Year: 2010

Dave Sweeney, left, and Marty Langford say they help companies get the big picture.

Creating Online Video — and Opportunities — for Clients

Dave Sweeney, left, and Marty Langford say they help companies get the big picture.

Dave Sweeney and Marty Langford believe in practicing what they preach.
And what they preach is that video on the Internet is a very popular medium — more than 70% of U.S. Web surfers view video on line, they say — and that business owners should take full advantage of this popularity to “advance their brand.”
So if one visits their Web site — www.viz-bang.com — he or she can see a clip featuring Sweeney and Langford talking about video, their company, and how they can use a host of platforms to help clients get their message across.
“If you don’t think this Web-video thing is real, what are you doing right now?” asks Sweeney shortly after introducing himself on the two-minute video. “You’re doing it — and your customers are doing it, too.”
The two partners, who launched Viz-Bang nine months ago, alternate with commentary throughout the video, with Sweeney saying at one point, “we make videos that move people — in a good way,” with Langford following with, “kick-ass videos.”
But the two were quick to point out — in both their video and an interview with BusinessWest — that they do more than create videos. They also combine them with some of the latest social-media vehicles, such as Twitter and Facebook, to give clients a diverse and cost-effective package of options for relaying a message to their intended audience.
All this means that there is a large educational component to their work, said Sweeney, adding that while most business owners are aware of the various social media outlets, they don’t know how to take full advantage of them. “So there are two conversations we have with people,” he explained. “We talk to business owners and managers about being on Facebook, Twitter, or a YouTube channel, and all the reasons they should be on those platforms. And then, what you hear often is, ‘OK, you’ve convinced me; now what are we going to say? What are we going to put out there?’ And that gets to the content question, which we can answer.’”
Doing both the convincing and the content has been the job description for the two partners since they came together late last year, confident that their talents would complement one another effectively.
Sweeney has a background in corporate communications (he spent 10 years with Cigna), while Langford has spent his career in video-production work. After working for other people for many years, the two went out on their own with entrepreneurial ventures. They collaborated on a few projects, and the resulting good chemistry prompted talk of going into business together — talk that eventually turned into action.
As he commented on video and the Internet, Langford said many business owners are taking advantage of advancing technology such as Web cams to gain visibility, tout their brands, and inform customers. But often, the product is lacking needed quality.
“As soon as the video question comes into the conversation, you can see it working in people’s eyes, you can see them tossing it around as we’re talking to them,” he explained. “They say, ‘I have a video camera, I have a Web cam on my computer, and I’ve seen lots of video blogs and links on sites for companies where they’re sitting at their computer blabbering away into their Web cam for five or six minutes.’
“That’s content,” he continued, “but it’s not particularly good content that’s maintaining and supporting the brand that they’ve established. It could actually hurt a company — we’ve seen it hurt clients and potential clients. There might be some good stuff in there, but production-value-wise, it’s probably lacking.”
Adding value that will enhance the brand is what the two partners say they specialize in, to the point where they’re using the slogan, ‘creating digital video they’ll wanna watch.’
But generating video is just part of the equation, the two stressed repeatedly. Another big part is taking that video and putting it to effective, cost-efficient use.
“One piece of video shouldn’t live or die based on one distribution method,” Langford explained, adding that he and Sweeney can work with clients to spread the content over several platforms, ranging from traditional media to social media.
The two partners said Viz-Bang is off to a solid start, with growth coming slowly and surely. They have been actively engaged in building awareness of their company, products, and services. Methods for doing so including participation in a series of seminars on social media called Online Impact, involvement in community projects such as the Big Theater restoration, and work on some high-profile projects such as the Art & Soles initiatives (those 5-foot-high sneakers visible throughout Springfield) and BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty Gala, for which the company produced a humorous video introducing the Class of 2010.
And they also do it through their own marketing, which includes all those platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, that they pitch to their clients.
“Viz-Bang is more than a video-production company,” says Sweeney toward the end of that promotional video on the company’s Web site. “It’s more than a product or service; Viz-Bang transcends commerce.”
Perhaps, but for now, the two partners are working to build some commerce for themselves. They say their book of business is growing steadily, as evidenced by calendars that have a healthy number of appointments booked. They expect to become increasingly busy as word gets out about them and more business owners come to say, ‘OK, you’ve convinced me; now what are we going to say? What are we going to put out there?’

— George O’Brien

Doing Business As Certificates

DBA Certificates Departments

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

AGAWAM

Allen’s Appliance
336 North Westfield St.
Allen St. Jean

Caravan Express Transport
151 Springfield St.
Miran Karapetyan

Games 2 U
367 North Westfield St.
Paul A. Jenney

Tastefully Simple
36 Senator Ave.
Kelley Richards

Twice But Nice
324 Springfield St.
Judy Scibelli

AMHERST

Arigato Sushi
11 North Pleasant St.
Jaxyoung Lee

Baystate Tax Service
409 Main St.
Richard Nolbrook III

Deb & Romalo’s Golden Fashion
233 North Pleasant St.
Deborah Cunningham

Herter Woodworking
401 Shays St.
Miles Herter

Ink & Toner Solutions, LLC
233 North Pleasant St.
Senges LaRiviere

Media Compass
520 Riverglade Dr.
Pablo Robles

Short Story Press
60 Echo Hill Road
Michael Shally-Jensen

Shumway Roofing
625 East St.
Alan Shumway

Tsanzi
188 Pine St.
Wanjiku Magua

CHICOPEE

Aqua-matic Lawn Sprinkle & Irrigation Inc.
320 Granby Road
Michael Sweeney

New Life Design Studio
20 West St.
Joanne Despard

GREENFIELD

Blue Moon Healing Center
11 Plum Tree Lane
Jean Conway

J.E. Kendrick Woodworks
576 Leyden Road
Jonathan Kendrick

Sofia’s Pizza
228 Federal St.
Costas Alimonos

HADLEY

Asian Metal Import Solutions
245 Russell St.
Medalco Metals Inc.

Dan Fit Personal Training
21 East St.
Daniel Fonseca

Out of the World Cleaning Service
116 Rocky Hill Road
Lindsay Shumway

HOLYOKE

Basic Prints
200 High St.
German L. Santiago

Bogey & Sons
19 Shepard Dr.
Boguslaw Wolanczyk

Dominos Pizza
1534 Dwight St.
Chris Macpherson

Paper City Cuts 2
522 South St.
Jose M. Lopez

LUDLOW

D & V Quality Landscaping
88 Bruni Ave.
Victor Nascimento

East Street Auto Body
575 East St.
Franklin Ryan

Monroe’s Salon & Day Spa
120 East St.
Katherine Dias

NORTHAMPTON

Leelyn Law
43 Center St.
Shannon Leelyn

Northampton Center for Health & Healing
241 King St.
Marcia Nickerson

Sunnyside Childcare Center @ Smith
70 Paradise Road
Susan Beemer

SOUTHWICK

ALB Enterprises
7 Secluded Ridge
Andrea Bradley

Chase Automotive Electric
805 College Highway
Julianna G. Chase

Colleen’s Graphic Designs
32 Davis Road
Colleen Hauff

Collins Automotive Electric
17 Shaggbark Dr.
George Collins

Fix Your PC, LLC
132 Vining Hill Road
Marc St. Onge

Forget-Me-Nots
535 College Highway
Linda Schwarz

Hillside Excavating & Septic Service
296 Granville Road
David K. Recoulle

Sunny’s Convenience
610 College Highway
Sunil Patel

SPRINGFIELD

2:30 AM Paperart Designs
34 Front St.
Donna L. Beck

Advantics Inc.
101 King St.
Suzette M. Cotton

After Life Tattoo Parlor
378 Dwight St.
Linda Casiano-Perez

Applebee’s Neighborhood Grille
1349 Boston Rd.
Rebecca R. Tilden

Auto Glass Replacement
501 St. James Ave.
Ann D. Bean

Baystate Wesson Women’s
3300 Main St.
Baystate Medical Center

Borinquen Bakery
464 Bridge St.
Danio Grullon

D & B Towing
141 Carver St.
Flor J. Torres

Dali’s Creations
103 Wilmont St.
Igdalia Rivera

Dharma Inc.
253 Pasco Road
Ramzan Ali

Euro Coiffure Salon
1910-1912 Wilbraham Road
Boguslawa Bocwinski

Executive K9
87 Hanson Dr.
Michael Vincent

Eyebrow Miracle
1655 Boston Road
Rajendra P. Hyoju

Gary Robert Hall
767 Armory St.
Gary R. Hall

Jeffrey Consedine
102 Juniper Dr.
Jeffrey Consedine

WESTFIELD

Friguglietti Landscaping
18 Overlook Dr.
Brian Friguglietti

Topors Lawn Care
21 Ellsowrth St.
Adam Toporowski

Vivid Hair Salon & Spa
99 Elm St.
Barbara B. Brazee

Westfield Energy Efficiency Trades Center
39 South Broad St.
Pam Howland

Windspire
93 Ely St.
Thomas C. Ogden

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Affordable Cleaning Services
44 Craig Dr.
Olesya Buchachaya

Arum Associates
291 Forest Glen
Douglas A. Guyett

Doggy Doody Disposal
165 Ohio Ave.
Theresa Selvoski

Robert Webster Electric
95 Chestnut St.
Robert A. Webster

Shree Ram Inc.
1573 Riverdale St.
Dilip R. Rana

The Kung-Fu Academy
195 Elm St.
Maria Santana

Building Permits

Building Permits Departments

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

AGAWAM

LRB Realty Trust
1804 Main St.
$15,000 — Six upgraded antenna panels

AMHERST

Merkos L’InyoneI Chinuch Inc.
30 North Hadley Road
$13,000 — Kitchen ventilation and suppression system

Rt. 9 Real Estate, Inc.
213 College St.
$3,000 — Building separate entry for Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Trustees of Hampshire College
731 West St.
$5,500 — Re-shingle

CHICOPEE

New Ludlow, LLC
59 New Ludlow Road
$9,000 — Repair fire damage in laundry room

Rivershore Real Estate, LLC
628 Center St.
$16,500 — Install new entry door and build handicap ramp

GREENFIELD

Fenwick LLP
111 Hope St.
$2,500 — Roof repair

Fenwick LLP
4 Woodard Rd.
$2,500 — Roof repair

Greenfield Savings Bank
35 Federal St.
$490,000 — Construction of a drive-up teller machine and teller building

HOLYOKE

South Hadley Realty Trust
36-40 Bobala Road
$57,000 — Add new offices, electrical, and fire protection

LUDLOW

Ludlow Housing Authority
37 Chestnut St.
$114,000 — Re-roof

NORTHAMPTON

7 Bravo Two, LLC
162 Old Ferry Road
$167,000 — New commercial building

Alka Kanoujia
45 State St.
$4,000 — Pour concrete basement floor

Bobo LLC
88 King St.
$20,500 — Interior Renovations

CFP Properties LLC
320 Riverside Dr.
$9,000 — Emergency repairs

Coolidge Northampton LLC
249 King St.
$1,200 — Remove non-bearing walls

Edwards Church of Northampton
297 Main St.
$6,000 — Repair stairs

Kathleen Maiewski
91 Crescent St.
$9,000 — Interior renovations

SPRINGFIELD

ESIBC
211 Carando Dr.
$99,500 — Renovations for home infusion and respiratory services

HAP Inc.
322 Main St.
$102,000 — New non-structural walls in handicap bathroom

Jacob Hannoush
1655 Boston Road
$20,000 — Interior renovations

John Salema
350 Cottage St.
$75,000 — Cosmetic remodel of the sales area, restrooms, and exterior facade at Dunkin Donuts

Tinkham Management
112 Industry Ave.
$9,500 — Interior renovations

WESTFIELD

Berkshire Bank
31 Court St.
$18,000 — Interior renovations

Floyd Pease, Jr.
101 Springdale Road
$26,000 — Renovation

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Diversified Realty Corp.
935 Riverdale St.
$55,000 — Renovation of 9,119 square feet of retail space

Peoples Savings Bank
547 Memorial Ave.
$750,000 — Renovation of 30,455 square feet of commercial building

St. Thomas School
47 Pine St.
$20,000 — Strip and re-roof

Briefcase

Briefcase Departments

State’s Economy Outpaces That of the Nation

BOSTON — The Bay State’s economy expanded twice as fast as the nation’s during the second quarter of the year, boosted by federal stimulus spending, demand for technology products, and the strongest job growth since the so-called miracle years of the 1980s,UMass reported recently. In its quarterly journal Benchmarks, UMass reported that the three-month period ending June 30 was the fourth consecutive quarter in which the state outpaced national economic growth. Analysts, however, warned that the state’s economy is likely to slow as stimulus programs fade and a weakened national recovery tempers economic growth here. “Government spending has played a much greater role in stimulating growth and encouraging consumer spending,” Robert Nakosteen, an Economics professor at the UMass Isenberg School of Management, told the Boston Globe. “Going forward, however, government stimulus is waning, and it is far from certain that private-sector spending will take up the slack.” The state’s economy grew at a 6.4% annual rate last quarter after expanding at a 4.1% rate in the first quarter and 6% at the end of last year, according to UMass. Nationally, economic growth was a sluggish 2.4% annual rate in the second quarter after expanding 3.7% in the first quarter and 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

Tech Park Releases Economic-impact Report

SPRINGFIELD — The economic impact of the Springfield Technology Park adjacent to Springfield Technical Community College is positive, according to recently released results of a report by the Center for Economic Development at UMass. The economic-impact report indicates that the nearly 900 jobs at the park create an additional 1,267 jobs in the regional economy due to the multiplier effect. Some $1.4 million is pumped into the local economy due to park management’s policy of favoring local contractors and service providers. In addition, the report indicates an estimated payroll of $37 million and estimated capital investments over the past three years of $4 million. Principal investigators and authors of the study are Zenia Kotval, Ph.D., and John Mullin, Ph.D., from UMass. The 15-acre park was founded in 1996 through an act of the Massachusetts Legislature and is the only technology-based business park connected to a community college in the U.S. The secure, gated site is a center of innovation with more than 70% tenant companies involved in the tech and engineering sectors.

