BusinessWest

The high-performance computing center planned for downtown Holyoke will apparently become reality in the next 12 to 18 months. While details of that venture — to involve UMass, MIT, and many other institutions — are starting to emerge, speculation has begun in earnest about what kinds of economic-development opportunities will follow such a project. Those involved in a task force to develop something to be called the “Innovation District” in the heart of the city say much depends on the research agenda that will emerge at the center. But all signs point to an enormous opportunity for this former paper and textiles hub, and the goal moving forward is to fully leverage this asset.

Jeff Hayden was recalling some of the Holyoke history he’s known since he was a child.

“When the dam was first built, there were no mills — this was an agrarian community with about 3,000 people,” said Hayden, vice president of Business and Community Services at Holyoke Community College and former director of economic development for the city, as he referenced the engineering project that enabled what was then a small town to take full advantage of a 57-foot drop in the Connecticut River. “Some 35 years later, there were 36 mills, probably close to 40,000 people living here, and an industrial complex that could rival anything in the country. That’s incredible growth in a very short time.”

He cited the chapter in Holyoke history written between 1850 and 1880 as he discussed the high-performance computing center that will now apparently become reality in the Paper City — and, perhaps more importantly, what could follow that facility in terms of economic-development potential.

Hayden is not predicting that history will repeat itself with such profound growth, but then again, he’s certainly not ruling it out.

Such is the power of imagination, and speculation, when it comes to the computing center, a concept that most people in this region, including many of those most-closely involved with it, are struggling to get both hands around. But optimism abounds, and there is widespread sentiment that the $50 million facility could change the landscape in this city that has been trying to reinvent itself since most of the mills closed decades ago.

What is known is that UMass, MIT, Boston University, CISCO, EMC, and several other partners will come together and build a facility somewhere along the canals in downtown Holyoke. This much was announced at a packed press conference in late October that featured Gov. Deval Patrick. What is also known is that the computing center will be a nonprofit venture that will not pay taxes to Holyoke and will create perhaps only a few dozen jobs to start, by most early estimates.

What isn’t known is what kind of economic development can follow such a facility. There are other so-called super-computing centers around the country, but most have been in existence only a short time, so there is no real body of evidence to show what can happen in Holyoke.

But there is widespread speculation that government agencies, private businesses, support services, and perhaps (or probably) all of the above will want to locate around the computing center, said Kathy Anderson, director of the Holyoke Office of Planning and Development. She, like others, said that much will depend on the research agenda that emerges at the center. But there are some common denominators.

“There is a pattern developing about the kinds of businesses that want to be located near these centers,” she said, noting that her office is conducting research on the subject. And there is ample reason to believe that many companies and institutions will want to be around this particular center, she continued, because of its uniqueness with regard to how it will be powered.

Indeed, inexpensive hydropower will be the primary source of energy to drive and cool the computers, said Anderson, adding quickly that this is an attractive drawing card at a time when many businesses and institutions want to portray themselves as environmentally conscious. “It’s clean, it’s green, and it’s comparatively cheap,” she noted.

Anderson will be one of the co-chairs of a task force charged with exploring development opportunities in what will be called the “Innovation District” in downtown Holyoke, where the center will be built, although the exact location isn’t known. She said the group will likely begin meeting next month, and while its specific charge hasn’t been put down on paper, it amounts to devising strategies to help enable Holyoke to leverage, and thus take full advantage of, an incredible opportunity.

Tim Brennan, director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the other co-chair of the task force, put things a different way.

“We’re essentially coming up with a re-use plan for a city,” he explained. “Holyoke was the first planned industrial city; now it could become the first re-planned industrial city.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with many who will be directly involved with this Innovation District about what the computing center could mean for Holyoke, and how the city can capitalize on this enormous asset.

Breaking New Ground

Brennan acknowledged that, like many who now have ‘high-performance computing center’ as part of their vocabulary, he’s still trying to grasp the concept.

There’s much that he doesn’t know about these facilities and the economic development that they could spur. What he does know is that nothing will happen overnight, and also that there is no clear model to follow, or anything approaching same.

“You can’t run to the library and get books on this,” he explained. “There just aren’t any. This is brand-new territory.”

Therefore, mapping out strategies will be challenging, but also rather exciting, he said, noting that a $50 million facility built by some of the top research institutions in the world is going to be dropped into the middle of an urban center, specifically a low-income community still struggling to gain a new identity after much of its paper and textiles mills closed down or moved south.

That makes this still-unnamed facility rather unique and potentially attractive, said Anderson, noting that most of the existing super-computing centers are located on or near college campuses (such as Ohio State University, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Hawaii), or in rural areas such as Rio Rancho, N.M., Fitchburg, Wis., and Butte, Mont.

Research into existing centers reveals that most have affiliations with both universities and federal agencies or departments, she continued. The Advanced Biomedical Computing Center in Frederick, Md., for example, is affiliated with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health. The Maui High Performance Computing Center, meanwhile, has affiliations with the U.S. Air Force and the Department of Defense, and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., has one with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Such affiliations are usually determined by the types of research being conducted at the centers, said Anderson, noting that it is far too early in the process to determine what the institutions involved in the Holyoke project will be focused on. The possibilities are seemingly endless, and include everything from work in climate change to new developments in so-called ‘cloud computing,’ or the delivery of hosted services over the Internet, or the ‘cloud.’

But the likely scenario, no matter the research agenda, is that government agencies will follow the computing center, and then private-sector firms doing business in (or trying to break into) the research areas that develop. There will also be support businesses to provide services to all those constituencies, as well as other businesses that want or need to locate near such a center.

“Our goal is to essentially create a campus,” Anderson explained. “We’ll see other businesses that are not even related to a high-performance computing center that would like to be around this.

“As the research agenda unfolds, we’ll see other researchers that will want to be around this,” she continued, “and we’ve already had calls from businesses that are not related to this kind of center but want to be near one.”

Hayden agreed, and used research and development of cloud computing as one example of what might emerge at Holyoke’s computing center, and how such work might attract businesses and jobs.

“One of the things they’ve talked about with this center is studying cloud computing itself and how it can be made more efficient, and green, and how it can best be utilized,” he explained. “That also incorporates things like security; if everything’s out there on the cloud, how do you keep it secure and how do you keep it proprietary?

“There are all kinds of complex computations that will be done in terms of how to do cloud computing in a way that’s effective for business,” he continued, adding that many private businesses could potentially be involved in this research, with the goal of bringing new products to the marketplace — products that could be produced in Holyoke.

