Home 2013 December (Page 3)

Month: December 2013

Golden Years

By
Sections The Business of Aging
Businesses Eye Potential in a Growing Over-65 Population

Don Anderson

Don Anderson says older people enjoy cruises, but not necessarily the same ones younger travelers do.

More than a half-century later, the Baby Boom has become the retirement boom — and the numbers are striking.
At the turn of the century, just over a decade ago, the U.S. was home to 35 million people age 65 or older. Since then, the number has risen to almost 42 million — a nearly 20% increase — and the 65+ crowd in America is expected to soar to 79.7 million by 2040, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“All our health and science advances mean people are living longer,” Jason Harris said. “Many are healthy and don’t foresee any kind of health traumas, or maybe they’ve already had that hip-replacement surgery, and they look at that as a wake-up call — ‘we’re getting there, but we’re healthy … what if we live another 15 or 20 years? What will our quality of life be?’”
As founder and lead carpenter at Baystate Accessibility Remodelers, Harris takes that question seriously. His firm specializes in creating safe and accessible residential spaces for seniors and people recovering form injury or living with a disability.
The modifications run the gamut from bathroom fixes such as grab bars, modified toilet heights, and walk-in showers to widening doorways and building ramps and chair lifts for people using wheelchairs, all the way up to completely remodeling kitchens for wheelchair accessibility or building additions for in-law apartments so an older person can move back in with their children.
“Our job really runs the gamut from minor modifications to full-blown remodeling,” Harris said. “The Baby Boomer generation is a working generation, and a lot of them have assets, and a lot of them have over time invested in retirement and other things, including their homes. When they start getting into that age category, people might consider aging in place, rather than moving into institutional care. They own their home, and they want to put one more investment into their home and stay there because all the things important to them are around them.”
Harris’ company is just one example of a business that stands to benefit from the rapidly aging population. According to the monthly marketing report Selling to Seniors, people 50 and over control 77% of all financial assets in the U.S., own almost 50% of all credit cards, and account for more than 50% of discretionary spending power.
With that in mind, here are just a few of the kinds of businesses that stand to benefit from the proliferation of America’s golden-age population.

Living Well
Harris and his wife, Cindy (Baystate’s president), don’t cater only to the elderly with their home modifications; many times, their services help patients readjust to home life after an injury or disability.
“Many times we’re following the path of the occupational therapist or physical therapist who comes into the home when someone’s been in a rehab situation. They check the person’s medical history and come up with a roadmap and say, ‘these are the things they need,’ and when we get in there and do the home evaluation, we can talk to them and make sure we get the medical side of it, make sure we understand their issues,” Harris said.
But in many cases, customers are relatively healthy, yet recognize a coming need to upgrade their home to keep them safe living in it.
“They’re really looking at the value of what they could potentially invest into their home,” he told BusinessWest. “They’ve already made a commitment, and now they’re just saying, ‘this is just the next level of investing in the house.’”
Millions of seniors and their families struggle with the decision of whether to stay in their home or move to a residential-care setting, he noted.
“There’s a lot of expense that goes into moving into any kind of institution — whether they like that environment or not, there’s a lot of costs,” Harris said. “They need to decide whether the financial investment is something that’s possible, and also, do they want to move away from everything they’re comfortable with, or make some modification to their home? That’s what we have to consider to when we talk to potential clients; we understand that a lot of emotion goes into making that decision to stay home or move into an institution.”
For seniors who are healthy and ambulatory, the Boomers are known as a generation that wants to remain active, and they’re increasingly seeking out fitness and wellness options to help them stay in shape.
Take yoga, for instance. Karoun Charkoudian opened a yoga studio in Springfield in 2009 and will soon celebrate the one-year anniversary of her business, Karoun Yoga, in its new West Springfield location. From day one, she said, seniors have made up a solid percentage of her business.
“We’ve had a lot of retired folks in here, and definitely more and more seniors, especially for our gentle classes,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s definitely been the case.”
She said older people tend to enjoy yoga because it brings fitness benefits without a high impact on their joints. “It really helps alleviate a lot of arthritic pain and joint pain, that kind of thing. In my opinion, it’s a safer way to get stronger — and they definitely get stronger, and they work on their balance. It’s a better way for the senior population to do that.”
As general awareness of yoga continues to increase, Charkoudian said, studios like hers will continue to benefit from a growing older population.
“With our beginner class or gentler class, at that level it absolutely works,” she added. “It’s effective for all the benefits they’re looking for.”

All Aboard
The retirement years are often synonymous with travel, and today’s seniors have some specific ideas of where they want to visit. To hear Don Anderson, owner of the Cruise Store in East Longmeadow, tell it, they’re not flocking to Caribbean beaches.
“Certain types of trips lend themselves more to seniors,” he said. “For instance, on Alaskan cruises, typically much of the clientele — but certainly not all — are seniors. There’s more awareness of Alaska; it’s on people’s lists — ‘one day I want to see the glaciers, see Alaska, travel inland.’”
Another hot choice among senior clients are river cruises. “Older people don’t necessarily want the flashy, 2,000-ton cruise ships, but maybe something that handles 100 or 200 people, tops. They might want to spend overnights visiting the beaches of Normandy, overnights in Paris, Budapest, Prague,” Anderson said.
“Other big items on the bucket lists are national parks — and we were impacted by the government shutdown,” he continued. “Older people also want to travel overseas to Europe or Ireland, but don’t want to drive on the opposite side of the road and contend with that sort of stuff, so they like escorted trips.”
When seniors travel, they often do so alone or in pairs, but a growing trend involves larger groups and cross-generational travel — where older customers arrange to cruise with their children and, sometimes, their grandkids.
“They have disposable income, but their kids go where the jobs are, so the kids live in different parts of the country. So, as a coming-home type of event, they pick a cruise ship, which caters to different generations. They can spend quality time with their kids and kids’ spouses or significant others, and the ships have kids’ programs. Some seniors with disposable income put their money toward getting everyone together on board, doing things together, eating as a family together. We’re seeing an increase in that, with multi-generational trips initiated by the parent or grandparent.”
In any case, with family or not, “seniors are saying, ‘now is our time; now is the time to do it,’ and they like the idea of a company like ours, where we set it up but don’t charge service fees; they love that.”
But, like other types of businesses that cater to different generations, Anderson said, “you can’t sell the wrong product to the wrong people; certain trips lend themselves to certain clientele.”
As tens of millions of Baby Boomers sail into retirement, that bit of wisdom will continue to ring true.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Editorial 2