AMICCON Organizers Move Event to Nov. 16

SPRINGFIELD — Organizers of the Advanced Manufacturing & Innovation Competition and Conference (AMICCON), www.amiccon.com, have moved the event from Sept. 23 to Nov. 16 in order to better respond to and convert the overwhelming response it has received from manufacturers, their supply chains, state organizations (from Massachusetts and Connecticut), and the business community as a whole. “We expected a good response to the AMICCON project, but the initial high caliber of participation set the bar very high,” said co-founder Ellen Bemben. “It is now clear that a few more weeks after the Labor Day holiday are necessary in order to satisfy the additional interest that those nationally acclaimed manufacturers are generating for a greater event.” Top companies in their industry sectors have confirmed their participation and support, including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Smith & Wesson, Callaway Golf, Savage Arms, FloDesign, and PolyOne, and precision manufacturers like B & E Precision Aircraft Components, D & S Manufacturing, United Plastics Group, and Boyd Technologies. With the momentum of media coverage, from Springfield to Chicago and beyond, preparations for the June 2011 national Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Competition are on schedule with co-chairs Paul Silva of Angel Catalyst in South Hadley and Michael Gurau of Clear Venture Partners in Freeport, Maine. Private investment firms are already offering their support for the unique competition with a $50,000 purse.

Construction Backlog Edges Higher

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) recently reported that its latest Construction Backlog Indicator (CBI) increased to seven months in May, a 27% increase from January of this year. CBI is a forward-looking indicator that measures the amount of construction work under contract to be completed in the future.

Among the regional highlights: compared to a year ago, all regions but the South experienced a rise in backlog; the Northeast reports the lengthiest backlog at roughly 7.5 months, the highest level for this region in the history of the survey; and the Middle States report the shortest backlog at roughly 6.6 months. ABC is a national association with 77 chapters representing 25,000 merit-shop construction and construction-related firms with 2 million employees.

Former Finance Control Board Official Pays Penalty

SPRINGFIELD — The state Ethics Commission approved a disposition agreement in which former Springfield Finance Control Board Deputy Director Stephen Lisauskas admitted to violating G.L. c. 268A, the conflict-of-interest law. Pursuant to the agreement, Lisauskas paid a $3,000 civil penalty. The law prohibits a state employee from knowingly, or with reason to know, using or attempting to use his official position to secure for himself or others unwarranted privileges or exemptions that are of substantial value and which are not properly available to similarly situated individuals. Lisauskas did not file a written disclosure with his appointing authority to dispel the appearance of a conflict of interest. The agreement notes that, by using his position as SFCB deputy director, he steered the city of Springfield into investing with Merrill Lynch, when Lisauskas had a friendship with one of the vice president/brokers. Merrill Lynch was given approximately 60% of the city’s investment money to invest and subsequently invested approximately $13 million in risky, mortgage-backed securities which were not on a ‘legal list’ of investments. Those securities lost nearly all of their value. In January 2008, Merrill Lynch agreed to reimburse the city $13.7 million to cover its investment losses and legal fees.

Seminars Slated for Small-business Owners

WARE — The Quaboag Valley Community Development Corp. is offering seminars for small-business owners and entrepreneurs this fall who want to learn to promote their business. Seminars planned include ‘Growing Your Business Through Marketing and Advertising,’ Sept. 22 and 29, 6 to 8 p.m., in Charlton; and ‘Social-media Networking,’ Sept. 16, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., in the Sturbridge area. For more information, call (413) 967-3001.

School Conversion Plan Dropped Due to Funding

WESTFIELD — The planned ‘academic village’ at the Westfield Normal School on Washington Street has been dropped due to lack of funding, according to Juan Cofield, president of Boston Realty Associates. Cofield noted that the original plan was to create housing for 90 Westfield State University students. Cofield’s firm would have leased the finished project to Westfield State. College officials will now work with the Mass. State College Building Authority (MSCBA) to determine if converting the school site can still be accomplished. MSCBA is responsible for all dormitories on state-college properties.

Union Station Project Back On Track

SPRINGFIELD — The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) recently lifted a freeze on funding for the Springfield Redevelopment Authority’s (SRA) $71 million Union Station project. The freeze was imposed in 2005 after an audit questioned spending by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) for the intermodal transportation project. With SRA as the lead agency on the project, once all forms are now completed on the federal level, the project should get back on track. The Union Station project proposal includes space for the PVTA, commuter rail, intercity bus operations, Amtrak, and office space related to transit. In addition to federal funding, the project has state and private funding in place. In other news, an FTA study recently estimated at $77.7 billion the cost of bringing systems into a state of good repair. FTA’s National State of Good Repair Assessment Study, requested by the U.S. Department of Transportation, provides a comprehensive study of the nation’s rail and bus transit systems and notes that infrastructure development is needed to rebuild America.

Weston Solutions Expresses Interest in Belchertown Parcel

BELCHERTOWN — For the next several weeks, the town’s Economic Development Industrial Corp. will be working with MassDevelopment to determine if a Pennsylvania-based corporation has the experience and resources to develop the former Belchertown State School property. Weston Solutions Inc., which has a regional office in Connecticut, has expressed an interest in developing the site to build shops, offices, housing, and an assisted-living facility. A letter of interest has been signed with the town that allows the company to investigate financing, contamination, and construction issues facing Parcel B of the site.

Ten Points About: Golf & Business Entertainment

10 Points Departments

By TERESA A. JUDYCKI, CPA

1. In addition to being ‘ordinary and necessary,’ entertainment expenses must pass another test to be deductible: they must be either directly related to or associated with your business.

2. A ‘directly related’ meal or entertainment either takes place in a clear business setting, or the main purpose is business and there is an expectation of specific benefit, not just goodwill. Business must actually be conducted — meeting, discussion, etc.

3. An expense is ‘associated with’ the conduct of business if the meal or entertainment precedes or follows a substantial business discussion and there is a clear business purpose which may be either to generate new business or to encourage continuation of a business relationship.

4. Lavish or extravagant entertainment is not deductible. The expense must be reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances.

5. The deduction for a skybox or a private luxury box rented for more than one event in the same sports arena is limited to the price of a non-luxury box seat for each seat in the skybox.

6. You cannot deduct more than the face value of a ticket to an entertainment event. This limitation applies equally to amounts paid to scalpers and service fees paid to ticket agencies.

7. Reciprocal meals or entertainment are not deductible (i.e. a group of business associates takes turns picking up the tab).

8. Once the expenditure qualifies, it is only 50% deductible. There are exceptions that include employee summer outings or holiday parties.

9. What about charity golf tournaments? If they qualify as entertainment expenses, charity sports events are not subject to the 50% disallowance as long as the primary purpose is to benefit a charity, the entire net proceeds go to the charity, and the event uses volunteers to perform substantially all the event’s work.

10. Strict substantiation rules must be met. The evidence must support the amount, time and place, business purpose (including the nature and duration of business discussions), and your business relationship to the person entertained.

Terri Judycki is a senior tax manager with the Holyoke-based public accounting firm

Court Dockets

Court Dockets 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.

CHICOPEE DISTRICT COURT

Helena Borek v. Wholesale Kitchen Supply Co.
Allegation: Breach of contract and unfair and deceptive trade practices: $8,274
Filed: 5/11/10

FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT

Nike USA Inc. v. 1793 Corp.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $33,835.64
Filed: 6/18/10

Ricky Greenwald v. RTB Design
Allegation: Breach of contract and fraud arising in construction dispute between the homeowner and the designer/builder: $393,055.72
Filed: 6/1/10

GREENFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Weddingpages Inc. v. Sakura Bloom, LLC
Allegation: Non-payment of advertising services rendered: $5,324.40
Filed: 7/1/10

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT

Adam P. Clermont, Esq. v. Robinson & Donovan, P.C., et al
Allegation: Legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty: $150,000
Filed: 6/1/10

Clinton Mitchell Jr. v. Associated Electro-Mechanics
Allegation: Employment discrimination: $25,000+
Filed: 5/25/10

Estate of Raymond F. Bolas v. The Hartford Casualty Insurance Co. and Elizabeth Warga, Margaret Bonney, and Stephen M. Brown
Allegation: Negligence, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty: $350,000
Filed: 5/26/10

MicMac Mechanical Insulation, LLC v. Fontaine Brothers Inc. and Federal Insurance Co.
Allegation: Non-payment of labor and materials supplied on a public construction project: $15,355
Filed: 6/3/10

Noonan Energy Corp. v. Howard Fuel Service Inc.
Allegation: Fraud and negligent representation: $89,167.40
Filed: 5/11/10

Orchard Variety Inc. v. Good Deal Auto
Allegation: Checks fraudulently cashed on closed accounts: $87,146
Filed: 6/2/10

Roberta Kerry v. Friendly Corp.
Allegation: Employment discrimination and harassment: $25,000
Filed: 5/25/10

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT

Caroline Wenck v. Warner Brothers, LLC, Allstate Asphalt Inc., and Gallagher Bassett Services Inc.
Allegation: Negligence in sidewalk construction project, causing injury: $21,005.39
Filed: 6/7/10

Carlos Casillas v. Steve Lewis Subaru Inc.
Allegation: Employment discrimination based on race, color, nationality: $25,000
Filed: 6/17/10

NORTHAMPTON DISTRICT COURT

AEC One Stop Group v. Dynamite Records
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $17,881.60
Filed: 7/2/10

Bailey Nurseries Inc. v. Keyes Perennial Farm
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $5,146.99
Filed: 6/30/10

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Bradco Supply Co. v. C.S. Alexander Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $10,789.04
Filed: 6/11/10

Collins Enterprises Inc. v. Niley’s Fashion
Allegation: Breach of lease agreement: $8,400
Filed: 6/10/11

National Vinyl Products Inc. v. Griswold Glass & Aluminum Co.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $7,441.65
Filed: 6/14/10

Salemi Appliance Service Inc. v. Shedd Plumbing & Heating Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment on appliances: $3,783.15
Filed: 6/11/10

Thurston Foods Inc. v. J.T.’s Bakery & Café
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $3,646.88
Filed: 6/10/10

WESTFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Capital One Bank NA v. Auto Specialties
Allegation: Non-payment of goods and services charged on a credit account: $6,861.81
Filed: 5/18/10

Picture This

Departments Picture This

Hanging with Wally

Joseph Bott, territory sales manager at the Hanover Insurance Group (left), Janet Steigmeyer, director of Human Resources for the Holyoke Chicopee Springfield (HCS) Head Start Inc., and Timm Marini, president of the FieldEddy Insurance Network, pose with Wally, the official mascot of the Boston Red Sox. The FieldEddy Insurance Network, in cooperation with the Hanover Insurance Group, sponsored Wally’s visit with the children enrolled in HCS Head Start. Head Start’s mission is to improve the lives of low-income children by providing quality, comprehensive child-development services focusing on education, health, nutrition, and mental health.

Getting a Lift

From left, Mary Meehan and Marian Poe-Heineman, both first vice president of commercial lending at PeoplesBank, join Mary Reardon Johnson, executive director of the Young Women’s Club of Western Mass., in celebrating the club’s new 2011 Kia Sedona. The van was purchased with a $21,813 donation from PeoplesBank, and will be assigned to the club’s Teen Transitional Living Program (TTLP). The TTLP serves at-risk teen mothers who cannot return to live with their families due to domestic violence, neglect, poor living conditions, or other extraordinary circumstances. The van will improve TTLP daily operations by providing residents and staff with safe and reliable transportation to and from doctor’s appointments and job training, as well as many other services critical to the success of the young mothers enrolled in the program.

