, well, there’s a disconnect there,” Trudeau explained. “We also sell homeowners’ insurance, and people’s houses burn down from smoking mishaps. The whole thing is not something we want to be supportive of. We wanted to be solution-driven on this matter, and this was a nice solution.
“To be good examples ourselves, and say ‘we’re not just talking about it, we do it,’ is a real positive,” he went on. “But at the same, we can also be guinea pigs and find out what works and what doesn’t work ourselves so we can further relate real experience to people.”
While smoking was the natural place to start, those spearheading the health and wellness initiatives knew there would be other target areas, and they conducted a so-called health risk assessment to determine what they should be.
That assessment, which involved 30 participants and thus provided a corporate-wide picture, revealed several areas of concern. For example:
• 97% of employees didn’t eat the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables;
• 55% were carrying too much weight;
• 29% had low-fiber diets;
• 13% had high blood pressure;
• 26% did not use good lifting techniques;
• 19% would drink and drive occasionally; and
• 45% did not exercise regularly.
With these numbers in hand, organizers then set about targeting some of the next steps, and decided to focus on cardiovascular issues, cancer prevention and education, accident management, and generating lifestyle changes.

Fruits of Their Labor
One of the first steps was the fruit bowl. It is filled every Monday morning, and often will have to be restocked long before week’s end. It is positioned in the kitchen, usually between the door and the snack machine, and thus it is giving many employees cause to stop, think, and spend 25 cents on a banana or plum instead of a dollar for a candy bar, said Davis.
Another step was an organized walking campaign called Every Step Counts, which kicked off May 1. Participants, usually going in groups, will devote some or all of their lunch break to walking in the area surrounding the company’s current headquarters on Park Street in West Springfield, near the expansive town green.
Pedometers have been given to all participants, and their collective steps are converted into miles, which are then used to chart the group’s progress in a so-called ‘virtual walk across America.’
Soon after the program started, the West Springfield group crossed over the Massachusetts border on this ‘virtual walk,’ said Jim Buker, a senior account executive in ICNE’s Employee Benefits Division, marathon runner, and fitness guru. Within a few weeks, the group had reached Florida. It then turned west, reaching San Antonio (tacks are placed on a map to show milestones), and then San Diego, before heading north to Washington State. It is now cutting back east toward Chicago.
Walking has become part of the culture at the company, said Rousseau, adding that this phenomenon has more than health benefits. Indeed, groups from the agency are now participating more often in fund-raising walks for nonprofit groups such as the Easter Seals.
Meanwhile, education is another area of focus, with program organizers working hard to put information into the hands of employees, through the in-house library of books and magazines that employees can borrow, as well as weekly company intranet health and wellness tips and news. One recent posting trumpeted the benefits of brown rice rather than white rice when it comes to lowering one’s risk for diabetes.
With the plan now in place for more than seven months, a focus on better health and wellness is becoming part of the fabric of the company, said Buker. But the focus on better health extends well beyond the eight-hour work day, he noted, which is the program’s real goal.
“The wellness program is starting to shift the culture — people are really get into it,” he said. “We started the walking program May 1. Already, two people have entered walking road races — one walked it, the other ran it — and a third … she’s out there running two miles a day now.”
The initial health risk assessment served to provide a baseline of information for program administrators, said Buker, adding that this snapshot, as he called it, helped decide which specific initiatives to put in place. In another six months, another snapshot will be taken to show what kind of progress has been achieved, and determine what the next steps might be.
“After a year, you take another corporate picture,” he said, adding that he expected it will reveal improvement with many of those risk factors. “We’ll certainly see a decrease in that 97% number on fruits and vegetables, for example. If we keep plugging away at that, if we keep talking about it, then hopefully we can bring that number down to 80% or lower.”
Exercise, and the need to do more of it, will likely always be a risk factor to be addressed, said Rousseau, adding that this need is already shaping plans for ICNE’s new corporate headquarters, to be created in the former Oaks banquet hall in Agawam. That facility will likely have a cardio room and shower facilities, she said, to encourage employees to take needed steps — literally and figuratively — to improve heart health.
“That will probably have a huge impact on the level of exercise, because it will make it more convenient for people,” she said. “Instead of just a walk, people can get on a cardio machine and give their heart a workout.”

Food for Thought
More than half a year after it was started, ICNE’s health and wellness program is “filtering its way into the subconscious,” said Trudeau, when asked to gauge the broad impact.
“In other words, people are thinking twice about that tradition of stopping and picking up a box of two dozen donuts for the office,” he explained. “And they’re saying, ‘jeez, do we really need a cake and three gallons of ice cream to celebrate someone’s birthday?’ It’s starting to bleed its way into the company a little bit.”
That’s what happens, he concluded, when a plan is simple, employees’ input is valued, and there’s nothing approaching the ‘full Big Brother.’
And that’s the key lesson that other companies can learn.

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

Sections Supplements
Demographics, Economics, and Going Green Impact How the Office Looks and Feels

Ron Gordenstein

Ron Gordenstein says many of today’s offices are designed to facilitate a new culture of collaboration.

With the modern workplace operating much differently than it has in the past, today’s office spaces are steadily being reinvented from the inside out. To thrive in these changing times, office-design professionals have to stay atop trends ranging from environmental concerns to a shift away from cubicles to a more collaborative work culture, and create workspaces that reflect and facilitate these changes.

It’s no longer as simple a job as picking out the color of paint on the walls and the type of carpet in the hallway, says Debra Freedman.
As senior designer for Corporate Designs NE, she and Maria Czupryna, vice president of operations, said that interior design comes with an ever-increasing and shifting set of demands for the 21st-century office.
Many of these changes are strictly aesthetic, they said, with professional spaces mirroring current residential design. “There’s more of a ‘Pottery Barn’ quality to people’s aesthetics now,” Freedman explained.
But the modern office is reinventing not only the look based on current designs found in shelter magazines, but the very way that business within those walls is conducted.
Mary Wilczynski, design principal of Spec’s Design in Springfield, said that “jobs are changing so rapidly, and there’s a lot of movement within an organization. Current design reflects those needs.”
The days of the Dilbert-style cubicle are a thing of the past, said Ron Gordenstein, referring to that comic-strip portrayal of life in a droning example of corporate America. As president of Broadway Office Interiors of Springfield, Gordenstein said that his firm designs efficient and smaller work areas, “either to fit more people into that square footage,” he explained, “or to allow collaborative areas to happen, so that the business doesn’t have to find larger real estate.”
Such redesign of the nature of the workplace maintains an important concept of flexibility, he said, and furnishings and partitions are requested to maintain that goal. Reversible, L-shaped returns on desks and other modular concepts are a good means to allow furniture to be moved around the office.
“Let’s face it,” he said. “Office furniture is expensive. You want to make sure you’re making the best possible investment.”
Many trends have been introduced into the modern workplace, not the least of which is the concept of making the office greener. While finishes and furnishings can assist in a non-toxic environment, architect Steve Jablonski looks outside of the box — at the ‘box’ itself.
Using the term “adaptive reuse,” Jablonski is a local proponent of renovating existing, older structures to become contemporary workplaces. There are challenges to integrating high-tech and code-compliant infrastructure to these buildings, but he is committed to seeing these projects as the best possible use of resources.
For this issue, BusinessWest spoke to several design professionals to help get a better look at the specifics of the modern office, and how that institution is being reinvented, from the inside out.

Opening the Floor
Wilczynski said that, for the first time in her 25 years in the industry, some major changes are underway in how offices are designed, furnished, and, in some cases, how they operate.
“We used to have private offices in cubicles,” she explained, “but what we’re now seeing are those cubicle heights coming down, a lot more collaboration with project-driven teams, and less distinction between workstation designs. Before you’d have a supervisor, a manager with two side chairs, a technical person with one side chair, a data-entry person with a very small workstation. But now that footprint of the workstation is getting smaller and is being more universally designed.”
At Broadway Office Interiors, Gordenstein agreed that the changing nature of work practices has dictated a significant change in the workplace itself. He said that one of the most common terms he uses in meetings with clients is ‘collaboration.’
“When I first started in this industry,” he said, “I don’t think we ever used that term in a sales presentation. But today, I often ask, ‘tell me how your staff works with each other, and how they interact. How do they collaborate with one another to solve the problems of your business?’”
While this phenomenon would seem to be the style of creative-based offices and smaller boutique firms, Gordenstein said it is becoming common across all industries and among businesses of all sizes. “Companies aren’t staffed the way they once were,” he continued. “You have fewer people doing the same amount of work. In many cases there’s also a crossing over of traditional job descriptions. No longer does Mary do this and John does that. Now Mary and John do the work of three or four people.
“Inherently you have a need for better communication,” he added.
To illustrate this point, Gordenstein referred to one of his larger clients, a firm with more than 200 employees. Everyone in the office, from the president on down, sits within a space framed by panels that are 42 inches high.
“You can’t help but see, hear, and feel everything that’s going on around you,” he said.
Elise Irish of Spec’s Design added that, for companies operating with less staff, employee retention is more important than ever. “If you want to hold onto them, and you want them to do as much as possible, then you’ve got to give them the right environment.”
Across the table, Wilczynski added, “especially with Gen X and Gen Y, who might look to move through companies more rapidly, employers recognize that they have to design to a younger population.”
Addressing that workforce, with younger ages and attitudes, Wilczynski said that more ‘fun’ is being introduced to the office environment. Employers strive to fashion workspaces that closely mirror a more residential formula, with lounge areas and designated areas for staff to congregate and interact.
Explaining the benefits of such an office, Irish said that “you spend more time in your work environment than you really do in your home, and I think employers are aware of that. If you’re in a creative environment, you are more likely to think outside of the box.”
To help create a workplace that is less stressful, employers are looking for more ways to look after the health and well-being of their staff. Freedman says that in-house gyms have become more common, and one of her rural clients landscaped hiking trails around the facility.
“It’s very important for the employer to satisfy the needs of the employees,” she explained, “to show that they are valued, and that the boss is looking after them. They’ll do better work, and in the end, there’s better productivity.”

Trade Talk
The evolving workforce, with increased numbers of telecommuters, has introduced a new lexicon to the design trade.
It’s not just people who work from home, Wilczynski added, but staff that are encouraged to be out in the field, without the requirements of a full office.
These types of workers might share workspace, she said, “and the name for this style of space is the ‘touch down’ spaces — where your storage is separate, but you share a workstation. When you come in those one or two days per week, you bring your wheeled storage station to the work area, and it’s plug and play … no more leaning under the desk to get to outlets.”
But these aren’t restricted to non-traditional employees, Gordenstein said, but rather a non-traditional style of work. “A lot of employees today don’t sit at their desk all day long,” he said. “They have mobile technology, they’re walking around … they are in another employee’s office. So we create generic meeting spaces that are accessible and quick. They can be a simple table in the department, or a quiet meditative space for someone to read a trade journal, also.”
He added ‘hotelling’ to the new vocabulary of his industry.
“If you’re an outside salesperson,” he explained, “I as the employer don’t pay you to sit at your desk all day long. I need you out meeting clients and selling. If I make it too comfortable, you’re going to stay at your desk.”
Green Is Good
Another measure of creating a healthy workplace is the renewed importance of building and maintaining a green office.
When sales reps show her the latest in furniture and accessories, Irish said that the green option is always the first to be presented. “Because those questions do come up more and more now with our clients: what chemicals are used, were the components sustainably produced,” she explained.
Her colleague agreed with her, and added that tax breaks don’t exist for green office design to a great extent, so clients aren’t pursuing LEED certification, “but they are designing to it,” Wilczynski said.
“And we’ve been designing to it for about three years now,” she continued. “All of our specifications are written for finishes with low VOCs — we are very conscious about the products that we put into spaces. Regardless of whether a client wants to pursue the LEED plaque, we’re still finding a strong movement to designing greener spaces.”
Czupryna said that, while her office has also been seeing an increased use of green components in design, that consciousness extends to any material removed during office rehab. “It’s important to take it another step and take the older materials that have been removed and then recycle them,” she said. “The clients appreciate that we too are doing our bit.”
But going green can often come at a price that clients cannot carry. Gordenstein agrees that green is a popular phenomenon, yet, he added, “customers will ask me about ‘green,’ but they don’t really understand what it means, nor are they prepared to pay for what it means, or make the commitments for what it means.”
But greening the office often is a measure of changing technology as well. Wilczynski said that, as large central copy stations have been rendered irrelevant by desktop, all-in-one printers, those large spaces are now turned over to central recycling stations.
“And it’s the first time in my career that we are seeing the realization of the paperless office,” she continued. “It’s been a buzzword since I started 25 years ago, but it’s finally here. Technology has caught up.”

Everything Old Is New Again
Steve Jablonski sees the movement toward greener office spaces from a different perspective. The Springfield architectural firm that bears his name is well-known for its interest in historical redevelopment.
“With the emphasis on the environment and carbon footprints,” he said, “people are finally starting to say, ‘what’s the greenest thing you can possibly do?’— well, how about reusing what is already there?”
He agrees that it is easier to tear down and build from scratch; “that way, when you design a square, you get a square,” he said, simplifying the complexity of redeveloping older structures. But, he added, these resources are not only a link to history, but also to project cost.
“It’s a matter of enlightening the client to get over the hump of thinking it’s cost-prohibitive,” he explained of adaptive reuse of older buildings. “To knock down an existing building isn’t cheap. And all the hazardous waste has to go somewhere. So people are saying, ‘wait, I have to pay that much to throw it all away?’
“If you take the long-term picture,” he continued, “let’s say that in ten to 20 years you might come out ahead with the cheaper, bland office structure. But if you take the 50- to 100-year approach, that cheap and bland structure is going to need to be replaced itself. Whereas these buildings with character that have been modernized at first might be 10% to 20% higher in cost overall, but then after 50 years it’s still going strong.”
Admittedly, such a timeline is not suited to the budget concerns of every client, but for higher education, this is not only good for the schools’ mission to go green, but in many cases an important link to honoring their own history.
Jablonski unfurled the plans for a building project currently underway at Springfield College. Formerly called the Judd Gymnasium, the elegant, 19th-century brick structure is being converted to office and museum space, and has been rechristened the Stitzer YMCA Center.
The building’s older warren of rooms was quirky, he said, but he praised the vision of college President Dr. Richard Flynn, who had the initiative to make this the new showpiece of the campus.
It can often be a hybrid of architecture and archaeology, Jablonski said, during these projects. Pointing to a large room at the Stitzer Center, he said, “we took out the drop ceiling and restored the truss roof. People walk in and say, ‘this is beautiful, what you’ve done.’ But really, all we did was bring back what was already there.”
Springfield College joins the ranks of many other campuses across the country in the successful adaptive reuse of buildings, he said, adding quickly that “it takes leadership on the part of design people to take the initiative to use these spaces.”
He emphasized the importance of good office design as an important role for people like himself, and the people who furnish those rooms. But, ultimately, he credits the client for their acceptance of these reinvented workplaces.
“There’s only so much you can do as a designer to lead people along,” he said. “But if they’re not following, you’re not going to get far.”

Sections Supplements
How Manufacturers Can, with Careful Planning, Minimize Their Bills

Cheryl Fitzgerald

Cheryl Fitzgerald

As all manufacturing business owners know, today’s economic climate is one of the most difficult in U.S. history. Some analysts have likened the current recession to the Great Depression of the 1930s, wreaking havoc with corporate and industrial America in ways that were unimaginable a few short years ago.
State and local governments, reliant on the profitability of corporations and individuals to fund their operations, are struggling to keep their states functioning and provide expensive services to their populace as unemployment statistics rise. Given these challenges, governors nationwide are turning to their legislatures to update tax codes and raise revenue. In some instances, these efforts result in legislative proposals to broaden the tax base through different methodologies, including the imposition of tax on Internet businesses that provide goods and services, the creation of new nexus standards, and the enactment of required combined corporate income-tax reporting.
Since many of these initiatives can impact the manufacturing industry in particular, it is important to consider how you as a manufacturer and taxpayer can combat some of these initiatives and use them as planning opportunities.

Nexus
Nexus, a Latin word used in state taxation, means ‘connection.’ States are continually seeking to show that out-of-state companies have nexus in (connection with) their state, requiring tax filings. States have become increasingly aggressive as a result of recent government victories in so-called ‘economic nexus’ decisions, and taxpayers are struggling with the validity of each state’s authority to tax out-of-state businesses. Taxpayers should be concerned that any decision they make as to filing gross-receipts tax returns based on economic nexus principles can have historic and long-range effects.
When confronting the issue of nexus, you might consider the following:
• Don’t give up the fight. Despite the lack of success with regard to challenging state gross-receipts taxes, taxpayers should not necessarily concede the economic-nexus issue. If taxpayers do cease such challenges and allow the states to impose these taxes based on economic nexus, the states may become even more aggressive in their pursuit of manufacturers under those regimes. If you are not convinced that you should be filing taxes in specific states, seek out the advice of a qualified tax advisor before you file.
• Also consider the risks. Taxpayers who choose to take an aggressive stance by using a wait-and-see approach in filing their tax returns will face an increased risk of exposure that could affect their financial statements. This risk is due to the potential for retroactive application of economic-nexus standards and a possible reduction in the voluntary disclosure and amnesty program deals offered by the various states. Manufacturers should carefully consider whether the risks outweigh the rewards, and, if so, may want to take advantage of the voluntary disclosure and amnesty programs currently offered.
• Will Congress step in? Finally, although the discussion of state-tax nexus continues at the federal level, manufacturers should not have confidence that these issues will be resolved any time soon. Until Congress steps in and clarifies this area of state-tax law, taxpayers may continue to press for favorable federal legislation through their own in-house government-relations professionals, trade associations, or other industry groups.

Apportionment
Another way that states are trying to increase revenue is through revisiting their approach when it comes to apportionment, the method used to determine what share of a company’s profit they are entitled to. Many states that use a three-factor apportionment (sales, property, and payroll) are modifying their formulas or even eliminating some factors. Because of this and other differences in calculating taxable income from state to state, the potential exists to subject more than 100% of a manufacturer’s revenues to tax.
One strategy used to counter this scenario begins with knowing what states you are doing business in and their ‘throwback rules.’ The throwback rule dictates that, when tangible personal property is delivered or shipped to an out-of-state purchaser, it is considered an in-state sale if the selling taxpayer is not taxable in the state where the property is sold. If you have a facility in a state where there are no throwback rules and can modify your procedures to have sales considered sold by the non-throwback state instead of your home state, you could create a overall percentage of less than 100% for your sales factor, which would provide for a lower tax.

Credits
While nexus and apportionment-tax reforms seem to be leading the way this year, some states are continuing to offer generous tax credits and incentives to manufacturers choosing to locate, expend, or retain jobs in their jurisdictions. A number of states continue to show support for companies included in state-designated ‘enterprise zones.’ Generally, these enterprise zone credits incentivize employers to hire, retain employees, or expand in certain designated areas. Some states and localities encourage ‘going green’ by offering incentives. They provide for this through property and/or income-tax credits, exemptions, or abatements tied to green initiatives. However, many states require you to become certified for eligibility before you can claim these credits.
Don’t be caught by surprise and miss potential tax-saving opportunities. Find out about available credits before you make a relocation or expansion of your business. Area economic-development agencies can help you identify potential credits.

Sales/Use Taxes
As with corporate income taxes, states are reviewing how their sales-and-use tax structures can be amended to bring about increases in revenue. There are two prevalent factors causing this: an economy stalled by lack of consumer spending, and an increase in transactions such as Internet purchases. Some states are trying to overcome their shortfalls by considering increases to their rates (states like Massachusetts, California, and Minnesota have recently increased their rates).
Some states are also considering expanding their sales-and-use tax bases to incorporate service transactions (i.e., accounting, advertising, information services). Finally, states are seeking out businesses they believe have sales-and-use tax nexus and assessing for uncollected sales tax on taxable sales into their states. This poses a significant liability since states typically look back seven years, and a company’s ability to correspondingly bill and collect from their customers is difficult.

Personal Property Taxes
Allocations to local cities and towns have also suffered, and they have become aggressive in the area of assessing personal property taxes. Cities and towns will often request taxpayers’ depreciation reports, which will be a listing of their personal property. They will use original cost on these listings as a starting point in their assessment of personal property subject to tax.
Some cities and towns contend that any asset you own cannot be worth less than 50% of its original cost. One way to help lower these taxes is to review your fixed-asset listings and remove all items that are no longer in service, or that have been discarded.
In Massachusetts, corporations that are ‘classified manufacturers’ benefit from a lower tax rate on their manufacturing machinery as well as their inventory. This benefit does not apply to any corporation that has not filed for classification as a classified manufacturer. Cities and towns are cross-matching their records of businesses in their locality to the annual state listing of classified manufacturers. Businesses that never filed or are organized as an LLC, partnership, business trust, or sole proprietorship do not benefit from the lower tax rates regardless of their line of business.
If your business is a Massachusetts-based manufacturer, consider the tax benefits of qualifying and enrolling as a classified manufacturer. Your tax adviser can help you with this process.
If yours is a manufacturing corporation doing businesses out of state, you need to be aware of the potential nexus and apportionment issues, increased rates, as well as the expanded taxable services. However, there are credits and strategies that can help you minimize your multi-state tax burden. A qualified tax advisor can help you make the most of these opportunities.

Cheryl Fitzgerald is a senior tax manager with the certified public accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C., based in Holyoke; (413) 536-8510.

Cover Story
Manufacturers’ Collaborative Puts Pieces Together

Cover July 19, 2010

Cover July 19, 2010

It’s called the Pioneer Valley Precision Manufacturing Collaborative, a bold initiative whereby four small area machine shops will market themselves as what amounts to one larger enterprise, one with capabilities ranging from injection molding to the machining of tiny components for medical devices to the production of parts that help NASCAR vehicles go faster. The collaborative is expected to help participating companies gain contracts they couldn’t garner on their own, while also making them better-able to compete on what has become a truly global stage.