By
Opinion
Opportunity for UMass and Tower Square

On Nov. 26, UMass President Robert Caret and Gov. Deval Patrick made it official: the university will seek to create what’s being called a ‘satellite center’ in Tower Square in the heart of downtown.
Plans call for leasing 27,321 square feet of space on the second floor of the retail/office complex built in 1969 and known then as Baystate West, with the university also gaining rights to use 1,600 square feet on the first floor of the building. While the exact use of this space, from a programming perspective, is still to be finalized, the goal is to have this satellite facility in place for the start of the academic year next fall.
There were four proposals sent to the university for the center — the other three being space in 1350 Main St. (One Financial Plaza), square footage in Harrison Place (1391 Main St.), and space within the Peter Pan bus terminal. And while all of those locations might have worked, we believe the Tower Square site makes the most sense and offers the most potential for having real impact in the city’s central business district.
It offers the most visibility for the university, probably the most flexibility, and the best chance to spur economic-development activity. And it provides the best opportunity in many years to spark a rebirth at what was once a hub of activity and commerce in Springfield.
That was a long time ago, of course, a different era in many respects, but mostly those involving how people shop — and where. Those who have lived in this region for 40 years or more can certainly tell stories about how downtown Springfield was the place to be — especially on a Saturday morning — and Baystate West was the center of it all.
People could buy everything from clothes to books to sporting goods, and dine at one of several eateries in the complex.
Construction of first the Eastfield Mall and then the Holyoke Mall started to change the equation rapidly and profoundly, and by the late ’90s, most all of the retail space in what was by then Tower Square was vacant.
Some new signs of life have emerged in recent years. Several banks now have retail facilities in the complex, Cambridge College relocated into space on the first floor earlier this year, and there’s a successful restaurant operating in space along Main Street. Still, many of the shops are empty, their windows filled with artwork or promotional material for area arts organizations and nonprofits.
Bringing a UMass satellite office into this environment is not going to change things overnight. After all, there are already hundreds of people in the office tower and thousands working within a few blocks, and if this critical mass hasn’t changed the fortunes of Tower Square, how much can be expected from some students and perhaps a few dozen workers?
Well, more vibrancy can be expected, and perhaps more momentum for a landmark whose best days are clearly behind it, but that could — and hopefully will — play a prominent role in re-energizing Springfield’s downtown.
There’s no turning back the clock for Tower Square — it is very unlikely that it can ever again be what it was in the ’70s and early ’80s — but this planned UMass presence can help change the equation.
We don’t know what will develop at this satellite center, but for now, this looks like a smart choice for the university, the city, and its evolving downtown.

Editorial

By
Opinion
Casino Saga Ends Badly in Palmer

There have certainly been a great many surprises in the two years since lawmakers passed legislation authorizing casino gambling in Massachusetts — developers getting in and dropping out; Holyoke’s mayor reversing himself, and then reversing himself again; residents saying ‘no’ in community after community; operators not passing muster with the Gaming Commission; competition for coveted licenses evaporating.
But perhaps the biggest surprise is just how badly things ended in Palmer (and they’re not over yet, apparently) between that community and Mohegan Sun.
Consider these remarks from Town Council member Paul Burns in a press release he sent to local media outlets late last month: “regretfully, I have to acknowledge that, as those on the anti-casino side indicated, Mohegan Sun cannot be trusted.” And, “Mohegan’s loss at the polls was not the result of a divided community, but the result of a conflicted casino company more focused on ensuring their financial viability and protecting their Connecticut property than they were on securing a license.” And, “good neighbors don’t work to impoverish their neighborhood. Good neighbors aren’t vindictive. Good neighbors care about more than their bottom line.”
It’s hard to imagine Burns, an ardent supporter of this project for as long as it’s been on the drawing board, offering such opinions two years ago or even two months ago. After all, Mohegan and Palmer have been linked in a project longer than any other community/developer tandem. Actually, we now need to use the past tense — Mohegan is now officially partners with Suffolk Downs in a bid to place a casino on track property in Revere — and this development is now clouded with intense controversy.
Indeed, since Palmer’s residents turned thumb’s down to Mohegan’s plans to build just off exit 8 of the turnpike early last month, the conspiracy theorists have been working overtime, and the really ugly side of the casino business has come into full view.
First, there were claims about a voting machine malfunctioning at a critical time, creating questions about the 93-vote defeat of the measure. Then, there were claims from pro-casino forces that the town clerk was making it difficult for gaming advocates to register to vote for the referendum, generating more questions about the tally.
But then, the focus shifted, from the vote and a planned recount (which upheld the original outcome) to the strong rumors that Mohegan Sun was talking with officials at Suffolk Downs well before the vote in Palmer.
And the conspiracy theories started multiplying. Indeed, the growing sentiment in Palmer is that Mohegan claimed to want a site in that community purely to minimize the impact on its facility in Connecticut (Palmer is readily accessible to people in the Nutmeg State via I-84), and that it stayed in the game in that town — it was the last developer to pay the licensing fee and draft a host-community agreement — just long enough to keep another casino operator from building at that location.
Those now quite angry with Mohegan Sun claim the company was either overconfident or ambivalent (or both, if that’s possible) going into the referendum vote and certainly didn’t work hard enough, or effectively enough, to change the eventual outcome. Further, the conspiracy theorists contend, Mohegan, by virtue of that referendum vote, has the best scenario possible — no casino in Palmer at all, and possibly one with the Mohegan Sun name on it just outside Boston.
Some are even saying that Mohegan tanked the Palmer vote to get pretty much everything it wanted.
We don’t know how much stock to put in all this, but things certainly don’t look good for Mohegan Sun right now — at least from a PR perspective and with regard to its five-year relationship with the struggling community of Palmer, which certainly seemed to buy into Mohegan’s rhetoric about a grand resort casino on the hill above the turnpike.
Maybe the best thing we can say at this point is that none of what is happening should actually be considered surprising. This is, after all, a business where greed and profits come before all else.