The Small-business Health Care Tax Credit

Begin Planning Now to Take Full Advantage of This Opportunity

James Calnan

If yours is a small business or small tax-exempt organization and you pay at least half of the cost of single health insurance coverage for your employees in 2010, you may qualify for a new tax credit. In 2010 the tax credit can be as much as 35% (25% for tax-exempt organizations) of the premiums you pay on your employees’ behalf.

The tax credit is included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law March 23, 2010 and is effective Jan. 1, 2010. The new law is intended to encourage small employers to offer health insurance coverage for low- and moderate-income workers by subsidizing premiums paid with a tax credit. Section 45R of the Internal Revenue Code was added to provide for this credit. IRS Notice 2010-44 was written to provide guidance in determining eligibility and to assist in calculating the tax credit.

Amount of the Tax Credit
The maximum amount of the credit is 35% (25% for tax-exempt employers) of a small-business employer’s premium costs in 2010. This rate increases to 50% (35% for tax-exempt) in 2014. To obtain the maximum credit, an employer must have no more than 10 full-time-equivalent employees (FTEs), and the average annual wages of its employees must be no more than $25,000.
For employers with more than 10 but less than 25 FTEs or with average annual wages of more than $25,000 but less than $50,000, the credit gradually phases out according to a formula.
For tax-exempt employers, there is an additional limitation. The maximum credit cannot exceed the sum of income and Medicare tax withheld from employees’ wages for the year and the employer share of Medicare tax on employees’ wages for the year.

Who is Eligible for the Tax Credit?
A qualifying employer must have fewer than the equivalent of 25 FTEs as defined in the act, the average annual wages of its employees must be less than $50,000 per FTE, and the employer must maintain a ‘qualifying arrangement’ under which the employer pays premiums for each employee enrolled in the health-insurance plan in an amount equal to a uniform percentage (not less than 50%) of the cost of coverage. For 2010, under transitional rules, paying 50% of the cost of single insurance coverage will satisfy this requirement.

Do Owners of the Business Count as Employees?
A sole proprietor, a partner in a partnership, a shareholder owning more than 2% of an S corporation, and any owner of more than 5% of any other corporation or business and their family members or members of their household are not considered employees for purposes of the credit. Their wages, hours worked, and premiums paid on their behalf are excluded from any calculations in determining the amount of the credit. This is significant because, in many cases, including owners would disqualify the related employer for the credit.

What is an FTE?
For purposes of this credit, an FTE is an employee that is paid for at least 2,080 hours of service, including vacations and other paid time off. So if an employee works part-time and is paid for 1,040 hours, the employee is considered a half or 0.5 FTE. The law allows three different methods for determining hours of service. To calculate the number of employee FTEs, divide the total hours of service by 2,080 and round down to the next-lowest whole number. Therefore, an employer with 25 or more employees may qualify for the credit if some of the employees work part-time.
Seasonal or temporary workers may be disregarded in determining FTEs and average annual wages unless each works for the employer more than 120 days during the taxable year; however, premiums paid on their behalf may be counted in determining the amount of the tax credit.

Determining the Average Annual Wages
To determine the average annual wages, divide the total wages (as defined for FICA purposes) paid by the employer during the year to the employees that were taken into account in determining FTEs by the FTEs for the same year, and round the result down to the nearest $1,000.

Qualified Insurance Premiums
For years prior to 2014, only premiums paid by the employer to health-insurance issuers, such as an insurance company or HMO licensed to engage in the business of insurance, are counted for purposes of the credit. Qualified health-insurance coverage plans include major medical, dental, long-term care, nursing-home care, home health care, community-based care, or any combination of the above. Also included are specific disease or illness plans, indemnity insurance plans, Medicare, and other supplemental plans.
Each type of plan must separately satisfy the qualifying arrangement requirement first before aggregating the premiums paid by the employer to calculate the allowable tax credit; i.e., at least 50% of premiums must be paid by the employer.
Finally, for taxable years beginning before 2014, the amount of the credit is limited to a percentage of the lesser of 1) the amount of non-elective contributions (premiums) paid by the eligible small employer on behalf of employees under the arrangement during the taxable year, and 2) the amount of non-elective contributions the employer would have paid under the arrangement if each such employee were enrolled in a plan that had a premium equal to the average premium for the small-group market in the state (or in an area of the state) in which the employer is offering health-insurance coverage. The secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) determines whether separate average premiums will apply for areas within a state (‘sub-state areas’) and also determines the average premium for a state or sub-state area. Revenue Ruling 2010-13 sets forth the average premium for the small-group market in each state for the 2010 tax year. This table can be accessed through www.irs.gov.

Claiming the Credit
The credit is claimed on the small employer’s annual income-tax return. Information will be forthcoming from the IRS for tax-exempt employers on how to claim the credit. It is currently contemplated that the credit will be refundable for tax-exempt employers. Small-business employers whose credit exceeds their current-year income tax can carry the excess credit back one year (except for 2010) and forward 20 years.

Devil in the Details
As with most tax benefits, there are exceptions, conditions, and other complications that can limit the amount of the credit and tax savings:
• Members of a controlled group or an affiliated service group, as defined in the tax regulations, are treated as a single employer for purposes of the credit. Therefore, all employees and all related wages of the control group must be aggregated to determine eligibility.
• The amount of the employer’s deduction for health insurance premiums must be reduced by the amount of the credit claimed in that year.
• There are specific rules as to the effect that state tax credits and subsidies for health insurance may have on the amount of tax credit allowable to the employer.
Although the rules and calculations involved are somewhat complex, the tax credits can save a small employer tens of thousands of dollars in cash flow each year, so it behooves you to do the math.

Start Planning Now
You should engage your CPA or tax advisor now to ascertain whether you might likely qualify for this in 2010. The following steps must be followed to determine whether you are eligible for the tax credit under IRS Code Section 45R:
• Determine the employees who are taken into account for purposes of the credit.
• Determine the number of hours of service performed by those employees.
• Calculate the number of the employer’s FTEs.
• Determine the average annual wages paid per FTE.
• Determine the premiums paid by the employer that are taken into account for purposes of the credit. Specifically, the premiums must be paid by an employer under a qualifying arrangement and must be paid for health insurance that meets the requirements of Section 45R.
• Determine if there are any state tax credits or premium subsidies related to the employer’s health-insurance program.
Running a pro-forma calculation now not only gives you an indication of your eligibility, but also identifies an action plan to take over the remainder of the year to maximize the tax credit, such as timing of premium payments and changing the policy relative to employer-paid premiums.
The accompanying examples of small-employer tax credits published by the IRS (see box) shows the potential savings to small employers.

Conclusion
The small-business health care tax credit could represent the largest federal tax credit ever made available to small employers. Go to www.irs.gov and search for ‘small-business health care tax credit’ to learn more about this credit, including a fact sheet, a worksheet to determine eligibility, frequently asked questions, examples of applying the rules, Notice 2210-44, and Notice 2010-13. n

James B. Calnan, CPA, is a partner with Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. in Holyoke, certified public accountants and business strategists; (413) 536-8510; www.mbkhealthcare.com

Small-Business Health Care Tax Credit Scenarios
Examples of Employers Receiving the Credit

Example 1: Auto-repair shop with 10 employees receives $24,500
credit for 2010.
Main Street Mechanic
n Employees: 10
n Wages: $250,000 total, or $25,000 per worker
n Employee health care costs: $70,000
n 2010 Tax Credit: $24,500 (35% credit)
n 2014 Tax Credit: $35,000 (50% credit)

Example 2: Restaurant with 40 part-time employees receives $28,000
credit for 2010.
Downtown Diner
n Employees: 40 half-time employees (the equivalent of 20 full-time workers)
n Wages: $500,000 total, or $25,000 per full-time equivalent worker
n Employee health care costs: $240,000
n 2010 Tax Credit: $28,000 (35% credit with phase-out)
n 2014 Tax Credit: $40,000 (50% credit with phase-out)

Example 3: Foster care nonprofit with nine employees receives $18,000
credit for 2010.
First Street Family Services
n Employees: 9
n Wages: $198,000 total, or $22,000 per worker
n Employee health care costs: $72,000
n 2010 Tax Credit: $18,000 (25% credit)
n 2014 Tax Credit: $25,200 (35% credit )

Putting Ideas in Motion

Features

The Region’s Plan for Progress Continues to Change and Evolve

Tim Brennan says the Plan for Progress is in a constant state of evolution.

Originally drafted in 1994, the region’s Plan for Progress, authored and administered by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in conjunction with area economic-development leaders, is anything but a static document. It is being constantly changed and updated to reflect new priorities, challenges, and opportunities. Recent additions and amendments have been made to address workforce-development trends and concerns, the desire to create a ‘green’ regional economy, and the need to connect the region to other urban areas in an emerging ‘mega-region.’

Tim Brennan says the Plan for Progress, the comprehensive regional strategic economic plan for Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties, receives a major overhaul every 10 years; the last one came in 2004, a decade after the plan was originally drafted.
There are smaller, yet significant, updates every five years, said Brennan, director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) and the document’s lead author, noting that the most recent of these came in 2009. But in reality, the plan is constantly changing — the word he chose to describe it was “fluid” — because it needs to reflect new p
riorities, challenges, and opportunities.
Take, for example, the somewhat recent national and regional emphasis on all things ‘green.’
Indeed, as of June 2009, ‘the plan,’ as it’s called, has a “strategy to develop a green regional economy.” There is a stated goal — to “establish a regional economy where sustainable living and business practices combined with clean-technology opportunities are core to our economic, environmental, and cultural vitality” — as well as identified action steps in six key areas: business development, agriculture, education and workforce development, management of natural and built resources, transportation, and communication.
Brennan said plan administrators want to take the regionwide clean-energy plan put in place in 2008, as well as several existing clean-energy companies, such as FloDesign Wind Turbine, Qteros, and others, and use these as a starting point from which to build a green cluster over the next decade or so.
“We started looking at it from the standpoint of how we can use this to our economic advantage, to grow new businesses and create more jobs,” he explained, adding that the new chapter in the Plan for Progress was added to keep the initiative in the region’s collective consciousness.
The informal plan moving forward is to take the various components of a ‘green sector,’ everything from existing companies to the planned high-performance computing sector in Holyoke to the annual Energy Connections Conference in Springfield, and shape them into something larger than the component parts.
“As someone said to me at a recent event, ‘there’s a lot of stuff going on in the region in this green sector; we need something to take all the snowflakes and make a snowball out of them,’” said Brennan. “I thought that was a good way to explain how we’re trying to get some traction and push this from an economic-development standpoint as well as an energy standpoint.”
The new strategy to develop a green regional economy is just one example of how the Plan for Progress is in a continual state of flux, said Brennan, adding that is in many ways like a roadmap in that it is always being amended to reflect changes in the landscape.
Other recent changes to the document include a rewrite of the plan’s workforce component to address issues such as the retraining of area residents for jobs in the knowledge-based economy; intensified efforts to brand the Knowledge Corridor and connect it to other urban centers in the Northeast “mega-region,” as Brennan calls it (more on that later); a new emphasis on the creative economy; and a commitment among plan administrators to turn plans into action and also measure what they’re doing.
“The plan is the roadmap to the future,” he said. “Once we finish doing the plan, I feel like there should be no more planning; instead, let’s get on to doing.”
For this issue, BusinessWest takes a look at some of the recent additions and adjustments to the plan, and why annual upgrades are needed to make sure the region is putting its attention — and its energy — in the right directions, and making more of those snowballs.