Tom Langevin says the idea is to take what he calls “big-company philosophies” and bring them to exponentially smaller businesses.
This is the main motivation behind the Pioneer Valley Precision Manufacturing Collaborative, or what Langevin described as an ambitious pilot program that involves four small area manufacturing outfits: Boulevard Machine & Gear and Thorn Industries, both in Springfield; Mechanical Drive Components Inc. (MDC) in Chicopee; and Creative Machining & Molding Corp. (CMMC) in Westfield.
Each of these companies is successful and profitable, and enjoys a solid reputation in their respective specialties, said Langevin, who takes the title ‘technology innovation application engineer,’ and works for the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County (more on all that later). However, they, like most other small manufacturers in the under-20-employees category, live “day to day,” as he put it, a corporate lifestyle Langevin noted while surveying area companies in his first assignment with the REB as point person for efforts to expand and strengthen the region’s precision-manufacturing sector.
“All of the companies I surveyed really hadn’t planned beyond the current year,” he said. “There were no three-, four-, or five-year plans, meaning marketing plans or engineering-research plans, or anything else,” he explained. “Everyone was in the same predicament; they didn’t really have a business system in place to take them through the next several years.
“It became clear that we needed to come up with a way to help these companies develop a business system that would help them strategically plan for the future,” he continued, adding that the methodology chosen was the collaborative.
It should, in effect, enable the four companies, working in unison, to achieve progress in the key areas of revenue growth and cost reduction that they likely could not accomplish on their own, he explained, adding that, in addition to thinking and acting like bigger companies, those enterprises in the collaborative should be able to generate opportunities generally reserved for much larger corporations.
Chris Araujo, owner of CMMC, a unique outfit that handles both precision manufacturing and injection molding, agrees, and he says he’s not speculating when he talks about the collaborative’s chances for success; he speaks with the voice of experience.
“This is something I’ve done very successfully in my career,” he said of the concept of collaboration. “By bringing together several smaller companies as we have, we can go after work that none of us could go after individually. As a group, as a collaborative, as a much larger entity, we will now be able to be competitive and have the horsepower that a lot of the big companies want.
“Everyone’s reducing supplier bases, and they’re looking for unique opportunities with their suppliers to have them do more,” he continued, adding that the collaborative can accomplish this end. “This gives us a unique opportunity to go after some of the larger aerospace companies, medical companies, and possibly even automotive companies, utilizing not only the assets of four companies but the intelligence of four individual owners to problem-solve and uniquely put together schedules and other details to accomplish very difficult tasks.”
Susan Kasa, owner of Boulevard Machine & Gear, concurred, and said she believes the collaboration represents another manifestation of an emerging trend within the manufacturing sector, one where smaller shops are viewing other players in the sector more as possible partners than competitors to fear and resist.
“I think local business owners have gotten over the hurdle, and no longer look at each other as competitors; we’re starting to look at what we can do to help one another grow and not necessarily be afraid of what we can take from one another in business,” she said while borrowing an industry term — prototype — to describe what the collaborative is or could easily become.
For this issue, BusinessWest takes an indepth look at the Pioneer Valley Precision Manufacturing Collaborative, how it is expected to benefit the participants, and how this model might be emulated by other companies in the region.

Gauging Possibilities
Joe Giffune, owner of MDC, said that, among other things, the company makes parts for the after-market automotive sector, or what he called “speed products,” including horsepower boosters, vacuum pumps, and other parts for NASCAR and National Hot Rod Assoc. vehicles and other customers.
“It’s a fun niche,” he said, adding that, while the company doesn’t deal directly with NASCAR drivers and owners, it serves those who do. “You’ll get calls from people saying, ‘so-and-so’s team needs this part by next weekend … you’ve got to get this done.’ It’s a good talking point; it’s fun to do.”
While the 11-year-old company has done well historically, it has been limited by its small size, relatively tight niches, and that ‘day-to-day’ operating philosophy that Langevin referenced, said Giffune, adding that the opportunity to increase its reach and operate more strategically is what prompted him to jump at the chance to become part of the collaborative.
“He [Langevin] seemed to think our companies had a lot of similar things to bring to the table — skill sets, approaches to the way we do business, approaches to the way we do machining,” Giffune explained, “but also some unique things specific to our businesses. But his perspective is that we were also operating without a strategic plan as individual businesses, and that was a real shortfall — and no one realy disagreed with him on that.
“As a small business you’re caught up in the day-to-day processes of making your debt payments, making your payroll, those sorts of things, and that tends to lead to more short-term thinking,” he continued, “which comes down to getting through a specific time period, be it a day, week, month, or a year, rather than think strategically.”
Giffune’s story is similar in many ways to those of the other participants in the collaborative, said Langevin, a former engineer with Danaher Tool who was hired in May 2009 by the Regional Employment Board as part of the so-called PMRAP (Precision Manufacturing Regional Alliance Project), a multi-faceted initiative involving the REB, UMass Amherst, the Western Mass. Chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Assoc. (WMNTMA), and other parties.
He told BusinessWest that his basic job description is to identify and execute strategies for helping area manufacturers become more competitive and tap new markets. One of his current endeavors involves work with educators at UMass to develop a cryogenic milling process for project machining.
One of his first assignments, however, was to survey WMNTMA members and determine what kind of support they needed. It was during these interviews that he identified a lack of — and need for — longer-term planning, as well as a stronger commitment to continuous improvement.
This is what Langevin calls a big-company philosophy, or ‘lean’ philosophy, and he acknowledged that it is something difficult for smaller companies to embrace and implement because of the resources required to do so.
“You have to develop data, gather data, coordinate data, analyze data, and things of that nature, and that’s hard to do if you’re a mom-and-pop shop with 10 employees,” he explained. “But if you take three or four or five shops and put them together, you can amortize those administrative costs to implementing such a business system.”
The desire to spread the cost and combine resources was the spark for creating the collaborative, said Langevin, adding that several area companies were asked to participate, with Thorn, Boulevard, MDC, and CMMC eventually agreeing to join forces.
They were chosen because they are among the more progressive companies in the area, said Langevin, adding that they are well-managed, have good engineers, are “above water,” as he put it, and, above all, have something to offer each other.
Working together, said Langevin, the companies in the collaborative will be better able to do what he says they need to do to compete in the global marketplace — become what amounts to contract manufacturers focused on the big picture.
“I’ve sat with many companies, and their focus seems to be on how to increase the speed of their machines — that’s where they think their money is,” he explained. “But that’s not really where their money is. We can’t really compete with the rest of the world machine for machine; we can’t compete labor-wise. We have to compete more on services; we have to provide more services to our prime contractors.”

Parts of the Whole
Kasa told BusinessWest that, while Boulevard has a long track record of excellence in its specialty — machining parts for primarily the aerospace industry — she recognized that there were many potential benefits to becoming part of the collaborative.
That’s because the companies involved complement each other and bring different things to the table. This should enable the group to compete effectively for more and bigger contracts from customers that always looking to get more from their suppliers.
“By coming together like this, we can, in effect, corner the market and gain business,” she said, noting that the collaborative will likely enable individual companies to gain pieces of contracts that they could not have garnered otherwise. “We all bring very different things to the table: we have the aerospace certification, Thorn has the medical certification, Creative has the injection molding, and Joe [Giffune] has the commercial market.
“When we pool our facility list,” she continued, “it’s actually quite impressive, but we don’t necessarily have duplicate equipment; we all specialize in such different niches that we feel that, by coming together, we can have a true edge on the market.”
Steve Hicks, co-owner with his father of Thorn Industries, which specializes in machining parts for medical devices, agrees. He said the collaborative enables the four shops to merge in a figurative sense, not a literal one, and, in the process, present themselves in the same way that some of the area’s largest and most successful precision manufacturers, such as Hoppe Tool, Berkshire Industries, and others can, and compete for bigger contracts.
“As part of this collaborative, we can look at some of these big jobs that we couldn’t quote before and identify pieces of the pie that we’d like to work on,” he explained. “One of us can handle the milling, another one the turning, and someone else can handle another aspect of making the part; we can all broaden our horizons.”
Araujo, whose company produces everything from stands for scented candles (CMMC has dozens of manufacturers in that industry on its client list) to components for credit-card readers, has seen several collaborative efforts succeed through a lengthy career in precision manufacturing.
“I’ve done it with automotive, with medical, with gun companies, aerospace, and more,” he said, adding that, through one collaborative effort, he was able to win a contract from Hamilton Sundstrand to make the air-handling system for the Boeing 787.
Echoing Kasa and others, he said that companies that award such large contracts are looking for diversity, but also solid management and especially long-term stability, and these are tangibles and intangibles that most smaller companies can’t boast.
“With the size of these contracts and the number of years involved, they’re looking for very strong companies that are going to be around a long time, with proven backgrounds and opportunities to handle not only their growth but the customer’s growth,” he explained. “As an individual company, you would have to be very large and established to meet those needs. As a collaborative, we can do the same thing.”

End Product
All those participating in the collaborative say time will tell if it can yield the many benefits organizers say it can.
But there is considerable confidence within the various companies that, by coming together in this fashion, the machine shops in question can do far more as a group than they can individually.
In short, they believe they have a working prototype — a prototype for growth and progress.

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

Opinion
Keeping the Best Minds Local

Massachusetts’ greatest natural resource is its stock of 535,000 college and graduate-school students. Human capital brings the ideas and entrepreneurship needed for regional success, yet too many of our students leave, including the entrepreneurs who created Facebook. Retaining talent requires us to fight the regulations that make entrepreneurship too rare and housing too expensive, but the state should also aim at winning students’ hearts while they are still in school.
Skills predict urban success. Across metropolitan areas, an extra 5 percentage points of the adult population with college degrees in 1970 has resulted in 8% more population growth and 4% more income growth. Yet the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Alicia Sasser found that 29.5% of New England’s college graduates left the region within a year of graduation, the highest out-migration rate in the country. That exodus reflects our schools’ aim of educating the world, but the state not retaining the graduates.
Connecting students to our region requires a response to the good, bad, and ugly sides of college life. I see a remarkable number of college students with a profound passion for doing good, whether working in shelters or tutoring children. They have time and are looking for meaning in life, and leveraging that can both help the Commonwealth and bind college students to the state.
A statewide public service organization — a Bay State Service Corps — could provide meaningful altruistic activities for college students and connect them with local leaders and the larger community. For six years, I’ve helped oversee the Rappaport Institute’s summer fellows program, which pays and assists graduate students to serve the region.
I’ve watched the fellows’ work contribute to public agencies, build their skills, and create a bond with Greater Boston. Providing thousands of college students with ways to serve the state could produce an altruistic army today and a steady supply of future leaders.
The ugly part of college life is the misbehavior that can come from the emotional effervescence of youth. Not for nothing are 37.5% of America’s resolved murders committed by males between 17 and 24. College students aren’t usually killers, but they also have uncontrolled energy which leads them to annoy their neighbors with less-than-perfectly polite recreation.
Now, I’m no expert on fun, but I am sure that the state can do more to make nocturnal pursuits less harmful and more entertaining by focusing on transportation and concentration. Bringing people together in entertainment districts can make safety more enforceable and nightlife more enjoyable, since the real point is to meet people anyway.
But concentrating on enjoyment is only possible when transportation works well. The T’s night-owl service stopped years ago. A combined strategy of rethinking entertainment regulation and nighttime transportation, perhaps trying to use liquor-license fees to keep buses running later, could help make Massachusetts more fun and safe.
The high cost of housing is the bad part of college life. Dormitories can be more expensive than apartments, but undergraduates who choose to live in normal neighborhoods can create plenty of conflict with other residents. The natural solution is to build more dedicated college space, but that’s financially impossible for many educational institutions.
One vision is to explore private interest in building a student city somewhere in Greater Boston. Would a consortium of private developers and colleges be interested in erecting large amounts of dormitory space if they could also put in connected retail space and bypass local land-use controls? If a collection of builders were willing to deliver dormitories, then they would also have an incentive to make the experience pleasant. A collective student city would give students a sense of place and lead to more regional identity.
Massachusetts has survived over centuries largely because skilled people wanted to stay here. Our continued success depends upon students continuing to fall in love with the state. The state can help by strengthening students’ opportunities to serve and have fun, and by making it easier to creatively build student housing.

Edward L. Glaeser, a professor of Economics at Harvard, is director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

Opinion
Helping Manufacturers Break the Mold

There are a number of intriguing initiatives underway to help grow and strengthen the region’s precision-manufacturing sector — everything from a project involving UMass Amherst that will drive innovation, to a conference this fall aimed at spotlighting this sector and keeping business in this region.
But perhaps the most promising endeavor is a recently launched collaborative involving four small area manufacturers. If successful — and everyone involved with this believes it will be — the collaborative will enable these companies to vie for contracts that they could not get on their own while also making them more competitive in the global marketplace.
One participant calls the collaborative a “prototype,” one that could, and hopefully will, become a model for other companies in this region to follow.
Here’s how it works: The four companies, Boulevard Machine and Gear and Thorn Industries, both in Springfield; Mechanical Drive Components Inc. (MDC) in Chicopee; and Creative Machining and Molding Corp. (CMMC) in Westfield, will market themselves as the Pioneer Valley Precision Manufacturing Collaborative. There will be a Web site developed for the group, and it will be one of the lead tools used to help steer business to the collaborative and its individual members.
In theory, and it’s a very sound theory, the collaborative will enable four very small companies with under 20 employees each to take on the look, feel, philosophy, and capabilities of one, much larger enterprise. Thus, these companies can get pieces of contracts that would otherwise be beyond their reach.
Why is this collaborative so important to the region and its precision-manufacturing sector? There are several reasons, but mostly it comes down to demographics. Indeed, while there are some large and very successful companies in the Western Mass. market, such as Hoppe Tool, Berkshire Industries, and Advanced Manufacturing, most are much smaller players that have cultivated niches for many years.
For Boulevard, that niche is aerospace and making parts for companies such as Hamilton Sundstrand, For Thorn, it’s medical-device work for customers such as Johnson & Johnson. MDC does work for several end-users, including NASCAR teams and National Hot Rod Assoc. members, and CMMC makes everything from holders for Yankee Candle products to parts for credit card readers.
These niches have served the companies well, but, in some ways, they limit growth opportunities. By bringing four diverse companies together — in what one participant called a “merger that isn’t really a merger” — the collaborative can open doors that might otherwise be closed.
And if enough doors are opened, then an historically significant sector of the region’s economy, precision manufacturing, which traces its roots to the opening of the Springfield Armory more than two centuries ago, can be an important part of the future, and not just a thing of the past.
This is significant because, as we’ve said many times, while the region is trying to create new business sectors or clusters, such as clean energy and bioscience, it must also commit time, energy, and resources to growing an already-solid employer such as precision manufacturing.
As we said at the top, there are a number of ongoing efforts that fall into that category. All of them bear watching, but the Pioneer Valley Precision Manufacturing Collaborative is extremely intriguing because of its potential to make small companies become much bigger in terms of their presence in the marketplace.

Features
His Job Description? Holding Down the Fort

Rudi Scherff, co-owner of the Student Prince restaurant

Rudi Scherff, co-owner of the Student Prince restaurant

Rudi Scherff started washing dishes at the Student Prince restaurant, then co-owned by his father, Rupprecht, when he was 12 years old. This means that, among many other things, he has a half-century’s worth of perspective on downtown Springfield.
He’s seen quite a bit of change in and around the central business district over that time, with much of it, by his estimation, being not exactly good for business.
“Years ago, people had to come downtown to see their lawyer or their dentist,” he said, noting that, while doing so, they would often stop in for lunch. “Now, that’s pretty much disappeared. When I was a teenager, I’d walk to the bank with my dad, and maybe 60% of the men you saw were wearing a sportcoat and tie, even in July; now, collars are a rarity, never mind ties.”
There have been other changes beyond dress and an outmigration of professionals, he added. There are fewer stores and far fewer restaurants downtown, and where once many white-collar workers lived downtown, now, the vast majority of housing is of the subsidized variety.
Through all of this change and societal evolution, the Student Prince, or the Fort, as it’s called colloquially, has been a constant (this year marking its 75th anniversary), when so many other establishments fail to keep the doors open even a tenth that time. When asked to articulate on the landmark’s longevity, the soft-spoken but opinionated Scherff said it comes down to consistency but also flexibility and adjusting to those changing times.
Elaborating, he said that, where once most customers and potential customers were content to simply have a nice meal and perhaps some accompanying liquid refreshment, many people today want “an experience.”
“As a result, we’re a little more in the entertainment business and less in the basic sustenance business,” Scherff explained. “Some people just want to come out and have something to eat, but I think more people are looking for that experience, they’re looking a novelty, for more than just stomach filling.
“So we change our menus a lot more, we’ll do many more seasonal specials, we’ll do a lot of different desserts,” he continued. “We try to give people reasons to come in, be it with soft-shell crabs in July or native corn; we try to have some variation of products. Sometimes things succeed, and sometimes they don’t.”
For this, the latest installment of its Profiles in Business series, BusinessWest turns the spotlight on one of Springfield’s most noted restaurateurs, who may not be quite the institution his father was, but has been equally successful in holding down the Fort.

A Lot on His Plate
Scherff never expected to follow in Rupprecht’s considerable footprints, even though he practically grew up in the restaurant and held just about every job in the place.
The plan was to become a lawyer, and, by and large, things went according to script. Scherff earned his juris doctorate from Boston College and settled into private practice in Springfield in the early ’80s. He focused on criminal work and handled some real estate. “Some of it I enjoyed, but all that paperwork … I didn’t really care for that.”
He had been in practice about a decade, and doing reasonably well, when his father’s failing health forced him to eventually slow down. Rudi, who would work in the restaurant on occasion, especially during peak times of the year, found himself having to pitch in much more and attempt to juggle two vocations.
“I tried to do both for a year,” he said, “but decided that I wasn’t being fair to the law practice, the restaurant, or myself.” So he left the legal profession in the early ’90s, and, with his sister, Barbara, brother, Peter, and nephew, Michael, now the kitchen manager, he continues the Fort tradition, which began in 1935.
When asked for his job description, Scherff said there are many elements to it. “I keep my eyes open, see what’s happening, and see if the customers are enjoying themselves,” he said, offering first the long view of what occupies the 60 or so hours a week he spends at 8 Fort St. “I do the scheduling and the ordering, and supervise menu development — all the little things that don’t fit in the pigeonholes.”
Also on that list is listening to stories about his father, who passed away in 1996, and there is no shortage of them coming from the Fort’s legion of long-time and sometimes very long-time customers.
“Some of these stories are true, some of them are not true,” he said, “but far be it for me to ruin someone’s memories.”
Scherff has many of his own memories from five decades on Fort Street. He’s watched the restaurant, famous for its collection of beer steins, stained-glass windows, and Roquefort dressing, expand and evolve, while also gaining a place in both the local lexicon and the national trade media.
Indeed, when, in 2008, Gourmet magazine printed its list of “legendary restaurants,” establishments that had been in business since before the magazine started publishing in 1941, the Student Prince was on it.
“We didn’t know it was coming,” Scherff said of the listing in Gourmet. “They just said, ‘we’re doing an article … you may or may not be in it.’ They were kind enough to send us a copy of the magazine, and it came the same day as we were having our Hampden Street Octoberfest. It was a very exciting day for us.”
Scherff said the Student Prince has hosted its share of celebrities over the years. John Kennedy frequented the restaurant when he was a senator, and his brother, Ted, did as well. Wilt Chamberlain dined there, as have others from the world of basketball visiting the birthplace of the game. Roy Rogers stopped in a few times, John Ratzenberger paid a visit when he was in town several weeks ago (and ordered a bologna sandwich), and Scherff has fond memories of when John Denver came in for dinner.
“Some of the guys in the kitchen wanted autographs,” he recalled. “When I asked him if he would sign a few, he said, ‘no, I’m not going to do that here,’ and promptly went out to the kitchen, thanked everyone, and signed them back there. He was a real gentleman.”
But while having stars in the dining room is great for any restaurant in terms of creating lasting memories for staff and patrons alike, Scherff said one doesn’t build a business and keep it open for 75 years because a few singers, politicians, and hoop legends stop in on their way to somewhere else. “All that’s wonderful,” he said of the celebrities, “but the guy who comes in once a week and has bratwurst and a beer or two is much more important to me.”
Such customers have been the lifeblood of the Student Prince, and while Scherff says there are still enough of them to keep the business humming, times are changing in the area, and they are making life more challenging for the current generations managing the landmark.
For starters, there are those changing trends and demographics downtown, which combine to create fewer of the kinds of customers the Fort has always thrived on. Also, the Fort, like all establishments downtown, has to contend with the negative perceptions of the area and the lack of free parking. In the meantime, there is considerable competition, both in the suburbs (much more than in decades past) and along Springfield’s riverfront.
On the brighter side, Scherff says he seeing some signs of a comeback in downtown Springfield, although he keeps his optimism guarded. He notes with enthusiasm the retenanting of the old federal building and other efforts to bring more workers to the central business district. Meanwhile, he sees some signs of progress bringing more professionals into the area to live.
“Hopefully we’re starting to see downtown come back a little bit,” he told BusinessWest. There are some things happening that give you reason to think that things are going to get better.”

Check, Please
When asked what he does when he’s not keeping an eye on things at the Student Prince, Scherff says he works, often in frustration, in his garden, and that he’s trying — that’s trying — to take up woodworking.
“I bought a lot of equipment, and I still have all my fingers, so I guess that’s good,” he joked, before admitting that, between his family (and especially twin 16-year-olds) and the family business, there simply isn’t time for much else.
And while he’s thinking about somehow trying to pare some of those hours he spends at and on the restaurant, he knows he can’t pull back too much. “I’d go crazy if I wasn’t here a lot,” he said.
Which means that he’ll log many more years of reflections on downtown Springfield. Times may never be as they were when the sidewalks were crammed with people and all the men wore suits and ties, but Scherff can easily envision much better times for the downtown that’s been his real home for the past 50 years.