Such scenarios echo Holyoke’s proud past, said Anderson, noting that, in many respects, history will indeed be repeating itself. It was abundant, inexpensive hydropower and an infrastructure to support large manufacturing operations that put Holyoke on the map 150 years ago, she noted, and it is these assets that are collectively bringing the computing center to the city — and fueling speculation about what will follow it.

Plenty of Dam Attributes

Indeed, while there are many unknowns when it comes to the computing center and the economic development it may generate, those who spoke with BusinessWest were in general agreement that Holyoke will certainly be well-positioned to capitalize on such opportunities.

“There are a lot of things happening in this city right now that are going to make it an attractive place for businesses to want to be,” said Anderson, adding that the computing center could be the catalyst that compels business owners, federal agencies, and college presidents to look in Holyoke’s direction.

Listing attributes and signs of progress, Anderson noted everything from the start of work on Holyoke’s Canal Walk to a large supply of former mill space that can be retrofitted to a number of uses; from an attractive location on or near several major highways to one of the lowest electric rates in the Northeast; from fast-track permitting to a strong fiber-optic backbone.

All of this and more is captured in a recently released video designed to promote the city as an attractive home for businesses, especially those of the green variety.

It features several players in business, industry, and economic development, including Anderson, Holyoke G&E General Manager James Lavelle, Universal Plastics President Joe Peters, and Brendan Ciecko, the 22-year-old entrepreneur who has made downtown Holyoke the home for his Web site design business Ten Minute Media.

“It’s a great strategic location for any business,” Ciecko says in the video. “Being within two hours of New York City and being an hour and a half from Boston is very advantageous for my business. I have the majority of my clients located in New York, so if I want to meet with Mick Jagger, for instance, I can be there in two hours.”

Summing up the content in the video and the many initiatives involving her office, Anderson said Holyoke has the wherewithal, and the creativity, needed to effectively leverage an asset like the computing center, making this city the proverbial right place at the right time for businesses in many sectors.

“A lot of things are coming together at the right time,” she told BusinessWest, noting everything from transportation facilities — a new intermodal transportation center downtown and the potential for commuter rail — to fast-track permitting that will expedite the process of bring a business to the city. “The pieces are coming into place for Holyoke to stand out in the market, and the state has recognized that.”

But perhaps the biggest asset is abundant, green energy, said Lavelle, noting that Holyoke’s hydropower is part of an attractive package, which also includes high-speed fiber-optic services, that is turning heads in the business community and elsewhere.

It obviously caught the attention of those at UMass, MIT, Boston University, and other colleges, who recognized the need for a high-performance computing center, but also the need to place it a community where the huge amounts of electricity needed for such a facility would be comparatively inexpensive — and green.

Lavelle noted that the electricity his utility would provide to a large commercial customer like the computing center (which is protected to need anywhere from six to 12 megawatts for its first phase) would currently cost about 8.4 cents per kilowatt. That’s roughly one-third lower than the rates currently charged by Western Mass Electric Co., he said, and about half what large businesses in Cambridge, home to MIT, are paying at present.

But it’s not just the rates that are attractive, he noted, adding that roughly two-thirds of the power supplied by HG&E is from renewable sources, mostly hydropower, and the utility is currently exploring ways to increase that percentage and also provide ample ‘green’ power for all those who might want to come to Holyoke.

“More than 80% of our power produces no carbon footprint, and that’s really attractive to entities looking to manage their growth and their carbon footprint at the same time,” said Lavelle. “And that’s not unique to high-tech and education; we’re seeing it across the board. Our challenge is going to be to scale and increase our renewable content with this growth so that we don’t dilute it.

“We’re trying to build our renewable portfolio so that our carbon footprint is continually declining,” he continued. “We’re looking at the possibility of wind generation on Mount Tom, we’re always looking at the hydro component to get more generation out of that plant, and we’ll look at other renewable sources.”

But the words ‘green’ and ‘renewable’ refer to more than just energy, said Anderson, referring to Holyoke’s vast inventory of old mill space and, in the larger scheme of things, its downtown as a whole.

Just as companies and institutions may want to reduce their carbon footprint, she explained, they may also desire to be part of an effort to revitalize and reuse some of the old mills, putting them back to work for economic development.

“I think a lot of entities would be intrigued by the possibility if reutilizing the existing resources we have here,” she explained, “taking old buildings built for manufacturing, looking at them in a different way and reusing them. That’s part of the whole green initiative, and it could be a real advantage for Holyoke.”

Powerful Arguments

Hayden, a Holyoke native, said the high-performance computing center is the hot topic of conversation seemingly everywhere in Holyoke, from HCC, which is already exploring creation of programs to train people who would work at the center, to the Stop & Shop, to the Dam Café on Northampton Street.

“There’s excitement and a level of energy I’ve never seen before,” he explained. “This has captured the imagination of an entire city.”

And it has drawn a number of references to Holyoke’s past and its meteoric rise as a manufacturing center, said Hayden, who, like Brennan and others, offered a cautionary note about the progress that could follow the computing center.

“Things won’t happen overnight,” he said. “It will take m
ny years for things to come into place.”

But as he recalled Holyoke’s profound growth after the dam and canal system were constructed, Hayden said, “30 years can go by in the blink of an eye.”

George O’Brien can be reached

atobrien@businesswest.com

On Nov. 27, regular-season Developmental League, or D-League, basketball will come to the Pioneer Valley when the Springfield Armor square off against the Iowa Energy at the MassMutual Center. Tip-off that night will cap months of work to bring a team here and then introduce it the Western Mass. community. Principle owner Michael Savit, who picked Springfield over a host of other cities in the Northeast, including Providence and Worcester, admits that this decision represents a bit of gamble, but one that he believes will eventually pay off.

Michael Savit says he could, in theory, have placed an NBA Developmental League team almost anywhere in the country.

But that’s not what Savit, owner of several minor-league baseball teams, had in mind, nor was ‘just anywhere’ what the National Basketball Assoc. wanted, either. The NBA wanted the D-League, as it’s called, to expand eastward and northward (most of its 16 teams are west of the Mississippi), and Savit — a native of Boston who operates his business, the HWS Group, in Wellesley — wanted to locate a team close to home.

He looked at cities ranging from Providence to Worcester, to Kingston, home of the University of Rhode Island, but ultimately decided on Springfield.

“I decided that if I was going to give this a shot, Springfield made the most sense,” he said, citing everything from the city’s status as the birthplace of basketball to its proximity to Hartford, Worcester, and other population centers. “I just had a feeling, a gut instinct, that this was a basketball community.”

Soon, he’ll get to see if those instincts are correct. The franchise now known as the Springfield Armor (a name chosen in part to reflect another piece of the city’s history, the Springfield Armory) will begin its regular season with a Nov. 27 game against the Iowa Energy at the MassMutual Center.