Connecting the Dots
As he talked about the plan’s new green component, Brennan said that emerging strategic initiative is predicated on the belief that, perhaps sooner than later, the region and nation will be moving away from fossil fuels to alternative, cleaner forms of energy.
The consensus seems to be that it’s not a question of if that will happen, but when, he told BusinessWest, adding that the plan’s new green component was added to “give the region a competitive edge” when that day comes.
Making the region more competitive is the simple, yet also quite complex, overriding purpose of the plan, said Brennan, as he traced the steps in its development. Putting things another way, he said the plan was put in place, and is continuously updated, to put the region out front, or ahead of whatever curve it was confronting, and be as prepared as possible to answer the proverbial ‘what’s next?’
As an example, he cited the plan’s long-term focus on improved rail service and connecting the region to points south and east, a strategic initiative that paid off when the Obama administration announced a serious commitment to rail-system improvements.
“We’ve been working on this rail plan for five years now,” he said, referring to an initiative to connect Springfield with New Haven and thus New York. “You wake up one morning and Obama says, ‘we’re going to put $8 billion into rail projects.’ Because we had been planning, we could flip our plan into a grant application and get it; Connecticut gets $40 million, Massachusetts gets $70 million, and Vermont gets $50 million. We’re the only corridor in New England to get funded.”
By continually tweaking the Plan for Progress, its administrators can script more success stories like the rail grant, said Brennan, adding there are many forward-looking strategic initiatives being considered, most all of them focused on the emergence of the so-called mega-region.
In a recent presentation to the Springfield Business Roundtable — and in other talks and documents — Brennan has identified 11 of these mega-regions: The Northeast, ‘Piedmont Atlantic’ (slicing through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama), Florida, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, the Texas Triangle, ‘Front Range’ (in the Rockies), the Arizona Sun Corridor, Southern Calif., Northern Calif., and ‘Cascadia’ (the Seattle area).
The names given to these regions vary with the individual or group referencing them, he continued, but most analysts looking out 40 or 50 years believe these regions will be the main forces driving the economy, and it will be incumbent upon smaller regions within those areas to be players in those regional economies — or get left out of the party.
“Our work is designed to make the Knowledge Corridor more than a brand,” he told BusinessWest, acknowledging that, even a few years ago, awareness building was the primary objective when it came to the Hartford-Springfield partnership. “We want to make it real, make it connected, and make it a much bigger powerhouse from an economic point of view, and make sure it’s part of this constellation here in the Northeast corridor. We’re working to position ourselves to be not just a bystander, but a player.”
To thrive in the Northeast mega-region, said Brennan, Western Mass. must be effectively connected to other parts of the region, especially Boston and Hartford.
“We can’t end up as a cul-de-sac,” he said, using ‘we’ to mean the corridor, and implying that, while there is a degree of connectivity already, it needs to be improved.
To achieve the connectivity Brennan described, the region has to take full advantage of vehicles such as high-speed rail, improved broadband service in Western Mass. (a $71 million plan to do just that is on the drawing board), highways, and other forms of infrastructure. And with connection can come collaboration with other cities and regions, he said, which is how economic development is really achieved.
As part of the broad action plan on bolstering the corridor, officials on both sides of the border will be applying for a federal grant to create a sustainable development plan for the cross-border initiative. There will be considerable competition for such grants, said Brennan, adding quickly that he’s optimistic about the region’s chances.
“We’re going into this with our eyes wide open,” he said. “We’re going to be competing against the Chicagos, the LAs, and the Atlantas, but I think we have a story to tell, and we have some impressive accomplishments for a medium-sized area.
“The Knowledge Corridor brand now has some traction,” he continued. “The challenge now is to get a product that goes with that brand that has a lot of substance.”

For Good Measure
While moving beyond the brand is a top priority within the plan, there are many other initiatives as well, said Brennan, adding that they involve everything from keeping college graduates in the region to helping more area residents become workforce-ready to Connecticut River cleanup.
Returning to the new green strategic plan and that snowball he referenced, Brennan said there will likely be a number of components to a green cluster in the region, from new products and services, such as the Scuderi engine and FloDesign’s new wind turbine design, to existing products that could be ‘greened’ to help them achieve a larger market, to available green power that can be used to attract companies that want to reduce their carbon footprints.
“The high-performance computing center is coming to Holyoke for essentially one reason — low-cost, clean energy,” he said, adding that area municipal officials and economic-development leaders must look for ways to leverage that asset and others across Western Mass.
And when the computing center is up and running, it will become another huge asset to leverage. “There will be a number of businesses that will want to plug into that kind of computing power, and that’s where the job growth could come from if there can be a path to accessibility.”
The green strategic initiative is the most comprehensive new addition to the Plan for Progress, but there have been other tweaks, including revisions made earlier this year to a strategic initiative to integrate workforce development and business priorities.
Overall, said Brennan, the plan is putting more emphasis on devising methods to close the skills gap in the region, a gap that is keeping many unemployed, underemployed, and displaced workers from finding solid job opportunities.
“We need to address how to retrain workers who wake up one morning to find that what they’ve been doing for 15 or 20 years is now being done by machine, or is being done in Asia, or isn’t being done at all because some other product or service has trumped it and knocked it off the boards,” he said. “Figuring out to get people more gainfully employed if they run into some kind of quicksand is something that needs more attention.”
The revised strategy calls for several steps, including the creation of a regional workforce-development plan; engaging the business community, civic leaders, and various industry sectors to be involved in the plan’s development and implementation; and work to identify funding for regional workforce and educational planning. It also recommends formation of a workforce-development strategy team as a subcommittee of the Plan for Progress that will oversee the progress of the strategic initiative by working with various workforce and educational institutions, such as the regional employment boards.
Still another adjustment to the Plan for Progress is a greater sense of accountability, or measuring results, said Brennan, adding that the Web site www.stateofthepioneervalley.org has been created to show how the region, through various implementing agencies, is doing relative to key issues.
“We’re trying, 24/7, to show how we’re doing in these various categories,” he said of the indicators. “We’re trying to access whether we’re making progress with any of this, or if we’re in a steady state and need to try harder.”
Measuring is that third leg of the stool behind planning and doing, he said, adding that they are all equally important to achieving the larger goals of attaining progress and giving the region competitive edges.

When a Plan Comes Together
The next big overhaul for the Plan for Progress won’t come until 2014. But it’s safe to say that the document, if it can be called that, will see a number of changes and additions before then.
Keeping the plan current to reflect new challenges and opportunities is critical, said Brennan, to the ongoing efforts to make the region more competitive, at a time when the competition is mounting.
Planning, doing, and measuring, the three parts of this equation, are all keys to progress, or enabling sound ideas to snowball — literally and figuratively.

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

Profiles in Business

Cover Story

This Chamber Official Is Fond of Summit Meetings

Cover August 16, 2010

Russ Denver has a number of vivid memories from his ascent last December to base camp at Mount Everest, some 17,500 or so feet above sea level.
One is of his first look at the glacier on which base camp sits, positioned between mountains on three sides. “You look out over the glacier and you see what looks like ocean waves, but they’re frozen at their peak height; it was very cool to be able to see that.”
An even more poignant sight came at the 15,000-foot level, when, after clearing a rise, Denver, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, and the other members of his party came across a collection of stone memorials to individuals who dared to climb to the top of the world’s highest peak — and died trying.
“There were maybe 100 of them, and they were all man-made,” he said, noting that this number alone was enough to give him pause. “Some were more sophisticated than others; they had interesting or funny inscriptions in the stones, like ‘he came, he saw, he didn’t conquer,’ or ‘it was always his dream to climb Everest, and he died trying to fulfill his dream.’
“It certainly made you aware of the dangers of what you were doing,” he continued, adding quickly that there are few, if any, fatalities among those whose goal is base camp, which is a little more than halfway to the summit, some 29,002 feet into the sky. But a good number don’t get that far, he went on, noting that he saw several people helicoptered out with extreme altitude sickness, broken bones from falls, and other maladies.
Denver made it to base camp — although he lost 21 pounds over the 18-day excursion (“it took me six months to gain it all back”) — giving him two major triumphs in what has become an intriguing new hobby, one that has given him more than stories to tell and photos to show (more on that later). The other came at Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, which he scaled in 2008.
And there are two more scheduled — Mount Elbris in Russia (18,800 feet) for early next year, and Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (21,000 feet) for late 2011. Doing two in one year — a feat made possible by the fact that it will be summer in South America in December — will be taxing on the body and the schedule, but Denver feels he can handle it.
He told BusinessWest that, as might be expected, there is a great sense of satisfaction that comes with reaching one’s goal on such peaks; one trains for months to get in proper shape, and there are many sacrifices that come with getting ready and hardships during the climbs, or what are technically known as ‘hikes.’
Things are a little different with his day job. For a chamber of commerce director, especially one based in a city with as many challenges as Springfield, the work is never really finished, and the triumphs are few and certainly not as definitive as reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro.
The victories are usually much smaller, and some of them don’t even get noticed by most business owners, he said, citing as one example success with tax classification in communities such as East Longmeadow, and keeping the commercial rates as low as possible.
“We have one business owner who’s been a member in East Longmeadow since 1963,” said Denver, who worked for the Springfield chamber for several years before joining a local law firm and then eventually returning to lead the ACCGS. “We’ve worked for years to keep a single tax rate in that town, and we’ve saved him $8,000 a year on his property. He said, ‘I never knew you guys did things like that.’ That’s because it’s behind-the-scenes work, like so much of what we do.”
As for Springfield’s future, Denver, whose 14-year tenure at the helm of ACCGS coincides with one of the most challenging periods in the city’s history, takes that optimistic, glass-half-full attitude that seems part of his job description. He said that things are looking up for the City of Homes in terms of recovery from its steep descent, but plenty of challenges remain, with everything from poverty and all that goes with it to convincing companies to look beyond current demographics and ultimately choose to locate or expand in Springfield.
For this, the latest installment of its Profiles in Business series, BusinessWest talked with Denver about everything from scaling one of the world’s tallest mountains to the role of the chamber of commerce in today’s business community. He had plenty to say about a host of topics.

Positive Steps
Denver said that while he’s always been interested in sports and staying fit — “I work out like crazy” — hiking some of the world’s tallest peaks was something he would never have considered even a few years ago.
Indeed, he came to this pastime in a rather roundabout fashion. It started, he told BusinessWest, with something called the HAM, or the Hike Across Maryland. He heard about it from a friend and former chamber colleague, and decided to take part in the 40-mile, one-day trek along the Appalachian Trail.
“The first year, I did it in 13 and a half hours, and I’ve gotten it down to 11:45,” he said. “That’s moving! We start at the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and finish up by crossing the Potomac River and then going on to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia; it’s a fun event, and you meet a lot of interesting people along the way because you don’t walk with the same people all day.”
One of the people Denver encountered during the 2007 trek was a woman, a lawyer who had recently returned from scaling Kilimanjaro. “She said that if I could do the HAM, I could do Kilimanjaro, so the very next day, after getting back from the HAM, I started doing some research.”
Denver eventually talked a few local business people into making the hike with him, and the three made the trek in the summer of 2008. “I fell in love with it, and said, ‘OK, what’s my next adventure?’ I determined that I was in good enough shape to make the hike up to base camp at Mount Everest.”
That odyssey, completed early last December, like the Kilimanjaro hike before it, gave Denver what he called “new and different perspective” on life and an appreciation for what he and most Americans take for granted.
“One of the things that strikes you when you travel to unusual places like this is that poverty is a very subjective phrase,” he said. “You see people living with just a pipe sticking out of the ground — there’s no running water. When we were Tanzania, we saw people in thatched homes, and in Nepal, the higher up you went, people lived without electricity — the only heat was from a stove heated with yak dung.
“Another amazing thing is all the different ways people find to make a living,” he continued. “In Nepal, there were 15-year-old boys carrying 40 pounds of goods on their backs delivering things from village to village because there’s no infrastructure.”
Like his treks up mountains, Denver’s career path has also featured a number of interesting twists and turns.
He started out as the aide to the City Council in Springfield, a job he held from 1980 to 1984. In that role, he was responsible for handling committee meetings, requests from constituents, requests from councilors, writing press releases, and other matters. He described it as a good learning experience, one that gave him considerable insight into how local government works.
He took that experience to his next stop, as the first full-time administrative assistant to the Board of Selectmen (now known as town manager) in Longmeadow, a position he kept for the next five years. He then went to work for the Springfield Chamber of Commerce and then-Director Jim Shriver, and attended Western New College School of Law at night.
He took his juris doctor and worked for the Springfield-based firm Robinson Donovan Madden & Barry (now Robinson Donovan) for four years, before putting his name into consideration to succeed Shriver in 1996.
“I loved the law,” he told BusinessWest, “but the opportunity to run a large chamber, be involved in economic development, and have a dramatic impact on a region as an organization was something too big to pass up.”