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

Bankruptcies Departments

The following bankruptcy petitions were recently filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Readers should confirm all information with the court.

Alimonos, Angela C.
1 Maplewood Ter.
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Allen, Carl E.
196 Eddy St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Allyn, William D.
2 Hawthorne Lane
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Anderson, Laurie L.
50A Indian Leap St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Armstrong, Pearlann M.
6 Harding Ave.
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Audet, Dawn M.
54 Fairview Ave.
Russell, MA 01071
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Barnett, Mychael
14 Berkeley St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Barry, Kevin T.
Barry, Sherry A.
56 Highland Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Baughn, Anthony E.
Baughn, Koren D.
a/k/a Velis, Koren D.
5 Radner St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Beach, Robert Stephen
174 River St., Apt. #2
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Berry, Sally J.
270 East Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Bewsee, Darrel A.
25 Collins St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Bohl, Sarah J.
450 Church St.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Bonet, Myrta
2074 Page Blvd.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Bongiovanni, Suzanne
389 Montague City Road
Turners Falls, MA 01376
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Boulanger, Timothy N.
Boulanger, Dawn M.
201 Drexel St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Bourgeois, Robert D.
Bourgeois, Elaine B.
a/k/a Haley, Elaine
28 Stanley Court
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Boutin, Christopher Daniel
4 Mellinger Lane
Chicopee, MA 01022
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Brock, Charles
140 Avondale Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Brown, Edward P.
Brown, Donna L.
20 Winthrop St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Brown, Patricia C.
a/k/a Washington, Patricia Chauntay
P.O. Box 386
Springfield, MA 01101
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Bussiere, Maureen A.
485 South St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Cabot, Sarah J.
PO Box 332
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Callaghan, Sean Eric
4 Plymouth St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Camp, Vincent
28 Chester St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Campbell, Roy H.
78 Lachine St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Carle, Irene E.
19 Congress St., Apt. 14
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Chase, Steven M.
Chase, Marietjie S.
268 Brattleboro Road
Bernardston, MA 01337
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Chiz, Stanley P.
Phillips-Chiz, Vickie M.
96 Elliot St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Clark, Kelly L.
927 Burt Hill Road
Tolland, MA 01034
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/31/10

Clifford, Joan Barbara
437 East Mountain Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Conroy, William E.
Conroy, Brenda E.
113 Mountainview St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Copenhaver, Katie Ann
a/k/a Yiznitsky, Katie Ann
18 Crow Hill Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Coppola, Alfred R.
800 Stockbridge Road #10
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Costa, Russell D.
Costa, Jennifer T.
108 Cherokee Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Cote, James J.
Cote, Donna M.
179 Chicopee St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Cote, Kenneth R.
Cote, Barbara J.
106 Paulk Ter.
Springfield, MA 01128
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Craig, James Ramsey
Craig, Rebecca March
20 Abbot St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Creative Freelance Studio
Susan Simonds Photography
Simonds, Susan D.
a/k/a Hellmann, Susan D.
142 Barna St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Cremonti, James J.
Cremonti, Cherie L.
88 Lancaster Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Danczak, Robert F.
a/k/a Danczak, Frederick R.
P.O. Box 1087
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Dan’s Oil & Muffler
Crystal Car Care Center
Copenhaver, Daniel Dean
31 Daniel Square
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Davis, Judith C.
3 Gardner Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Denis, Robert B.
85 Dunsany Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106-2731
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/31/10

DeOliveira, Adriana C.
a/k/a Silva, Adriana C.
89 Edward St.
Medford, MA 02155
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Devaine, Thomas
46 Marmand Court
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Donicz, Carol L.
40 Highland Village
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Donohue, Evelyn R.
582 Adams Road
Oakham, MA 01068
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Dowd, James
Dowd, Pamela
57 Newton Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Dowjat, Michael S.
Dowjat, Mary H.
119 Lovell Road
Holden, MA 01520
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Driben, Robin Jill
266 Grove St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Drown, Raymond C.
354 Miller St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Drozdal, John T.
Drozdal, Lucyna B.
17 Concord Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Duval, Marcia M.
113 Forest Glen
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Electrolysis by Athena
Barbieri, Lorraine Marie
50 Sheffield Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Emond, Gary P.
Mason Emond, Charissa M.
695 Bernardston Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Esty, Xavier
45 Manor Court
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Fazio, Antonio Gerard
Fazio, Christine Marie
197 Greenacre Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

French, Lawrence R.
French, Loretta J.
52 Michael Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075-3024
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Galarneau, Donna J.
93 Grochmal Ave., Lot 3
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Galindez, Jose
23 Willow, St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Garvey, Mary Lou
97 Mooreland St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/26/10

Gattoni, James M.
421 North Main St.
Leeds, MA 01053
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/26/10

Gauthier, Jason S.
Gauthier, Jennifer L.
856 Old Keene Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Giardina, Bartholomew S.
459 School St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Gillen, Paul T.
147 Podunk Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Goodine, Robert A.
Goodine, Laurie A.
420 Mayo Road
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Gormley, Jennifer R.
37 Craig Drive, Apt. 0-1
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Gougeon, Kelly S.
a/k/a Hoffmeyer, Kelly S.
13 Old Chesterfield Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Griswold, Jon F.
Griswold, Marilyn E.
34 Anderson Road
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/26/10

Guy, Raymond P.
64 Felix St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Gwozdzik, Jennifer R.
231 River Dr.
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Hall, John
Hall, Renee
58 Spring St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Halley, Christian H.
76 Oswald Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Hamel-LeSage Studio
Hamel, Marc
a/k/a LeSage, Edward
328 Old Dana Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Haney, Dianne R.
348 Montcalm St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Hannah, Earl F.
Hannah, Donna M.
61 Cornflower St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Harrington, Elizabeth A.
123 Adams St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Hawkins, Diane L.
38 Thompson St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

Hewitt, Patricia A
13 Bellevue Ave.
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Higgins, Andrea D.
130 Lindbergh Blvd.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/31/10


 

Holden, Anthony S.
70 Wilmont St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Howland, Roger G.
146 Temby St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Jacques, Richard R.
60 Oak St.
Southbridge, MA 01550
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Kondrotas, Francis P.
Kondrotas, S. Yvette
PO Box 698
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

LaBranche, Joseph M.
LaBranche, Melissa A.
117 Bridle Path Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/22/10

Learned, Christina L.
a/k/a Gagnon, Christina
71 High St., Apt. 13
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

LeBlanc, Derek M.
90 James St.
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Lefsyk, Jason M.
a/k/a Mallett, Brandy L.
Lefsyk, Brandy L.
135 Pleasant St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Legere, Burke M.
Legere, Linda M.
519 East River St.
Lot 116
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Levine, Robert S.
35 Smithfield Court
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Logan, Beatrice
45 Rochelle St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Lozada, Sara
a/k/a Cusson, Sara
4 Virginia St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Lucey, Debra Ann
24 Mechanic St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/26/10

Luciano, Ramon E.
44 Pelham St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Lynch, Robert J.
Lynch, Tara K.
a/k/a Murphy, Tara K.
P.O. Box 795
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

MacDonald, Andrea F.
107 Turkey Hill Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Mandeville, Francis X.
Mandeville, Lisa B.
a/k/a Burnstine, Lisa B.
a/k/a Sturz, Lisa B.
243 Eagle St.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Martin, Katherine M.
60 Dresser Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Martinez, Jesse
Mercado, Amelia
253 East St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Mathieu, Wilfred F.
175 Garland St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Matos, Luis A.
61 Wentworth St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Mazella, Lorie L.
369 North Loomis St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

McQuade, Timothy Tyrone
64 Gillette Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

Melendez, Cindy
57 Hyde Ave.
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Michaluk, Allison E.
295 Sturbridge Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Molina, Lisa
12 Rattle Hill Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/22/10

Monson Heating
Bourgault, Jacques D.
152 Lower Hampden Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Montes, Celestino
49 Palmer Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/30/10

Morin, Colette Marie
a/k/a Koch, Colette Marie
78 Metacomet St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Morrison, Cory S.
Delles, Jennifer M.
379 College Highway
Southampton, MA 01073
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Morse, Joshua L.
475 Corey St., #A
Agawam, MA 01101
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Noel, Charlene L.
405 North Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Nulph, Todd E.
18 Barker St., Apt. C
Three Rivers, MA 01080
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

Nye, Joshua Albert
Nye, Jennifer Leigh
24 North Brookfield Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Ortiz, Shirley
72 Plantation Circle
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Ouk, Phal O.
34 Cameron St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/30/10

Oyola, Jose L.
54 North Bridge St., Apt. 3
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Palma, Carmen R.
37 Sunrise Ter.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Pantoja, Felipe N.
108 Chapin St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/30/10

Paul, Susan M.
5 Pine Knoll Dr.
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Perez, Louis
38 Montcalm St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Perrault, Dennis J.
Perrault, Karen M.
192 Froman St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Polak, Edward R.
35 Karen Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Popp, Deborah L.
13 Piper Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Powers, Wendy Michelle
a/k/a Fox, Wendy Michelle
14A North Farms Road
Haydenville, MA 01039
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Precanico, Wayne J.
Morgan, Heather A.
110 General Knox Road
Russell, MA 01071
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Prendergast, Raymond
Prendergast, Phyllis H.
198 Lamont St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Presnal, Thaddeus J.
a/k/a Presnal, Ted
Presnal, Patricia A.
356 Grove St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Proulx, Joel P.
Proulx, Diane S.
12 Ledgewood Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Qadir, Shama
19 Decatur St.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Quenneville, Barbara S.
229 State St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/30/10

Racia, Danuta G.
1269 Berkshire Ave.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Raymond, Jean M.
1068 So
th St.
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/23/10

Richard, Calvin P.
26 Flora St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Robbins, Michael J.
Robbins, Melody L.
40 Mount Hitchcock Road
Wales, MA 01081
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Romano, Judith H.
P.O. Box 1548
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Ryan, Helen A.
10 Congress St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Sacco, Alex J.
3 Goodrich Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Scott, Michael B.
Scott, Tami M.
123 Bumstead Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Serrano, Aida L.
102 Blanchwood Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/18/10

Shepard, William E.
P.O. Box 80778
Springfield, MA 01138
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Signor, Brenda L.
a/k/a Signor Giblin, Brenda L.
19 Crestwood Circle
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/31/10

Snow, Fawn M.
304 Montague City Road
Turners Falls, MA 01376
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Southwick Road Realty
266 Southwick Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Stockwell, Curran E.
151C North Main St.
South Deerfield, MA 01373
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/26/10

Swift, Harold R.
Swift, Laurie A.
69 Babcock Tavern Road
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

Tenero, Sarah C.
9 Moores Cross Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/25/10

Thompson, Mary Ellen
150 Ashland St. Apt 61
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Thornton, Jeffery C
Thornton, Laurie A.
13 Richview Ave.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/19/10

Tomasauckas, Raymond R.
Tomasauckas, Lynn M.
11 South Chesterfield Road
Goshen, MA 01032
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Toro, Aida R.
a/k/a Cesareo, Aida R.
164 Tyler St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Torres, Adilmar E.
136 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Tuttle, Raymond L.
28 Wood Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Vaughan, Mary M.
a/k/a Olsley, Mary M.
91 White Birch Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Weake, Joanne S.
310 Stafford St., Apt. 1314
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/28/10

Weingarten, Kirk J.
Weingarten, Stacy M.
29 Harkness Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/21/10

Wheeler, Randell L.
Wheeler, Therese L.
51 Pleasant St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Wilmot, Patricia A.
229 Reed St.
West Warren, MA 01092
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/27/10

Witherell, Nicholas J.
Witherell, Shannon M.
a/k/a Drummond, Shannon M.
28 Gargon Ter.
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/20/10

Withroder, Danielle M.
86 Dwight Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/24/10

Zammuto, Joseph A.
Zammuto, Marilyn J.
17 Hassler St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 05/17/10

Building Permits Departments

The following building permits were issued during the month of June 2010.

AGAWAM

McDonald’s
868 Suffield St.
$780,000 — Construction of a new McDonald’s restaurant next to the existing facility

Ralph DePalma
17 Begley St.
$100,000 — Construction of a building for a pre-school

AMHERST

Mercyhouse, Inc.
367 North Pleasant St.
$1,000 — Repair and upgrade emergency egress

Shumway Limited Partnership
196 North Pleasant St.
$20,000 — New roof

CHICOPEE

ALLM, LLC
694 Center ST.
$634,000 — Erect prefab addition to existing building

Dow Jones & Company
84 Second St.
$255,000 — Strip and re-roof

VOC
374 Montgomery St.
$227,000 — Modify existing billboard

EASTHAMPTON

City of Easthampton
43 Main St.
$1,000 — Install new soundproof materials to existing windows

City of Easthampton
Daley Field
$40,000 — Addition to existing building at Nonotuck Park

Dick Boyle Realty Trust
179 Northampton St.
$11,000 — Renovate interior space to create law offices

HADLEY

Thomas Meaux
300 Venture Way
$15,000 — Remodel existing library into video conference room

HOLYOKE

Brian Duke
24 Longfellow Road
10,000 — Install new windows & slider door

LUDLOW

American Tower Corporation
31 Ravenwood Dr.
$15,000 — Replace cell tower panels

NORTHAMPTON

CSO, Inc.
29 North Main St.
$3,000 — Install new exterior door

Nonotuck Mills, LLC
296 Nonotuck St.
$3,000 — Construct wall for additional space

Smith College
5 Chapin Dr.
$5,2000,000 — Renovations at Wright Hall

Suher Properties, LLC
58 Pleasant St.
$9,500 — Construct two offices in existing building

SOUTH HADLEY

Loomis Village
10-20 Bayon Dr.
$10,000 — New gazebo

 

 

Mt. Holyoke College
50 College St.
$951,000 — Renovations

SOUTHWICK

Town of Southwick
454 College Highway
$75,000 — Construction of the Great Brook Boardwalk

SPRINGFIELD

Baystate Medical Center
2 Medical Center Dr.
$240,000 — Install new partitions for urgent care unit

Community Music School of Springfield
18 Willow St.
$322,000 — Exterior repairs

Flores Development, LLC
7 Greenwich St.
$1,177,000 — Full remodel of building A

Flores Development, LLC
7 Greenwich St.
$511,000 — Full remodel of building D

Forest Park Zoological Society
55 Sumner Ave.
$3,000 — Construct a deck for showing zoo animals

Springfield Housing Authority
500 Hancock St.
$110,000 — Construction of new maintenance building

Springfield Housing Authority
31 Morgan St.
$112,000 — Construction of new maintenance building

Springfield Housing Authority
231 Pine St.
$176,000 — Construction of new maintenance building

Yellow Brick Properties
65-67 Holly St.
$85,000 — Re-roof

WESTFIELD

Hallamore Pipe Venture Corporation
69 Neck Road
$22,000 — Commercial repair

Home Depot
50 Campanelli Dr.
$445,000 — Construction of a new conveyor system

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Bill Bayton
811 Memorial Ave.
$20,000 — New roof

Eastern States Exposition
1305 Memorial Ave.
$10,000 — Expand offices

Fred Aaron
1478 Riverdale St.
$205,000 — Renovate 2,589 square feet into office space

Town of West Springfield
26 Central St.
$375,000 — Repairs to City Hall

Chamber Corners Departments

ACCGS
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555

July 6: Springfield Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Meeting, 12 noon to 1 p.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 9: ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee, 8 to 9 a.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 15: ACCGS Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 21: ERC Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., the Gardens of Wilbraham, Community Room, Wilbraham.

July 21: Diplomats’ Meeting, 4 to 5 p.m., EDC Conference Room, Springfield.

July 26: ACCGS Golf Tournament, all day, Springfield Country Club, Springfield. Cost: $160 per player or $640 for a foursome.

July 27: WRC Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., Captain Leonard House, Agawam.

Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield
www.springfieldyps.com  
n July 15: Third Thursday, hosted by The Delaney House, Holyoke.

Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce
www.amherstarea.com
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Chicopee Area Chamber of Commerce
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101

July 15: Red Sox Bus Trip to Fenway Park vs. Texas Rangers, 7:10 p.m. Cost: $105 per person includes ticket to the game, round-trip bus fare, and tip for the driver. Call the chamber for more information or to purchase tickets.

Franklin County Chamber of Commerce
www.franklincc.org
(413) 773-5463
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

July 14: Networking by Night Business Card Exchange, “Water Ski Show Night,” 5 to 7 p.m., hosted by Oxbow Water Ski Show Team, 100 Old Springfield Road, Northampton. Sponsored by Bay State Gas. Gala water-ski show, door prizes, hors d’ouevres, host beer and wine. Cost: $5 for members, $15 for non-members.

July 30: 26th annual Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce Golf Tourney, 9 a.m. shotgun start, scramble. Hosted by Southampton Country Club, Southampton. Major sponsor: Easthampton Savings Bank. Golf with cart, lunch, dinner, gift, contests. Cost: $100 per person or $400 for a foursome. Win a Buick Hole-in-One sponsored by Cernak Buick. Win $10,000 Hole-in-One sponsored by Finck & Perras Insurance.

Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce
www.explorenorthampton.com  
(413) 584-1900

July 7: Arrive@5, 5 to 7 p.m., Seth Mias Catering at Northampton Country Club. Cost: $10 for members

Northampton Area Young Professional Society
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900

July 11: NAYP Party with a Purpose Family Day, 1 to 5 p.m., Look Memorial Park, Willow Brook Shelter. Cookout, games, and fun. Cost: $5 for NAYP members, $10 for guests, $2 for children.

Quaboag Hills Chamber of Commerce
www.qvcc.biz
(413) 283-2418
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

South Hadley/Granby Chamber of Commerce
www.shchamber.com
(413) 532-6451

July 19: 7th Annual Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament, hosted by Hickory Ridge Country Club, benefiting Amherst Regional High School business-education programs. Registration and putting contest at 11 a.m., light lunch at 12:30 p.m., shotgun start, scramble format, dinner reception and raffle at 5:30 p.m. Cost:  $125 per person or $500 for a foursome.

Three Rivers Chamber of Commerce
www.threeriverschamber.org
(413) 283-6425
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Company Notebook Departments

Bay Path Receives HSF Business Award

HOLYOKE — Bay Path College recently received the 2010 Human Service Forum Business Award from the Human Service Forum for its commitment to the community and specifically Girls Inc. Girls Inc. of Holyoke nominated Bay Path for its ongoing board involvement, financial support, and expertise in various subject matters, according to Suzanne Parker, executive director of Girls Inc. Parker added that the college provides “transformational opportunities” for Girls Inc. participants. For the past decade, the Human Service Forum has honored area businesses and organizations that have played a significant role in supporting the human services of the Pioneer Valley.

ReStore Expanding in Springfield

SPRINGFIELD — Next summer is the target date for the ReStore Home Improvement Center to move into a 32,000-square-foot complex at 83 Warwick St. The warehouse was formerly owned by the Kavanagh Furniture Co. The expanded facility will provide a retail experience featuring sections of recycled appliances and environmentally friendly products for the home, as well as seminar space designed for builders and homeowners. ReStore’s inventory includes used and salvaged materials and surplus stock from the building industry. Items are accepted from homeowners, contractors, manufacturers, retailers, and municipal collection centers. ReStore officials note that, by shopping or donating materials, area residents can save materials from disposal and make home improvement more affordable for more people. With the move, ReStore expects to hire five additional employees, as well as deconstruction crews that would be needed to collect inventory. As part of the overall project, ReStore secured $900,000 in federal stimulus money through the Mass. Department of Energy Resources to make the new building more energy-efficient. ReStore is currently located on Albany Street in the Gasoline Alley complex.

Mercy Recognized as Community Value Provider

SPRINGFIELD — Mercy Medical Center was recently recognized as a top-ranked Community Value Provider by Cleverley + Associates of Columbus, OH. Cleverley + Associates, a health care financial consulting firm specializing in operational benchmarking and performance enhancement strategies, released the findings as part of its new publication, State of the Hospital Industry – 2010 Edition. Dr. William Bithoney, interim president and CEO of the Sisters of Providence Health System and chief operating officer of Mercy Medical Center, said Mercy is proud to be identified as one of the highest-scoring facilities in the country in measures of quality of care and costs. He noted that these awards serve as “independent validation” that Mercy’s quality scores exceed those of its peer hospitals while charges and costs are significantly lower than peer hospitals. Health care value and value-based purchasing of health care services are increasingly important concepts driving health care reform, and Mercy continues to prove that high-quality hospital care can cost less, added Bithoney. The State of the Hospital Industry reports selected measures of hospital financial performance and discusses the critical factors that lie behind them. The publication focuses on the U.S. acute-care hospital industry during a three-year time period (2006-08). For the seventh year, the 2010 State of the Hospital Industry reports an exclusive measure developed by Cleverley + Associates: the Community Value Index (CVI). The CVI is a proprietary index created to offer a measure of the value that a hospital provides to its community. The book outlines the data used to calculate the CVI as well as provides a list of the Top 100 and all Five-Star (top-quintile) hospitals. The Community Value Index was created to provide an assessment of a hospital’s performance in four areas: financial strength and reinvestment, cost of care, pricing, and quality. Fundamentally, the CVI suggests that a hospital provides value to the community when it is financially viable, is appropriately reinvesting back into the facility, maintains a low cost structure, has reasonable charges, and provides high-quality care to patients.

MassMutual Hosts ‘Way to Win’ Conference

SPRINGFIELD — MassMutual’s Retirement Services Division recently hosted a conference titled “Way to Win,” showcasing its commitment to helping its select network of third-party administrators (TPAs) grow their business by leveraging the resources provided by MassMutual to TPAs on behalf of sponsors and participants. MassMutual has been working with TPAs for more than 30 years, according to Hugh O’Toole, senior vice president of sales and client management. O’Toole noted that each TPA channel has unique strengths and resource needs, and each brings a “unique value” to the sponsor and the participant. More than 60 TPAs nationwide attended the conference. O’Toole added that the response from the participants was “phenomenal.” The common view expressed throughout the event was that MassMutual understands the TPA business and the value TPAs bring to plan sponsors and participants, said O’Toole. For more information on MassMutual’s TPA Alliance, call (866) 444-2601.