Community Profile: Lenox

By
Community Profile Features
Lenox Boasts More Than Just Seasonal Charms

Tanglewood

Tanglewood, which hosts the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other musical events, is one of the top tourism draws to Lenox.

John Bortolotto understands that, from an economic perspective, Lenox is a seasonal destination.
“Predominantly, Lenox revolves around Tanglewood and Shakespeare & Co. and the multiple art venues in town, and as a result, we have a very productive summer. There can be a shortage of rooms in hospitality,” said Bortolotto, who serves on the Lenox Chamber of Commerce board of directors.
“If you talk to many of the local folks, you’ll find out that many have this  preconceived idea that Lenox is busy from June through October, and then the town gets really quiet,” he added. “To an extent, that’s true.”
But he’s trying to get people to think about this small community — population just over 5,000 — in different ways, talking up its energy and recent commercial growth, and not just its many downtown inns and its high-profile performance spaces.
“From a chamber perspective, it used to be that, if you weren’t downtown, you kind of didn’t partake in all things Lenox,” he said. “What’s happening right now — what’s been happening for the last five years or so — is that Route 7, which is just outside downtown, connecting Pittsfield to Lee, has experienced growth of a different type. We now have three banks on that little stretch, where before there were only two downtown. We have multiple attorney’s offices, a fitness facility, a printing company, some retail.”
One notable success story has emerged in the Lenox Shops, a cluster of once-underutilized retail space along Route 7.
“It had a few stores, until a gentleman named David Ward bought the place and started revamping,” Bortolotto told BusinessWest. “He added condos out back and brought some non-retail businesses and restaurants to it. It’s going to be huge.”
In addition, Berkshire Health Systems, the largest employer in Berkshire County, will occupy a large portion of the complex, and healthcare services, from primary care to ob/gyn to yoga, will have a strong presence — and a flow of employees to support other businesses in the shops.
“So Route 7 has really come along, with more professional businesses and not just retail,” he added. “And, of course, we have Cranwell Resort, Spa and Golf Club nearby — a beautiful place to be.”

Growth Pattern
The character of fast-growing Route 7, with its chain hotels and motels, is different than downtown’s Main Street, Church Street, and surrounding roads, which play host to a number of inns, bed and breakfasts, and locally owned shops.
“Downtown is largely retail,” said Bortolotto, who is also branch manager of NBT Bank in town. “You have two banks, some attorney’s offices, a lot of realtors — that’s part of the makeup, some of the more profitable businesses — but the retail, they tend to close for a good part of the year. Church Street gets very quiet. Some restaurants choose to close for the whole winter season because they figure they lose less money by not adding staff and other expenses.”
Laura Shack has bucked that trend for two decades. She opened Roseborough Grill in downtown Lenox in 1993, then transformed it into Firefly, which she calls a “new American bistro,” 10 years later.
“Roseborough Grill had a great run, but that was because there were only 25 restaurants in Berkshire County, and now there are probably 125,” she said. “It got to the point where it was more of a struggle to maintain the antique, country feel, and I didn’t have a big bar. But I love what I do, so I reinvested and gutted the place, changed the name, and started over.”
Firefly features the huge bar she craved, and a décor that’s contemporary and rustic at the same time. “We changed the menu a little bit, did some tapas and light plates — just changing with the times — and it’s been a great run. There were times when the economy was struggling, but this is one of the few restaurants in Lenox that stays open year-round. We’ve created an extremely loyal clientele due to the fact that I cater to the locals tremendously. We went from having 10 people in the winter to 100. People come in, spend money, have drinks — and they come back.”
Shack partly credits a well-received series of daily specials, from a $5 burger to 50-cent chicken wings, a $16 prime rib, and $10 lobster rolls, which locals look forward to. She’s used a similar strategy at her new breakfast-and-lunch eatery, Kitchen on the Commons, located at the transformed Lenox Shops, and is a testimony, Bortolotto says, to the fact that local businesses can succeed year-round in town.
Our challenge as a chamber is to say, ‘look, if you build it, they will come,’” he said. “If you stay open, it won’t happen overnight, but people will come and spend. As they go ski in Great Barrington or Hancock, they may feel inclined to come to Lenox.
“The challenge is to get more people to downtown, yes, but Lenox is sort of changing that,” he added, noting that the chamber is actively trying to lure non-tourism-related business into its fold.
“Some of the professional service people say, ‘look, I’m not going to join the chamber because I really don’t see the benefit; the chamber revolves around the arts. But I work in a professional business, working with attorneys, electricians, and car businesses, and when I joined the chamber, one of my goals was to add value to those businesses. We’re trying to do some of that.”