Getting Down to Business
While he’s in a different profession, Denver says he’s putting his law degree to good use at the chamber.
“I use it almost every day here,” he said, “while interpreting legislation and working on local zoning and municipal ordinances, HR issues that require legal interpretation, and, as lead tenant [in the economic development offices at TD Bank], drafting and interpreting subleases. There’s a lot of use of my legal background.”
Many of these duties fall into that broad behind-the-scenes category that Denver described, which constitutes much of what happens at the chamber and also defines much of its relative worth to members. Putting things another way, Denver, when asked to delineate the value chambers (and especially this one) provide to members, said, “we’ve got your back.”
Elaborating, he summoned the chamber’s mission, “to create a positive business environment for businesses to start, grow, and prosper,” and said this is work he and others in the organization take very seriously — and that many in the business community may not know about, or appreciate, until they need it.
“There’s legislative work we do on specific matters of importance to the business community,” he said as he started listing chamber initiatives. “There are also the 15 to 20 businesses a week that I help out of jams, like people who need additional financing and don’t know where to turn, referrals for banks, people who want to open a restaurant and say, ‘how do I get started?’ and others who want to be hooked up with commercial real-estate people because they want to expand in Springfield.
“It’s these and many other things that seem mundane, but are very important to many individual businesses,” he continued. “I could help 20 to 30 people a week, and the staff people can help another 20 to 30, because they’re out there; people are so busy running their companies they don’t know what resources are out there.”
As for Springfield itself, Denver said demographic evolution, especially with regard to how many residents are at or below the poverty line, has changed the city’s fortunes, and, unless trends are reversed, they will likely hinder its progress moving forward.
“Over the past 10 or 12 years, Springfield has become much poorer, and many people don’t understand that this has a dramatic impact on economic development,” he explained, adding that the Urban Land Institute, in its comprehensive analysis of the city, strongly recommended steps to help reverse this pattern and improve the income demographic to attract more business. And the chamber is committed to following that advice.
“Companies will call that might be interested in the Springfield market because of its size,” Denver continued. “And then you share with them the income demographic for Springfield proper, and that does not put the city first on their list of places, so they may wind up in West Springfield or Wilbraham, so they can get the population size, but they draw a wealthier income demographic.”
Meanwhile, another problem is the educational demographics for the city, he said, adding that once — and not too long ago — the city could boast that a well-educated workforce. “That is not the case anymore.”
And education is just one of many ways that poverty directly and indirectly impacts economic-development efforts, he said, adding that, while there are no easy answers to the problem, Springfield has to do something to reduce its concentration of poverty.
From his office in the TD Bank building, Denver looks out on Main Street and, more specifically, Tower Square, which means he’s had a front-row seat from which to observe the changes that have come to downtown over the past 10 to 15 years.
Noting the sharp decline of the retail base in Tower Square — there are only a handful of stores left — and elsewhere, Denver said changing demographics have impacted that sector considerably, but he says other forces are involved, especially the Internet.
“I’m a lawyer, so I know that, in the old days, you had to file everything by paper — with the court system, with the government,” he explained. “Nowadays, everything is done electronically, so you don’t need to be close to a courthouse, because of all the electronic filing.
“If you were to go back 20 years and look at the number of law firms and accounting firms that were located in downtown Springfield, and compare it to today,” he continued, “there’s probably half the number, and that has a huge impact. With fewer professionals downtown, there’s less money downtown, and retailers look at that.
“If you were to take just 10 professional salaries out of downtown, that’s 10 fewer lunches being eaten every day, 10 fewer books being bought every day, it goes on and on and on,” he told BusinessWest. “I think the Internet has a lot to do with Springfield’s problems.”
Looking ahead, Denver said he expects that Springfield will eventually complete the process of converting to what he called an “eds and meds economy,” meaning one fueled mostly by its many colleges and health care facilities. Job growth in both areas will be significant, he said, adding that there will still be a solid base of manufacturing as well as a significant tourism sector.
However, if real growth is to occur, Springfield must take steps to present current and prospective employers with a better-qualified workforce. “We need to increase the graduation rates in Springfield,” he said, then repeated those words for emphasis. “That’s a must.”

Reaching the Top
While talking with BusinessWest, Denver, 53, allowed himself to contemplate retirement for a few moments.
He said he’d like to spend it in the Midwest, preferably working in some capacity for a minor-league baseball team. “I’ll do anything they ask,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s selling tickets, being a landscaper, whatever. I just want to be involved in sports at a lower level, where the players are still trying their absolute best so they can progress to the major leagues.”
With that, he acknowledged that retirement is still quite a ways off — “that will be well into my 60s; I love working.”
In other words, there are still a number of mountains to climb, in a literal sense, and a figurative one as well.

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

Editorial

Opinion

Patrick Holds the Right Cards on Casinos

Amid the standoff on Beacon Hill that has apparently put casinos on hold for at least another year, and may have scuttled their chances altogether, there is no shortage of finger-pointing on this highly controversial subject.
Some lay the blame on Gov. Deval Patrick for insisting that a casino measure include just three resort-style casinos and no slot parlors at racetracks (called racinos) by some. Indeed, Patrick’s opponents in the upcoming election say that his stubbornness will keep the state from adding a projected 15,000 jobs any time soon, while also delaying any much-needed revenues in the form of casino licenses. In fact, Tim Cahill said that, if the state winds up with no casinos or slots, Patrick “owns this recession.”
But from our view, Patrick is right about this gaming bill, and we’re glad he’s sticking to his guns, even if it means casinos will have to wait another year or two or even 10. The governor says casino backers have waited a long time to see a gaming measure win approval, and they should wait longer if doing so means the difference between getting the legislation right and getting it wrong.
And approving slot parlors at the racetracks is simply wrong.
Why? For starters, doing what the Legislature has proposed amounts to awarding no-bid contracts to the track owners, which is simply not a good way to do business, even if those track operators are suffering and need an economic boost. But more importantly, the racinos offer very little in terms of jobs — it doesn’t take many people to run a slot parlor — and economic development, and will inevitably become additional competition for the three resort casinos, including the one proposed for a site just off the Turnpike in Palmer. There is already plenty of competition to begin with, and probably much more on the way in New York and other New England states. The Commonwealth doesn’t need to be creating competition for its own casinos.
As he explained his stance on the slot parlors and his reluctance to compromise, Patrick said the risks from the racinos far outweigh the potential benefits, and he’s right.
Casino supporters, including the many in Palmer who are looking at the facility proposed for their town as an economic lifeline, have a right to be upset and disappointed with the stalemate in Boston. Gaming has been debated in this state for a long time, and it finally seemed as though the stars were properly aligned for passage.
But then, politics got in the way, as it so often does.
From our perspective, though, the measure being pushed by the House and Senate and rejected by the governor was flawed, and the current stalemate is better for the Commonwealth than a bad gaming measure.
Who knows what will happen 11 months from now? The governor faces strong competition this November and may not prevail. Meanwhile, a number of legislators may not win re-election, and a number are not even seeking another term. Casinos may never again come as close to passage as they did this July.
But in the final analysis, the proposal that was on the table just wasn’t worth that roll of the dice.

Opinion

Green-power Costs Shouldn’t Be in the Dark

Green power curbs greenhouse-gas emissions, reduces our reliance on fossil fuels, and has the potential to create new industries and jobs. But it’s not cheap, and consumers footing the bill for green power have a right to know what it costs.
All too often the price tag is either not disclosed at all or hidden in plain sight on customer utility bills, buried inside charges for power generation and distribution. NStar, as part of its obligations under the state’s Green Communities Act, recently asked state regulators to approve three windpower contracts the utility signed after a lengthy bid process.
Hundreds of pages of testimony supporting the contracts were submitted to the Department of Public Utilities, but on the copies available to the public, the product and pricing information for each contract were blacked out.
NStar says public release of the pricing information would result in the disclosure of competitively sensitive bid terms and hinder the ability of its suppliers to compete for future contracts. Disclosure might also set a floor on bids for future windpower contracts. “This is consistent with all of NStar’s energy-supply contracts,’’ says NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen.
But green-power deals are different from most other energy-supply contracts because they are being subsidized directly by utility customers. NStar acknowledges as much in its filings, noting that the cost of its three windpower contracts — two of which last 10 years and one that lasts 15 — will exceed market prices by a combined $62 million.
These above-market costs are essentially the premium NStar estimates its customers will pay for the green power. It would be helpful to know what assumptions NStar is making about future energy prices to develop its above-market cost estimates, but the utility says that information is also proprietary and confidential.
National Grid has been more forthcoming about the pricing of its windpower contract with Cape Wind, in part because the contract was negotiated and not put out to bid. The utility initially proposed paying Cape Wind 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour starting in 2013, a price that would rise 3.5% a year for the remainder of the 15-year contract. The above-market cost of the contract was estimated at $65 million the first year and somewhere between $734 million and $885 million over the entire 15 years.
Attorney General Martha Coakley, who represents ratepayers in utility proceedings, was battling National Grid and Cape Wind last week for more information about the project’s construction costs and profit margins when she decided to give her blessing to the contract in return for a 10% reduction in the initial price. The new, reduced price still requires DPU approval.
One would think consumers would find out the actual cost of these green-power contracts and the state’s other energy and environmental initiatives when the charges for them start showing up on utility bills. But that’s not the case. Aside from assessments for some energy-efficiency programs and the state’s Clean Energy Center, most of the costs associated with the state’s green initiatives are lumped in anonymously with other charges on the bill.
For example, the distribution charge on customer utility bills is ostensibly the cost of delivering electricity to homes. But it has become a dumping ground for all sorts of green-power charges, including the above-market cost of long-term renewable power contracts as well as the tab for utility solar installations, smart-grid pilot projects, and other programs subsidizing renewable energy. Even the fees utilities collect for signing green-power contracts are rolled into the distribution charge.
The cost of the state’s green initiatives should be separated out and clearly identified, either on customer utility bills or separate-bill impact statements. That way, consumers can decide if the environmental benefits of green power are worth the extra cost. If state officials want consumers to embrace a green future, they have to be truthful about what that future costs.

Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine, which recently published a special issue on energy and environmental issues.

Competing to Compete

Controversy Brewing over Non-compete Agreements

Tim Murphy

Non-competition agreements are controversial. This issue has divided lawyers, judges, and academics for a long time. The controversy has spread to the business world, where non-competition agreements have been an accepted practice for years. Our state Legislature has weighed in on the controversy by proposing a bill that would change this accepted practice by significantly restricting the enforceability of non-competition agreements in Massachusetts.
Recently, an active and organized segment of the business community has come out supporting restrictions on the use of non-competition agreements. This support has given traction to the proposed legislation.

Why Non-competes Are Used
To protect themselves from competition by departing employees, Massachusetts employers frequently require employees to sign non-competition agreements. As the name suggests, these agreements restrict the ability of former employees to work for a competing business.
Judges do not particularly like these agreements because they tend to limit an employee’s ability to earn a living in his or her chosen field; however, judges will enforce non-competition agreements if they protect the legitimate interests of the employer, and they are otherwise reasonable in the duration and geographic scope. The courts will not enforce non-competition agreements if they are only designed to protect a company from ordinary competition.

Protecting the Business
Proponents of non-competition agreements cite the role they play in protecting trade secrets, confidential information, and goodwill. They argue that, if businesses cannot protect these business assets, they will be unable to compete against businesses that can, and if businesses cannot protect their trade secrets, confidential information, and goodwill, job loss and economic stagnation will follow.
Business groups like Associated Industries of Massachusetts are wary of any change in the enforceability and use of non-competition agreements. They argue that reform is unnecessary because our courts can and do strike the right balance between protecting employers’ interests and employee freedom of mobility. They further caution that it would be unwise to make it harder for businesses to compete in the current challenging economic climate.

Non-compete Agreement Opponents
On the other hand, there are those in the business world that think non-competition agreements stifle economic growth. The Alliance for Open Competition (opencompetition.wordpress.com), a self-described group of entrepreneurs, employees, investors, and executives dedicated to fostering innovation, sees non-competition agreements as a barrier to entrepreneurialism because they force potential entrepreneurs who are subject to non-competition agreements to risk legal and financial ruin in order to start or join competing ventures. California is held up as the model because that state prohibits most non-competition agreements, and the theory is that this prohibition resulted in a vibrant entrepreneurial economy, although California’s economy is certainly less than vibrant today.

House No. 4607
Legislative proponents of reform, among them Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera of Springfield, appear to have gotten behind House No. 4607, which is a consolidated version of two other bills authored by Coakley-Rivera. House No. 4607 reflects a middle ground between those in the business community who want no change at all and those who seek to eliminate non-competition agreements altogether. But make no mistake; if enacted, House No. 4607 would force major changes in the use of non-competition agreements.
Among the changes that House No. 4607 would bring, if enacted, would be to prohibit the use of non-competition agreements with employees who earn less than $75,000 a year. In addition, House No. 4607 would limit the duration of non-competition agreements to six months. Any agreements for a longer term would be presumed to be unreasonable.
Employers that require the signing of non-competition agreements as a condition of employment would also have to notify prospective employees of this requirement before the employees quit their current jobs, and, for existing employees, employers would have to offer a financial inducement for them to sign: at least 10% of annual compensation.
Moreover, if an employer sues to enforce a non-competition agreement, House No. 4607 would require the payment of the former employee’s attorneys fees if the employer acts in bad faith or the court does not enforce a term of the agreement (unless it is presumptively reasonable as defined in the bill). If the former employee sues to have a non-competition agreement invalid and wins, the employer would also have to pay the former employee’s attorneys’ fees.
House No. 4607 would not affect non-competition agreements arising out of the sale of a business or business assets. It would also not limit an employers’ ability to use non-solicitation agreements to prevent former employees from poaching existing customers or employees.
As this article is being written, passage of House No. 4607 this summer appears to be a long shot. A recent effort to attach it as an amendment to another bill under consideration failed. Whether House No. 4607 passes or not, the controversy surrounding non-competition agreements is likely to continue.