DBA Certificates Departments

The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of June 2010.

AGAWAM

Acorn Somers
1026 Springfield St.
Sara LaCroix

Colonial News
39 Southwick St.
Mushtaq F. Yusuf

Guns and Gear, LLC
168 Elm St.
Christopher Szczygiel

Maxx Home Improvement
82 Kanawha St.
Maksim Mikanovich

Ohlmeyer Enterprises
39 Day St.
Donna Ohlmeyer

Over the Moon
1325 Springfield St.
Christine Dziengelewski

Universal Distribution Group
15 Cypress Terrace
Anthony Serra

AMHERST

Broadway Terry’s
321 Main St.
Terry Knott

Clearwater Seafood & Grille
178 North Pleasant St.
Jason Brown

Flow Media Design
28 Farmington Road
Richard Hood

Innate Body Wisdom Physical Therapy
96 North Pleasant St.
Marjorie Giliberto

Interventions
441 West St.
Shirley DeSheilob

Left-Click Corporation
15 Coales Lane
Kelly Ambrecht

Pet Behavior Consulting
72 Mechanic St.
Elise Gouge

Synergy Rehabilitation Services
219 Heatherstone Road
Debra Ellis

CHICOPEE

La Nena Boutique
425 East St.
Wilfredo Mercado

Liberty Tax Service
17 Bradway St.
Jacob Garcia

The Slosek Insurance Company
170 Springfield St.
John P. Slosek, Jr.

EASTHAMPTON

Bethlehem House
11 Doody Ave.
Barbara Mucha

Jenny’s Place
77 Main St.
Jennifer Dutra

Pythagorass Painters
134 West St.
Ethan Froebel

GREENFIELD

Euroline Trucking
1109 Bernardston Road
Nick Georgitsa

Ford of Greenfield
1 Main St.
Two Fathers, LLC

Tiffany Hilton Pottery
3 Village Green
Tiffany Hilton

HOLYOKE

Bath & Body Works, LLC
50 Holyoke St.
Patrick Hennessey

Café Whitney
361 Whitney Ave.
Alan Berrogard

Homewood Suites
375 Whitney Ave.
David H. Baldauf

Jay’s Auto Repair
170 Main St.
Jesus Vargas

Manny’s Pizza
510 Westfield Road
Charlene M. Fantakis

NORTHAMPTON

Antique Center of Northampton
9 ? Market St.
Stephen Whitlock

Blaque Life
60 Platinum Circle
Neuline Anaji

Paper! Paper!
11 Market St.
Laura J. Hoffman

True Blue Dog Training
72 Austin Cir.
Jennifer Schreimer

PALMER

Leslie Dionne Photography
1024 Pleasant St.
Leslie Dionne

MI / ZE Construction
104 Emery St.
Maria Goncalves

Sammi’s Mart & Deli
1365 Main St.
Saed Batayneh

 

Specialty Timber Harvesters
61 Beech St.
Susan Scott

Trust Associates Real Estate
16 Wilbraham St.
Debra Woods

SOUTHWICK

Pentz’s Parlour
38 Lakemont St.
Lisa Pentz

William Lakota Plumbing
17 Sheep Pasture Road
William M. Lakota

SPRINGFIELD

Abaldwinproduction
32 Fairfield St.
Bridgette Baldwin

Potato Patch
21 Marble St.
Sharon E. McCarthy

Reina Market
260 Hancock St.
Reina Diaz

Relevant Energy Relevant
1833 Roosevelt Ave.
Brian S. Tolliver

Sir-Tech Auto Body Glass
1292 Dwight St.
Damaris S. Baez

So Clean
158 Island Pond Road
Lorensa Stinson

State St. Café & Sports Bar
1146 State St.
Edwin Martinez

The Ice Cream Bus
47 Garfield St.
Michael Joseph

The Cutting Edge
473 Boston Road
Jeanne Sady

Touch of Class Balloons
350 Eastern Ave.
Carmen Mason

TVO Consulting Company
211 Commonwealth Ave.
Thanh T. Vo

War and Fantasy Games
125 Paridon St.
Erik W. Liggan

WESTFIELD

CJ Tree Service
1100 East Mountain Road
Joshua Raymaakers

Emmet’s Hot Dog
256 Union St.
Janet Allen

Hayrake Farm
1150 East Mountain Road
Christine Buffum

Savoir Faire
1251 East Mountain Road
Sandra M. Sorel

Source
2 Russell Road
Renee Collier

Westfield PC Tech
234 Bates Road
Douglas Jones

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Ballard Mack Sales & Service
124 Ashley Ave.
John Picking

Bob’s Discount Furniture
135 Memorial Ave.
William C. Ballou

G & C Landscaping
118 Galaska St.
Gregory D. Warren

Hands Across the Heavens
900 Riverdale St.
Stanley A. Farley

Licensed Avon Beauty Center
250 Westfield St.
Deborah L. Scharmann

Light of Hope Foundation
464 Main St.
Svetlana Gorbovets

Major Home Improvement
42 Cooper St.
Vasilie Kharchuk

Mani-Pedi
680 Westfield St.
Julie S. Harty

On the Border
33 Border Way
Otb Acquisition, LLC

Ricoh Business Solutions
1 Interstate Dr.
Ricoh Americas Corporation

Steve’s Sports
94 Front St.
Steve Bourdeau

Tailor Made Paintless Dent Repair
59 Robinson Road
Callie A. Krawczyk

The Communications Group Inc.
380 Union St.
Matthew Villamaino

Theriotdistrict.com
121 Baldwin St.
Dominic Alfano

Wireless Advocates
119 Dagget Dr.
Wireless Advocates Corporation

Departments People on the Move

Bay Path College President Carol A. Leary, Ph.D., has been selected by the Massachusetts American Council on Education – National Network for Women Leaders as the woman leader in 2010 who has proven leadership in higher education and promotes the advancement of women in the field. She was honored by the organization with the 2010 Senior Leadership Award on June 9 in Milton.

•••••

Douglas Guthrie, Senior Vice President of Comcast’s Western New England Region, was recently inducted into the Connecticut Business Hall of Fame and recognized as Business Leader of the Year at an event at the Connecticut Laborer’s Council offices in Hartford, Conn. Guthrie oversees 2,000 employees and serves as the top executive responsible for operations, financial performance, and customer service for more than 800,000 customers in Connecticut, Western Mass., Vermont, and New York.

•••••

Stephanie Fisk, Business and Finance Officer for the Gateway Regional School District in Huntington, was elected as Vice President of the Massachusetts Assoc. of School Business Officials. Fisk has served three years on the organization’s board of directors and chaired several committees for the board. At Gateway, she handles all financial operations, food services, student transportation, grants management, and maintenance operations of the school district.

•••••

Tammy Richards of Pieciak & Co. has been recognized as an Outstanding Member by the National Assoc. of Certified Valuation Analysts, a global, professional association. She holds an accredited valuation analyst designation from the association as well as a certified mergers and acquisition professional designation from the Middle Market Investment Banking Assoc.

•••••

Patrick Leonardo, a long-time Paramedic Supervisor with American Medical Response, was recently honored with the American Ambulance Assoc. Stars of Life Award in Washington, D.C. The Stars of Life program is an annual event that recognizes and honors outstanding individuals in the emergency medical services industry throughout the nation. Leonardo has been employed in the field for more than 13 years.

•••••

Robert P. Molta’s Carlson/GMAC Real Estate announced the following:
• Robert E. Thomas has joined the agency’s Wilbraham office;
• Heather Thomas has joined the agency’s Wilbraham office; and
• Christine Magnacca-Moran has joined the agency’s Wilbraham office.

•••••

Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) announced the following:
• Ronald D. Grodsky was honored at recent commencement exercises with an honorary degree. Grodsky is President of Harry Grodsky and Co. of Springfield. He has served as president since 1995, and has worked full-time at the company since 1968. Grodsky was recognized for his service to the community and at STCC;
• Franklin D. Quigley Jr., a 1977 graduate of the Civil Engineering program at STCC and founder of FD Quigley & Associates, received the 2010 Distinguished Alumnus Award at commencement exercises. Quigley was recognized for his distinguished career in engineering as well as an exceptional record of service to the community; and
• Tamson M. Ely, recently retired Dean of Library Services at STCC, has been inducted into the Mass. Library Assoc. Hall of Fame. The honor is bestowed on practicing or retired librarians who have made a substantial, sustained contribution to advancing the cause of Massachusetts librarians or librarianship over a career of at least 10 years.

•••••

The Western New England College School of Law in Springfield announced the following:
• Professor René Reich-Graefe recently received the Catherine J. Jones Excellence in Teaching Award. Reich-Graefe serves as Associate Professor of Law; and
• Benjamin Rajotte was recently named Adjunct/Visiting Professor of the Year. Rajotte serves as Assistant Visiting Professor of Law.
Students nominate winners of the prestigious honors for outstanding contributions as educators and advisors.

•••••

Danielle Grosse has received top honors from lia sophia and its Excellent Beginnings Program Achievers for outstanding sales accomplishments and professionalism.

•••••

Jeré Dittrich has been named Director of Nursing at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke. He is responsible for overseeing the nursing staff at Providence, as well as developing and implementing high-quality patient-care services, and various administrative duties regarding policies, procedures, and programs.

•••••

The Springfield Housing Authority (SHA) announced the follwing:
• Michele Decoteau has been promoted to Accounting Manager. She is responsible for managing the daily operations of the Accounting Department and its staff. She also prepares and supervises the financial statements required for compliance with HUD and DHCD;
• Ivette Otero to Assistant District Manager. She is responsible for enforcing lease requirements and regulations, showing units to prospective residents, resolving resident complaints, and performing inspections.

•••••

Park Square Realty in Westfield announced the following:
• Kristine Cook has joined the Westfield office as a Sales Associate; and
• Peter Curtin has joined the Westfield office as a Sales Associate.

•••••

The Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. announced the following:
• Director Jonathan Fitch, Manager of the Princeton Municipal Light Department, was elected Chairman of the Board;
• Gary R. Babin, Director of the Mansfield Municipal Electric Department, was elected to a three-year term as a Director; and
• Jeffrey R. Cady, Manager of the Chicopee Municipal Light Department, was elected to a three-year term as a Director.

•••••

Vicki Evans was recently promoted to Vice President and Controller at W.F. Young Inc. of East Longmeadow.

•••••

Gregory B. Chiecko, Sales Director at the Eastern States Exposition, West Springfield, was recently elected President of the New England Assoc. of Amusement Parks and Attractions. He will lead an 18-member board of directors from across New England to fulfill the association’s mission of promoting safe operations, regional development, professional growth, and commercial success of the amusement industry in the region. He is also the Chairman of the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.

•••••

Ken Toong, Executive Director of Dining Services at the UMass Amherst, was recently named a leader in retail food service by Fare magazine. The award will be presented at the Foodservice at Retail Exchange Conference in Chicago. During the conference, Toong and the other award recipients will participate in a panel discussion titled “Gold Standard: Insights from the Best in Channel.”

•••••

Bart Bales has joined Tighe & Bond of Westfield as a Mechanical Engineer and Manager of its mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work.

•••••

Rick Stolarik, Produce Manager at the Big Y World Class Market in Tolland, Conn., has received an award from the United Fresh Foundation’s Center for Leadership Excellence. Stolarik was honored among 25 produce managers representing 20 supermarket chains, commissaries, and independent retail stores within the U.S. and Canada. Stolarik has been a produce manager for close to 30 years.

Departments Picture This

Mission: AMICCON

Organizers of an event called AMICCON — the Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Competition & Conference — staged a press event recently at the New England Air Museum at Bradley Airport to help build awareness of the Sept. 23 conference that will highlight manufacturing in Western Mass. and Connecticut. AMICCON will focus on six key manufacturing niches — plastics and advanced materials, precision machining, paper and packaging, electronics, ‘green’/clean technology, and medical devices — and has been designed to help area manufacturers make connections with one another and become aware of all that is produced in Springfield-Hartford corridor. The conference will take place at the MassMutual Center. For more information or to register, visit www.amiccon.com. Seen here are, from left, Jeff Sattler, president of NUVO Bank, one of the event organizers; Daryl Ott, executive director of the Connecticut Tooling & Machining Assoc. and also membership director of the National Tooling & Machining Assoc.; organizers Eric Hagopian, president of Hoppe Tool in Chicopee, and Ellen Bemben; and Mike Speciale, executive director of the New England Air Museum. Those gathered are standing under a fully rehabbed WWII B-29 bomber.


IBS Celebrates Its 20th

Innovative Business Systems staged a 20th-anniversary party recently at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House. More than 100 clients, friends, and vendor partners attended. From left, Dave Delvecchio, president and owner; Scott Seifel, owner and technician; Bill Tremblay, former owner and president; Tremblay’s wife, Elaine; Ben Scoble, owner and technician; Brian Scanlon, owner, vice president, and treasurer; and Scott Benoit, owner and technician.

Features
Intriguing Business Opportunity Comes Into Focus

Denise Smith

Denise Smith says her company can help other companies with the crucial task of projecting a positive image.

Denise Smith was searching for a word or two to describe the process, or technique, applied to many of her images — one that makes them look more like paintings than photographs — and not doing particularly well.
“Let’s just they’re computer-enhanced; we have a little magic formula, or something we do in Photoshop to enhance the image to give it more of an artsy look,” she told BusinessWest, opting to be rather vague about what she does to images to give them such a unique quality that they’re now hanging in several area businesses and executives’ offices.
They can be seen in the main lobby of NUVO Bank’s facilities in Tower Square, for example, and also in several Hampden Bank branches, including Longmeadow, Indian Orchard, and West Springfield. Meanwhile, Russell Denver, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, has several of Smith’s images of downtown Springfield hanging in his office in the TD Bank building.
If it were up to Smith, her works would be appearing in many more area businesses. Such exposure would be clear evidence of success with a new business endeavor she launched roughly a year ago. Called Corporate Images, the venture is an offshoot of a photography studio that has, for more than 20 years, focused mostly on family and bridal portraits.
And it’s one that Smith believes has enormous growth potential, because it has several components — everything from headshots of a company’s employees to photographs that can be used on a Web site, to images of people and places that can be put on an office’s walls.
“Image is everything for a business,” she explained. “And we can help a company project a very positive image, from the look and feel of its Web site to the office décor that says so much about the company.”
Tracing the history of how a hobby turned into a multi-faceted business, Smith said she had only a passive interest in photography until high school, when her uncle, a professional photographer, passed away and her father bought all his equipment and gave it to her.
She took a few classes in photography at area colleges, developed an affinity for the art, and eventually took a job with Loring Studios doing mostly high-school yearbook work. After a few years, she left Loring for another studio, but always yearned to go into business for herself.
In 1989, she did, with the launching of Denise Smith Photography in her home in Longmeadow.
Over the next several years, she built up a solid reputation for children’s photography, and is best known for her portrait work, which includes a suite of services under the brand name Bella Donna (‘beautiful woman’ in Italian), specifically photography of brides, mothers, and mothers-to-be.
Seeking to diversify in a competitive marketplace, Smith launched Corporate Images in the summer of 2009 to focus on a different and potentially lucrative market — the business community. And she said her work with NUVO and, later, Hampden Bank provided much of the inspiration for the new venture.
At NUVO, Smith was commissioned to capture what she called “different angles” of Springfield that would go well beyond conventional shots of landmarks such as the Campanile, Symphony Hall, and the Memorial Bridge.
“Sometimes the biggest challenge is to capture images that everyone is already so familiar with, and generate a product that is so different from what other photographers have already created,” she explained. “We worked to create a result that truly speaks of how beautiful Springfield is and how vibrant our community is, from motorcycles to architecture to rock and classical music.”
That result includes several unique views of downtown, including one looking south from the North End, as well as a set of images of the entertainment district during one of the so-called ‘biker nights.’ There are also several tight shots of architectural elements from historical buildings, and one dramatic image (actually three different images pieced together) from opening night at Symphony Hall.
For several Hampden Bank branches, Smith put together a snapshot (or several of them) of the community in question. In Longmeadow, for example, the branch’s walls hold images of the town library, Community Center, and old cemetery, and even the fire department, gathered on and around one of its pumpers.
Many of the images now hanging in these various venues, as well as dozens more on Smith’s Web site (www.denisesmithphotography.com) are printed on canvas and computer-enhanced to provide that quality that makes them look like paintings.
This technique, coupled with the use of different angles or views of a specific subject, has prompted Smith to adopt the marketing line, “we take the ordinary and make it something extraordinary.”
In addition to works that can be displayed on office walls, Smith is also handling a number of assignments for companies’ Web sites, especially portraits of key personnel. This is just one component of the multifaceted business that she expects will develop into a highly successful branch of her larger photography business.
Moving forward, Smith hopes her current displays and other forms of marketing will build awareness of her work, and her venture, and thus help expand the portfolio. And she’s being aggressive and imaginative in the pursuit of ways to create visibility.
For example, she’s currently working with the Springfield Business Improvement District and its director, Don Courtemanche, on a special project — photographing the inside of Springfield’s old Court Square Hotel for an exhibit, slated for this fall, designed to spur interest in the restoration of that landmark.
“These are really never-before-seen images,” she said, adding that she has now been in the hotel several times for some shooting. “It’s very run down in there, but there is a lot of beauty still left. There is some beautiful woodwork on the staircases, for example. And on each floor, there are original wall murals that depict different eras in Springfield’s history, and they are just fabulous.
“I have a lot of very interesting shots of rooms, hallways, and the walls, and the exhibit should be very interesting,” she continued. “These are things that not everyone can just get in and see.”
Creating works that people don’t see often, if ever, is the broad mission behind Smith’s work and her various business ventures. You might say she’s focused on the big picture — in more ways than one.

— George O’Brien

Sections Supplements
Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame Steers into Its Second Decade

Ira Rubenzahl says that, a decade after its creation, the Western Mass. Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame has earned a place within the region’s business community — and so has the banquet at which inductees are announced and celebrated.
There are now 57 inductees. Some of them are individuals (Theodor Geisel, Mary Lyon, Milton Bradley, and Primus Mason are in this category), a few teams of partners (Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, Charles and George Merriam, and Silas Lambson and Abel Goodnow), as well as a couple of organizations (such as Baystate Health, for example). But most are families that started businesses and ran them for decades.
Those family names include Picknelly, O’Connell, Fontaine, Steiger, Sandri, Balise, Roberts, Falcone, Scherff, and many others. They are now etched into plaques that hang in the main lobby of the Scibelli Enterprise Center in the Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College.
And there will be more names added to additional plaques, said Rubenzahl, president of STCC, who told BusinessWest that, a decade after its founding, the hall of fame will continue to honor and celebrate the region’s tradition of entrepreneurship.
“This has been an important event for this region,” he said of the annual dinner. “The college and the college foundation wanted to continue this, and we’re enthusiastic about the program moving forward.”
But there will be a few changes moving forward, said Rubenzahl, with most of them involving the annual induction dinner.
For starters, the event, traditionally staged in November, will be moved to the spring, with the one honoring the class of 2011 slated for April 14 at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House. Meanwhile, inductees, which have been announced each May for the past decade, will now be introduced at the college’s annual Top of the City party, with the next one slated for Jan. 20. And moving forward, proceeds from the dinner will go toward scholarships for entrepreneurship students at STCC; in the past, they were used for youth-oriented entrepreneurship programs.
Another change will be the larger role being taken by BusinessWest, which has also been honoring the region’s rich history of entrepreneurship and will collaborate with STCC in matters involving the Hall of Fame and the annual dinner.
The magazine, which has, since 1996, presented its Top Entrepreneur Award (the Holyoke G&E was chosen for 2009), will honor its latest winner at the Top of City party. In addition, BusinessWest will play a prominent role in introducing the inductees for a given year and handling logistics of the annual banquet.
“This region has a strong heritage of entrepreneurship, and it continues today with a number of new and exciting ventures and the expansion and evolution of many family businesses,” said Kate Campiti, associate publisher and advertising manager of BusinessWest.
“We’re looking forward to collaborating with STCC to recognize people from the past and present who are continuing a tradition of innovation and excellence,” she added.
Also working with the college on matters involving the Hall will be UMass Amherst, said Rubenzahl, noting that the university recently entered into a collaborative effort with STCC on the management of the Enterprise Center and its Springfield Incubator. Marla Michel, director of Strategic Communications and Outreach for the university, is now a shared executive, working two days each week as director of the incubator.
Representatives from UMass will be among those chosen to serve on a committee that will select the inductees for 2010, said Bill Kwolek, director of Development at STCC, adding that the panel will also include representatives of the college and several area economic-development agencies.
Here are the inductees for the first decade of the Western Mass. Entrepre-neurship Hall of Fame.