Taste of Home
A New York City native, Shack said she came to Lenox for the summer 23 years ago and never left. “What I’ve learned is, you have to cater to the locals, and you have to be super warm and friendly and welcoming. I have staff who have been with me for 20 years; I’m known as Mama Shack, and I’ve raised a lot of kids out of there. They started at the age of 13 or 14, and some are still here. They started out busing tables, and I taught them how to cook or bartend.”
One of those, Zee Vassos, left Roseborough for college but decided the food industry was what he loved, Shack said, “so he came back and helped me open Firefly. Then, after being out in Boston for a few years, he came back again, and we just opened Kitchen on the Commons in May. We had a great summer. David Ward, who owns the complex, really turned it around.”
Bortolotto said the chamber has become more open to cooperating with local towns on events and marketing. “It’s one county, not ‘we’re Lenox, and you’re everyone else.’ We’re mixing more, and we’re more open-minded these days than we were 10 or 15 years ago, definitely.”
There’s more to Lenox than its downtown and Route 7, of course, including Lenox Dale, a blue-collar village straddling Lenox and Lee that used to be home to a cluster of paper mills and today still features some manufacturing.
But, overall, Lenox is mainly known as the home to arts destinations like Tanglewood — where the Boston Symphony Orchestra plays — and a knot of rustic inns, while Bortolotto and the chamber continue to raise the profile of the town’s other charms.
Shack certainly finds the town charming, and hated the early days when she closed for part of the time during the off-season. “I find continuity is really important, being open seven days a week, so people don’t ever question, ‘are they open?’
“I love the people. The town is great,” she continued. “Obviously, having Tanglewood around the corner is wonderful. But I’ve really gotten to know the local people, and the clientele makes it really nice. People are grateful I’m here for them, and I’m grateful to have them.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Raising Expectations

By
Features
Valley Gives Looks to Build on a Successful First Year

By MICHAEL REARDON

Valley Gives

Valley Gives, which raised $1 million for area nonprofits and schools its first year, has set the ambitious goal of $2 million for the 2013 edition.

When organizers of Valley Gives, a one-day online fund-raising event for area nonprofits and schools, launched their venture nearly a year ago, they did so with ambitious expectations — for participation among those nonprofits, the number of donors, and the money raised.
And they surpassed all of them.
More than 6,000 donors from across the Pioneer Valley pledged more than $1 million to 250 participating nonprofits, said Kristin Leutz, vice president of Philanthropic Services for the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, which helped orchestrate the program. This performance enabled the initiative to live up both halves of its name — it is, indeed, a region-wide effort, and people certainly did give — and prompt organizers to set the bar much higher for year two, slated for Dec. 12.
Indeed, the goal for 2013 is $2 million, said Leutz, adding that there are now more than 350 nonprofits and schools registered for the program, and newcomers and returning participants alike are looking forward to what promises to be an exciting day.
“When we raised $1 million in the first year of Valley Gives, it stunned everyone,” Leutz said, noting that the local effort surpassed the performance of a similar initiative in Boston. “The online-giving growth rate is growing twice as fast as traditional giving. This is an efficient and effective way to raise a large amount of money in a small amount of time.”
But Valley Gives is about much more than raising money, said Al Griggs, former chairman of the Community Foundation and, along with Springfield attorney Paul Doherty, an architect of the initiative.
“The idea is to allow people who are philanthropic to do what they naturally do, and that is to support organizations up and down the Valley,” said Griggs, adding that there is another component to the event. “Thousands of people across the Valley work for nonprofits, and we wanted to celebrate that.”
And the first Valley Gives was very much a celebration — in many respects, said Leutz.
A number of organizations created a party-like atmosphere around Valley Gives last year, she noted. One organization, Country Dance and Song Society, busted out a flash mob at Thornes Marketplace in Northampton. The Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts brought a dunk tank.
Leutz said a Valley Gives wrap party will be held on Dec. 12 at the Galaxy restaurant in Easthampton.
“We’ll watch the total come in,” she said. “Valley Gives is a festival of generosity, and that’s what I love about it. This is truly a community event.”
For this issue, which also features the annual BusinessWest Giving Guide, we take an in-depth look at this community event and how it has enormous potential to become a powerful Western Mass. tradition.