Alex Schwerin, the Armor’s general manager, isn’t predicting a sellout for that night, but he says filling the house is definitely doable given the extensive promotional work being done and the level of interest he’s witnessing. Overall, he’s projecting first-year attendance of perhaps 3,000 per game (not quite half the capacity of the MassMutual Center for D-League games), which would be a solid start for the new franchise and enough to at least break even for the year, which is the unofficial goal going in, or one of them, anyway.

“Minor-league sports is not a huge moneymaker from year to year,” he explained. “But if the league does well and the team does well, then the value of that franchise will increase, and if you’re an owner or an investor, that’s what you’re looking for.”

For the past several months, Schwerin, a graduate of the UMass Amherst Sports Management Program who worked for some of Savit’s baseball teams before being given the opportunity to guide the Armor out of the gate, has been putting the pieces in place for the inaugural season. Such work includes everything from assembling a management team and hiring a coach (former Celtics star Dee Brown) to picking a name (a rather involved process) and even hiring a dance team that will perform during the games.

But much of his work falls under the category of building awareness for this team and making it part of the regional landscape. This has been ongoing, and tireless, work, he said, noting that he, Sales Director Eric Reddy, and, more recently, Brown have ventured anywhere and everywhere they can to be visible and amass some name recognition for their franchise.

“We’ve been to pancake breakfasts, heart walks, chili cookoffs, you name it,” said Reddy. “We’ve gone pretty much anywhere where we can get our name out in front of the public.”

For this issue, BusinessWest goes behind the scenes with those readying the Armor for battle this fall. There will be two major initiatives, said Schwerin — winning on the court, obviously, but also, and much more importantly, winning over fans and corporate sponsors.

Net Results

As part of his work to be visible and build awareness, Brown was behind the microphone on Oct. 30, addressing attendees at a so-called Developers Conference designed to familiarize the development community with opportunities that exist in the City of Homes.

He followed Mayor Domenic Sarno to the podium in the ballroom at the MassMutual Center, and was the last of a few morning speakers who preceded a lengthy bus tour of the city and afternoon remarks by city and state economic development leaders. Paraphrasing Brown’s remarks, he told those assembled that the Armor and the city of Springfield were essentially doing the same thing at the same time: creating some excitement and pulling the necessary ingredients together for success.

“Like Springfield, we’re building from the ground up,” said Brown, who told attendees that the NBA has a term for cities of Springfield’s size: ‘micropolitan area.’ This means it’s not as big as a metropolitan area, but it certainly has the wherewithal to support a D-League franchise.

Brown has introduced a number of area residents and business owners to that term. Since being hired in August, he’s spoken before groups ranging from area chambers of commerce to the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau, to area nonprofit groups staging annual meetings. Often, these groups have dialed his number, seeking a celebrity voice, but just as often, the team is making him available as part of a broad marketing initiative.

Brown said his messages vary somewhat, but what he generally tells his audience is that the D-League is a quality product, worthy of an investment in a ticket.

“It’s not semi-pro … it’s professional basketball,” Brown told BusinessWest, as he took a quick break from preparation work for the league’s player draft last week. “Each NBA team has probably two or three players who spent time in the D-League; nearly 20% of the NBA’s players spent some time at this level.”

Schwerin concurred, noting that, if the 360 best basketball players now working in this country are in the NBA, most of the next 200 or so best players are in the D-League. “It’s some of the best basketball in the country,” he said, noting that the Armor will serve as the affiliate to three NBA teams — the New York Knicks, New Jersey Nets, and Philadelphia 76ers.

The team’s rosters, capped at 12, will be made up of perhaps a few NBA players assigned to the D-league by their clubs to develop their talents (hence the name), Schwerin continued, with the balance comprised of former college players who were not drafted into the NBA, perhaps some former NBA players, and some from overseas. In each and every case, the player’s goal is to get to, or return to, the big leagues.

It was this quality of talent that convinced Savit that could sell the D-League product, and when the NBA approached him about establishing a team after a franchise in Anaheim folded, he consented, thus agreeing to join the likes of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the Maine Red Claws, the Tulsa 66s (named after the famous highway), and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

The question then became where to place this franchise, Savit continued, adding that Springfield’s geography, demographics, and historical attachment to the game invented by Dr. James Naismith eventually provided the answer.

And so far, Springfield is showing signs that it could be the basketball town that Savit perceived it to be. Schwerin and Reddy said that season-ticket sales have eclipsed the 1,500 mark, and they have confidence they can match that number with game-day sales to hit their attendance targets.

Still, they know that they still have considerable work to do to institutionalize the Armor brand and make this team part of the local fabric.

Points of Interest

Schwerin said the NBA announced the awarding of the Springfield franchise nearly a year ago, when he was in job-search mode. He left minor-league baseball and Savit’s employ to return to his native Western Mass. and seek opportunities here. When Savit called asked if he would be interesting in leading the D-League franchise, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I was looking at some other things,” he explained, “but what really interested me in this was a new team; this represented a chance to start from scratch, which is somewhat of a unique thing in this business.”

And start from scratch he has. Indeed, since April, he has been hard at work on a laundry list of to-do items needed to get the team ready for its 50-game schedule.

At the top of that list was assembling a management team, and one of his first draft choices was Reddy, who handled sales and marketing for the America East Conference (a college athletics league) until he was downsized earlier this year and found himself in search of a new opportunity.

Other steps included the hiring of Brown, enlisting much-needed support from the business community, making travel arrangements for lengthy road trips that will take the team across several time zones, selecting team colors (black and silver), coming up with a mascot (they have one, but it hasn’t been named yet), and all manner of work that falls under the heading of marketing and public relations.

And then, there was the task of coming up with a name and logo. Regarding the former, team officials compiled a list of finalists — Fame, Spirit, Colonials, and Founders were also on a list put through what Schwerin called the “NBA washing machine” to weed out potential copyright violations and politically incorrect monikers — and then asked area residents to vote. Armor emerged as the winner.

The team then hired the Springfield-based marketing firm Six-Point Creative Works Inc. to come up with a brand, the imagery that will be used on everything from uniforms, stationery, and business cards to T-shirts and other merchandise for sale on game days and the team’s Web site.

All of this took a back seat, of sorts, to the overriding mission — the building of a financial model, which, in this case, was based on the majority of revenues coming from ticket sales. There is a small radio-broadcasting contract, said Schwerin, and many corporate sponsorships, but the rest of the revenue comes from the gate, which means a heavy emphasis on both season-ticket sales and game-day transactions.