Class of 2009
• Bacon Wilson, P.C.;
• The Cambi Family (Springfield Foodservice Corp.);
• Larry Derose (Texcel Inc.);
• The Desrosiers Family (Hadley Printing);
• John Gormally (BusinessWest, ABC40/FOX6); and
• The Peters Family (Universal Plastics)

Class of 2008
• Baystate Health;
• The Jacobson Family (OMG Inc.);
• The Samble Family (Belmont Laundry);
• The Scherff Family (Student Prince restaurant); and
• The Young Family (W.F. Young)

Class of 2007
• Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss);
• Charles and George Merriam (Merriam-Webster Inc.);
• The Bassett Family (Bassett Boat Co. Inc.);
• The Falcone Family (Rocky’s Hardware);
• The Gordenstein Family (Broadway Office Interiors); and
• The Roberts Family (F.L. Roberts)

Class of 2006
• The Balise Family (Balise Motor Sales);
• The Fontaine Family (Fontaine Bros. Inc.);
• The Grenier Family (Grynn & Barrett Studios);
• Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson (Smith & Wesson); and
• The Lanier Family (Springfield Food Systems)

Class of 2005
• Sister Mary Caritas and the Sisters of Providence;
• Joshua Brooks (Eastern States Exposition);
• William L. Putnam (WWLP TV-22);
• Mary Lyon (Mount Holyoke College);
• Fran and Teddi Laurin (Laurin Publishing); and
• Joseph Napolitan

Class of 2004
• Albert and Amelia Ferst (Camfour);
• Silas Lamson and Abel Goodnow (Lamson and Goodnow);
• Joseph V. Gosselin Jr. (Commonwealth Packaging Co.);
• Emanuel (Manny) Rovithis (Manny’s TV and Applicances); and
• William Skinner and Family (William Skinner and Sons)

Class of 2003
• Channing Bete Family (Channing Bete Co.);
• Samuel Bowles (the Republican);
• Milton Bradley (Milton Bradley Co.);
• The Hannoush Family (Hannoush Jewelers); and
• Daniel J. O’Connell Family (Daniel J. O’Connell Cos.)

Class of 2002
• The Carroll Family (Riverside Park);
• John E. Reed (Mestek Inc.);
• The Sandri Family (Sandri Cos.);
• Stephen Spinelli Jr. (American Oil Change Corp.); and
• Albert Steiger (Steiger’s)

Class of 2001
• The Davis Family (American Saw and Manufacturing Co.);
• Jane and Jack Fitzpatrick (Country Curtains);
• Primus Mason;
• Peter C. Picknelly and Peter L. Picknelly (Peter Pan Bus Lines);
• George W. Rice and Caleb Rice (MassMutual); and
• Amos Rugg (Rugg Manufacturing Co.)

Class of 2000
• Frank S. Beveridge (Stanley Home Products);
• Curtis Blake and S. Prestley Blake (Friendly Ice Cream);
• Zenas Crane (Crane Paper Co.);
• Paul D’Amour & Gerald D’Amour (Big Y Foods);
• Joseph J. Deliso Sr. (HBA Cast Products);
• Michael Kittredge (Yankee Candle);
• Albert G. Spalding (Spalding Sports Worldwide); and
• Rita M. Tremble (Valley Communications Systems)

Sections Supplements
Bay Path Students Learn by Doing

Lauren Way, Bay Path College’s director of Entrepreneurial Programs and Cooperative Education.

Lauren Way, Bay Path College’s director of Entrepreneurial Programs and Cooperative Education.

Lauren Way, director of Entrepreneurial Programs and Cooperative Education at Bay Path College, likes to say that the school’s programs in entrepreneurship do more than prepare students to start and manage their own business. In short, they promote entrepreneurial thinking, something that can help people in all fields, employers and employees alike. The school has even created its own term to describe the mindset it promotes: ‘entre-vation,’ which blends entrepreneurship and innovation.
Before a conversation began about the nature of entrepreneurial education, Lauren Way posed the hypothetical question, ‘what exactly is an entrepreneur?’
“Some would say it’s a person who takes the risk to start and run a business,” she continued. “Others would say that an entrepreneur is not a social or financial category at all, but rather it is a philosophy, a state of mind that focuses on seeking out opportunities, taking action, and finding ways to solve other people’s problems in a profitable way.”
Way is Bay Path College’s director of Entrepreneurial Programs and Cooperative Education, and she told BusinessWest that teaching college students the tools for starting one’s own business has a practical application that is more important than ever.
“About 50% of the current crop of undergraduates will own their own business one day,” she said, referring to the nationwide population of students. “They don’t realize it yet, but that is a statistic that is cited more and more often. And that’s all students, not just business students.”
Sure, she continued, there is also the statistic that says somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of new businesses will fail in their first five years, but, she countered, “what that number doesn’t tell you is that the majority of those people go on to found another business.”
As part of Bay Path’s commitment to providing students with a career-focused education, the college has been fine-tuning its entrepreneurial academics on all levels, with offerings from graduate programs all the way to summer sessions for area high-school girls.
“At Bay Path, what we think is that employers want entrepreneurial thinking in need-finders and problem-solvers,” Way explained of the college’s mission. “That’s what our curriculum focuses on … not specifically that you’re going to start your own business, but asking what entrepreneurial thinking is all about.”
With that summer program gearing up, Way met with BusinessWest at her desk surrounded by the supplies for her upcoming week-long session. She explained how Bay Path is the leading entrepreneurial spirit on campus, and how the school hopes to be more widely known nationwide for its ongoing commitment to making entrepreneurial education not just a necessary discipline in higher education, but also a cultural mindset.

The Gifts That Keep on Giving
Way gives much credit for the beginnings of the entrepreneurial programs at Bay Path to the contributions of two charitable organizations.
She credits the Springfield-based Harold Grinspoon Foundation with “doing the impossible.”
“They were an early catalyst in getting 12 local colleges together for an Entrepreneurial Initiative [EI],” she explained, describing that organization’s mission. “Not an easy task to get such a number of schools all on board.”
Those colleges meet once every year for a conference at the MassMutual Center, and as testament to the growing popularity of entrepreneurship at the schools, the number that started out at 50 students this past year numbered close to 500.
In addition, Grinspoon’s EI endows an annual elevator-pitch contest between the colleges, with the winner taking home $2,000. Bay Path has had, in Way’s words, “unusual success” at the competition, taking top prize in five of the seven years, and placing in six.
The Coleman Foundation, based in Illinois, funds educational entrepreneurial programs across the country. Way said that its goal is to instill entrepreneurship on campuses, to make it interdisciplinary, and to embed it into a business department’s curriculum. Through a grant from that organization, she came to Bay Path.
But she said that much credit needs to go to the college’s president, Dr. Carol Leary, for her visionary approach to making Bay Path a fertile ground for all of these initiatives.
“One of the reasons I came here from Hampshire College,” Way said, “is that we are such an entrepreneurial college. In the four years that I’ve been here, we have started 10 new master’s programs. Talk about need-finding — we’re finding the needs of our students, and our region.”

Pitch Perfect
Way said that one of the biggest advantages to teaching entrepreneurship at Bay Path is the size of the college. “We’re small enough that we can focus on reaching all the students from all the different disciplines,” she explained.
In addition to the undergraduate program that is a focus of the business department, there is a certificate program that Way launched last spring for students in all majors. Psychology and Education draw a great deal of students to the program, she said. “Many of them want to start their own child-care centers,” she said, “or they want to invent their own game or learning tool.”
A capstone course for juniors and seniors is ‘Entre-vation’ (a word copyrighted by the college), which is described as a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship and innovation.
While business courses are typically taught by the Harvard Case Study method, Way explained that much of that dates to the 1980s. Entre-vation takes a different approach.
“During the summer, I choose five local entrepreneurs,” she continued, “and do a case study on them. We spend the first five weeks interviewing those businesspeople, learning what makes them tick, how they got started, what their background was.”
The students team up to offer innovative solutions to real-life cases entailing problems or challenges for these businesses. By the end of the course, the student teams present their findings to the business owners, often with surprisingly acute and helpful suggestions.
The next step up is a master’s program in Entrepreneurial Thinking and Innovative Practices, which is open to both men and women, and much of the course work can be completed online. There are students from across the U.S., and even one from Afghanistan, she said.
“We had a student at our last commencement, graduating with his master’s,” she said, “and he had never been to the campus before!” But, she added, there is a high level of interaction with professors in the online classes.
It is the MBA program that sets Bay Path apart from its contemporaries, Way said, describing the non-traditional student body for that degree.
“On the one end of the spectrum you’ve got the Millennial generation, then Gen-Xers, to Baby Boomers, even beyond, in their 60s,” she said. “I’d say that the average MBA student is in their mid-40s or 50s. I love those students … they know what they want to get out of their education, they have been in the world long enough to see links between the classroom and the world. They have hooks to hang the theories on. They have a wealth of material to bring to other students in the classroom.”
In addition, there is a Saturday Program, or the One-day Program, which Way describes as targeted to older women who never got their undergraduate degrees. “They don’t have to fit their schedules around classwork,” she explained.
But as she motioned around her office crowded with supplies for her upcoming one-week summer session, she spoke of the next generation of entrepreneurial education.
Going into its fourth year, the week-long training session is called “It’s My Business,” and is targeted at underserved area high-school girls. For a total of 40 hours in one week, the girls will have readings by high-school and college-aged entrepreneurs who hit the million-dollar mark, seminars with similarly-aged local business owners, and during this time the students will devise a plan for a startup company of their own.
The week ends with an elevator pitch before an assembly of faculty and peers. “Talk about stage fright,” Way laughed.
“Most of these girls say that there’s absolutely no way they can do that, but we have a great speech coach from Connecticut who helps them through it. And they all do it. It blows me away.”

Success Stories
Bay Path students have excelled in peer challenges, and Way is quick to point out how her students have exceeded her expectations more often than not. A sophomore Biology student won the campus elevator-pitch competition, sending her to the Grinspoon challenge with other local colleges, and Way said that “this was a student who was so shy that she couldn’t even make eye contact when I first met her.”
However, her idea for “popper stoppers,” a porous ear plug designed to help with fluctuating atmospheric pressure — no more ears popping on flights — won her campus renown as well as the top prize in the area challenge.
“The fact that our students win against all these other colleges,” Way said, “with older graduate students, and in some cases people who already have owned their own business, is incredible.”
But the successes from Bay Path alumni aren’t isolated to the collegiate arena. Way proudly told the story of Stacey Bilodeau, a woman yet to finish her bachelor’s degree, whose three-year-old company, Independent Solutions, saw $70,000 in revenues in its first year, with a spike to $500,000 dollars the second year, and 13 additional employees.
Bilodeau started full-time work at the age of 13, and quickly realized a vocational passion — working in home health care. “She started working for someone else,” Way said, “and saw the problems inherent in that industry. She realized she could do better than this.”
Providing home care for patients with traumatic brain injuries, Bilodeau is presently looking to hire new staff to help her meet great demand. And that’s where Bay Path’s education helps her keep the wheels on the ground, learning how to make the passion for her field grow in a measured and successful manner, while maintaining the high level of service and care that brought her to this role. Approaching the end of her third year, Bilodeau plans to double the size of her staff and expects to make $1 million.

Learn By Doing
Bay Path takes a philosophical approach to teaching entrepreneurial initiatives, but Way said that she doesn’t frown upon encouraging students to begin a business, even if there’s a better-than-average chance that it will fail.
Learning from mistakes is a growing theme in entrepreneurship, she explained, and added that people tend not to learn from their successes, but rather from their failures.
“Starting a business right away allows them at least to get in there,” she said of current students entering the business world, “and it makes them realize those pieces of their education that they do need to work on. Maybe they find they need more math skills, or customer service. Doing it helps you figure out what else you need to learn.
“It’s important for students to be exposed to failure to see how they react and to see what messages they will take away,” she continued, adding, “You can’t learn to dance by reading about it.”
Way sees Bay Path’s model of entrepreneurial training eventually having important ramifications not just in the workforce, but in society at large. Her hopes are for the college to become more widely known as the premier college for undergraduate and graduate students in entrepreneurial thinking.
“I would love the phrase ‘academic entrepreneurs’ to describe the way we do things here at Bay Path,” she said.
“We can all be more entrepreneurial,” she added. “We can take a more entrepreneurial approach with our jobs, with our relationships, in our communities and our churches. This method of thinking is really for everyone. It’s not just about starting a business. It’s about finding needs and meeting them — finding solutions for problems in a profitable way.”

Sections Supplements
Online Banking Services Surge in Popularity

Karen Buell

Karen Buell says banks are being challenged to recognize what tech-savvy customers want, and then provide it.

When online banking was introduced about a decade ago, some people predicted the eventual death of physical branches, while others wondered if people would ever be comfortable transacting business on their home computer. Neither has proven to be true. In the past couple of years especially, Internet banking has taken off, and not just among the younger, tech-savvy crowd. Yet, bank administrators say it doesn’t threaten to close teller windows, as customers simply do more business than they used to through multiple channels. But online banking has created a new competitive challenge — one that area banks are excited to take on.

When it comes to banking, Karen Buell knows how the younger generation thinks. That’s because she’s one of them.
“I’m Generation Y, and I haven’t been to the bank in years — I work at one, but that doesn’t count, does it?” said Buell, Internet branch manager for PeoplesBank. So she regularly asks herself what features she’d like to see in an online banking platform.
“Really, my job is to make sure that anything we can do in our branches can be done online,” she told BusinessWest. “Anything that can be done in person, you should to be able to do at home, 24 hours a day. We know that convenience is the key.”
That convenience is becoming more of a priority for an increasingly tech-savvy consumer base at Peoples and other regional banks. And Buell — as well as others we spoke with — said it’s not just younger customers moving to the Internet to do much of their banking.
“If you asked me a year and a half ago, I’d have said it’s mostly the younger generation, but it’s across the board now,” said Kelly Ryan, vice president of Operations for Berkshire Bank. “I think it’s convenient; it’s 24/7 access, having the information right at your fingertips.”
Lynn Starr, vice president of Systems and Operations at Easthampton Savings Bank, is seeing the same trend — specifically, more banking customers of all ages switching to online banking.
“I also think people are becoming increasingly comfortable with online shopping, using the Internet to search for products, just more comfortable with the electronic world, so to speak,” she explained. “So we see a wide spectrum of customers, from 18 to 65 or 70, using our online platform. It just depends on how comfortable they are with technology and how much they’ve adopted it in other areas of their lives. We don’t see it happening only in the younger generation, but across all demographics.”
That means that online banking has become more than just an innovative offering used by a small number of customers; it’s now a competitive issue, a feature increasingly seen as necessary. And that has required a shift in what services banks offer and how they market themselves to an increasingly tech-savvy clientele.

Logging On
According to a survey sponsored by Fiserv and conducted by Harris Interactive, more than 80% of households with Internet access last year used it for online banking services: to access balances, check account history, transfer money between accounts, or pay bills at a bank Web site — and the number continues to grow rapidly. Among those surveyed, 41% of online banking users said they planned to pay more bills online at their financial institution’s Web site in the coming months.
The major reasons survey respondents said they prefer to pay bills online included speed (79%), ease of use (72%), cost savings on stamps (71%), and control over the timing of payments (71%). In addition, 49% of consumers who use online bill pay said they are less likely to switch banks due to their experience, up from 43% the previous year.
“We believe that consumers will continue to conduct more and more of their financial activities online,” said Geoff Knapp, vice president of Online Banking & Consumer Insights for Fiserv. “Online banking and bill payment is a free service, and a convenient and environmentally friendly way to bank. Consumers are actively becoming fans of the user-friendly, secure services financial institutions are implementing.”
Ryan called Berkshire Bank’s online channel “robust,” noting that, “on the personal side, you can pay bills, check account balances, transfer funds between checking and savings, and get images and copies of cleared checks. But our major project recently has been FinanceWorks, an online financial-management tool for personal Internet banking. We had no marketing on it at first, but close to 1,800 hits in the first 24 hours. The product just sold itself.”
FinanceWorks allows customers to manage all their accounts — even those from other banks — with a single login, create and monitor budgeting categories to show where money is being spent, monitor recurring transactions, and remind the customer when bills are due, among other features.
“My total goal is to look at the infrastructure we have internally, then look at the Internet banking platform and keep it robust,” Ryan said, echoing Buell’s priority of making sure customers have access to as many services online as those who visit the branch — and, in the case of features like the budgeting tool, even more. “We do it because we have to be competitive.”
Fedelina Madrid, vice president and senior marketing officer for Berkshire Bank, added that many banks have a similar structure to their basic online services — again, to stay competitive in an area customers have come to expect — but her institution also offers customers online access to all the bank’s financial services, including investment and wealth-management products.
“Customers expect online banking,” she said, “but when we add network services, we move more customers our way.”
FinanceWorks has also been a hit at PeoplesBank, where customers appreciate the way it aggregates all accounts in one place, so they can see balances and account histories, and are able to set budgets and track spending habits and savings goals, Buell said.
“So if you go to Dunkin Donuts, it’s automatically categorized as dining or coffee, and you can set up a budget for that expense. If you want to spend only $20 a month on coffee and no more, you can tell if you’re close to that goal or exceeding it. It’s a helpful tool for budgeting and tracking. If people see us as a resource to help them manage their money most effectively with the best options, hopefully they’ll choose us.”

Secure Transactions
At Easthampton Savings Bank, “online banking is certainly becoming a much more popular option,” Starr noted. “It’s becoming more widely accepted as people become more comfortable online. We’ve structured our program so that you can do online what you can do in the branch. You can even open up many types of deposit accounts, apply for consumer and mortgage loans, and receive e-statements.”
Those are popular, Starr continued, partly because they give customers instant access to recent activity every time they log in, so they’re not waiting for a mailed statement to discover potential problems, like fraudulent use of their account. Ryan added that eliminating mailed statements, an option many banks offer, also eliminates the risk of the information being stolen out of a mailbox, a factor in identity theft. It also cuts down on paper waste and was part of Berkshire Bank’s recent ‘going green’ push, Ryan said.
Still, when most people think of online banking, they think of convenience, Buell said. “Within our online banking channel, we offer bill payment, transfers, account history, check images, e-statements, things like that,” she noted. “We also offer Direct Connect to Quicken for personal accounts, which allows you to manage your money a little easier, because you don’t have to manually enter all the data.”
Buell was also proud of the next step in online banking — mobile banking, which can be conducted on a wireless device.
“It’s a scaled-down version of online banking, but it allows for one-time bill payment and transfers on the personal side,” she explained. “We’re finding that more and more people are doing things from their mobile device; they want to do things straight from their phone. So our mobile banking adoption has grown immensely; we launched an actual application for the iPhone earlier this year, and since then, our mobile banking option has advanced even further.
“It’s important that we provide all these options,” Buell continued. “We know the demand is there; we just have to bring products to market to meet the demand.”
She noted that it’s a challenge to be among the first to bring products to market, but at the same time, that’s how banks differentiate themselves from their competition — and the online world has certainly become ground zero for that sort of competition.
So, will online banking eventually mean the death of branches? Starr doesn’t think so.
“It’s just another channel,” she said. “When ATMs came out in the late ’70s and early ’80s, we heard that ATMs will be the death of branches, the death of the lobby. And when online banking appeared a decade ago, we heard the same thing, that branches would go away. But it’s just another channel by which customers can do business with us. Some use only the ATM, some use only branches, some use online banking, and some use all of them.”
Starr noted that, unlike the days before Internet banking and especially before ATMs, when people would do more business in each trip to the bank, customers tend make more transactions today and do a little business at a time. In that way, she said, branches will continue to thrive.
But that doesn’t make the virtual world any less intriguing, Buell said.
“It’s an exciting job,” Buell told BusinessWest, “especially in a world where technology is progressing so quickly. Every day brings new challenges and new success. It’s all about creating convenience for the customer. Sometimes I step back and say, ‘how would I want to do this?’”
Good question — especially coming from someone who never goes to the bank.

Joseph Bednar can be reached
at [email protected]

Sections Supplements
What Every Small Business Should Know about Immigration

Joseph Curran

Joseph Curran


Every small business should understand the basic rules about its responsibilities under the immigration laws, and also the growth opportunities available under immigration laws.
Employer responsibilities are the first concern of a small business. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) requires every employer to verify that all employees have proper work authorization — every single employee. The centerpiece of this system is the I-9 form, which employers must complete within three days of the start of work for each employee. Typically, each new employee must present photo identification and proof of employment authorization, with original, unexpired documents. Employers are not required to keep copies of the documents on file. A properly completed I-9 is all that is required.
It is not your job to make an actual determination whether the documents are legitimate. You are not an authorized Department of Homeland Security investigator. If you check the papers and fill out the form, and it turns out that the worker is illegal, you face no liability. The standard for reviewing the documents is “…reasonably appears on its face to be genuine.” Do not request more or different documents than the minimum required. The employee, not the employer, chooses which documents to present.
The employment verification regulations (the so-called ‘I-9 rules’) cover only true employees, not independent contractors. As in the area of workers’ comp, whether an individual or entity is an independent contractor is determined on a case-by-case basis — there are no bright line rules. The term ‘independent contractor’ includes those who “carry on independent business, contract to do a piece of work according to their own means and methods, and are subject to control only as to results.” In most cases, a company would have no obligation to check the immigration documents its subcontractors’ employees.
Violations of the employment-verification rules through a contract situation must be ‘knowing.’ This includes constructive knowledge and failure to exercise reasonable care in learning about and implementing immigration rules.
Beware of employment discrimination. An employer cannot selectively hire, or refuse to hire, nationals from certain countries. That practice is called ‘national origin discrimination’ under both federal employment-discrimination law and immigration law. Various federal statutes intersect on this issue; 8 U.S.C. § 1981 and Title VII apply to non-citizens, and prohibit discrimination on the basis of national origin.
IRCA adds another layer by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of national origin and citizenship in hiring and firing employees. IRCA violations are known by the legal acronym UIREP (unfair immigration-related employment practices). Employers may require only the minimum identity and employment documents outlined in the I-9 handbook. Employers may not require any specific or additional documentation. The UIREP provisions were added to temper the effect of IRCA on aliens who have proper work authorization. Congress did not want employers to stop hiring foreigners or people with accents out of fear of accidentally hiring an illegal alien.
Civil penalties for failure to fill out and maintain I-9s correctly can range from $110 to $1,100 for each I-9. Civil penalties for employment of unauthorized aliens can range from $275 to $2,200 per alien for the first offense, $2,200 to $5,500 for the second offense, and up to $3,300 to $11,000 per alien for the third or higher offense. Criminal penalties may be imposed in cases involving pattern or practice violations.
The Immigration Service (USCIS) has also implemented E-Verify, a Web-based verification tool that employers can use to check the visa status of potential employees, using information from USCIS and the Social Security Administration databases. E-Verify began as a voluntary program, but now government employers and government contractors, as well as some private employers, are required to use the program as part of their I-9 verification system.
IRCA enforcement is not consistent. Unless there is a pattern of violations, or you are unlucky enough to be targeted for a politically motivated ‘raid,’ you are not likely to be audited, and the penalties for IRCA violations are relatively mild. In fact, current INS policy favors a warning letter before fines are assessed. The goal of this policy is to educate employers and encourage them to correct problems without litigation. There are simply too many employers hiring foreign nationals for USCIS to keep track of them.
But keep in mind that this is all about politics, and the prevailing sentiment is strongly anti-immigrant. Any comprehensive immigration legislation that passes Congress will almost certainly include provisions to increase enforcement of the IRCA/I-9 rules.
In addition to the ‘defensive’ immigration concerns with I-9 compliance, employers should also consider the potential benefits available under the immigration laws.
If you have identified a skilled international professional who can help your business grow, there are employment visas available that will allow this worker to lawfully join your company. Because of the recent economic downturn, the numerical restrictions on these visas have disappeared, and the visa petition process is relatively straightforward. Keep in mind that the employer is the visa petitioner, not the foreign national. It is a process based on promises by the organization, not by the worker. Clearly, the worker gains a benefit from the visa petition, but the procedure must be initiated by, and controlled by, the employer.
The most common employment visa is the H-1B visa, but there are employment opportunities under a variety of visa classifications, including L-1, E-1/2, J-1, O-1, and other visas.