The Power of Giving
Griggs said it was reports of the generosity of billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates that prompted he and Doherty to start thinking of ways to increase philanthropic giving in the Pioneer Valley.
So two years ago, they sought the advice of the Community Foundation of Western Mass. to find ways to create opportunities for fund-raising in the area. The foundation took what Griggs calls their “germ of an idea” and did some research and came across an effort created in Minnesota called Give to the Max Day, a one-day online fund-raising event for nonprofits and schools that has spread to other parts of the country, including Boston and Miami.
The concept sounded like it could be successfully adapted to the Pioneer Valley, so the foundation decided to create a local event based on the Minnesota model and call it Valley Gives. The idea was to unite residents of Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties in one massive online fund-raising effort for nonprofits up and down the Pioneer Valley.
To bolster the effort, the foundation recruited the Beveridge Family Foundation, the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation, the Jewish Endowment Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Western Mass., United Way of Franklin County, United Way of Hampshire County, United Way of Pioneer Valley, and the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts as partners.
Donations during Valley Gives are pledged entirely online. The event goes on for 24 hours, beginning at midnight and ending at 11:59 p.m. Donors can log onto valleygivesday.org to find the nonprofit they want to give to and make a donation.
Valley Gives donors don’t have to be a Gates or a Buffett to make a pledge. On the contrary, the minimum donation is $10, and there is no maximum.
Nonprofits registered to participate in Valley Gives in August and September, and went through training in October and November. Much of the training was focused on effective methods of marketing, with a major emphasis on social media and other online strategies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging, and e-mail newsletters.
“A large percentage of nonprofits were not on social media, and there were others that were on social media, but didn’t do much with it,” Leutz said. “We convinced them to take social media to a new level. We’re creating the environment for nonprofits to market themselves successfully. For many of the nonprofits, they saw capacity in places that they did not see before. New opportunities were created for them. A lot of donors were new.”
Besides the pledges rolling in during Valley Gives, nonprofits will be eligible to win leaderboard prizes of up to $10,000 for being a top fund-raiser, as well as a Golden Ticket or Power Hour, which are prizes of up to $1,200 throughout the day.
Lisa Oram, marketing and communications director at Snow Farm: the New England Craft Program in Williamsburg, remembers the organization’s staff huddled around computers watching the money come in during the 2012 Valley Gives event, and posting on Facebook and Twitter throughout the day to keep momentum going.
“People were very engaged and enthusiastic,” Oram said. “I felt humbled by the amount of generosity of people across the Valley toward all of the organizations that participated. The day became all about Valley Gives.”
The team members at Snow Farm were floored when they won a prize worth $10,000 last year, especially since they first thought it was for $1,000. Last year, the organization raised $22,000 which paid for new computers for the organization’s digital photo lab and scholarships for its high-school program.
Other nonprofits that participated in last year’s event are looking forward to being involved again this year.
Safe Passage, the Northampton-based organization that addresses issues of domestic violence, was among the nonprofits that participated in Valley Gives in 2012. Marianne Winters, executive director of the organization, said money raised was used for programs to support children who are exposed to domestic violence, and to help fund its legal program in probate court.
This year, money will go toward a prevention initiative called Say Something, which offers training, education, and other skills for dealing with a potentially abusive situation.
“We have startup costs and need to generate publicity and other ways to get people involved,” Winters said.
Nonprofits that are first-time participants in Valley Gives are also eagerly awaiting the stroke of midnight on Dec. 12.
Team Jessica Inc. was formed in 2009 in honor of Jessica Martins of Belchertown, who died at 19 as a result of complications from Rett Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Although Martins was confined to a wheelchair, she was as active as possible, going to school dances, playgrounds, and riding horses. Team Jessica is striving to raise money to build a playground to be named after Jessica on 13,367 square feet of land at the Belchertown school complex.
“We want to build a new playground that’s 100% handicapped-accessible, with a poured rubber surface,” said Deanna Roux, the organization’s spokesperson. “The playground will cost $400,000, and we’ve raised $207,500 so far over the last three years through different events.”
Team Jessica wanted to be involved with Valley Gives last year, but had not achieved 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit status in time to do so.
Team Jessica is hoping to raise $10,000 through the Valley Gives event. Besides raising money to build the playground, Vicky Martins Auffrey, Jessica’s mother, hopes to continue developing handicapped-accessible projects.
On the day of Valley Gives, Team Jessica street teams will visit two Belchertown restaurants and will have postcards printed with a QR code that can be scanned by a smartphone to make a donation, as well as a computer to make a pledge.
“We’re hoping to expand our reach,” Roux said. “We heard all of the success stories from last year’s Valley Gives and felt we really needed to be involved. We signed up the minute it opened up.”

The Bottom Line
After signing on to participate in Valley Gives, Roux and Patti Thornton, Team Jessica Inc.’s grant writer, attended the training sessions and participated in a webinar to prepare them for the event. Roux said they learned a lot of valuable information about how to market themselves to get the word out to potential donors of their involvement with Valley Gives.
Team Jessica learned the importance of developing an e-mail newsletter, as well as posting on Twitter and other social media, and being more active online in general.
“I’m looking forward to 12/12/13,” Roux said. “All of the stuff you do beforehand matters. I’m excited, but nervous. We’ll see right away how dollars are moving.”
And with that, she spoke for everyone looking ahead to the second edition of Valley Gives.

Big Picture

By
Employment Sections
Training & Workforce Options Takes Region-wide View

Bob LePage

Bob LePage, executive director of Training & Workforce Options.

