Home 2014 March
Building Permits Departments

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

AGAWAM

Joseph Walz
300 Suffield St.
$8,500 — Renovations at dental office

CHICOPEE

Abors Associates, LLC
999 Memorial Dr.
$32,000 — Renovations to existing pavilion

Tony Acuri
63 1/2 Main St.
$3,000 — Build sound-proof interior wall

GREENFIELD

Christopher Ethier
76 Hope St.
$10,000 — Rebuild roof over stairway

Girls Club of Greenfield
35 Pierce St.
$3,000 — Replace front door

LUDLOW

Ludlow Housing Authority
39 Chestnut St.
$3,000 — Alterations

SOUTH HADLEY

Loomis Village
246 North Main St.
$37,000 — Repairs

SPRINGFIELD

1350 Main Street, LLC
1350 Main St.
$34,000 — Alterations to tenant space on the 4th floor

Baystate Medical Center
759 Chestnut St.
$35,000 — Renovations

Baystate Medical Center
759 Chestnut St.
$37,500 — Construct four mock-up patient rooms

Glory II, Inc.
595 Main St.
$83,000 — Interior fit out for tenant

HAP Housing
322 Main St.
$177,000 — Existing office renovation

New North Citizens Council
2455 Main St.
$99,000 — Build out of existing space for office

WESTFIELD

CPL, LLC
37 Feeding Hills Road
$373,000 — Interior renovations

Noble Hospital
115 West Silver St.
$95,000 — Replace existing ceilings

Oldon, L.P.
6 Southampton Road
$395,000 — Renovation to existing restaurant

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Paul DiGrigoli
134 Capital Dr.
$405,000 — Renovations to existing building

Construction Sections
Economy Improves, but Challenges Remain for Builders, Consumers

Brad Campbell

As the economy ramps up, Brad Campbell says, so does the number of shady contractors looking to take advantage of eager consumers.

Brad Campbell calls it the “black-box effect.”

That’s the phrase the executive director of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Assoc. of Western Mass. (HBRAWM) contrived to reference the action of any consumer using their computer, tablet, or smartphone when selecting a professional home builder or remodeler.

“I think people have become way too dependent and trusting of the computer,” said Campbell, calling the phenomenon a faulty mindset, because glossy websites with carefully worded testimonials and paid reference sites like Angie’s List don’t always tell the full story. “And if consumers took the same amount of time to research the contractor as they do the product, they’d be much better off.

“As the economy gets better, we want consumers to know that there are risks and dangers out there,” Campbell continued. “There are more people out there who will take advantage of you.”

It’s a sign of the times, he told BusinessWest, adding that, just as contractors start coming out of the woodwork when there are weather-induced surges in construction-related work, as this region has seen recently, they also come out when consumers are ready to open their wallets and start catching up on deferred maintenance and expansion projects. And some of these contractors have less-than-stellar track records.

As she heard these remarks, Marybeth Bergeron of Charista Construction in East Longmeadow started nodding her head emphatically. “He’s absolutely right,” she said, adding that the conditions are now approaching perfect for disreputable builders to take advantage of consumers who are completely uneducated about how to find a contractor for repair or new construction, but want one because they’re in a mood to spend.

Because of the improving economy, and this black-box effect, Campbell said the focus of this year’s Western Mass. Home and Garden Show will shift from “come and see the products” to “come and learn about the people that install the products.”

Celebrating its 60th year, the show, produced by the HBRAWM, will run March 27-30 on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield.

The show will feature hundreds of contractors and those who support the home-building and remodeling industry, Campbell explained, but more importantly, professionals to help educate attendees who are finally ready and able to spend money on home improvements or build new houses.

On the commercial side, business has definitely picked up, but education is necessary in that area of the building industry as well, due to heightened processes involving commercial and residential contractors’ licensing requirements, the Bay State’s increasingly strict energy-saving codes, and for the commercial consumer, a reality check about what is necessary and what isn’t for efficiency processes and new high-tech building products.

Town by town, Massachusetts is becoming the strictest state in the nation for energy-saving codes, said both Campbell and Seth Crocker, vice president and co-owner of Crocker Building Co. in Springfield. This development coincides with a desire among commercial and residential clients to be more ‘green’ in their building and perhaps pursue LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designation. What’s needed, they said, are detailed conversations between builders and their clients about what is necessary and what makes sense from the standpoint of return on investment.

For this issue’s focus on construction, BusinessWest spoke with professionals from both the residential and commercial sides of the building and remodeling industry just as the annual Home Show is about to begin, and winter exits stage left — finally. The consensus is that, while the economy is improving — and everyone has been waiting impatiently for that to happen — challenges remain.

Shades of Recovery

Seth Crocker

Seth Crocker says building codes are becoming more stringent, raising costs for contractors and homeowners.

Founded in 1939, the Springfield-based HBRAWM, a nonprofit trade association affiliated with the National Home Builders Assoc. (HBA), has nearly 350 members operating in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and promotes the best interests of home ownership, home buyers, and the building industry.