As for corporate sponsorships, they form a solid revenue stream, Schwerin continued, and the team has secured several, from companies including MassMutual, Big Y Foods, Mercy Medical Center, the Springfield Sheraton, and others.

Overall, Schwerin is predicting that the Armor can at least break even in their first year of operation, but there are many unknowns and several intangibles.

“There is a lot of overhead — 12 of the teams are west of the Mississippi, and two are in California, one’s in Nevada, one’s in Idaho … that means considerable travel,” he explained. “But we’re very optimistic; there’s a great deal of excitement surrounding this team.”

To drive ticket sales, team officials are keeping prices low — there are packages for so-called ‘flex tickets’ (10 for $99), for example — and focusing on group sales and getting families out.

There are birthday-party specials, for example, that offer 10 lower-level tickets for $99, said Reddy, with an added bonus: the birthday girl or boy’s name on the video board.

Meanwhile, the team is casting a wide net, trying to attract fans from not only the 413 area code, but also Connecticut, the Worcester area, Eastern New York, and other regions. The broad goal is to attract not simply the hardcore basketball fan, but the occasional fan who might be attracted to a product Schwerin said is better than Division 1 college basketball, as well as families looking for an economical night out.

And while winning on the court is obviously a factor in the team’s success at the gate, the far-bigger ingredient is what Schwerin called simply “the experience.”

“Our goal is to make people want to come back,” he explained. “To do that, we have to show them a good time, and that goes well behind what happens on the court.”

At the Buzzer…

“The Future of the NBA Today.”

That’s one of the many marketing slogans now being employed by the Developmental League. It speaks to the level of talent on the display and the ultimate goal for those who take the court in Fort Wayne, Tulsa, Albuquerque, Reno, and Sioux Falls.

But the tagline also speaks to Springfield’s entry in this league. Indeed, the future is now, and Armor officials are intent upon making the most of their golden opportunity.

George O’Brien can be reached atobrien@businesswest.com

Donald Courtemanche has long been fascinated by New England downtowns. It all started when he was a student at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, working toward a degree in Political Science. He didn’t get a chance to work on projects involving that community’s urban core, but he soon started a career in downtown revitalization in troubled New Britain. He spent nine years there and is credited with spearheading a much-needed turnaround. His success there turned the heads of those leading the search for a new director of Springfield’s Business Improvement District, an assignment he says comes with its own brand of challenges and opportunities.

Donald Courtemanche remembers the unofficial (sort of) charge he was given when he became executive director of the New Britain Downtown District in 2000.

“It was ‘don’t let things get any worse’ — that was essentially what they said to me,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the actual wording board members placed on his job description was something to this effect: “to prevent further decay in the central business district.”

In actuality, things couldn’t have gotten much worse, he said, citing a 54% vacancy rate in the central business district and a distinct sense of gloom and defeat among most residents and city officials. “It was a like a ghost town when I got there — every other building was boarded up — and no one knew quite what to do. There was a lot of frustration and very little hope.”

But things did get worse.

The vacancy rate dropped a few more percentage points following the opening of a new shopping center on the west side of town. A pizzeria closed down, prompting an entire building to go dark, and a jewelry store that had been in business for 80 years called it quits.

“That’s when the board more or less gave me a mandate,” said Courtemanche. “They said to stop the bleeding, start strategizing about how to stem the tide, and while doing that, let’s start to fill some space, because the property owners are hemorrhaging money.”

To fast-forward through the next nine years of his career — he did all that. (More details later.)

There is still work to be done in New Britain, but Courtemanche feels pretty good about the 12% vacancy rate he left behind as he begins his new assignment, this one as executive director of the Springfield Business Improvement District, or SBID, as it’s called, the decade-old nonprofit agency funded by assessments to participating property owners. His job description here is much different than it was with the first line on his résumé — there is no significant bleeding at the moment.

Still, the general task at hand, as he sees it, is essentially the same.

In New Britain, to stop the slide, he needed to put downtown on the map and, at the same time, get people in downtown office buildings to venture out of those facilities and onto the streets. In short, his charge was to create and maintain an environment that was clean, safe, and conducive to commerce. It’s the same in Springfield.

In New Britain, it all started with a small bookstore and coffee shop opened by a retired librarian. In the City of Homes, Courtemanche arrives with much more to work with. There is much more to see and do, but, in Courtemanche’s mind, too many people are not aware of all that downtown has to offer.

Thus, one of his first priorities is to change that equation, and for that, he’ll borrow some pages from his script in New Britain and work to create architectural walking tours, breakfast network meetings with developers, and other efforts to the word out and also get people on the streets.

In the meantime, he intends to focus on the issue of the perception of crime. He said that Springfield doesn’t have a problem with crime — or any more of a problem than other cities its size — but the perception held by many that the streets are not safe is a problem that could potentially limit progress downtown.

How does one change those perceptions? “You have to get people downtown — get them out of the downtown office buildings and give them a good experience,” he explained. “You have to prove to them it’s a wonderful place.”

Summing up the situation he inherits in the City of Homes, Courtemanche said the downtown “has great bones … but things need to be better-connected.”

“There are thousands of employees working in the downtown in office buildings and government buildings,” he explained, “but they’re not connected to each other, and in a lot of cases they’re not venturing out of their buildings. Getting them out the front door is challenge number one, but it’s also opportunity number one, if we can get them out there.”

In this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Courtemanche about Springfield, it’s downtown, the SBID, and the work he has in front of him.

Background Check

Courtemanche remembers when that retired librarian started talking about her bookstore and coffee shop plans. She originally wanted to open such an operation in Maine.

“I said, ‘why not do it in New Britain?’ he recalled. “She didn’t really have an answer for that, so I wrote her a business plan, and she decided to do it, even though the idea was greeted with some skepticism.

“Someone said, ‘you’re going to fail … what are you, nuts?’” he continued. “And it was the mayor of the city.”

Such was the state of things in the central business district of Connecticut’s sixth-largest city (72,000 people), home to the giant hardware corporation Stanley Works, the minor-league baseball team known as the Rock Cats, the world’s oldest museum devoted to American art, and not much else. This was where Courtemanche chose to start a career forged by his fascination with New England urban centers that developed while he attended Eastern Connecticut State University.

“ I didn’t go to college expecting to be revitalizing downtowns,” he told BusinessWest. “I went to college in Willimantic, Conn., and as a byproduct of my being there, I fell in love with their downtown; I spent the last two years of my college career trying to get involved in the redevelopment of that downtown, but I wasn’t able to get my start there due to my age and inexperience.”