Bob LePage spends a lot of time talking to employers from many different sectors, from healthcare to hospitality; financial services to manufacturing. And they all have one thing in common — a need for quality workers.
He related a conversation he had with the head of an area manufacturing firm. “He said, ‘we have more work than we have capacity. And what’s the biggest capacity constriction? Lack of workers. If I could find them, I’d add a shift, I’d add another line. Our challenge is, we need more qualified workers, whether that’s taking assemblers and upscaling them to machinists or convincing young people that working in today’s manufacturing environment is not what your grandfather did.’”
One regional manufacturer, LePage added, is anticipating 300 to 400 retirements in the next five years. Simply put, “we can’t close the gap based on what’s coming out of high school.”
As the executive director of Training & Workforce Options (TWO), a partnership between Springfield Technical Community College and Holyoke Community College, LePage thinks about these issues all the time. The initiative was launched in 2011 to provide specialized contract training for a range of client businesses. But along the way, it has created sector-wide collaborations to help tackle workforce needs across entire industries.
“TWO grew out of a workforce assessment done by the two community colleges, which came together and decided there are a lot of opportunities to build collaboration between the two colleges, and opportunities for us to work collaboratively with the Regional Employment Board [REB]on supporting and building sector-based strategies.
“It’s come a long way,” he added. “We first had to develop staffing, planning, infrastructure, processes, procedures, how we’re going to do things.”
In the meantime, TWO has worked with the REB and others on developing workforce strategies on a sector-by-sector basis, he explained.
“If we use the example of healthcare, a year and a half ago, we started assessing what the medical coding needs were for the region,” LePage noted, because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is replacing the current standard code sets in 2014, creating reimbursement challenges for providers.
Along with Kelly Aiken, the REB’s director of Health Care Initiatives, and about a dozen regional healthcare employers, LePage explained, TWO developed a partnership by which medical coding and billing students can transfer credits between colleges, and will also launch a training academy to help employers train their workers in the upcoming conversion.
“TWO came in and really provided the skill-assessment expertise we didn’t have before,” Aiken said, and not just in the coding realm, but in direct care as well. “Employers have said there’s either a mismatch between supply and demand, or the industry is changing so rapidly that we need to revisit and revamp career pathways. TWO has been instrumental in helping us collect data from employers and walk employers through the skill-assessment process so we can really understand where the gaps exist.
“I really look at them as a side-by-side partner,” she added, “to fill us in and help employers and training institutions figure out how to fill those gaps through regional and organizational strategies.”

Across the Board
Healthcare is just one of the many sectors TWO has a hand in, however. The partnership recently brought together a group of regional financial-services providers — banks, insurance companies, and others — to discuss workforce needs, and the end result is a new certification program to train people to fill financial call-center jobs.
“The first class of 17 students is going through an intensive training program and will hopefully be placed into jobs in January,” LePage said. “This was an industry-driven need.”
Returning to healthcare, yet another TWO initiative aims to help providers develop new systems to remove inefficiency and waste from healthcare — a major issue in these days of cost-cutting and accountable care. TWO has also worked with Wingate of Wilbraham, a skilled-nursing facility, by training workers in STCC’s simulation lab.

Kelley Tucky

Kelley Tucky says MGM Springfield is depending on regional job-training efforts to build a 3,000-strong workforce in the city.

“It’s a way to assess their hands-on skills, a new way of looking at competence and how students can practically apply their skills,” he said. “Wingate had some very specific things they wanted to partner with us to test.”
And in the manufacturing realm, “we recently partnered with the Westfield Chamber to host a manufacturing workforce forum. We had manufacturers at Savage Industries host 10 or 12 companies around the idea of developing new regional programs for machine operators. In most cases, they might need one programmer but six or 12 operators. Our goal is to develop a new training program to allow us to provide on-site operator training.”
When thinking about the number of precision machinists approaching retirement, LePage said, the challenge is to create large-scale programs to develop the next generation.
“We’ve worked with a number of individual organizations — we might work with them on a multi-year training program, help them do organizational assessment, skills assessment, build a training program with them, and help them capture state resources to enhance the performance of employees.”
Such investments pay off, he noted. “Every dollar invested in support of manufacturing yields $1.64 return on investment in the first year alone. Every time you support labor-pool investment, your community makes money.”
TWO has engaged in similar strategy-building initiatives with area hospitality employers. “We partnered with the [Greater Springfield] Convention & Visitors Bureau on a formal needs assessment. What are the workforce challenges for the hospitality industry? We’re now starting to put together strategies to support their emerging needs, both culinary and front of house.”

Upping the Ante
The hospitality industry is only one of many sectors acutely aware of the probability of MGM Resorts International building a casino in Springfield’s South End, now that the proposal is the only viable casino plan for Western Mass. being considered by the state Gaming Commission.
“It’s highly likely this region is going to have to navigate 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs in the next 24 to 36 months,” LePage said. “TWO has taken the lead in partnering with the Gaming Commission to develop a workforce strategy to support the casino industry.
“We know, for example, that, if you want to be a dealer or in gaming, you have to pass a very specific set of requirements, and if you can’t pass them, you can’t work in a casino,” he added. And those requirements, he noted, could pose difficulties.
Kelley Tucky, vice president of Community and Public Affairs for MGM Springfield, agrees, saying her team has been working closely with the Mass. Casino Career Training Institute — which oversees employee regulations, licensure, and training — to ease some of the obstacles to employment.
“We’ve made our position known that we see the current CORI and SORI background-check requirements to be somewhat restrictive,” she told BusinessWest. “For instance, if we have someone working in the warehouse with a history of bankruptcy, it matters very little to us. Certainly, in a position where data is being handled or where there’s tremendous responsibility with money handling, you want those individuals to be vetted thoroughly, but we’ve heard from the one-stop career centers, the Gaming Commission, and others that they see some roadblocks already.”
Meanwhile, MGM has developed ties with the career centers and TWO to develop strategies for recruitment and soft-skills training, from interview and résumé-writing skills to language barriers. “Those are very important for us,” Tucky said. “We’ve built our reputation on providing an exceptional level of customer service. We gauge that from the minute an individual walks in the door for an interview. The more the one-stops train their clientele in those skills, the more confident we are that we’ll find the talent we need.”
However, the casino challenge extends far beyond MGM’s needs, LePage noted, as businesses in a host of sectors anticipate losing many of their own workers to the casino — for example, a bank teller who might want to be trained as a dealer or money handler — and having to refill those positions.
“We’re very aware of what’s going to be happening with the gaming industry,” he said. “If we want to have 3,000 new jobs in the region, we don’t want to subtract 1,000 jobs from other employers just by moving from one place to another. We have to grow 3,000 new workers throughout the region, but we have to develop strategies to fill multiple sectors, so there’s very little ripple effect.”
Take healthcare CEOs, he added. “The concern for them is culinary. They service a large number of people each day with food. And they currently have challenges hiring people. Add another 150 to 200 culinary jobs in the region, and they might have a bigger challenge.”
Tucky sees that sort of movement as an overall plus for the job market and the economic vibrancy of the region.
“Churn is good in terms of changing jobs, changing opportunities. It’s a good thing because people are exposed to additional career options — for instance, veterans returning from active duty, even the semi-retired. We offer jobs across the spectrum, and if we can attract a bright personality and they have the basic skills for the job, we will train for everything else.
“People see this as economic development for the region,” she continued. “It’s all about economic revitalization, and we’ve done a really good job being transparent. We see the benefits for Springfield and the Western Mass. economy, and we feel it’s a win-win.”
LePage agrees — if there’s an effective strategy in place that benefits MGM without disadvantaging other employers. “With the entry of a large employer into the region, we’ve tried to build partnerships across the region. No one organization can solve these regional workforce challenges.”