Timothy F. Murphy is a partner at the law firm Skoler, Abbott & Presser, P.C., a boutique firm that practices only labor and employment law and represents only the interests of management. The firm’s practice areas include all aspects of labor and employment law, including traditional labor law, contract negotiations, union avoidance and arbitrations, employment litigation in state and federal courts and before administrative agencies, employment counseling, policy review, and training; (413) 737-4753; [email protected].

The Big Picture

Rosemary Agoglia, left, and Alexandra Kennedy

‘The Carle’ Balances Exhibition, Education, and Celebration of Artwork

Rosemary Agoglia, left, and Alexandra Kennedy say the museum is much more than the home of Eric Carle’s works.

Now a decade old, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, or ‘the Carle,’ as it’s known to many, is drawing visitors from across the region and around the world. They are treated to much more than collections of picture-book art, say those who manage the facility. Instead, they find an experience that is both educational and inspiring.

Alexandra Kennedy says that the most-commonly heard exclamations from first-time patrons to the Eric Carle, Museum of Picture Book Art are ‘I can’t believe this’ and ‘I had no idea…’
“They didn’t imagine something as vast and with as serious a purpose as what we’re doing here,” she explained with a sweep of the hand at the expansive great hall behind her.
Kennedy is the second director of the Amherst-based attraction, and as children galloped around the surrounding apple orchard or strolled through the soaring spaces with parents in tow, she and her colleagues told BusinessWest that, while the museum sits squarely in the cultural landscape of other exhibition halls of the Pioneer Valley, ‘the Carle,’ as it’s called, has a purpose and a presence far beyond the foothills of the Holyoke Range.
Nick Clark is the curator of the museum collections and exhibitions, and was the initial director of the museum that he helped to create with Eric and Barbara Carle. As he stood in one of the three elegant gallery spaces, he told how the initial idea for the Carle was a storefront-style operation in downtown Northampton, “not much bigger than the space we’re in right now,” he said.
While the foundation of the collection is Carle’s archive, Clark said it has always been the dream to encompass much more than that. “So instead of the Eric Carle Museum, it would become ‘the Carle.’ As the collection grows, people will realize that we are much more than just his works.”
And, indeed, the museum is much more than just a repository of picture-book art.
As director of education at the museum, Rosemary Agoglia explained three key aspects of the Carle: the galleries, a reading library, and an art studio open to all visitors at all times. But, she said, even within that framework, an important concept arises that all facets of the museum support.
“The intent is to raise a generation of museum-goers who are interested in being in a museum because they are interested in engaging their heart and mind,” she said. “In many museums, the typical visitor is engaged intellectually, but are they connected to it? This museum underscores the personal connection at its foundation.”
From educational concepts that Eric Carle was exposed to in Italy, where early-learning goals and techniques are addressed differently from testing and a formulaic, results-oriented approach, the museum that bears his name also maintains a similar philosophy.
But at the Carle’s core is that great, colorful palette of his artwork that is known to children of all ages — the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Brown Bear, and the Mixed-Up Chameleon. Many of these originals, composed of torn tissue paper, are incredibly fragile, but the museum always has their namesake artist’s work on exhibit. And though you might not recognize some additional friends and characters on display from other artists, chances are that your children will.
And chances are that, after a visit to this museum, you might very well exclaim once again, “I had no idea…”

Table of Contents
Traveling in Europe and Asia, the Carles saw a variety of illustration museums, celebrating the art form in a way that they had not seen stateside. Kennedy explained that the distinction was that these museums, particularly in Japan, were preserving, promoting, and sharing picture-book art specifically.
She said that Carle has long felt himself an incredibly fortunate individual. “His fans and publishers have been great to him, and he has made incredible friends throughout the art community,” she said. “This museum was his idea to help give back.”
That original idea of a small, downtown space was scratched, however, because in a visionary fashion his scope grew as he recognized a need and a demand. In order to treat the artwork with respect, Kennedy said, the building would need to reflect that. He needed a place that was worthy of fine art.
Working with the firm Juster Pope Frazier in Northampton, Carle found architects that met his grand plans for the space. Earl Pope was the principal on that job, and the artist and draftsperson created an edifice that sits within the landscape harmoniously, complementing Carle’s commitment to nature, but also containing first-rate exhibition space.
Norton Juster, another member of that firm, contributed to the design process in more ways than one: architect by day, now retired, he is also an award-winning children’s book author perhaps most famous for The Phantom Tollbooth.
The philosophy of artwork and education was a primary goal for the museum’s design. Kennedy said that a great amount of thought went into the three gallery spaces, but added, “of equal importance is that the art is at the center of what we do, and also is a catalyst for programming. It’s a museum where people can bring children and experience picture-book art in a number of ways.”
To achieve that, an auditorium, handsomely trimmed in pale woods, offers year-round events. From authors’ readings to children’s theater and performances — through a partnership with the Northampton Community Music Center — to programming for adults within the purview of the picture book, the space is big enough to draw in the brightest lights of the industry.
At a recent opening for the Austrian artist Lisbeth Zwerger, whose jewel-like illustrations are currently on display, the museum was packed. Kennedy said that visitors came from as far away as California and London specifically for the event, underscoring the wide appeal of both the medium and the museum itself.
In the reading library, a comfortable nook with books organized by artist, Agoglia said that the function of this space is to bring the art seen out on the walls back to its original intent — “to rejoin the words and images,” she added.
Boston’s Simmons College has a renowned Library Science program, and it has partnered with the Carle, most notably in the utilization of the museum’s library. Graduate students share the space with youngsters, each finding something different in the colorful volumes.
The library is envisioned as the ‘living room’ of the museum, a place where families can gather, with parents reading to children and vice versa. But it is also home to serious scholarship in the nature of the published text.
The ‘whole-book’ concept was pioneered at the Carle library, said Agoglia, explaining how the process looks at the layout, artwork, and story as individual elements. “This technique has opened the eyes of librarians around the globe,” she said. “The book has greater potential than just the sum of its parts. The more you look, the more you see.”

Learn by Doing
From the hushed reverence of the library, the art studio at the opposite end of the Carle offers a sun-filled hubbub of creativity. The well-stocked studio is a child’s — and adult’s — dream of a space to sit down and try out different techniques.
“It’s a very open-ended approach to making things,” said Kennedy. “There isn’t any ‘make-this’ style of interaction. This is instead very much an approach akin to the practices of Reggio Emelia.”
That technique, an educational philosophy that Eric Carle was exposed to in Italy, emphasizes the importance of many different forms of critical engagement for children’s education. At the museum studio, Kennedy said this method never instructs a ‘right way’ to creatively express oneself, instead focusing on the importance of the expression itself.
“Children have an incredibly strong sense of aesthetics,” she continued, “and they learn from using tools and materials. They love to document what they think. They understand things visually. This studio encourages children to use critical thinking in the creation and viewing of art.”
Art is an expressive language, Agoglia said, and this was an important concept Carle wished to employ in the museum.
“The art studio is a place where people can learn the expressive language. It’s more about exploring the possibilities of materials, having been inspired by what they see in the galleries, what they see out the windows,” she said, gesturing to the apple orchard and hillside just outside. “It’s not project-focused space. We present people with materials and say, ‘what can you do with these?’”
Both acknowledged the shortfalls of arts funding for public schools, and how the economic downturn has prompted schools to cut back on the number and frequency of field trips to the museum. Unswayed by such circumstances, Kennedy said that the Carle has been actively venturing out into communities for art-outreach programs, and the studio technique has been a successful export, not only for schools, but for local children’s foundations as well.
The Treehouse Foundation in Easthampton is one of those groups, she said, one that she and her colleagues find inspiring to work with. An organization started by Judy Cockerton in 2002, its mission is to help improve the lives of foster children. Kennedy said that, when the foster kids are given books, with a nameplate that they can inscribe, that’s just one example of the museum becoming an important part of the lives of children in this community.

Picture This
The Carle hopes to broaden that scope of partnerships with local institutions, said Kennedy, adding, “our point of view is that we are an international institution that wants to have very deep roots locally.
“I think that, because we are young, there are people out there who don’t understand how many people we’re bringing here,” she continued. “We have a devoted local audience, but there are so many others out there.”
The Carle draws upwards of 50,000 visitors per year, and many of those guests come from well outside the region.
“During this time of year, we are the kind of place that people will make a stop on their way elsewhere,” Kennedy said, but as a member of the constituent offerings of the region, she added, “we will tell them, ‘while you’re here, why not stop in Northampton? There are great restaurants, as well as a great collection of picture-book art at the Michelson Gallery,’ or ‘here are some hotels in the area.’ We benefit from other regional venues, but I feel that we are a wonderful magnet.”
And of course, before they are wowed by the first moment walking in the door, they have come to see the picture-book art. For the permanent collections that the Carle houses, that first impression helps secure its place as a future repository of the genre.
When artists and families of artists come here, Clark said, they see what the Carles have done for the industry, and they want their material to be housed at the museum.
Zora and Les Charles, she a former first-grade teacher and he the co-creator of the TV show Cheers, have a world-renowned collection of children’s books and original artworks. They loaned the body of work to the Carle for an exhibition, but when they first visited the museum, that all changed, and the arrangement became permanent.
“Les walked in the door here and said, ‘oh my God, I had no idea about this space,’” Clark remembered. “Zora said almost immediately, ‘this is where my collection will come.’”
Another couple, Allan and Kendra Daniels, also loaned their collection to the Carle for an exhibition, but have pledged to donate a collection of early works. Clark said such gifts are an important addition to a museum with a very limited acquisitions allotment.
Several artists have agreed to make the Carle the destination for their own archives. Since the museum’s inception, collections from Zwerger, Petra Mathers, Leo Lionni, Antonio Frasconi, and what Clark called “the big enchilada,” the picture-book art of William Steig, have been added. “In many instances,” he added, “we have some of the great titans of the 20th century.”

Back to the Books
At 10 years young, the Carle has accomplished or moved stridently toward meeting many of the goals set forth by the founding members, artists and administrators alike. But Kennedy said that much more is necessary to look ahead.
“From an abstract perspective,” she said, “literature for children is changing so rapidly. I think it’s going to be important for us to carry on a mission to underscore the importance, emotionally, of reading with your children, and the impact it has on them. As wonderful as it is for children to experience other forms of entertainment, that is by all accounts the most enriching experience a child can have.
“And that’s a message that we want to keep out there,” she added.
The Carle will always be dedicated to books on paper, she explained, but will be open to the possibilities beyond. “Because it’s not the medium,” she continued, “it’s the art and the story that will be what stays with you.
“There’s a paradigm shift in the very concept of the modern museum, and that applies to us,” she continued. “You don’t want to think of yourself as merely a destination — that you’re defined by what people see when they walk in your front door. You really want to be a center for representing your mission, which for us means the promotion, presentation, and celebration of picture-book art.”
But chances are that for many years to come, she will still hear guests exclaim upon seeing the Carle for the first time, “I had no idea!”

Fair Assessment

The Numbers Show the Big E Is a Driving Force in the Local Economy

Wayne McCary says the numbers clearly show that the Big E is a powerful economic engine in the region.

Wayne McCary views the Big E as a wheel with many spokes.
“It’s the tremendous diversity of the vehicle that causes so many people to come here,” said the long-time president of the Eastern States Exposition. “There really is something for everybody from babies in strollers to people who are 90 years old.”
The wheels have changed in size and scope since the exposition, known then as the Springfield Fair, opened in 1916, but they are still spinning in the right direction. In fact, in spite of the poor economy, the Big E set an all-time attendance record in 2009, with 1,260,400 visitors.
McCary attributes last year’s success to two factors: good weather and tradition. “The Big E has become a tradition in New England for thousands and thousands of people,” he said. “Everyone has prioritized the way they way they spend their money, and it’s clear that people stayed closer to home last year because of the economy. People look for value more than they did in the past, but they can have a wonderful time here and stay within their family budget.
“Still,” he conceded, “it was remarkable to set an all-time attendance record in 2009.”
However, the fair’s history shows that tradition trumps bad news, both economic and societal. “The Big E opened a few days after 9/11 in 2001,” McCary said. “Planes weren’t flying, and professional sports were grounded. But more than a million people came here.”
The 2010 edition of the fair, which opens Sept. 17 and runs through Oct. 3, is one of the largest in North America and draws vendors from across the U.S. and Canada. “We have a $2 million budget for entertainment, and 90% of it is free with admission, which is a big drawing card,” said McCary.
The American Bus Assoc. has listed the Big E in its top 100 places to visit for many years, and in 2009 it designated the fair as an ‘international’ event, raising its status to one shared by the Indianapolis 500 and Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City.
“We are the only fair in that category. In fact, the Big E is the only fair in the nation that has more than one state participating,” said McCary. “The six New England buildings are a real draw, and people who go through them can actually claim they have been in all of the New England states, as each state owns its building and the land it sits on. Surveys show they offer a mini-tour with icon products that attract visitors.”
About 650 tour buses visit the Big E each year. They arrive from across New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and occasionally farther out, said McCary, who talked at length with BusinessWest about the fair, its traditions, and its strong influence on the local economy.