He eventually moved to Hartford, launched a job search, and spotted the opening in New Britain, a position that hadn’t been filled in years. Quickly summing up his time there, Courtemanche said that retired librarian did open up shop in the community, providing a much-needed spark.

“That was the first time anyone could buy a cup of coffee in downtown New Britain in about 20 years, or something like that,” said Courtemanche, adding that he was exaggerating, but only slightly. “For the first time in a long time, people had a reason to get out of their office buildings and take in the downtown.

“At first, we were just trying to stop the hemorrhaging,” he continued, referring to his first few years in New Britain. “We said, ‘let’s fill downtown with anyone willing to spend a buck, meaning discount stores, pawnbrokers, and the like. We then moved on to the second round, with restaurants coming in, a theater company, and more. We kept building on the foundation.”

Listing the accomplishments he helped orchestrate, Courtemanche started with the recruitment of more than 80 specialty retailers and office users, including a full-service grocery, two pharmacies, a national clothing retailer, and several restaurants. He also recruited La Quinta Inn & Suites, which undertook an $8 million renovation project of an abandoned 120-room hotel, drove multiple infrastructure-improvement projects, and opened the Downtown New Britain Visitors’ Center complex. He even personally restored the abandoned Charles Mitchell mansion, a downtown historic landmark, into his private residence.

He has to find a new home in Springfield — he’s eyeing Forest Park and the McKnight sections — but he won’t have to replicate most of his other accomplishments in Connecticut.

That’s because Springfield has many of the pieces that were missing in New Britain already in place. Its downtown has sound infrastructure and is considered (by many, at least) to be clean and safe, he said, adding quickly there is still considerable work to do.

Courtemanche said he became aware of the vacancy in Springfield very soon after then-SBID Executive Director Jeff Keck announced he was leaving — “there’s a small, informal network of downtown managers in Southern New England, and we all talk” — and decided quickly that he would like to make this, the largest BID in the Commonwealth, the next line on his résumé.

“I thought this was a natural next step for me career-wise,” he explained. “I had been looking for a bigger city and something in New England; there are certainly a lot of downtown manager jobs available in this country, but I was waiting for the perfect fit.”

What’s in Store

Courtemanche said one of his first priorities will be to conduct a top-to-bottom review of everything the SBID does and how it does it, a necessary step at this juncture in the organization’s history.

“The BID is 10 years old now, so this is a good time,” he said, “to take a step back and look at what works and what doesn’t work and to review all that the BID does. The (BID’s) board members are well aware of what they’ve got here — a potentially dynamic downtown — it just needs some tweaking.”

Summing up the work to be done in Springfield, Courtemanche started by saying that the situation in the City of Homes is really no different than what exists in myriad other urban centers in the Northeast.

Tracing the recent history of downtowns, he said their decline began in the late 1950s with the exodus of many urban dwellers to the suburbs. It continued in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, with the building of suburban malls and the highways that would bring people to them.

“In reality, it took a long time for downtowns to decline,” he explained, adding that the process took three or four decades to fully play itself out in most communities. “Cities like New Britain didn’t hit rock bottom until the early ’90s. It certainly didn’t happen overnight, and on the flip side, revitalization doesn’t happen overnight, either. It’s going to take a while to get back up to the downtowns we all remember and that we all love.”

Addressing the task at hand in Springfield, Courtemanche says one must start with an honest assessment of the how society — and the landscape — have changed, and what that means for downtown redevelopment. “The Holyoke Mall isn’t going anywhere, and I-91 isn’t going anywhere,” he told BusinessWest. “That’s reality, and we have to deal with that reality.”

Courtemanche has been on the job only a few weeks, and he says he’s still getting a feel for his assignment, the players he will be working with, and the scope of the issues confronting him in a district that stretches to the railroad tracks to the north, Chestnut Street to the east, the Connecticut River to the west, and State Street (more or less) to the south. He has met, and more meetings are scheduled, with key stakeholders, including the managers of Tower Square, who are struggling to replace the many retailers who have left in recent years.

One of the keys to expanding the retail base is creating more market-rate housing in an area dominated by subsidized housing, thus expanding a demographic that is appealing to regional and national retailers.

In the meantime, he wants to focus his energies on making those connections he mentioned, and to do that Courtemanche said he intends to take a solid base of SBID programs designed to get people downtown — everything from a summer concert series to a farmers’ market — and build on it.

Architectural walking tours worked in New Britain, and Springfield has a much larger inventory of architecturally significant buildings. Other steps will likely include networking events with developers to familiarize them with the many opportunities that exist in the downtown area.

“A lot of what we did in New Britain was just bringing the parties together, and that’s what got the ball rolling,” he explained. “We did bus tours of development sites, we did walking tours of development sites. Downtown real estate had fallen off the map because no one was promoting it. It’s not quite the same here, but we still want and need to make more connections.”

In short, Courtemanche wants to put downtown back in the public’s mind, through targeting marketing and programs designed to prompt visits to the area. But he knows that’s only half the battle. As he said, once people are downtown, he has to help provide a provide a positive experience, and thus he must maintain a focus on elements such as safety, appearance, and cleanliness, which are already positives.

Those are just some of the ‘great bones’ he referred to, with others being infrastructure, architecture, several major employers doing business downtown, cultural institutions, and more.

“We have a lot of pieces already in place,” he said in summary. “We just need to package the downtown better and show people they can have a good time here.”

Down on Main Street

Courtemanche says he knew a little about Springfield — “from driving to, from, around, and through it over the years” — before deciding to pursue the SBID directorship.

What he knew was that the downtown was one of the most intriguing in New England, and he’s seen and studied many.

He knew also that his assignment here wouldn’t be simply to keep things from getting any worse, as it was in New Britain. Instead, it would be to continually make things better.

He’s confident he can do that — no bones about it.

George O’Brien can be reached atobrien@businesswest.com

Friendly’s President and CEO Ned Lidvall says the current recession is unlike anything that has hit the restaurant industry in recent memory. It has created casualties — individual restaurants and entire chains have failed — and forced all players to examine what they do and how they do it. Friendly’s is responding with some new concepts, including an ‘Express’ model restaurant and a renewed focus on the fundamentals, or what Lidvall calls “blocking and tackling.”

Ned Lidvall says that, based on their experiences during the two previous economic downturns — the one in the early ’90s and the other one, which came after 9/11 — most in the restaurant industry entered the current slide thinking their sector was all but recession-proof.

They’ve learned, the hard way, that they were dead wrong.

Indeed, across the many categories within this broad industry — including fine dining, casual dining, mid-scale family, as it’s called, and even fast food — the numbers are down, said Lidvall, president and CEO of Wilbraham-based Friendly’s. And the reason is quite simple: people are eating at home more and eating out less.