Mind the Gap
Casino or not, those workforce challenges are persistent, and the term ‘skills gap’ is nothing new to Western Mass. employers.
LePage noted that only about 78 in 100 teens in Greater Springfield make it through high school, but even if the rate was 100%, “we wouldn’t come close to meeting our workforce needs.”
That’s why TWO is so important — not only because it brings together the two colleges’ strengths, such as HCC’s English as a Second Language program and STCC’s Adult Basic Education initiatives, but because the colleges are bringing so many other voices into the conversation.
“What you see with all this collaboration is that there’s very little ego,” LePage said. “It isn’t what the colleges want done, it’s what industries want done. We’re listening to industries and hearing what they need and how they need it, and then saying, ‘OK, what can we do to solve this problem?’ That is the key to all of it; it has to be industry-driven. If you try to force change on industry, that’s not going to work. You’ve got to let those guys tell you what they need, then do the best you can to fulfill those needs.”
Aiken believes the effort has begun to bear real fruit.
“We love the fact that the community colleges are collaborating together,” she said. “We at the REB are all about collaboration, and they are a model for how community colleges and other institutions can collaborate together.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Season of Hope

By
Restaurants Sections
Despite Challenges, Local Restaurateurs Have a Positive Outlook for the Holidays

Victor Bruno

Victor Bruno has successfully paired meet-and-greet and food-sampling efforts to bolster his restaurant’s promotional card program.

Victor Bruno has never run from hard work.
As a young boy, he sold cans of soda at the Italian Festival in Springfield’s South End, making a nice profit for pocket change. Fast-forward 30 or so years to 2011, when he used the most basic form of grass-roots marketing — the meet and greet, and food sampling — to brand his barely year-old Worthington Street restaurant, Adolfo’s Ristorante, an homage to his late father.
Bruno and two of his employees spent four weekends in the West Springfield and Enfield Costco locations offering samples of his stuffed mushrooms to promote his new venture through the Costco discount gift-card program.
“I was there from when the store opened until I ran out of mushroom caps each time, and I met thousands, and I mean thousands, of people, and we would talk about the restaurant and downtown Springfield,” Bruno recalled.
He heard it all, and the most pervasive issue was the perception that Springfield isn’t safe anymore. “But I told them, it’s the entertainment district, and we have valet parking and good lighting; you’ll have a great meal — and I’ve seen thousands of those cards come back.”
Bruno knows the restaurant business is one barometer of how willing the public is to indulge in discretionary spending. With the all-important holiday shopping season just beginning, there is some cautious optimism among the restaurateurs that BusinessWest spoke with, although it was tempered with concern about what will be a short holiday shopping season.
“Sadly, this was the latest Thanksgiving possible; we’ve lost a week of shopping time, and that hurts all restaurants,” said Robert Luz, president and CEO of the Mass. Restaurant Association (MRA). “But we continue to extricate ourselves from the Great Recession, and generally speaking, we’re starting to come out of this, and consumers are a little bit more confident about spending dollars.”
Bob Luz

In spite of a shortened selling season due to a late Thanksgiving, Bob Luz says, consumers are more confident to spend.

Luz expects holiday sales to be flat or in the negative, mostly due to that lost week. His organization offers business assistance to restaurant-industry members — most importantly legislative advocacy. According to Luz, as restaurateurs get through this shorter holiday season, they have a potentially disparaging issue looming with a recent bill that just passed the Senate and is headed toward the House that could raise not only the minimum wage for all industries, but also the base of tipped wages for waiters and waitresses in the restaurant industry, increasing their minimum wages by 71% (more on this later).
For the restaurateur, food-price increases are only the beginning; city taxes, property insurance, workers’ comp, and liquor-liability costs are also increasing. “There’s only so much you can get from a stone,” said Bruno. “And all businesses have some of these costs, too. But in the restaurant business, we’re working with a profit margin of nickels and dimes.”
For this issue’s focus on restaurants, BusinessWest talked with some industry veterans about the holiday season ahead, as well as the much bigger picture — the challenging environment in which they’re operating and the prospects for improvement.