Economic Engine
A study conducted in 2008 by Regional Economic Models Inc. in Amherst showed that the 17-day fair is a powerful economic engine which generates just under $225 million as a result of visitor spending. That amount does not include money spent by people in Hampden County.
“The assumption is that people who live in the area would spend their money on other things if we weren’t here,” said McCary. “The number reflects new money for Hampden County.”
Almost half of the Big E’s visitors travel more than 60 miles to get to the fair, and 69% have a college education, according to the report. The fair draws 37% of its guests from Massachusetts, 50% from Connecticut, and about 12% from other places in New England. “The majority come for one day, but many people who live in close proximity come for multiple visits,” said McCary.
The Big E creates 2,800 full-time jobs and 3,500 temporary jobs in Hampden County which otherwise wouldn’t exist, the report concluded.
“The Big E impacts many sectors,” said McCary. “There is a trickle-down effect, and the hotels in the area are always filled to capacity. Vendors and competitors vie to get rooms during fair time.”
The Big E also contributes almost $500,000 in local hotel taxes, and adds $7.53 million to the state budget in sales-tax revenue.
When the report first came out, McCary found the results astonishing. “I was stunned at the magnitude of the Big E’s impact on the economy. It far exceeded what we were claiming, and the numbers were so strong, we asked to have the results reviewed to confirm they were accurate,” he said.
Paul Picknelly, who owns the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel and the Hilton Garden Inn in Springfield, says the Big E is a tremendous benefit, not only for hotels in the immediate area, but also throughout the Pioneer Valley. “Our hotels do a substantial amount of business from that particular event,” he said. “The economic impact is significant for the hotel business.”
But more important is the year-round roster of shows held on the exposition grounds. “I don’t think there are more than a handful of weekends throughout the year when we don’t have rooms booked from visitors attending events at the Eastern States Exposition. To sum it up, it’s the largest hotel-room generator in Western Mass.,” said Picknelly.

Farm Factor
The Big E, known as the Springfield Fair until 1949, was founded by Joshua Brooks in 1916. At that time, regional farmers decided to to set aside state boundaries and work together to combat signs that agriculture was on the decline.
“Joshua went to the national livestock show in Chicago and convinced them to move it to West Springfield. At that time, there was nothing here but a swamp. None of the facilities had been built,” McCary said. “The first fair lasted only a few days, but it was big enough to launch a succession of fairs that have continued until today.”
Each year, thousands of children from 15 states participate in 4H and Future Farmers of America competitions during the Big E’s 17 day-run.
The agricultural component of the show remains important, and “the competitions are very crucial to people in the livestock, sheep, alpaca, and horse business,” McCary said. “The credentials of the Big E in agriculture are very strong nationwide, and winning a competition here adds value to their livestock.”
The exposition has survived storms, floods, and recessions, and encompasses many facets of New England life. Today, it extends far beyond its agricultural roots, and there are attractions to interest people of all ages. “There are so many elements to the Big E. People can shop until they drop, come for the entertainment, or eat their way through the fair. But many still come to see the farm animals,” McCary said. “The fair provides a unique opportunity for urban people. There is still something that makes the public want to reach out and touch a cow or see a chick hatch, and the Big E brings all this together.”
About 80,000 people enjoy the Big E circus each year. McCary has been producing it since 1970 and says each act is drawn from some of the most promiment circuses around the world. “Because it is a supercircus, we rotate the cast and generally don’t repeat acts from one year to the next. This year we have four acts that have never been seen here before.”
Other attractions include the Mardi Gras parade, which has been so popular, it will run twice a day this year. There is also the Better Living Center, with 127,000 square feet of what McCary describes as “wall-to-wall shopping,” plus Storrowton Village, where history comes alive.
Last year, the fair introduced the Craze-E-Burger, which earned the Big E international acclaim after the bacon cheeseburger, which is served on a glazed donut grilled with butter, was touted by Facebook fans. Director of Marketing Noreen Tassinari said it was talked about by Jay Leno and David Letterman and was written about in the New York Daily News, the London Daily Telegraph, and newspapers in Australia. “Social media is very important to us,” she said.
There is so much to see and do at the Big E that 90% of visitors surveyed over the past 10 years say they will return. “It’s a tremendous referendum for any product or service, and the challenge is how to live up to expectations,” McCary said.
But one thing is clear, he added. “When I am asked what I think about the future, I borrow a phrase from Coca Cola: it’s the real thing.”

View to the Future

Shardool Parmar of City Place Inn & Suites

Pioneer Valley Hospitality Group Adds Springfield Landmark to Its Portfolio

Shardool Parmar says City Place Inn & Suites, formerly the Holiday Inn, needs some work, but most of the fixes are small.

Shardool Parmar calls it a “fixer-upper — of sorts.”
That’s how he described what is now known as the City Place Inn & Suites — formerly named the Inn Place, and known throughout most of its existence as a Holiday Inn — on Dwight Street in Springfield. That qualifier “of sorts” was used to convey his opinion that the 12-story, 242-room landmark needs some work, “but the fixes are small ones.”
And many of them don’t involve a hammer, nails, paint, or wallpaper, he continued, noting that, overall, the building is in solid shape. Instead, they fall into the category of image repair and awareness-building.
“Many people don’t know this place still exists,” said Parmar, president of the Pioneer Valley Hospitality Group, the family-owned entity started by his father, Laxman, that now owns and manages four hotels in the region. He noted that, when the Dwight Street facility lost its Holiday Inn nameplate a year or so ago and became the Inn Place, it remained open, but lost a good deal of its presence within the market as an attractive, lower-cost alternative to the downtown Springfield hotels and others in the region.
The PVHG, as it’s called, is committed to gaining that standing back.
And Parmar says that process starts by simply going back to the basics of good service, something lost under previous ownership as its fiscal challenges mounted.
“Springfield has some great hotels that are on the higher end,” he explained. “Our goal is to provide quality service that won’t break the bank. This hotel has always had a lot going for it, but in recent years, it was simply not managed well.”
City Place Inn and Suites, which became part of the PVHG in late June, is now the largest property in the group’s portfolio — actually, it has more rooms than the other three, the Hampton Inn and Comfort Inn in Hadley and a Comfort Inn and Suites in Ludlow, combined — and represents a valuable addition, said Parmar.
It gives the group a presence in Springfield, something it hasn’t had since it sold the Howard Johnson’s on Boston Road, which it operated for nearly 20 years, he explained, adding that its location near the Turnpike, I-91, and I-291 makes it both accessible and visible. Meanwhile, the combination of location and lower price point has historically made the hotel a popular alternative for overflow from the downtown Springfield hotels and Hampshire County as well.
“Historically, this hotel has always done well,” said Parmar, noting that, until very recently, it enjoyed occupancy rates at or above 50%. “This is a great location; it’s situated so that you can quickly get north or south. The access is very good.”

Room for Improvement
As he talked about his family’s latest acquisition and what happens next for the PVHG, Parmar first went back in time. He opened his desk drawer and took out a brochure for the Holiday Inn that was about 40 years old.
Back then, and for several years thereafter, the facility’s main claim to fame was a revolving restaurant on the top floor, which offered stunning views of a downtown that had but one real office tower (Baystate West, as it was called then), as well as a North Blocks neighborhood just coming together after the building of Route 291.
The restaurant, now aptly named Panorama, remains a permanent fixture — literally and figuratively (it no longer spins) — but its look, and most other aspects of the hotel, have changed over four decades.
Over the past few years, the facility faded into near-obscurity as it lost the Holiday Inn flag and ownership let some aspects of service and infrastructure slide. Eventually, the hotel was lost to mortgage foreclosure. A broker was hired to sell the property, and the PVHG was among the many parties asked to give it a look.
But initially, the group had little interest in the hotel, said Parmar, adding that it was focusing most of its time and energy on plans to build a $15 million Hilton Garden Inn near Pulaski Park in Northampton. However, when that project was scuttled after PVHG failed to secure a needed $12 million bond, the group turned its attention to the landmark on Dwight Street.
What it saw was a hotel that was somewhat tired and had seen much better days, said Parmar, but one the family believed could make a full recovery from what was ailing it. In other words, the property represented the kind of challenge that the PVHG likes to take on.
“We’re always looking to find new opportunities that represent challenges,” he said, noting that both he and his father are engineers by trade and enjoy problem solving. “We figure that, if something’s easy, someone else is already doing it. We like taking on challenges and creating value.”
In the case of the former Holiday Inn, acquired by the PVHG for $2.5 million, the main challenges are bringing a higher level of quality to the service and building awareness of the facility and the fact that it is under new and better management.
“This business is fairly simple,” said Parmar, addressing the service issue first. “People’s expectations are very clear — they want a certain level of cleanliness, they expect all the lights to go on and the air conditioning and television to work properly. Our job is simply to make sure these expectations are met.”
As for awareness-building, some of it will come through word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers, he said, adding that he plans to do a lot of “face-to-face” work himself and get in front of the various constituencies he serves, especially the business community.
Meanwhile, there has been some infrastructure work undertaken, and more is planned, said Parmar. He noted that, in addition to considerable painting, wallpapering, and deep cleaning, hundreds of lightbulbs have been replaced with more energy-efficient units, and a poor chemical mix in the large indoor pool has been rectified.
“When we first started here, you couldn’t even see the bottom — now you can,” he said, adding that this new-found clarity has revealed a clear need to repaint the facility, a project to be undertaken down the road.
Overall, the hotel and its guest rooms are in generally good condition, he told BusinessWest, noting that significant renovations were undertaken three years ago, and that such initiatives usually have a shelf life of about a decade.
The challenge ahead, then, is to convince potential customers that the hotel that all but dropped from sight is still a viable player in the market, and to get that message out soon, with the Big E arriving in a month, ushering in the region’s busiest season for tourism.

Staying Power
Looking ahead, Parmar said he’s not sure when or if the PVHG will try to gain a prominent brand, like Holiday Inn, for the hotel, or remain independent.
There are significant costs attached to becoming part of one of the major chains, he explained, adding that one can certainly debate whether the resulting benefits justify those costs.
Meanwhile, he’s focused on the name currently on the property — City Place Inn and Suites — and making it a prominent part of the local hospitality sector. Meeting that goal will be a challenge, but, as he said, this family likes challenges.

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

Stay the Night

A chart of area hotels and meeting facilities
Hotels & Meeting Facilities BW8.10b

Picture This

Departments Picture This

Arts & Soles

A flatbed truck carrying 20 six-foot-high fiberglass sneakers rolled into Springfield on July 8. Later in the day, an elaborate press event was staged to announce Arts & Soles, the community project involving the sneakers and the artists who will paint them in ways to answer the question, “what makes Springfield Great?” The footwear will be ready in time for the Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in August, and will be displayed in various locations downtown. Above, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno addresses those assembled for the media event. Behind him are, from left, Maryann Lombardi, director of creative economy for UMass Amherst, a partner in the project; Nancy Urbschat, president of TSM Design, one of the organizers; and John Judge, Springfield’s chief development officer. At left, Don Courtemanche, executive director of the Springfield Business Improvement District, one of the organizers, stands by one of the giant sneakers.

Comcast Digital Connectors

The Urban League of Springfield, Comcast, and One Economy held a special graduation ceremony at the Urban League of Springfield recently to honor a group of Springfield youths who have completed the Comcast Digital Connectors program. A total of 26 students completed the vigorous program, a year-long technology learning and service initiative that teaches teens and young adults from diverse, low-income backgrounds how to use broadband technologies and how to put that knowledge to work in their communities. At the event, several students shared the experiences they gained from the program. Each of the students was also presented with their own personal NetBook laptop, courtesy of Comcast, and the announcement was made that the Comcast Digital Connectors program will continue in Springfield next year. From left, Henry Thomas, president and CEO of the Urban League of Springfield, and Doug Guthrie, Comcast senior vice president for the Western New England Region, hand out NetBook laptops to the graduating Comcast Digital Connectors.