“Everything that drove this industry over the past few decades, from the two-wage-earner households to people being compressed for time and needing quick food, to the affluence of Baby Boomers — all of those things have been reversed with the recession,” said Lidvall. “We’ve seen people change lifestyle habits and behaviors that we believed were entrenched.”

This phenomenon has resulted in more intense competition for fewer restaurant visits, said Lidvall, who arrived at Friendly’s roughly a year ago. That means it has also prompted a good deal of introspection and detailed review of how business should be conducted — not merely for the present with the goal of surviving the Great Recession (many restaurants and some chains have not), but also for the future and life after the downturn is over.

That’s because Lidvall, for one, is rather confident that when better times return, things will not simply go back to the way they were before. Instead, consumers will likely continue to put a strong emphasis on value, meaning not simply the food on the plate, but the overall experience.

To compete — and potentially thrive — in this environment, restaurants like Friendly’s, founded nearly 75 years ago by Curtis and S. Prestley Blake, must find ways to differentiate themselves, and then continually drive home to the consuming public what makes them different, said Lidvall, adding that, with Friendly’s, that differentiator is ice cream.

“The family meal occasion, while declining due to the economic conditions, is still a very relevant occasion in America,” he explained. “And we have the benefit of what I call a glaring point of difference, and that’s one of the things we really search for in our business today.

“As the industry has continued to segment, the lines and the definitions of brands have blurred somewhat, I believe,” he continued. “The fact that the Blakes built this company, and subsequent owners continued operating, around the notion of ice cream as a hero product is a point of difference. There’s not many companies you can point to that have that.”

To fully leverage that advantage, Friendly’s is focusing on the guest experience, meaning the basics, or what Lidvall, who played football at the University of Kentucky, calls “blocking and tackling,” gridiron fundamentals and terms that many in business have applied to what they do. Elaborating, Lidvall said it’s incumbent upon his company to simply execute better.

“This is an execution-based business,” he said of food service. “It’s not so much what you do, but how well you do it, because there are so many touch points when you go through a restaurant experience. It’s a matter of being competitive or slightly better with as many of those as you can, and that’s what we have to do to win.”

As part of this focus on execution, the company has created a new concept, called Friendly’s Express, its first foray into the relatively new food-service realm known as “fast casual.”

The first of these smaller restaurants opened two months ago in Mansfield, Mass., southwest of Boston. It offers a more condensed menu, with patrons ordering their meals at a window and then waiting, on average, about six minutes for their orders. Some eat on the premesis, but many take their items out.

In the first few weeks the first ‘Express’ was open, before school started, the venue saw a good number of visits from families, which was encouraging, said Lidvall, but more promising was the business from workers looking for a fast lunch — and finding it at a new face on the block.

Moving forward, the company plans to chart activity at the Friendly’s Express, refine the concept, and expand it (there are no immediate plans to place any in the 413 area code), said Lidvall, adding that the broader assignment is simply for more of that aforementioned blocking and tacking, and positioning the company for the day when the economy improves — and whatever it might bring.

Here’s the Scoop

Lidvall categorizes himself simply as a “career restaurant guy.”

He told BusinessWest that he got “the bug” soon after graduating from college as a biology major. Not knowing what to do with himself, he took a job at a Steak and Ale restaurant, and has been in food service ever since.

“Steak and Ale was one of the seminal breeding grounds for restaurant people back then — it sort of invented casual-theme dining,” he said, noting that it gave a solid education to those, like himself, who entered its management program. “In the realm of casual dining and full-service dining, [founder] Norman Brinker is considered one of the real innovators and one of the real creators, with both Steak and Ale and another chain called Bennigan’s.

“I was lucky to get started in a culture that was very educational,” Lidvall continued, adding that there have been a number of stops during his 35-year career, the last of which was a 12-year stint running the Colorado-based chain Rock Bottom Restaurants, which has locations in 14 states, including a few in Massachusetts.

He was in the process of leaving that corporation and beginning the search for a new opportunity in the industry when he interviewed with Sun Capital Partners, which acquired Friendly’s in 2007, for the opportunity to succeed George Condos as president and CEO.

“I guess the stars kind of aligned,” he explained. “I had spent my entire career in casual dining, and thought it would be fun and interesting to join a complex, vertically integrated family-dining, mid-scale chain.

Explaining that word ‘complex,’ he said it refers to the number of business units at Friendly’s. There are five: manufacturing and distribution, which are both profit centers, as well as a retail component, a franchise division, and 300 company-owned restaurants.

This complexity appealed to him, as did the company’s life-cycle status, which he said academics would call a realignment.

“The company’s financially healthy, but there’s work to do and wood to chop around improving the base business, and I wanted to do that,” he explained, adding that word on the street, meaning industry circles, concerning Friendly’s was that it was a strong brand that had let its value proposition weaken somewhat.

Since arriving, Lidvall and his team have been developing a strategic plan to regain some of that lost ground.

Perhaps the most noise is being made with the Friendly’s Express, which has earned solid reviews since it opened, and gives the company another way to compete for what Lidvall called “share of stomach.”

And it provides entry into an emerging segment in the industry known as ‘fast casual,’ or ‘quick casual,’ a progression that makes sense given the direction in which society is moving.

“It’s a natural development,” Lidvall explained, noting that it blends speed with more high-quality food than what one might encounter at fast-food establishments. “It’s a blend of limited service with better food, and it’s the one segment in the industry that’s been flat or has actually seen some growth over the past 12 months.”

The current leaders in the fast-casual segment are Panera Bread and Chipotle, and Lidvall expects to soon have Friendly’s on that short list, based on what he’s seeing in Mansfield.

There, at a 2,200-square-foot facility (just over half the size of a standard Friendly’s restaurant), the company is offering what Lidvall said is the best of its lunch and dinner menus — burgers, salads, and SuperMelt sandwiches — along with a vibrant selection of ice cream and sweet-treat offerings.

“What we like about the position of the Friendly’s Express is that we think we can play in the premium convenience or quick-casual food occasion,” he explained, “and we also think we can get the sweet-treat occasions, whether it’s sundaes, ice cream cones, or ice cream beverages that the Cold Stones and the Ben & Jerrys are currently getting.”

Any Given Sundae

The plan moving forward is to add four or five new ‘express’ locations in the near term, said Lidvall, adding that the company hasn’t yet opened up the concept to franchisees, although he expects this to be its biggest opportunity because of the lower cost of opening and operating such a facility. “It will be a significant piece of a our future growth.”

But it will be just a part of the equation, he continued, noting that Friendly’s is still in the traditional full-service food business, and will remain there. And as with the ‘express’ model, the assignment with the larger restaurants is to continue refining, improving, and growing that segment.