Joseph Curran, a partner with Northampton-based Curran & Berger LLP, has been exclusively involved in the practice of immigration and nationality law since 1985. He provides legal advice to individuals, corporations, and universities, specializing in immigration issues impacting business and health care in the New England area. He currently serves on the AILA Healthcare Committee and the Mass. Bar Assoc. Immigration Law Section, chairing the MBA’s Immigration Essentials Program.

Sections Supplements
How to Have Your Business Ready Before a Labor Union Comes Knocking

Amy Royal

Amy Royal

Non-union businesses are currently facing an increased risk of union infiltration.
Due in large part to the sympathetic ear of the Obama administration and the stagnant economy, labor unions have gained momentum over the past year, becoming much more aggressive than they have been in several decades. Also, with the explosion of social-networking Web sites, labor unions have seized the opportunity to reach broader bases and larger audiences by using this free social medium to spread their message with relative ease. In light of the recent uptick in union organizing, businesses must begin taking proactive steps to guard against unionization.
The two best union-avoidance practices that businesses should put into place now before the union comes knocking at their door are what’s known as ‘managing by walking around,’ and implementing an open-door policy. Managing by walking around is literally what it sounds like: managers, including those in upper management, walk around the company, going to each of the employees’ work areas. This type of managing is a win-win situation. It makes employees feel that management is accessible and approachable. It also makes them less likely to turn to a third party for representation.
Unionization is successful is not solely because employees want better wages and better benefits; it is also because employees do not feel recognized. When management comes to the employees’ work areas, workers will undoubtedly feel a greater sense of value and importance. That simple pause to tell an employee that her hard work is appreciated can go a long way. Managing by walking around also provides an opportunity to discover potential problems and nip them in the bud before they snowball. Certain problems that go unnoticed or are left unattended could ultimately lead employees to seek out the help of a third party.
Benjamin Bristol

Benjamin Bristol

Open communication between employees and management is essential to reducing the risk of organizing activity. Non-union businesses should consider implementing an open-door policy that allows employees to have access to any manager in the company. Just as it sounds, an open-door policy literally means that every manager’s door is open to every employee. In order for such a policy to work, businesses must make sure that the doors to management are actually open. Certain steps can be incorporated into the policy that encourage employees to go to their supervisor first before contacting the company’s president; however, for the policy to have the intended effect, employees must feel that they can, if need be, go to anyone in management to voice their concerns.
Businesses should also consider implementing a formal grievance procedure that provides a process by which employees can express their concerns internally. Some companies have created formal grievance procedures that allow employees the right of appeal up through executive-level personnel. Other companies have gone so far as to model their practices after the typical union format, utilizing similar grievance procedures to that of a union. In either case, seeking union representation is less needed when businesses have created their own mechanisms for resolving problems internally. Indeed, the reason behind having these types of policies is simple: why would employees pay a union to do what the business already does for them?
Other policies businesses might consider implementing include non-solicitation and non-distribution policies. Such policies prohibit the solicitation of employees or the distribution of literature during work time and in work areas. Implementing a union-free-environment policy can also be a good way to communicate the reasons why the company believes a union is unnecessary in light of its current environment and culture.
As part of having an open dialogue with employees, businesses might actually consider using the ‘U’ word with their employees. Often times, management is reluctant to do so out of fear that saying it will somehow put the idea of unionization into the heads of their employees. Another reason management might be afraid to say the word or otherwise discuss unions is the fear of committing an unfair labor practice under the National Labor Relations Act. Educating management on what it can and cannot say about unions is key.
Management training in union avoidance will arm managers with the tools they need to know how to have lawful conversations with employees about unions as well as enable them to identify the early warning signs of unionization. Such training also teaches management how to react appropriately should union representatives show up at the company.
Once upper management is trained in union avoidance, supervisory training is crucial to guarding against a union since these individuals are the company’s first line of defense. Due to their close proximity to rank-and-file employees, supervisors must be trained in several key interpersonal and leadership skills, such as effective communication and listening, accessibility and approachability, and modeling appropriate behavior. Further, supervisors must be trained to handle conflicts that arise amongst employees. With these skills, supervisors will help to create a positive working environment, and employees will believe that they can resolve their issues with the person that they see every day.
There are no guarantees that a company can remain union-free. But with thoughtful and continual planning, businesses can make a preemptive strike against unionization instead of playing defense once the union is already knocking at the door.

Amy B. Royal, Esq. and Benjamin A. Bristol, Esq. specialize exclusively in management-side labor and employment law at Royal & Klimczuk, LLC, a women-owned, boutique, management-side labor and employment law firm; (413) 586-2288; [email protected]

Sections Supplements
A Chance for You to Advocate for Your Child

By DENNIS G. EGAN JR., Esq. and MELISSA R. GILLIS, Esq.

Dennis G. Egan

Dennis G. Egan

It is universally recognized that a child’s first five years of life are the most important in his or her overall development. As such, having your child assessed for special-education eligibility can be an intimidating and scary process.
If your child is going through the assessment process, someone — either you or your child’s teacher or day care provider — at some point questioned whether or not your child has a disability requiring special education. However, knowing the basics of the assessment process can alleviate a great deal of this fear and help equip you with the tools necessary to advocate on behalf of your child.
The federal special-education law is the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which dictates how municipalities and state governments must provide early intervention, special education, and related services to those children who qualify. IDEA mandates that each child receive a ‘free, appropriate public education.’ This means that state and local governments must provide such services as determined to properly meet a particular child’s needs.
The first step in the IDEA is the determination that your child should be assessed. The next step is the assessment process itself. This process involves your child and you meeting with a team of special-education professionals. IDEA provides that “the evaluation must gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the child, including information provided by the parent.” As such, it is essential that you not only take part in the assessment, but also that you understand your role as a parent. Oftentimes, parents feel that they are not experts in the field and should simply leave the assessment process to the professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth.
After the evaluation process is complete, the evaluation team, including you, will determine eligibility. This point in the process is crucial in that, if the evaluation team determines that your child is not eligible for special services, the process stops and your child is placed in a traditional classroom. While a determination that your child is not eligible for special services may seem like the best possible outcome to some parents, the only better determination is that a child in need of services is eligible for those services, and ultimately receives them.
If the evaluation team determines that your child is eligible for special-education services, an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting is scheduled. IDEA mandates that the IEP meeting take place within 30 days of the eligibility determination. You play a very important role in the IEP process, because out of this meeting comes the IEP plan, which is a written plan outlining your child’s needs and goals as well as the strategies to be implemented to achieve these goals. Once again, your input is critical, because you are your child’s best advocate.
Once the IEP is written, it becomes the road map by which your child’s education is conducted. It is important to note that once written, the IEP is not set in stone. Instead, it is reviewed at least annually in order to ensure that your child’s educational needs are being met and his goals are capable of being attained. If it is determined that your child’s needs are not being met, modifications are made to the IEP. This provides an ongoing opportunity for you to assure that your child’s best interests are furthered.
Melissa R. Gillis

Melissa R. Gillis

It is important to note that one of the outcomes of the re-evaluation process may be that your child is no longer eligible for services under IDEA, but you must consider each step an additional opportunity to advocate on behalf of your child.
It should be noted that you hold your child’s educational rights until (1) your child reaches the age of majority; (2) parents’ rights are terminated; or (3) one parent is awarded educational decision-making rights under a divorce decree or separation agreement.
In the end, knowing your rights, as well as your child’s rights, as they apply to the special-education assessment and IEP process will alleviate a great deal of stress and confusion. As a result, your child’s needs and interests will be better served.
While the information outlined above is meant to serve as a broad overview of this very intimate and important topic, further information can be obtain by contacting an education-law attorney, special-education advocate, special-needs assessment professionals, and/or your city or town’s school department.

Dennis Egan Jr. is an associate with Bacon Wilson, P.C. concentrating his practice in business and corporate law; (413) 781-0560; [email protected]. Melissa Gillis is an associate with Bacon Wilson, P.C. in the family law and real estate departments; (413) 781-0560; [email protected]

Sections Supplements
Business Community Takes Lead Role in Building a New Putnam

From left, York Mayo, Cleveland Burton, and J.M. “Buck” Upson

From left, York Mayo, Cleveland Burton, and J.M. “Buck” Upson stand in front of Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical High School in Springfield.

Construction is underway on a new Putnam High School in Springfield, a project that is being influenced in many ways by input and hands-on consulting from the business community. For those involved, it’s a labor of love, and a way to ensure that the new school is providing the kinds of training that can directly benefit several different sectors of the economy.

Last month, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical High School in Springfield, which will open its doors in the fall of 2012. And although replacing the 1938 building is a event worthy of celebration, there is a private project underway which is equally important in shaping the school’s future.
It’s called the Roger L. Putnam Technical Fund Inc. and was started in August 2008 by John Davis of the Irene and George Davis Foundation with the goal of insuring that students and staff in the new school have state-of-the-art equipment as well as support and guidance from industry and business leaders so they can succeed in their fields of endeavor.
A trio of ‘retired’ businessmen, York Mayo, J.M. “Buck” Upson, and Cleveland Burton, have been working tirelessly for two years to recruit people from the business community, forge mutually beneficial relationships, and raise $9 million in donations and/or equipment, which is the shortfall needed to purchase furniture, fixtures, and equipment to keep students in line with today’s technology.
“We don’t want to bring an old school into the new building. We are looking to the future and figuring out what changes need to be made to be more future-oriented,” Mayo said.
School officials are grateful for their efforts, which have resulted in significant donations and a veritable army of volunteers who came on board after touring the school and listening to presentations by students.
“Building a new building is one thing,” said School Superintendent Alan Ingram. “But it’s what takes place inside that affects our students. What’s exciting about this fund is the impact it will have on them, their lives, their futures, and the community. The crux of this [fund] is making sure that the work that takes place inside the building is relevant, is rigorous, and is predicated on relationships between the kids and the business community.”
Putnam’s senior vocational administrator, Fred Carrier, agrees. “Our students are going to work in industries, and if we don’t have vibrant relationships with businesses, we won’t be able to meet their needs,” he said.
Mayo, Upson, and Burton put in more than 50 volunteer hours a week collectively to meet their goals and hope other volunteers will join them. “There is no silver bullet,” said Upson. “It’s just hard work. We are putting in a lot of hours and working as agents of change by promoting the idea of having the business community get involved in government and education.”

Trade Deficits
Davis had thought about forming the Roger L. Putnam Technical Fund Inc. for several years. But when plans for a new school became immiment, he knew it was time to formulate a plan of action.
He modeled the Putnam fund after the Skyline Fund at Worcester Technical High School, which has raised more than $4 million in cash and more than $3.5 million in equipment donations since its inception in 2005.
Davis knows people who are involved with that program and thought it could be replicated locally.
“I was really impressed by the program and by how involved the business community is with it, and I knew it could be beneficial for Springfield,” he said.
“Technology is changing much more quickly than it did in the past, and although the students are enthusiastic, they need to have the right equipment and training.”
One of the first steps he took in establishing the Putnam fund was to recruit Mayo, who worked for American Saw (which was Davis family’s business) for 30 years before retiring and becoming an active community volunteer. He agreed to take over the helm after he toured Putnam in August 2008 and met with Ingram and Principal Kevin McCaskill.
“Kevin told me that, during his tenure, the school expanded from 900 students to 1,637, and the graduation rate went from 29% to 70%,” said Mayo. “The school now has 350 kids on the waiting list. And students in vocational regional schools in the state score higher on the MCAS on average than students in a purely academic school, even though they spend only half their time in those classes. I was so impressed and felt I could make a difference in the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of students by helping them get the right equipment.
“Our goal is to form entrustments with national companies who will lease equipment or sell it to the school at reduced prices,” he continued. “In exchange, they can use the school to show off the equipment to their clients.”
Mayo is dedicated to his role with Putnam. “We can’t sit back and criticize if we are not part of the solution,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s what we need to do to change our country. We can’t just pay educators and expect them to do the job. The business community has to make a sacrifice and become involved.”
Mayo noted that it’s critical for the business community to get involved, because over the next several years, thousands of Baby Boomers will be retiring, and those who will be entering the workforce must have the requisite skills to replace them.
That translates into opportunities for students in a number of vocations, including health fields. “Baystate [Health] says it will have thousands of jobs open due to expansion and retirements,” Mayo said, adding that Putnam has an Allied Health Trade program with 140 participants.
“The business community needs to align itself with Putnam and with Springfield Technical Community College and get involved,” he said. “The way to change the world is not by talking, but by having a vision. Ours is to get every business owner in our school because we want to make it the number-one vocational school in Massachusetts.”
Burton is another recruit from American Saw who worked in the Human Resources department as manager of employee relations for 36 years before retiring. “My role is to work with our business partners to make Putnam the best school on the planet,” he said. “We are looking beyond 2010 and are reinvigorating their advisory council. The new school will have four academies and 21 programs, and we are putting a business chair in charge of each department.”
The advisory committees are meeting on a regular basis to talk about what Burton calls “burning issues and opportunities for improvements in each program.
“Our focus is on students because they are the product of the school; we are going to enhance their programs and engagement because our goal is to have them in their career when they graduate,” he said. “It’s a lofty goal, but if we involve business partners and build the right program, by the time the students graduate, they will have gone through internships, cooperatives, and be employed.”

Parts of the Whole
The new school is designed to house 1,400 students, which is about 200 less than the current population. “It will be smaller, so there will be opportunity for more focus,” Burton said. “A lot of kids feel disconnected and don’t feel there is much opportunity for them. But we will accentuate the positive so the negative goes away. If we put the right processes and systems in place, we can make Putnam the school of choice in Hampden County. These young people are our future leaders, and we need to help pay the tab for them, just like someone paid for us. The clock is ticking, and if we don’t do it now, it won’t happen.”
One of the most successful strategies the team has employed is group tours. Over the past 15 months, organizers have conducted 34 tours of the school with 236 business people from 134 companies, and the results have been remarkable.
The tours include PowerPoint presentations by students which show what they are working on and what they would like to have in the school, as well as graphic layouts for the new floor plans.
Mayo said that when Jeb Balise, president of Balise Auto Sales, and four key employees who accompanied him on the tour saw the proposed layout of the equipment in the new school’s automotive-technology program, he recognized there was a real gap.
“He needs 40 technicians this year and can’t find them,” said Mayo. “He just completed his Honda store and invited his administrators to the presentation. They looked at our plans and showed us his plans. There was a gap, because he is looking to the future and we were still in the past. He offered to engage an architect to look at our plans and paid for it.”
The new design, which aligns with current industry standards, will be given to the architects working on Putnam, so they can make the necessary changes.
“This is what happens when you open schools to organizations,” Mayo continued. “It works beautifully and has resulted in donations from 11 companies and a half-million dollars in equipment so far.”
Carrier is thrilled with the success. “The tours have gotten so many people from the business community to become passionate about Putnam,” he said. “They have become involved with the life of Putnam and have opened up their doors to us for tours, internships, and cooperatives. We always had them, but the program has never been this rich.
“Parents and students are also realizing the trades are where the future is,” he continued. “ You can’t send plumbing or electrical work offshore. Those jobs will always be here.”
Another component of the program is to establish a partnership between the business and educational communities, which operate in two different realms. “The business community needs to learn the needs of the educational program, and they need to learn the needs of the business world,” Mayo said.
Carrier concurs. “It’s very important, and you always have to push to try to improve things. It’s very easy for educators to get complacent,” he said, adding that the school is conducting training sessions this summer on new pieces of equipment.

Lathe of the Land
Upson drives from Cape Cod every Monday morning to spend three days working at Putnam. The retired president and owner of Pioneer Tool in West Springfield is responsible for resurrecting the machine-technology program at Putnam three years ago.
He says that, although there are seven vocational schools in the Pioneer Valley, only 50 machinists were graduating from them, which was problematic, since two years ago, the UMass School of Business documented over 8,000 jobs in precision manufacturing in the Pioneer Valley, and a report by Northeastern University projects a growth of 100,000 jobs in that field in Massachusetts over the next 10 years.
“There are many Baby Boomers retiring and there is tremendous opportunity for educated students,” he said, adding that it is their hope that Putnam graduates will go to college, although it’s not required to work in the field. “Almost every shop in the Valley has tuition reimbursement,” he said. “These jobs pay high wages and offer profit sharing and excellent medical benefits.”
In order to get the program restarted, Upson sought help from former School Superintendent Joseph Burke, David Cruise of the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County, and the board of directors from the National Tool and Machining Assoc.
They had little to start with, except some machines recycled from the Springfield Armory used during World War II. But thanks to Upson and a dedicated staff, the program has grown, and this year 16 students were involved in a cooperative, which allowed them to work in the industry during the school year.
Smith & Wesson donated four machines to the program and promised a donation of $250,000 over five years. “They have been struggling for years to find qualified employees, as there are no apprentice shops anymore,” Upson said.
In fact, Smith & Wesson became so vested in Putnam that it hosted a meeting for area businesses last October and asked others to leverage the $250,000 it is donating.
“It was the largest assembly of manufacturing senior business owners in more than 50 years, said Upson. “It was a very successful fundraising initiative, and more than 50 companies attended. The L.S. Starrett Company in Athol made a $50,000 contribution in measuring devices, and ANCA donated a $100,000 cutter grinding machine.”
Upson said local firms are hoping Putnam will host a night program to allow workers to upgrade their skills on the new equipment. “Putnam will become a center for continuing education for the industry, in addition to educating 9th- to 12th-graders,” he said.
Since joining forces with the fund, Upson has also become involved with the graphic-arts program and has reached out to large and small shops to make sure the school’s curriculum parallels job skills needed in today’s world.
“There are plenty of things people in the business community can do if they are willing to volunteer,” he said.
Anyone interested is invited to contact Mayo at (413) 596-8634, or (413) 537-0197, or by e-mail at [email protected]

Opinion
Another Tax That Hits the Middle Class

With the agreement at the Toronto G-20 summit of major nations to cut public deficits at least in half by the year 2013, we will start hearing a lot more about a value-added tax (VAT). We should keep our hands on our wallets.
The goal of cutting the deficit by a set amount by 2013 is arbitrary and premature. Whether that formula makes sense depends on whether the recession is really over. Until we get a stronger economic recovery, too much deficit reduction reduces purchasing power and slows job creation.
A VAT, which is a kind of national sales tax, is especially perverse because it is a tax directly on consumers, who have already been hit hard by the recession.
But it does raise a lot of money. A VAT of 5%, the number usually proposed, would bring in about $250 billion a year.
In the fiscal year that begins tomorrow, the deficit will be $996 billion, according to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO projects that, by fiscal year 2013, it will still be $525 billion. If you do the math, that means a normal recovery plus the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will cut the deficit nearly in half by 2013 with no massive new tax increases. But that hasn’t stopped the budget hawks, who want new taxes to cut the deficit even more.
VAT supporters include many members of President Obama’s own fiscal commission; the billion-dollar Peter G. Peterson Foundation (which bankrolls a lot of deficit hawkery); former Democratic Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; and the outgoing director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag.
Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, likes a VAT. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of President Obama’s chief of staff and a White House adviser on health care, has called for a VAT as a way to finance expanded health coverage.
Supporters also believe that a VAT offers a bipartisan grand bargain. Because it taxes consumption, it touches only income that is spent. So wealthy people, who invest rather than spend most of their income, would not pay much VAT. As a sweetener for Wall Street, some enthusiasts would include a cut in the corporate income tax as well. That presumably makes it a tax that even Republicans might like.
Advocates trying to sell Democrats on a VAT point to Europe, where value-added taxes as high as 25% in Scandinavia raise prodigious sums that in turn support generous social services. And because a VAT typically exempts products that are exported, it would be good for American manufacturing and our trade balance.
But American budget hawks don’t want VAT revenues to go for more and better preschool or health care or job training or other favorites of liberals. They want the proceeds to go for deficit reduction. And most of the Republican leadership in Congress is dead set against new taxes. So a VAT remains a political stretch.
As the European experience shows, a VAT can indeed be an effective revenue raiser. But unless the proceeds go to support valued public services, it is just another tax on the middle class.
It is possible to make a VAT less regressive by using some of the new revenue to reduce income taxes or payroll taxes paid by working families. Some countries with VATs exempt necessities such as food. We can also offset its regressive nature by coupling it with new surtaxes on very high incomes.
So when the president’s fiscal commission raises the idea of a VAT, as is likely, we need to ask three questions:
• Are basic necessities like food and housing to be exempted?
• Is it part of a package that makes the tax system fairer and less onerous to the middle class overall?
• Do some of the proceeds go to finance public services that have been shortchanged for decades and that got further reduced in the current recession?
If not, the VAT should be considered dead on arrival. The last thing we need in a deep slump with persistent unemployment is higher taxes on the middle class.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His new book is titled A Presidency in Peril.