All That Jazz

More than 12,000 people turned out in downtown Springfield for the 4th Annual Hoop City Jazz and Art Festival, staged July 9-11. The event featured a number of regional and national entertainers, arts, crafts, a variety of food, and much more. Clockwise, from above, KASIF gets the audience hopping; Greg Caputo’s big band Velocity performs; members of Terrance Blanchard belt out another tune; trumpeter Cindy Bradley performs with Zoe; and employees and friends of event sponsor Hampden Bank, from left: Nancy Mirkin; Shana Hendrikse; Carolyn Ware; Bank President Tom Burton and his wife, Kathy; Nancy and Glenn McCarthy; John Osborn, president of the Hood City Jazz & Art Festival; Deb and Rick DeBonis; and Debbie Andrews.

People on the Move

Departments People on the Move

Attorney David Webber of Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C. of Springfield was one of eight local attorneys who recently volunteered their time to answer questions from veterans at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Veterans from across Western Mass. turned out to ask personal legal questions. In addition, veterans received information on particular state laws and appropriate court procedures. Webber practices law in the areas of business transactions, estate and succession planning, taxation, and nonprofits.

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Brian Smith has joined Cambridge College in Springfield as an Admissions Counselor. He is responsible for educating individuals, health care professionals, and businesses in Connecticut and Western Mass. about the Master of Management Program for working adults.

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Jan Steven Martell has joined UMassFive College Federal Credit Union as a Financial Adviser in the Financial and Investment Services Department for the Northampton and Worcester branches.

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Carla Oleska was recently chosen as a delegate to the Vision 2020 National Convention. Vision 2020 is a national project focused on advancing gender equality by energizing dialogue about women and leadership. The national search for delegates focused on finding women with a demonstrated commitment to helping women and girls.

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Brendan Neal has accepted a position with Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He will serve as Senior Officer involved in institutional development, planning and managing institutional development, and advancement activities with local and international partners, stakeholders, and alumni.

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Kathleen Krisak, an employee in the Nuclear Medicine Department at Holyoke Medical Center, was elected Secretary of the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s technology section at the society’s 57th annual meeting in Utah. A member of the society for more than 30 years, Krisak received fellowship status in 2008 and recently completed her second term as president of the New England Chapter of the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

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Claudine Parent recently joined Prudential Connecticut Realty in Enfield, Conn. as a Sales Executive. Parent will focus on residential real estate and providing service in Connecticut and Massachusetts. She is licensed in both states.

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Robin Ann Bienemann of Touchstone Advisors in Enfield, Conn. has been named the first entrepreneur in residence at the UConn School of Engineering. At Touchstone Advisors, Bienemann advises companies looking to increase their value through improved business processes and innovation. She is also Chairman and Founder of Crimson Rook, a Connecticut-based firm specializing in helping small and medium-size businesses increase value through improved processes.

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James B. Heffernan has joined Bacon Wilson P.C. as an Associate Attorney in the Springfield and Amherst offices. He will handle a variety of corporate transactional matters, bank financing, and Chapter 11 work.

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Chicopee Bancorp Inc., the holding company for Chicopee Savings Bank, announced the following:
• Guida R. Sajdak has been appointed Chief Financial Officer;
• Lisa Crowley has been promoted to Assistant Vice President of Accounting;
• Maria Lopez has been promoted to Assistant Vice President of Residential Lending;
• Cidalia Inacio has joined the organization as the Senior Vice President of Retail Banking;
• Alyse Ramalho has joined the organization as Senior Vice President of Retail Lending; and
• Henry Downey has joined the organization as Assistant Vice President of Commercial Lending.

Incorporations

Departments Incorporations

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

BECKET

Technology Empowering Rural Individuals Inc., 23 Prentice Place, Becket, MA 01233. Steven Craig Schatz, same. Educational organization.

BELCHERTOWN

Quality Fleet Service Inc., 625 State St., Belchertown, MA 01007. Nicholas J. Moynihan, 25 Summit St., Belchertown, MA 01007. Mobile repair service.

CHCIOPEE

American Legion Auxiliary Fairview Unit 438 Inc., 29 New Ludlow Road, Chicopee, MA 01020. Edna Delsautels, 22 Pleasant St., South Hadley, MA 01075. Organization designed to preserve the memories and incidents of the association.

DALTON

The Home Shop Inc., 757 Dalton Division Road, Dalton, MA 01226. Colleen B. Maffuccio, same. Real estate agent.

LUDLOW

Seli’s Deli and More Inc., 223 East St., Ludlow, MA 01056. Ginger A. Seligman, 53 Mariana Way, Ludlow, MA 01056. Restaurant.

HOLYOKE

Tardy Foundation Inc., 4 Scott Hollow Dr., Holyoke, MA 01040. Alan Tardy, 4 Scott Harlow Dr., Holyoke, MA 01040. Fundraising for educations, charitable, benevolent, and religious purposes.

NORTHAMPTON

Baystate Metal Solutions Inc., 668 North Farms Road, Northampton, MA 01062. Anthony Fernandez, 668 North Farms Road, Northampton, MA 01062. Metal manufacturer.

Bustle Media Inc., 377 Prospect Street, Northampton, MA 01060. Anthony Sean Cahillane, same. Computer software application development.

PALMER

RLR Development & Management Inc., 45 Squier St., Palmer, MA 01069. Raymond J. Remillard, same. Land planning and construction-project management.

SPRINGFIELD

Pump Tech Inc., 127 Thompson St., Springfield, MA 01109. Robin Babineau, same. Pump repairs.

Renacidos En Cristo De Dios Es El Poder, 93 Mill Park, Springfield, MA 01105. Jose Juan Cabezudo, 299 Lexington, Springfield, MA 01104. Teach the word of God.

Roberto’s Sports Bar & Grille Inc., 272 Worthington St., Springfield, MA 01103. Paul Ramesh, 26 Nottingham St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. Restaurant.

Roy’s Towing and Service Inc., 1130 Bay St., Springfield, MA 01109. George H. Roy Jr., 489 Trafton Road, Springfield, MA 01108. Towing Service.

Sound Performance Inc., 265 Mill St., Springfield, MA 01108. Hector L. Davila, same. Retail audio installation.

World Telephone Network Inc., 9 Gunn Square, Springfield, MA 01109. Darnel Ali, same. Low-cost Internet telephone service.

SOUTHWICK

Vinee Corp., 587 College Highway, Southwick, MA 01077. Dave Nitin, 22-B Maple St., Westfield, MA 01085. Convenience store.

STURBRIDGE

Wasp Audio Technologies Corp., 50 Main St., Sturbridge, MA 01566. David Tschirpke, 124 Fabyan Woodstock Road, North Grosvenordale, CT 06255. Consumer electronics.

Yankee Purchase Corp., 376 Main St., Sturbridge, MA 01566. Donald F. Cimini, 251 Mapleshade Ave., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. Package stores.

WEST STOCKBRIDGE

Queensborough Liquors Inc., 26 Main St., West Stockbridge, MA 01266. Leslie Mickle, 45 Garland Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201. Package store.

WESTFIELD

Red Dog Realty Inc., 18 Country Club Dr., Westfield, MA 01085. Denise J. Calvo-Berndt, same. Realty services.

Sackett Brook Sand & Gravel Inc., 162 Union St., Westfield, MA 01085. Dawn Antonuzzo, same. Manufacture, purchase, and sale of sand, gravel, and related materials.

Doing Business as Certificates

DBA Certificates Departments

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

GAWAM

Ian Parker
91 Parker St.
Pawel Muskus

Igliesia Christiana Casa
525 Springfield St.
Ramon Morales

On the Way
308 Suffield St.
Rashad Rauf

PWC Courier Service
218 Beekman Dr.
Patrick Camp

Tortoriello Construction
178 Maynard St.
Mark Tortoriello

AMHERST

Amherst Enterprises Park
463 West St.
Leigh Andrews

Amherst Extensions & Beauty Salon
233 North Pleasant St.
Yasmin Branford

Annias Garden & Gift
515 Sunderland Road
Russell Granguist

Auto Express
118 Southeast St.
Amir Mikhchi

Pioneer Valley Pizza
70 Belchertown Road
Joseph Rowman

Intelligent Machine Consulting
222 North East St.
Frank Stolle

Sonnhalter ETC
17 Aubinwood Road
Christine Sonnhalter

Strongbridge Associates, LLC
19 Amity Place
Theodore Rosenberg

Water Lifearts
511 West St.
Perry Conley

Yoga Center Amherst
17 Kellogg Ave.
Patty Townshend

CHICOPEE

Christian Brothers Painting Company
265 New Ludlow Road
Moises R. Cruz

New Pinoy Food Mart
157 Grove St.
Rhoda St. Germain

GREENFIELD

Beck’s Automotive
370 Deerfield St.
Lancelot J. Beck

Mirage
97 Franklin St.
Margary Fisher

Save Each Life
332 Deerfield St.
Dan V. Oros

HADLEY

Aranda Yoga Studio
41 Russell St.
Justine Humphrey

Michaels
325 Russell St.
Michaels Stores Inc.

Saint’s Landscaping
116 Rocky Hill Road
Philip St. Lawrence

HOLYOKE

Dancing Dog Café
191 High St.
Octavia Anderson-Mackey

Nathan’s Floors
18 Pearl St.
Nathan Holesovsky

New England Fish & Chip
530 High St.
Timothy S. Callahan

Trak II Convenience LLC
330 Main St.
Johnny Kayrouz

LUDLOW

Europa Café & Catering
390 West St.
Antonio Rodrigues

Permanent Addiction Tattoo
81 East St.
Shawn Murphy

Portelada Electric
168 Lockland Ave.
Antonio Portelada

NORTHAMPTON

McFalcon Construction
270 Bridge St.
Jose Guaman

Pioneer Valley Driving School
241 King St.
Mary E. Paciorek

Platinum Vision Records
21 Alamo Court
Tyler Geis

SOUTHWICK

Benny’s Heavy Equipment Repair
25 Sam West Road
Bernardo E. Garcia, Jr.

Craig Electrical Service
114 Granville Road
Craig R. Filiualt

JL Towing
40 Sam West Road
John A. Litwak

Laba Drycleaners and Alterations
208 College Hwy.
Vladimir Molokras

Liberty Enterprises
92 South Loomis St.
Robert Liberty

Mitchell’s Corner
9 Wood St.
Cheryl A. Mitchell

Pentz’s Parlour
38 Lakemont St.
Lisa Pentz

William Michael Lakota Plumbing
17 Sheep Pasture Road
William M. Lakota

SPRINGFIELD

Kidsandjeans.com
35 Berbay Circle
Nicole T. Wallace

King Nails
461 State St.
Nguyet Nguyen

Linda Nails
898 Main St.
Tuyen Nguyen

Mamma Mia Pizzeria
1441 Main St.
Maria Alfarone

Merchant Auto
354 Main St.
Kevin Scott

Nany’s Tag Sale Store
360-368 Walnut St.
Anna Medina

Novelty
1655 Boston Road
Ran Chang

Or Enterprises
97 Kane St.
Othoniel Rosario

Robbin D. Jones
21 Deveau St.
Robbin D. Jones

Santana Tax Service
882 State St.
Luis R. Santana

Santana X-Press Inc.
81 Ranney St.
Wilking Mateo

SRC Springfield
215 Bicentennial Highway
Brian C. Callahan

Tammies Bags and Things
23 Duggan Circle
Tammie M. Robinson

Terry Etc. – Hair and Nails
380 Allen St.
Teresa M. Ianello

Tong Tong Beauty Center
1293 Boston Road
Tong Wang

WESTFIELD

City Package Store
131 Meadow St.
Corey Phillips

Grammy’s Natural Soaps
467 Northwest Road
Diane Fothergill

Steve’s Glass & Mirror Company Inc.
21 Mechanic St.
Stephen J. Erwin

Tactical 4 Manufacturing Support Systems
432 Southwick Road
Linda L. Buzzee

Whip City Landscaping
817 Airport Industrial Park Road
Radames Lopez

WEST SPRINGFIELD

AT Installers
76 Merrick St.
Vlad Grechka

Christine Parizo Communications
118 Wilder Ter.
Christine Parizo

Ex Tempore
38 Front St.
John Mackay

Nathan P. Somers, MD
61 Bayberry Lane
Nathan P. Somers

Nutel-West Communications
1434 Memorial Ave.
Massachusetts SK Games Inc.

Ron’s Delivery Service
454 Main St.
Roland M. Navone

Travelodge
437 Riverdale St.
Bhavna V. Bhagat

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