Which brings Lidvall back to the recession and how it has prompted all players in this industry to look hard at what they do and how they do it, with an eye toward not simply surviving — although for some, especially those not in Friendly’s strong financial position, that’s a real challenge — but positioning themselves for what happens next.

Overall, it’s been a long year for most independents and chains, said Lidvall, noting that ice-cream-focused outfits have been hit not only by the downturn, but Mother Nature as well. “To not have a 90-degree day in June or July was certainly tough for us,” he said.

Friendly’s has seen its revenues decline, but it is running better than most other players, again because of its diversity, said Lidvall, noting quickly that the current conditions are forcing everyone to ramp up their games.

“There’s been a marketplace retreat in terms of food eaten away from home since the Great Recession began,” he explained. “People are simply eating out less. But there’s also been a trade-down effect, where people have traded down from full service to quick service. All of that means that you have to become more competitive.

“As a result, we’re doing a lot of innovation around the menu — that’s going to be a big part of our strategy for next year,” he continued. “There will be significant menu work, largely improving the value proposition. People will also see a lot of work on how we execute, meaning speed of service, the cleanliness of our restaurants. And we’re going to continue to go to market aggressively from an advertising and promotional standpoint; we’re fighting for market share.”

And the fight will go on, in earnest, even when it is clear to all that the recession is over, he continued, reiterating his comments about how consumers will not simply open their wallets again.

“The rebound will come, but people are spending a lot of time talking about how the marketplace is going to be different, because the rebound will not, in my opinion, mean that things will go back to the way they were,” he said. “I really think that the consumer, in general, will be a lot more value-conscious, and that, in our industry, doesn’t just mean price, because we essentially market and sell experiences.

“The product is experiential, and for us that involves not only the tangible product,” he continued, “but the emotional product of service, hospitality, and atmospherics — those things that go into the purchase decision other than what I eat and drink.”

Just Desserts

As he talked about competition in his chosen industry, for today and the foreseeable future, Lidvall used the words ‘keen’ and ‘intense.’ And then summoned one more: ‘Darwinian.’

His intent was clear. While success in any business has always been about survival of the fittest, that phrase applies especially to the food-service industry, where, by some accounts, 4% to 5% of the nation’s nearly 1 million restaurants have closed in the past 18 months, with more failures projected.

Friendly’s is still among those standing, but the goal is not merely survival; instead it’s about fully leveraging a brand and a differentiator — and gaining a bigger share of the stomach.

George O’Brien can be reached atobrien@businesswest.com

As publisher, editor, and sales director of The Western Mass. Sports Journal, Tad Tokarz developed working relationships with many members of the business community. Now as principal of Central High School, he’s working to take these relationships to a new and different level, while also forging new ones. The energetic, big-thinking Tokarz wants a group of “business partners” to help him fulfill his mission to make Central one of the top high schools in the country.

It is 9:46 a.m., and second-period classes have just ended. The hallway at Springfield’s Central High School becomes a sea of black and tan as uniformed students make their way to the next stop on their schedules.

It is only a few seconds into the four-minute slot allotted for this assignment, but Tad Tokarz, the school’s principal, is already admonishing his charges to move it out. “Come on, let’s go, let’s go,” he says in an authoritative voice, clapping his hands for added emphasis and exhorting those who stop to chat to find another time for such activity.

“We’re getting better,” he told BusinessWest while looking down at his watch repeatedly. “It’s still early — this is just the third day of school, and some of the freshmen are still getting lost; we’ll get there, though.”

Hallway monitoring is just one of many everyday duties for Tokarz, 36, a long-time assistant principal at Central who was promoted to the corner office in July. He brought with him an ambitious set of goals for the 23-year-old institution, one of the largest high schools in the state, and having the hallways completely cleared in four minutes is just one of the simple ones.

His stated ambition is to move Central onto U.S. News and World Report’s list of the top 100 public high schools in the country — and keep it there. He’s not exactly sure how far outside that threshold Central is at present, but he knows that he, his staff, and 2,200 students have some work to do.

He knows also that they’ll need some help getting to where they want to go, and he’s turning to a somewhat unique source to find it: the business community.

Indeed, Tokarz, who established relationships with many area businesses through an entrepreneurial venture known as the Western Mass. Sports Journal (from which he’s taking a respite), started calling some of these contacts earlier this summer to solicit help with funding — and therefore strengthening — several key programs that help shape the overall culture of the school.

And he’s already been overwhelmed by the response.

Springfield Technical Community College, for example, has agreed to become a so-called “business partner,” and, more specifically, to sponsor a live morning newscast from the school’s television studio (more from the anchor desk later). Meanwhile, Cambridge College is helping to underwrite the school’s drama department, a donation that will help fund a fall production of The Merry Wives of Windsor and also help Central students attend the annual Shakespeare Festival in Lenox.

Another area school, Branford Hall, has signed on as a partner, with its specific beneficiary being the school’s Web site — www.springfieldcentral.com — which is in the process of being updated and energized, giving the school more visibility and a better chance to get its message across to prospective students, parents, staff, and anyone else who visits that site.

And what is that message?

That this school is on the rise, said Tokarz. “Central can be one of the top 100 public high schools; it has the staff, it has the culture, and, most important, it has students committed to excel.”

There are more of these business partners — L’il Dogs, a marketing and promotions firm, has agreed to help with the online school store, for example — and additional discussions are ongoing with other companies, Tokarz continued, adding that the dollar amounts committed, while they are relatively small and add up to a tiny fraction of the school’s budget, are nonetheless quite significant.

“They represent a big investment in these kids, this school, this city, and the future; it’s great to see these businesses get involved and help improve the product we’re able to offer to our students, our clients,” he said, offering the first of what would be many comparisons between the machinations of a public high school and a business.

And while the present tense is encouraging, Tokarz is even more excited about the future and the potential to expand the corporate-partners initiative. “I think we’re just getting started,” he told BusinessWest.

Those same words were offered by many others involved in this unique initiative.

Our Top Story

School starts at 7:35 at Central, but things are hopping at Studio 86 long before that.

So named because Central opened in 1986, the studio is the site of a morning newscast called amCentral, which is piped into every homeroom and aired just after the Pledge of Allegiance. At 7:33, two minutes before the cameras roll, Jim Adamopoulos, or ‘Mr. A,’ as he is called by his students, is going over some last-minute script changes with that morning’s anchor, Jenn Christian.