Opinion
Creating More Jobs for Teens Is Critical

The numbers are alarming.
In 1999, more than half (52.5%) of Massachusetts teens ages 16 to 19 held paying jobs. By 2009, that number was down to 32.1%, and for the first four months of this year, it was 23.6%.
That figure will undoubtedly rise during the summer, when teen employment is traditionally at its highest, there is a trend emerging across the Bay State and it does bode well for our cities and towns: teens are just finding it increasingly difficult to find employment.
There are many reasons for this movement, the biggest being the economy and its many side effects.
While conditions have improved somewhat over the past few quarters, the recovery has been mostly a jobless one. This means that teens have competition for open jobs from thousands of unemployed individuals across the region. Meanwhile, ongoing concerns about the recovery and its relative staying power have left many business owners skittish about doing any additional hiring, even if they are part-time positions. Also, many companies learned during the downturn that could make do with fewer people in some offices or departments, and the fact that times are better doesn’t mean they’re going to become less lean.
Beyond the recession, there are certainly some other factors at play with this trend toward teen hiring. First, there are far fewer drug stores, hardware stores, and video stores for young people to work at, and fewer large businesses that have the flexibility to bring on help in the summertime. Another factor is the very real possibility that, when given the choice between hiring a retired Baby Boomer with good work habits and a desire to stay active and hiring a 17-year-old that is a largely unknown commodity, business owners are choosing the former — and who could blame them?
Whatever the reasons behind the trend, there are some real dangers to our region and its job market if it continues.
As Bill Ward, director of the Regional Employment Board, points out in the story that begins on page 6, jobs connect teens to the world of work. They introduce them to the workplace and, in most cases, compel them to become more responsible. It is while employed that young people learn the importance of showing up on time, being part of a team, and doing the best job they can — always.
But in the workplace, young people also learn from their elders. Every Baby Boomer remembers his or her first (or second, or third) job, and they recall more than the skills they acquired and the experiences they recorded, but also some life lessons from people 20, 30, 40, or more years older than they were.
All these things are missing from the equation when teens can’t gain employment.
That’s why it’s important for companies, often working in collaboration with agencies like the REB, to be diligent and imaginative in creating strategies that can create summer jobs or internship opportunities such as those created by Western Mass. Electric Co. and Big Y.
These programs not only help young people by giving them jobs, spending cash, money for college, and a chance to stay off the street and out of trouble. They also help the companies in question by introducing teens to those businesses and the career opportunities that can aspire to. They call these win-win scenarios.
This region and its business community face a number of challenges. Creating more jobs for teens may seem one that belongs far down on the page of priorities, but the reality is that addressing this problem now can lead to far fewer problems down the road.

Features
CEO’s Success Is Measured in Dollars and Scents

It was just after 7 a.m. on a Friday, and Harlan Kent was on the road — again.
His destination this time was New Hampshire and several of the Yankee Candle stores there. Kent, who became CEO of the company last fall, does this often. He talks to the people who run the stores, and he talks to customers. The goal is the same: to find out if the store in question is providing the kind of products, services, and experience that the corporation demands of each outlet.
“I tell them I work for Yankee Candle — I don’t tell them I’m the CEO,” he told BusinessWest when asked about his MO for these store visits. “This is definitely a part of being in retail. I can travel anywhere in the U.S. and be visiting our stores, which is certainly a problem for my wife, because it means every time I’m on vacation, there’s going to be some stores for me to go to. And that doesn’t make her too happy.”
Kent said he considers these visits a big part of his job description, and also the company-wide mission to build, promote, and protect the Yankee Candle brand, which happens to be just one of many famous names he has sold during his career.
Others include Vlasic pickles, Dole pineapple, Winchester ammunition, and Pepperidge Farm products. “I have a passion for brands,” he said, adding that those food-related résumé stops dovetailed nicely with another passion — cooking.
Indeed, Kent spent a year between high school and college at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, learning the art of food preparation. He later had a number of summer jobs working in various restaurants. Kent still likes the kitchen and says he makes a mean spaghetti avongele (white clam sauce), and satisfies his sweet tooth with many endeavors involving chocolate. But his only interest in the restaurant at the Yankee Candle complex in South Deerfield (Chandler’s) is eating there.
“I get to see what’s going on there, and get my fix that way,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be disrespectful to our chef and venture into the kitchen; I do all my cooking at home.”
At the company’s headquarters in South Deerfield, he is, most definitely, more interested in work involving another of the five senses — smell. Yankee Candle now has roughly 200 scents in its inventory (most stores carry about 75 at any given time), and new ones are being created each year, New additions include ‘vanilla cupcake,’ ‘strawberry buttercream,’ ‘tropical lifestyle,’ and ‘pineapple tilantro.’
“One of the teams I have the utmost respect for here is our fragrance team — they’ve been doing a fabulous job for a lot of years,” said Kent. “They are responsible for rolling out, on average, 20 new fragrances a year, and to get there, they start with more than 2,000 fragrances that they’re evaluating that they’ve culled down to get to those 20 fragrances.
“They’re incredibly creative,” he continued, noting that, contrary to popular belief, there are still countless possibilities still to be considered. “They’re always coming up with new twists on how to combine fragrances or new ways of providing variety in versions of a fragrance.”
Monitoring additions to the portfolio is just a small part of the workload for Kent, who, in his current role and, previously, as COO, has steered the company through the Great Recession with relatively modest revenue declines (4%), and is now focused on establishing sustainable growth and expanding Yankee Candle’s presence around the globe.
For this, the latest installment of its Profiles in Business series, BusinessWest looks at how Kent will go about those assignments, and why visits like the ones he was making in New Hampshire play such a key role in that process.

Waxing Nostalgic
As he was driving to Deerfield in 2001 for his interview for the position of senior vice president of the Wholesale Division of Yankee Candle, he called his father to get his take on that career opportunity.
If he was looking for encouragement, he certainly didn’t get it.
“He told me that sounded like a pretty silly idea,” Kent recalled, “because he’d been to a number of dinner parties recently and no one was burning candles. So he didn’t think it would be a good business to get into. I had to explain to him that it wasn’t those kinds of candles, he wasn’t the customer we had in mind, and that this was actually a very good business.”
Still, this wasn’t a career stop he could have imagined. “I certainly never envisioned myself working in, or aspiring to work in, the candle industry,” he continued. “But it’s been fabulous.”
Kent interviewed with Yankee Candle because, after four years as senior vice president and general manager of the Wholesale Division at Totes Isotoner Corp. in Ohio, he was looking for a new career challenge and a return to the East Coast.
Over the course of a 25-year career in business, Kent has worked with and for a number of famous brands, and in different capacities. He said his work history has three distinct parts — first some time in consulting and strategic planning, then several years in brand management and marketing, and then the last third in general management. After a stint with Bain and Co. as a consultant, he went to work for Dole Food Co., Castle & Cooke Inc. in a marketing and advertising capacity. He went from there to the Campbell Soup Co., where, after a stint as director of strategic planning, he worked in a number of divisions building several name brands.
He served as marketing manager for the frozen dinner brand LeMenu Healthy, and later became senior marketing manager for Vlasic. From there, he took the position of business director for the frozen foods division of Pepperidge Farm, and later became vice president of marketing for that company, handling Milano, Goldfish, and other iconic trademarks.
His next career stop was at the Winchester Division of Olin Corp., where, as vice president of global sales and marketing, he executed a complete business turnaround for the for the $260 million recreational, military, and industrial ammunition maker.
While there was wide diversity with the products he sold and marketed, there were some common denominators with all those stops.
“I always had a passion for the team I was on, and a passion for brands — I always fall in love with the brand I’m working on,” he explained. “I also have a passion for solving business issues. All of the companies I’ve worked for have had that combination of opportunities. I’ve been very lucky.”
Kent has had to rely on all those passions as he’s maneuvered the company through the prolonged economic downturn. The retail sector suffered considerably during the recession, he explained, and Yankee Candle was certainly no exception.
Still, the company has managed to control its revenue declines while also continuing efforts to expand its presence. Yankee Candle is now in 42 states, and has some 3,000 stores in Europe, another 2,000 in Canada, and more than 3,000 in Asia.
“We now export candles from Deerfield, Mass. to Beijing, China,” he said, adding that the company opened two stores in that city last October, and there will undoubtedly be more to follow. “There’s an unbelievable opportunity there; just look at the numbers. There are 13 million people living in Beijing, and another 4 million come into it every day to work. That’s 17 million people, which adds up a lot of opportunities to sell candles.
“And scented candles are catching on there,” he continued. “We see that as a gradual growth opportunity for us. But we’re having great success in Asia; we started in Japan, we’re having a lot of success in Korea, and now we’re starting in China. We’re very excited about the possibilities.”
Kent hasn’t visited the stores in Beijing yet, but he’s made countless stops at facilities in several different countries. In each case, the broad assignment is the same — to gauge the experience being provided, to customers and employees alike.
“I’m really interested in understanding first how our team is taking care of customers in that store,” he explained. “There are three things that we talk about at Yankee Candle in terms of strategies that the company is all about. One of them is creating a sensational product experience, and for that you need have well-thought-out, quality products. The second is providing shoppers with a very rewarding and enjoyable in-store experience, and the third is creating sensational work experiences for our team.
“When I’m in a store, I’m interesting in making sure we’re creating the best shopping experience possible for our guests,” he continued. “I’m focused on what the store looks like, how the product is presented, and how warm and engaging the sales team is. And then I ask a lot of questions about what is the company can be doing to support them.”
More questions are then put to customers, he explained, about everything from the products to the competition.

Tales from Retail
When he’s not working, Kent says he spends considerable time traveling with his wife and three children. The whole family is athletically inclined, and there have been a number of ski trips, including one recent sojourn to the French Alps.
“I had just one regret, and that was that we went before the dollar started getting strong against the euro,” said Kent with a laugh, adding that he’s traveled extensively in this country and overseas.
And at almost every stop there have been visits to Yankee Candle stores to gauge the thoughts of managers, employees, and especially customers. Such stops may put a holiday on hold for an hour or so, but they are, as Kent said, part of being in retail.
And they’re especially part of this company’s success story.

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

Departments

Ten Points About : the New Global Accounting Standards

By TONY GABINETTI, CPA

1. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was created in 2001 to develop an international set of accounting standards known as the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

2. In May 2008, the American Institute of CPAs Council approved the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as a recognized standard-setter for financial reporting. More than 100 other countries have adopted IFRS as the global standard.
3. In July 2009, the IASB issued IFRS designed for use by small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). IFRS for SMEs are not intended to be used by not-for-profit organizations or governmental agencies.
4. Small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) in the scope of the standard include entities that publish general-purpose financial statements for external users and do not have public accountability.

5. One projected timeline estimates that IFRS could be mandatory in the U.S. with a staggered adoption period of 2015-18.

6. Once fully adopted, International Financial Reporting Standards will replace U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principals (GAAP) as the basis for financial reporting.
7. U.S. GAAP, IFRS, and IFRS for SMEs are similar, with basic accounting concepts such as comparability, going concern, and materiality.
8. U.S. GAAP, IFRS, and IFRS for SMEs are different, with certain accounting and reporting treatments. A few of these differences are the treatment of LIFO inventory costing, goodwill carrying value, impairments and write-downs, research and development costs, and borrowing costs for self-constructed assets.
9. IFRS reporting is considered simpler and more ‘principles-based’ than the ‘rules-based’ GAAP financial reporting, which may better meet the needs of financial-statement users. The change in reporting may have implications on an entity’s accounting, taxes, financing, as well as processes and controls.

10. While full convergence from GAAP to IFRS reporting standards is years away, companies should speak with their accounting advisors to determine their requirements for adopting the new standards.

Tony Gabinetti, CPA is a senior audit manager at Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. in Holyoke; (413) 536-8510.

Departments

40 Under Forty Gala

June 24: BusinessWest will celebrate its 40 Under Forty Class of 2010 at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House with a gala to begin at 5 p.m. The event, which has become a spring tradition in Western Mass., will feature fine food, entertainment, and special presentations of the Class of 2010. Tickets for the event are $60. To order tickets or for more information, call (413) 781-8600, ext. 10, or e-mail [email protected].

The Coming Demographic Storm

June 30: The 2010 census statistics will prove it out over the next few years, but Kenneth W. Gronbach already knows what the stats will mean to America. A demographic storm of epic proportions is upon us, and if America’s businesses, regardless of size, are ready, they can plan for amazing success. But if they are not ready, they could be washed away in the giant generational wave. Gronbach, a gifted public speaker and a nationally recognized expert in the field of demography and generational marketing, will be the keynote speaker at the noon luncheon for the Advertising Club of Western Mass. at Longmeadow Country Club. Gronbach makes the science of the census results and shifting demography come alive with real-life examples that make it relevant to today’s culture, business climate, and economy. His presentation is based on the effects of shifting demography. He is an accomplished author with a new, bestselling book, The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm. The demographic landscape in the U.S. is made up a series of waves that are about 20 years in duration. It would follow that business will rise and fall according to the critical mass of customers heading toward it. What is different about this wave is the extraordinary amount of population it includes compared to the past two generations. Businesses will enjoy extraordinary success if they are prepared and in front of the wave. Ad Club members are invited to bring a business associate and join the Ad Club for this presentation and network with the top advertising, marketing, and design talents in Western Mass. To make a luncheon reservation, contact the Ad Club at (413) 736-2582, or online at www.adclubwm.org. The cost for the luncheon is $25 for members, $35 for future members, and $15 for students.

Construction Course

July 14: The Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. of Western Mass. will sponsor a six-session course starting July 14 to help individuals prepare for the Massachusetts Construction Supervisor’s Licensing Exam. Sessions are planned at the Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. headquarters at 240 Cadwell Dr. in Springfield for six Wednesdays from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The exam is authorized by the State Board of Building Regulations and Standards and administered by Thomson Prometric. Registration forms to enroll for the exam will be distributed at the first session of the program. The fee is $250 for members of the Home Builders Assoc. of Western Mass. and $350 for non-members. All course participants must bring the 7th edition of the One & Two Family Dwelling Building Code book and the 7th edition of the Basic Building Code book to each class and to the open-book examination. There is an additional charge to order the code books through the association. For more information or to register, contact Sandra Doucette at (413) 733-3126.

Advanced Manufacturing Competition & Conference

Sept. 23: The first highly concentrated, cluster-centric, regional manufacturing conference of its kind will be held at the MassMutual Center in Springfield. The event, called the Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Competition & Conference (AMICCON), is being staged in response to growing recognition among area manufacturers and supply-chain members that there is an urgent need to find and meet one another. “AMICCON was formed to identify who’s here in manufacturing, expose them to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and procurement, and to make these introductions,” said co-founder Ellen Bemben. “The ultimate goal is to be the advanced-manufacturing region in the U.S., where exotic manufacturing, such as micro, nano, and precision, meet higher specifications and tighter tolerances, and short runs are the norm.” Industry sectors to be represented at the event will include plastics and advanced materials, precision machining, paper and packaging, electronics, ‘green’/clean technology, and medical devices. Business opportunities in defense and aerospace will also be highlighted at the event. OEMs and their supply chains are being invited personally to participate. “AMICCON is also a new consortium on innovation that also delivers manufacturers to innovators and new markets in order to cause new business,” said Gary Gasperack, vice president and general manager (retired) of the Spalding Division of Russell Corp. “We are very excited about introducing it to our region.” The Mass. Export Center has already produced two programs for AMICCON: an “Export Experts Panel,” and a seminar, “International Traffic in Arms Regulations for Defense and Aerospace Export.”

Departments

SPHS Lays Off 135

SPRINGFIELD — Citing severe economic challenges in the first several months of 2010, the Sisters of Providence Health System (SPHS) has eliminated 135 full-time-equivalent positions across the system. “Like most health systems and hospitals in the region, state, and nation, SPHS is experiencing a decline in patient volume and continuing challenges with reimbursement levels that, for some services, do not adequately cover the cost of providing care,” according to an SPHS statement. “Factors such as increased health insurance deductibles and co-pays, coupled with general concern regarding the economy, appear to be causing a delay of non-urgent medical care and health services that is influencing this downward trend in volume,” the statement continues. “Without proactive changes in operations, SPHS would incur a projected budget shortfall of $14 million for 2010. Specific to Mercy Medical Center, year-to-date volume reflects that discharges are 8% below budget, and outpatient volume is 7% below budget.” The most significant impact of the layoffs will be on inpatient support staffing responsibilities at Mercy, due to the elimination of 63 patient care technician positions. This change will allow the retention of bedside, licensed nursing staff and allow nurse-patient ratios to remain at current, planned levels, “but will not impact care quality or patient safety,” the health system asserts. In addition to the elimination of positions at Mercy and across SPHS, including administrative positions, several other cost-saving measures are being taken to help improve the health system’s financial performance. For example, the overall salary increase program for 2010 is being suspended, and the internal employee referral bonus program is being discontinued. Other initiatives to help improve the system’s fiscal outlook include the renegotiation of service and vendor contracts at lower rates, the sublease of unused space in off-campus locations, and revenue-enhancement opportunities such as an increase in grant funding. “We deeply regret that the reduction of jobs is necessary,” said Dr. William Bithoney, interim president and CEO of SPHS. “The decision to make these changes has been difficult and the subject of a lengthy discernment process. Several potential alternatives were evaluated. However, we believe the course of action selected is the best for patients, residents, and clients, and for continuity of the SPHS mission. These changes reflect good stewardship and prudent management that will focus resources on the most important aspects of high-quality patient care. Providing high-quality care remains our focus and primary concern. Our clinical and nursing standards remain unchanged, and we continue to provide those we serve with the highest-quality care.”

Survey: Hiring Outlook in U.S. Gains Momentum

MILWAUKEE — U.S. employers anticipate favorable hiring plans for the third quarter of 2010, marking three straight quarters of positive survey findings, according to the seasonally adjusted results of the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, conducted quarterly by Manpower Inc. Employers provided a seasonally adjusted outlook of +6%, up from -2% during the same period last year. According to the survey, 98% of U.S. states have a positive hiring outlook, and 95 of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas have a positive outlook for the third quarter. Of the more than 18,000 employers surveyed, 18% anticipate an increase in staff levels in their third-quarter hiring plans, while 8% expect a decrease in payrolls, resulting in a net employment outlook of +10%. When seasonally adjusted, the net employment outlook becomes +6%. More than two-thirds of employers (70%) expect no change in their hiring plans. The final 4% of employers indicate that they are undecided about their hiring intentions. Employers in 11 of the 13 industry sectors surveyed have a positive outlook for the third quarter: leisure and hospitality, +20%; mining, +17%; professional and business services, +15%; wholesale and retail trade, +15%; nondurable goods manufacturing, +12%; financial activities, +11%; information, +10%; durable-goods manufacturing, +9%; transportation and utilities, +9%; construction, +8%; and other services, +8%. The July-September outlook is -2% for two of the surveyed sectors — education and health services and government. Compared to one year ago, surveyed employers in all four U.S. geographic regions anticipate hiring increases. Employers in the Northeast have the brightest hiring intentions, with a net employment outlook of +9%. When adjusting for seasonal variations, Midwest employers report the strongest shift for the third quarter of 2010, with a considerable increase in confidence year-over-year and a slight increase quarter-over-quarter. Compared to the second quarter of 2010, employment prospects are stable in the Northeast and South, while slightly slackening in the West. The net employment outlook is derived by taking the percentage of employers anticipating an increase in hiring activity and subtracting the percentage of employers expecting a decrease in hiring activity.

Federalization of SHA Sites Yields $15M Impact

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Housing Authority (SHA) recently announced the federalization of the Robinson Gardens, Reed Village, and Duggan Park developments, which will lead to more than $15 million in improvements to bring them up to HUD standards. Contracts have been bid and awarded to several local companies for design services, construction supervision, and physical improvements. Funding sources for the new construction include $1.8 million awarded to the SHA under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $13.1 million awarded to the SHA by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Housing and Community Development. During a recent press conference, Richard A. Walega, HUD’s New England regional director, noted that Springfield led the commonwealth in converting state projects into federal developments. “That’s a win for today’s tenants and a win for preserving affordable housing for future generations,” said Walega. The SHA is the third-largest housing authority in Massachusetts, with more than 2,300 housing units spread over 27 sites.

National Jobless Claims Fall

WASHINGTON — In the week ending June 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims nationwide was 456,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 459,000. The four-week moving average was 463,000, an increase of 2,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 460,500. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5% for the week ending May 29, a decrease of 0.2% from the prior week’s revised rate of 3.7%. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending May 29 was 4,462,000, a decrease of 255,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 4,717,000.

State: May Revenues Strong, but $70 Million Below Benchmark

BOSTON — The state Department of Revenue (DOR) recently released its May revenue report showing a monthly collection of $1.573 billion, which was $292 million better than a year ago but insufficient to make up for all of the revenue loss experienced in April due to the filing extension to May 11. As a result, with one month left before the close of the fiscal year June 30, year-to-date collections are $70 million below the benchmark. DOR Commissioner Navjeet K. Bal noted that personal income-tax withholding and 2010 estimated payments, as well as sales and use tax and corporate collections, all of which are good indicators of a continued economic turnaround, were above the benchmark. Bal added that shortfalls for the combined April/May period in payments with 2009 returns and extensions probably reflect a decline in capital gains due to past economic performance, which caused the overall year-to-date below-benchmark performance.

Departments

The following building permits were issued during the month of June 2010.