Main Menu
As if the Great Recession and recent food-price increases weren’t enough for local restaurateurs, a week before Thanksgiving, Senate President Therese Murray advanced a plan to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $11 per hour over the next three years. The Senate voted for that wage increase, and Luz of the MRA was prepared for that hike, which would certainly affect any business owner.
But in the same session, the Senate also voted to increase the minimum wage for tipped employees to half the minimum wage. With the tipped wage currently at $2.63 per hour, it would now force restaurateurs to pay them $4.50 per hour this year, a 71% increase, which will continue to increase over the next two years.
“It’s been frozen since 1999, because it works,” Luz said. “Over that time period, waiters’ and waitresses’ wages naturally increased because of menu inflation and because we educated our members’ employees to declare all of their tips.”
Technically, Luz said, employers have to meet the current minimum wage for those waiters and waitresses whose declared tips don’t equal current minimum wage, but that is rare because they usually do make solid tips. Waiters and waitresses in Massachusetts, he went on, are already paid the most in the country, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that they earned an average hourly wage of $13.13 in 2012, when tips are factored in. Should this new increase for tipped employees pass, employers will be footing yet another increase for something that Luz said doesn’t need a separate increase.
The MRA offers its members information sharing, education and training, forums for networking, cost-cutting group-discount opportunities, and, most importantly, legislative advocacy.
“The restaurant business is highly labor-intensive, and when you affect wages like that, it’s dramatic,” Luz said. “We’re the entry-level point for a lot of jobs, but the business has a razor-thin bottom line.”
Luz added that the MRA is working to finalize a formal strategy to fight this matter in the Legislature.  But heading into the holiday season, there are significant issues that already exist for the network of Western Mass. restaurateurs.
For the past 14 years, Chris Brunelle has been the owner of Pinocchio’s Ristorante (formerly in Amherst, now in Three Rivers), and is also general manager of the new Bistro 21 at the Cold Spring Country Club in Belchertown. Through those two businesses, he’s come to the formal conclusion that there may be no bounce back to where things used to be pre-Great Recession.
“This is the new norm; the cost of doing business in the last year to two years for food alone has gone up 6% to 22%, and everybody is paying for the October snowstorm from two years ago because our insurance prices have gone up another 20%,” added Brunelle.  “That’s just the cost of doing business, and you can’t pass that cost down to your customer.”
Judie Teraspulsky, owner for the past 36 years of Judie’s restaurant in the center of the vibrant college town of Amherst, said her professional life revolves around when students are in town; she’s survived the Great Recession by streamlining every area that she can, and running the restaurant, from purchases to staffing shifts, with extreme efficiency.
“We are tight, tight, tight,” said Teraspulsky. “We don’t lay off employees, because they are the most important factor in our business.”
As hard as things get for Brunelle, his philosophy, year-round, is the same as Teraspulsky’s: he’s staying strong due to his allegiance to his employees, many of whom have families, and four specifically who have been with him for the full 14 years.

Gifting Limit
Rudi Scherff, manager of the Student Prince, a landmark eatery in downtown Springfield that just celebrated 78 years in business, is used to the ups and downs of the hospitality business. Scherff, who undoubtedly has one of the strongest and most affluent regular clienteles in the Pioneer Valley, said he’s getting the sense that, while there is apprehension and concern, people are a bit happier with at least the regional economic situation than they were a year ago.
Scherff told BusinessWest that the holidays are “huge” for his restaurant, which does a solid 20% of the year’s business from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, and half of the gift certificates sold are during that same time span.

Rudi Scherff

Rudi Scherff says the holidays are a very busy time, when half of the year’s gift certificates are sold for the Student Prince.

“We’re going to be busy this season, and the eight days before Christmas are as much as we can handle,” Scherff noted, adding that banquets and events, entertaining up to 90, are a big part of that equation.
While Teraspulsky may not be as straight out as Scherff this time of year, she still sees the holiday season as very important to her business.
“Where I shine during the holidays is that you can come in and do just a dessert or a popover, or one of our great cocktails,” she said, adding that her menu, from the beginning, has afforded her customers the ability to have whatever they want, when they want it.
Teraspulsky and her staff of 90 push the gift certificates hard to get that return that will pick up the cash flow once the 50/50 percentage of college students and traditional customers returns.
Bruno is also looking forward to this season, not only to see those Costco cards come back, but to sell more gift certificates in the restaurant, and he’s already booked early corporate parties in his private room upstairs, seating up to 45 people.
“There’s still that caution with spending,” said Bruno, recalling the days in his former restaurant, Caffeine’s, in the same location, where customers used to spend $100 on a bottle of wine.
“Now they’re only spending $25 to $30 on a bottle of wine, but at least they’re spending it here.”

The Garnish
The potential of a downtown Springfield casino complex in the years ahead provides holiday conversation and a giant question mark for many restaurateurs; while they are not sure if it will help or hurt them personally, ultimately, they hope that the pledge of far more people will materialize.
“We’re always optimistic come January, and for the [prospective] casino, during the construction phase — it’s going to be great for downtown,” said Scherff.  “And once it opens, it’s going to help some, hurt others, but hopefully it puts more feet on the street and gets more people down here.”
Bruno agreed, adding, “the perception of downtown is far, far worse than it actually is, but with a casino, there will be people, and people bring safety; my position has always been that we’ll be the safest downtown around.”
Until a decision is made, Bruno is doing everything in his power to overcome the challenges that all restaurateurs are facing this holiday season. His greatest compliments thus far have been from those who tell him that Boston’s North End, renowned for authentic Italian restaurants, has nothing on Adolfo’s.
“They tell me I should consider opening up another restaurant,” Bruno said, laughing as he explained, “because if you can make it in Springfield, you can make it anywhere.”

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

News

Contact

Advertise

Events