The show runs just over six minutes, and it includes reminders about an upcoming college fair at Western New England College, the pending class elections and deadlines for filing candidacy, and information for taking part in a MassMutual program called Academic Achievers, as well as a public service announcement and a “biographical nugget,” as it’s called, on Squanto.

Adamopoulos watched from his classroom just outside the studio because he wants to see the broadcast but have his students try to handle any issues without his direct assistance. He’s been doing this for 13 years now, so he knows how best to support and challenge his charges.

He also knows how challenging it has been to keep the facility adequately funded.

It was built with some financial support from Continential Cablevision, which agreed to the donation of equipment and technical support as part of a community-outreach component that won it the Springfield cable-TV contract. When that contract expired, said Adamopoulos, funding for the studio, its activities, and its equipment became considerably more precarious.

In recent years, a major fund-raiser, a basketball tournament, has been the main avenue of support, along with some money from the English Department. But the need for additional funding has been apparent for some time, said Adamopoulos, adding that this is what prompted Tokarz to make a specific request to Joan Thomas, director of Marketing at STCC, and her boss, Pat Tighe, director of Enrollment at the school.

It was, said Thomas, a fairly easy sell because of what she called its win-win qualities. The studio gains some financial stability in the form of a $2,500 annual donation that will help maintain aging equipment, and the college gets some desired exposure in the form of ads that will run on the station and other opportunities to familiarize students with its many programs.

“Tad’s very energetic, and that energy is contagious,” she explained. “He wants to take Central to the next level, and we want to be part of that effort; we want to help make Central the best it can be.

“We get to help one of the biggest high schools in the state,” she continued, “and in return, we get to introduce students to STCC and community colleges in general.”

There are certainly other projects that needed funding support or a greater sense of financial stability, said Tokarz, adding that he approached the business community not merely for checks made out to Central High School, but important backing of the institution and his stated mission to see it recognized nationally.

And as he talked about how to get where he wants to go and how to get there, Tokarz offered BusinessWest a tour of the school. While doing so, he said that breaking the top-100 list requires progress with myriad qualitative and quantitative measures, from the number of advanced-placement (AP) classes to the volume and quality of extracurricular activities, to the prevalence of a culture of excellence.

“It’s a fairly simple equation,” he explained. “Staff plus students plus culture equals success. We have a tremendous staff that really cares about every single student in the building; our students understand that academics is their number-one priority, and our culture has always been strong, but it has been ratcheted up several notches with some of the things we’ve done and the programs we’ve put in place.

“We offer a lot of different things, like visual and performing arts and athletic programs that are storied, with such alumni as [basketball star and former NBA player] Travis Best who have gone on to do amazing things,” he continued. “We’re a comprehensive high school that’s proud of its tradition and excited about its vision.”

Textbook Examples

During the tour, Tokarz stopped at several classrooms, interrupting only momentarily to introduce another faculty member and show the diversity of the subjects being taught, from Spanish to computer science to AP physics.

As he went from one floor and classroom to the next, he said he wished he could take every business owner and decision-maker on the same tour. Doing so, he said, would certainly open some eyes.

“People think they know about Central,” he said. “But the opinions are formed by what people might read or hear, and a lot of that is not reflective of all the good things that are happening here.”

Tokarz knows he’s way too close to Central to have anything approaching an objective opinion about the school, its current state, and its future. But he makes no apologies, and says that one of his missions is to get more people and institutions closer to the school so that they may see some of the things he sees.

It is his ability to articulate his broader mission and convey his enthusiasm that no doubt helped Tokarz prevail over the more than 20 other candidates for the principal’s job. And it is that same ability to sell himself and his ideas that helped him quickly gain the support of several area businesses.

Indeed, Meghan Arena, assistant director of Enrollment at Cambridge College, said it took essentially one meeting with Tokarz to secure the school’s support for his initiative and, specifically, the drama program.

“I’d have to call it a whirlwind,” she said of the discussions between the parties. “It happened very quickly … it just seemed like the perfect fit for us.”

Rick Turner, the school’s director, agreed, and said he was struck by the uniqueness of the request, but also its importance to the school and Tokarz’s ambitious goals.

“In my 33 years in this business, no one’s ever asked me to fund a Shakespearean play before,” he said, noting, as Thomas did, the inherent win-win nature of the request.

Cambridge College was a frequent advertiser in the Western Mass. Sports Journal because the publication was widely read within the city’s schools, especially by faculty members who need the advanced degrees offered by the college to move up the ladder. The business-partnership arrangement enables the college to stay visible in front of the large constituency, while also supporting a program identified as a key contributor to the culture Tokarz and others described.

Michael Cremonini, a drama teacher at Central since it opened, said the $2,000 donation from Cambridge College will help the high school absorb the $12,000 cost of continuing its long-term collaboration with Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox and the resulting Fall Festival of Shakespeare, which the school has staged for more than 20 years.

Elaborating, he said the Lenox group comes into the school and works with students on all aspects of its fall production for approximately 10 weeks. That show is then staged at the school (two performances), and also in Lenox at Shakespeare & Co.

“It’s become part of the fabric of the school,” Cremonini said of the two major productions the students stage (Little Shop of Horrors will be presented in the spring). “This donation helps us to keep that tradition alive.”

Meanwhile, to effectively convey that culture to several important audiences, administrators at Central wanted to significantly improve the school’s Web site, and approached Branford Hall for assistance.

With a $4,000 donation from that institution, the site will be revamped and modernized, said Thomas Brunette, a physics teacher who has worked on several Web sites, including one he created for a rock band he was part of (it has since disbanded), and took charge of Central’s online initiative.

The school has hired the Springfield-based Web site designer DIF Design to breathe more life into www.springfieldcentral.com, making it both more aesthetically pleasing and, giving it more functionality and, overall, making it much more informative, said Brunette, adding that over time he wants the school’s students to play an increasingly larger role in the site’s content.

Said Tokarz, “our Web site is going to be state-of-the-art, and this will give us that ability to show people in Springfield and far behind what an amazing institution this really is. This is our branding — we’re trying to brand ourselves as the home to scholars and champions — and our revamped Web site will help us drive that message home.”

Class Act

Tokarz told BusinessWest that Central would still have a Web site without the Branford Hall donation; it just wouldn’t as effective.

Likewise, there would still be an amCentral and its morning newscasts, as well as a drama program. But these initiatives probably wouldn’t be as secure financially or perhaps as comprehensive without the corporate support.

And perhaps more importantly, there wouldn’t be direct involvement from these partners with the school and its principal’s drive for the ‘Top 100’ list. “These partners are simply helping us make a dream reality,” he said.

He was going to say more, but another period was coming to a close, and it was time to go back up the second-floor hallways and keep his students moving forward — in more ways than one.