AGAWAM

Edward O’Leary
200 Silver St.
$35,000 — Construction of 819 square feet of office space

Robert Germano
13 Maple St.
$15,000 – Renovations to barber shop

AMHERST

Kappa Kappa Gamma Inc.
15 Washburn Terrace
$25,000 — New roof

Pioneer Valley Living Care
1 Spencer Dr.
$15,000 — Convert covered porch into new sunroom

Servicenet Inc.
364 Southeast St.
$26,000 — Construct addition

CHICOPEE

Aldenville Credit Union
34 Valier Ave.
$8,700 — Re-shingle roof

Griffith Road LTD Partnership
300 Griffith Road
$175,000 — Alterations to interior for new lab and office area

LeClerc Properties
52 Julia Ave.
$10,000 — Install new siding, windows, and doors

Pioneer Cold Storage
149 Plainfield St.
$65,000 — Repair roof from wind damage

EASTHAMPTON

Autumn Properties
422 Main St.
$47,500 — Complete interior build out for bank

CFN Properties, LLC
10 O’Neill St.
$12,000 — Construct interior partitions and new lavatory

HADLEY

Matt Massingell
42 West St.
$7,500 — Renovations

HOLYOKE

Holyoke Mall Company, L.P.
50 Holyoke St.
$22,000 — Remodel existing Kay Jewelers store

LUDLOW

Site Acquisitions
1 State St.
$15,000 — Replace cell tower panels

NORTHAMPTON

Claire & Mario Aniello
98 Main St.
$58,000 – Renovate second and third floor for yoga studio

Massachusetts Audubon Society
127 Combs Road
$51,000 — Installation of ground-mounted solar array

Pomeroy Terrace, LLC
90 Pomeroy Terrace
$28,000 — New bathroom and deck

Ron Finnessey
229 Elm St.
$12,500 — Interior renovations

 

SOUTH HADLEY

E-Ink
7 Gaylord St.
$34,000 — Renovations

Mt. Holyoke College
50 College St.
$10,000 — New decking

Riverboat Village
River Lodge Road
$23,500 — New roof on unit #1

SOUTHWICK

Rite Aid Drug Store
605 Juniper Lane
$7,000 — Replace heating and AC roof units

SPRINGFIELD

Baystate Dental PC
1795 Main St.
$81,000 — Interior renovations

Colebrook Partners, LLC
511 E. Columbus Ave.
$82,000 — Reconfiguration of non-load-bearing partitions

Flores Development, LLC
2718 Main St.
$782,000 — Full remodel of Building C

Herbert Bar
40-42 Acorn St.
$8,500 — Repair front porches

Mercy Medical Center
271 Carew St.
$15,000 — New changing rooms for the radiology department

River Street Spirits Inc.
276 Cottage St.
$21,000 — Change of use from bank to liquor store

Ronald McDonald House
34 Chapin Street Terrace
$12,000 — Siding

Springfield Housing Authority
100 Ashley St.
$120,931 — Construction of new maintenance building

Springfield Housing Authority
347 Central St.
$136,000 — Construction of new maintenance building

WESTFIELD

Frank Demarinis
217 Root Road
$175,000 — Renovations to existing building for a new daycare

Paul Dion
Airport Dr.
$15,000 — Construction of an office in a hangar

WEST SPRINGFIELD

FiberMark
70 Front St.
$84,000 — Renovate space into office/lab area

Pride Limited Partnership
1967 Riverdale St.
$6,000 — Reoccupy existing retail space for the sale of exercise equipment

Russian Pentecostal Church of Hope
407 Park St.
$25,000 — Exterior renovations, including a roof

Triad, LLC
83 Verdugo St.
$15,000 — Exterior renovations

Departments

ACCGS
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555

June 28: WRC 7th Annual Golf Tournament, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., hosted by Crestview Country Club, Agawam. Call the chamber for more information.

July 6: Springfield Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Meeting, 12 noon to 1 p.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 9: ACCGS Legislative Steering Committee, 8 to 9 a.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 15: ACCGS Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., TD Bank Conference Center, Springfield.

July 21: ERC Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., the Gardens of Wilbraham, Community Room, Wilbraham.

July 21: Diplomats’ Meeting, 4 to 5 p.m., EDC Conference Room, Springfield.

July 26: ACCGS Golf Tournament, all day, Springfield Country Club, Springfield. Cost: $160 per player or $640 for a foursome.

July 27: WRC Board of Directors Meeting, 8 to 9 a.m., Captain Leonard House, Agawam.

Young Professional
Society of Greater Springfield
www.springfieldyps.com   

July 15: Third Thursday, hosted by The Delaney House, Holyoke.

Amherst Area
Chamber of Commerce
www.amherstarea.com

June 23: After Five New Member Reception, 5 to 7 p.m., recognizing J.F. Conlon & Associates; Prudential Sawicki Real Estate; Ziomek & Ziomek; Blair, Cutting & Smith Insurance. Sponsored by Whirlwind Fine Garden Design, the Center for Extended Care, and Greenfield Savings Bank. Cost: $5 for members, $10 for non-members.

Chicopee Area
Chamber of Commerce
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101

July 15: Red Sox Bus Trip to Fenway Park vs. Texas Rangers, 7:10 p.m. Cost: $105 per person includes ticket to the game, round-trip bus fare, and tip for the driver. Call the chamber for more information or to purchase tickets.

Franklin County
Chamber of Commerce
www.franklincc.org
(413) 773-5463

See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Easthampton
Chamber of Commerce
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

July 14: Networking by Night Business Card Exchange, “Water Ski Show Night,” 5 to 7 p.m., hosted by Oxbow Water Ski Show Team, 100 Old Springfield Road, Northampton. Sponsored by Bay State Gas. Gala water-ski show, door prizes, hors d’ouevres, host beer and wine. Cost: $5 for members, $15 for non-members.

July 30: 26th annual Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce Golf Tourney, 9 a.m. shotgun start, scramble. Hosted by Southampton Country Club, Southampton. Major sponsor: Easthampton Savings Bank. Golf with cart, lunch, dinner, gift, contests. Cost: $100 per person or $400 for a foursome. Win a Buick Hole-in-One sponsored by Cernak Buick. Win $10,000 Hole-in-One sponsored by Finck & Perras Insurance.

Greater Holyoke
Chamber of Commerce
www.holycham.com
(413) 534-3376
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Northampton
Chamber of Commerce
www.explorenorthampton.com  
(413) 584-1900

July 7: Arrive@5, 5 to 7 p.m., Seth Mias Catering at Northampton Country Club. Cost: $10 for members

Northampton Area
Young Professional Society
www.thenayp.com
(413) 584-1900

July 11: NAYP Party with a Purpose Family Day, 1 to 5 p.m., Look Memorial Park, Willow Brook Shelter. Cookout, games, and fun. Cost: $5 for NAYP members, $10 for guests, $2 for children.

Quaboag Hills
Chamber of Commerce
www.qvcc.biz
(413) 283-2418
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

South Hadley/Granby
Chamber of Commerce
www.shchamber.com
(413) 532-6451

July 19: 7th Annual Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament, hosted by Hickory Ridge Country Club, benefiting Amherst Regional High School business-education programs. Registration and putting contest at 11 a.m., light lunch at 12:30 p.m., shotgun start, scramble format, dinner reception and raffle at 5:30 p.m. Cost:  $125 per person or $500 for a foursome.

Three Rivers
Chamber of Commerce
www.threeriverschamber.org
(413) 283-6425
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Greater Westfield
Chamber of Commerce
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
See chamber’s Web site for information on upcoming events.

Departments

Travelers Recognizes Sumner & Toner Agency

LONGMEADOW — The Sumner & Toner Insurance Agency was recently recognized by Travelers as one of 20 agencies in the country to receive its prestigious Insurance Agency of the Year Award. Firms are chosen based on their goals for long-term profitable growth, dedication to high-quality customer service, and commitment to Travelers. “The Sumner & Toner Insurance Agency demonstrates the highest level of motivation and commitment,” said Greg Toczydlowski, president of personal insurance for Travelers, in a prepared statement. Toczydlowski added that Travelers “truly values” the partnership they’ve developed with the local firm. Established in 1933, Sumner & Toner Insurance Agency is an independent provider of comprehensive auto, home, professional liability, and life insurance. In 2008, partners Warren Sumner and Bill Toner created a dual father-and-son family business with sons Bud Sumner and Jack Toner. The next generation of Sumner & Toner, they say, serve as the company’s sales representatives and are helping to lead the company into the 21st century.

MMWEC Redesigns Public Web Site

LUDLOW — The Mass. Municipal Wholesale Electric Co. (MMWEC) has redesigned its public Web site with the goal of bringing greater efficiency to its Web-site management and improving content to online visitors. The Web site, www.mmwec.org, provides a “fresh and sophisticated look” at MMWEC’s history, programs, and services as well as recent news, financial reports, and information about energy assets and renewable-energy initiatives, according to MMWEC CEO Ronald C. DeCurzio. The site also features improved navigation and a search function, making it simpler for visitors to find specific information that is enhanced with graphic detail. The new site is updated using a customized content-management system, giving authorized individuals the ability to update and publish Web pages as needed from any location with Internet access. In addition, the site is search-engine-optimized to direct more users to the site based on their search-engine queries. MMWEC is a nonprofit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that provides a variety of power-supply, financial, risk-management, and other services to the state’s consumer-owned, municipal utilities.

STCC, Balise Create Partnership for Students

SPRINGFIELD — Balise Motor Sales recently donated $25,000 toward the purchase of a state-of-the-art Hunter vehicle-alignment lift for the Automotive Technology Department at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). The lift will introduce students to real-world diagnostic equipment to better prepare them for their careers in automotive technology, according to Raymond Sbriscia, chairman of the Automotive Technology Department. Sbriscia noted that the lift will be an integral part of the education and training students receive. The college also has a relationship with the Hunter Engineering Co., the manufacturer of the lift and other automotive-repair equipment. Hunter uses the STCC facility as a training and demonstration center for repair companies throughout the region and neighboring states. In return, STCC receives the latest, highest-quality equipment in the industry. Michael Balise, vice president, noted that Balise Motor Sales is always in need of talented automotive technicians who have computer and electronics training in addition to the traditional mechanical training. During the first year at STCC, students work mostly in the lab, diagnosing and fixing problems. At the end of the first year, students receive a certificate of completion. Students can then either join the workforce or continue on to the second year of study and receive an associate’s degree in automotive technology. Only 22 students are accepted into a new class, so the competition is “fierce,” according to STCC officials.

“Hackman” Retires after 48 Years

EAST LONGMEADOW — Lee “Hackman” Breton recently retired from LENOX after a 48-year career that started out on the manufacturing floor. In 1962, Breton was credited with manufacturing the first bi-metal reciprocating saw blade entirely by hand. His career took a dramatic change in 1981 when the LENOX sales team asked him if he thought he could cut a car in half with the new Hackmaster hacksaw blades to show off their superior strength and durability. He accepted and met this challenge, which turned out to be the first of hundreds of car cuts — earning him his nickname. From that day forward, being Hackman became his full-time job. Over the years, Breton traveled the world as Hackman, demonstrating the strength and durability of LENOX Tools by cutting more than 500 cars and other items, including an oil tank truck, cargo plane, boxcar, house, armored car, and even a bus at Super Bowl XXXIIII in 1999. Rich Mathews, vice president of marketing and new business for LENOX, noted that Breton exemplified the LENOX brand with his trademark car cuts, and was always willing and able to help out the company with anything and everything. “He will forever be considered a great employee as well as the best ambassador for the LENOX brand that we ever could ask for,” said Mathews. Breton’s last day at LENOX was May 28.

Café Lebanon Celebrates 10 Years in Business

SPRINGFIELD — Nadim Kashouh, owner of Café Lebanon, recently invited customers and friends to a complimentary 10-year celebration extravaganza at the 1390 Main St. restaurant to thank everyone for their patronage over the years. Kashouh serves Lebanese and Mediterranean cuisine in what he calls “an elegant, yet relaxed atmosphere.” Café Lebanon also offers catering for weddings; showers; anniversary, birthday, and graduation parties; bereavement gatherings; holiday events; business meetings; and corporate events. Kashouh maintains a second Café Lebanon restaurant in the center of East Longmeadow at 60 Shaker Road.

Departments

The following is a compilation of recent lawsuits involving area businesses and organizations. These are strictly allegations that have yet to be proven in a court of law. Readers are advised to contact the parties listed, or the court, for more information concerning the individual claims.

FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT

New England Broach Company Inc. v. Clarke Industrial Sales
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $55,679
Filed: 5/20/10

GREENFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Donald Graves, LLC v. Bennett Construction Company Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of services rendered: $9,140.43
Filed: 5/11/10

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT

James Concannon v. Gentle Movers
Allegation: Breach of contract for moving and storage services: $200,000
Filed: 5/24/10

Kathy Crowley v. Pride Fuels Inc.
Allegation: Employment discrimination: $25,000+
Filed: 5/14/10

Naismith, LLC v. GFI Investments III Springfield Inc., John Deliso, and Steven E. Goodman
Allegation: Breach of contract and failure to pay: $1,804,368
Filed: 5/20/10

Sovereign Bank v. Travel Escapes Inc.
Allegation: Default on promissory note: $13,628.87
Filed: 5/12/10

Western New England Renal Transplant Associates, P.C. v. GE Healthcare Strategic Sourcing Corp.
Allegation: Breach of contract for billing services: $4,000,000+
Filed: 5/17/10

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT

Reikka Simula v. Almadan Inc.
Allegation: Employment discrimination based on age: $72,000
Filed: 6/3/10

HOLYOKE DISTRICT COURT

F.W. Webb Co. v. Welch Plumbing and Gary F. Welch
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $7,967.17
Filed: 4/27/10

Graphic Enterprises Inc. v. Berkshire Westwood Graphics Group Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment on judgment: $16,334.50
Filed: 4/30/10

PALMER DISTRICT COURT

Barbara Loveling v. Joe Deans All Customs
Allegation: Breach of contract to restore Pontiac Firebird: $10,599.50
Filed: 5/25/10

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Comcast Spotlight Inc. v. Allied Career School
Allegation: Non-payment of advertising services rendered: $23,825.39
Filed: 5/11/10

Comcast Spotlight Inc. v. Goldcrafters Exchange
Allegation: Non-payment on advertising services rendered: $5,085.93
Filed: 5/14/10

Competitive Kitchen Designs Inc. v. Serge Construction
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $5,747.98
Filed: 5/5/10

Fairway Wholesale Corp. v. Chartier’s General Carpentry
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $2,654.43
Filed: 5/12/10

J.P. Noonan Transportation Inc. v. Quaboag Transfer Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment on judgment: $6,475.73
Filed: 5/12/10

WESTFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Absolute Fire Protection Inc. v. Sahil Hospitality Corp.
Allegation: Non-payment of services rendered: $8,101.45
Filed: 4/30/10

Departments

The following business incorporations were recorded in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties and are the latest available. They are listed by community.

ADAMS

Greylock Realty Group Inc., 233 Columbia St., Adams, MA 01220. Erik Pizani, same. Real estate services

AMHERST

Amherst Area Publications Inc., 232 Amity St., Amherst, MA 01002. Carlton Brose, 36 Triangle St., Amherst, MA 01002. Non-profit charitable organization.

Fonhoh-USA Inc., 990 North Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002. Marky Jean-Pierre, same. Non-profit charitable organization designed to address the problems and provide educational resources for the people of Haiti.

CHICOPEE

Charles Kennedy Unit No. 275 American Legion Auxiliary Inc., 41 Robbins Road, Chicopee, MA 01020. Carolyn Baranowski, 6 Gardens Dr., Springfield, MA 01119. American Legion Auxiliary.

EAST LONGMEADOW

Arbors Home Health Associates Inc., 200 North Main St., Suite 204, East Longmeadow, MA 01028. Ernst Gralia III, same. Home health care.

G & A Verdile Landscaping Inc., 81 Millbrook Dr., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. Alberto Verdile, same. Landscaping services.

GREENFIELD

Amenita Ventures Inc., 33 Shattuck St., Greenfield, MA 01301. Linda Koonz, same. E-Commerce.

HADLEY

Atlaua Inc., 83 Rocky Hill Road, Hadley, MA 01035. Eric Lyons, Apt. 2, Pomeroy Ter., Northampton, MA 01060. Build, manufacture, fabricate, construct, assemble, design, and develop hydroelectric power generation.

HOLYOKE

AMSC Corp., 589 High St., Holyoke, MA 01040. Marek Wieczorek, same.

LUDLOW

The Boston New Music Initiative Inc., 193 Chapin St., Ludlow, MA 01056. Timothy Davis, same. A network of individuals and groups comprised of composers, performers, conductors, directors, and champions of new music designed to generate new music concerts, compositions, and collaboration.

 

NORTHAMPTON

Every Pet’s Dream Inc., 94 Pleasant St., Northampton, MA 01060. Jessie Byrnes, 552 Old West Brookfield, P.O. Box, 368, Warren, MA 01083. Retail sale of pet foods and pet related products and services.

PITTSFIELD

Berkshire Capital Resources, 65 Bartlett Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201. Thomas Hamel, same. Provides resources, capital and borrowing capabilities to small closely held businesses.

Green River Farms Inc., 57 Wendell Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201. Franklin Lewis, 12630 NE 243rd Ave., Salt Springs, FL 32134. Farming and sale of farm related products.

SOUTH HADLEY

Architectural Roof Management Inc., 17 Canal St., South Hadley, MA 01075. Linda Boisselle, same. Consulting and project management.

SPRINGFIELD

Amarantus MA Inc., 3601 Main St., Springfield, MA 01107. Gerald Commissioning, 6200 Stoneridge Mall Road, #300, Pleasanton, CA 94588. Biotechnology company developing treatments for ALS, Diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.

Borinquen Apartments Manager Corporation, 2460 Main St., Suite 112, Springfield, MA 01107. John Motto, same. Acting as a general partner and property manager.

Brotherhood on the Move Inc., 1500 Main St., Tower Square, Springfield, MA 01115. Andrew Keaton, 176 Garland St., Springfield, MA 01115. Organized exclusively for charitable, religious, educational, and scientific purposes.

Eden Investments Inc., 154 Chapel St., Pittsfield, MA 01202. Mathew Bishop, same. Investment firm.

WEST SPRINGFIELD

The B.A.B.B.I.T.T. Syndicate, 98 Ashley St., West Springfield, MA 01089-3168. Dave Babbitt, same. Web development.

Elephant for Dollar Inc., 935 Riverdale St., West Springfield, MA 01089. Liselo Walker, same. Discount retail store.

Departments

Michael Seward has joined Prudential Sawicki Real Estate in Amherst. He has been a Real Estate Agent since 2003 and a Real Estate Broker since 2005.

•••••

Emily Bryant has been promoted to Director of Sales at the Hampton Inn Springfield-South in Enfield, Conn.

•••••

Margaret A. Wheeler has joined the Law Practice of Attorneys Joseph P. Curran and Dan H. Berger. Wheeler has been an Immigration Attorney since 1997.

•••••

Alice E. Pizzi has joined the management employment law firm of Sullivan, Hayes & Quinn in Springfield.

•••••

David G. Ahearn has joined Greenfield Cooperative Bank as Vice President for Commercial Loans.

•••••

Paul Nicolai has been named to the Executive Committee of the Western Mass. Economic Development Council Board of Directors. He is President of the Nicolai Law Group in Springfield.

•••••

The WFCR Foundation announced the following:
• Marc Berman has been named President of the Board;
• Paul Friedmann has joined the board as a Director;
• Michael Miller has joined the board as a Director;
• James V. Staros has joined the board as a Director;
• Eva Thompson has joined the board as a Director; and
• Sarah Tanner has joined the board as an Adviser.

•••••

The Landmark Companies announced the following:
• Christopher Woods has joined the Wilbraham office;
• Nancy Hunt has joined the Wilbraham office;
• Ela Gomes has joined the Ludlow office;
• Elizabeth DeGray has joined the Ludlow office; and
• Gina Gelineau has joined the Dot Lortie-Springfield office.

•••••

W. F. Young Inc. of East Longmeadow announced the following
• Molly H. O’Brien has been named Advertising Supervisor, Equine Health Care Products. She will be responsible for the creation, execution, and media placement for Absorbine horse-care products, as well as the Equine America brand. She will also collaborate with the company’s advertising agency and creative team to implement strategic branding and creative execution to promote the company’s equine products throughout the world; and
• Vicki Evans has been promoted to Vice President, Controller.

•••••

Michael J. Roy, Esq. has joined Easthampton Savings Bank as the Compliance Officer. He will be responsible for overseeing the bank’s compliance program. His responsibilities will include implementing, amending, or creating compliance policies and assisting with federal and state regulator compliance exams. Roy will also function as the in-house expert for all applicable federal and state banking laws and regulations.

•••••

Chicopee Savings Bank announced the following:
• Cidalia Inacio has joined the organization as the Senior Vice President of Retail Banking;
• Alyse Ramalho has joined the organization as the Senior Vice President of Retail Lending; and
• Henry Downey has joined the organization as an Assistant Vice President of Commercial Lending.

•••••

Susan Dixon, M.D. has been appointed to the medical staff at the Brattleboro Retreat in Brattleboro, Vt. Dixon is board-certified in child and adolescent psychiatry and will spend the majority of her clinical time working with adolescent inpatients.

•••••

Bertram W. Gardner IV, AIA, of Caolo & Bieniek Associates Inc. in Chicopee, recently was granted reciprocity as an Architect by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Gardner is also a licensed Architect in New Jersey.

•••••

The Home Builders Assoc. of Mass. announced the following:
• Walter Tomala Jr. will serve as President of the organization from now through 2011;
• John DeShazo will serve as President-Elect of the organization;
• Michael McDowell will serve as Senior Vice President of the organization;
• Christopher Lund will serve as Vice President of the organization;
• Dwight Thompson will serve as Treasurer of the organization; and
• Robin Ward will serve as Secretary of the organization.