That mission is ongoing, but it takes on more emphasis at times like these, said Campbell, when there are more business relationships being made between consumers and contractors. He compared choosing a contractor to the dating process.

“You just can’t sit down with the first guy and say, ‘I trust him,’” said Campbell. “And when it comes to making a business relationship official, consumers are definitely afraid of something called a contract, and they have to change that mentality.”

Elaborating, Campbell said that consumers seem to feel that a contract is bad for them and good for the contractor, when in fact, it’s good for the contractor, and better for the consumer.  “It’s not restrictive, but a way to hold everybody accountable for what they said they were going to do.”

His example of a good contract is one that doesn’t have a line item stating that all the windows will be replaced in the home, but that a specific brand, style, and size of window will be used in all windows in question. Spending $300 to have an attorney look over a contract is also a good idea, Campbell added, given the much larger sum that could be lost if someone doesn’t exercise due diligence.

Additionally, he said, if the contractor doesn’t pull a permit, the consumer becomes 100% responsible for an entire project; if the project isn’t done the right way, the consumer can’t file a claim with the state’s repair fund.  “And if a contract doesn’t have certain things in it, it’s not a real contract.”

On the flip side, Campbell doesn’t want to see contractors themselves make mistakes. “They can hurt themselves by not having that same contract; it’s part of their licensing requirement, and they’re told they must have contracts for projects over $1,000, which these days could be just a storm door.”

Walt Tomala, president of TNT General Contracting, Home Show deputy chairman, former president of the HBRAWM, and past president of the statewide HBA, agreed.

Walt Tomala

Walt Tomala says a contract is critical to protecting the interests of both the builder and the consumer.

“There are so many different licensing qualifications that need to be met now, it’s hard enough for the contractor to keep up with it, never mind the consumer,” he said, adding that a contract protects both parties’ interests.

In order to get Home Show attendees to the HBRAWM booth to learn about such matters, agency officials are giving visitors a chance to register to win $160,000 cash. Upon entering, attendees will be given a card asking what they have planned for the next 12 to 18 months. Those who check off ‘building’ or ‘remodeling’ will be invited to speak one-on-one with HBRAWM professionals about what consumers need to know about hiring for these needs.

“We want you to talk to builders that have gone through a formal process to be approved in our association,” Campbell continued. “That’s not to say we’ve never had an issue with one of our builders, but at least if that happens, we have a policy and a process to help you get through this situation.”

LEED by Example

Contractors, homeowners, and business owners should have a lot to talk about at this year’s show.

Indeed, many consumers have put off repairs or remodeling while waiting for the economy to improve, and over the past few years, new products have been introduced, building codes have become more strict, and the world, in general, has become more green-focused.

Brothers Seth and Bill Crocker — co-owners of Crocker Building Co., which offers full-service general contracting solutions in commercial construction and renovation — have witnessed all of this. They say they often face a situation of balancing a desire to be environmentally friendly with what makes sense economically and what also meets state regulations.

Currently, there is heightened interest in efficiency in heating, air conditioning, and the thermal performance of the building envelope, but Seth Crocker sees the expense of higher-technology products as a hurdle that many clients are not willing to jump over, especially if they don’t have to.

The philosophy, Crocker said, is to advise clients on what are ultimately the best products to use, as far as efficiency and ROI.

“But what’s driving a lot of it is that the building codes are so stringent,” he told BusinessWest. “And all signs say that will continue to get more strict, which will drive more people to things like foam insulation, which is a lot more expensive.”

Campbell agreed, citing a survey by the NHAB suggesting that stricter codes are likely, and the Commonwealth has a mindset to be a clear leader in energy conservation, which has resulted in already-demanding regulations compared to most other states.

The 2012 Stretch Energy Code, which does what it says — stretches that base code by another 20% efficiency — and is adopted on a town-by-town basis, is making it financially difficult to build in Massachusetts, Campbell said, estimating that these codes add $16,000 to the cost of a 2,200-square-foot home.

Because of those strict Massachusetts codes, said Tomala — one of the first green professionals certified by the NAHB — he and most other contractors are already building to that highly efficient level, even though doing so does not necessarily designate a building as LEED-certified.

And this has prompted questions among some builders about whether LEED is worth pursuing.

“The actual LEED certification process is very time-consuming, and you really just get a plaque for the wall,” said Crocker. “In some cases, there’s a huge upfront cost, and the payback is all in feeling good about it.”

The plaque on the wall tells a story, for sure, Tomala added, but the Energy Star efficiency rating of the high-tech products he uses tells the same story, with a lot less time and formality.

“Don’t get me wrong — we’ll do whatever the customer wants, but we’d rather be out on the site, not have more office time doing paperwork,” which always means more expense to the customer, he said.

Sustainable Future

Weather extremes, a healthier economy, and the return of the popular outdoor modular home are expected to hike attendance at this year’s Home Show.

“I think the show is going to be a huge hit because people can only sit on their hands for so long, and it’s the year they feel like it’s OK to do something,” Tomala said.

Added Crocker, “I think there’s pent-up demand because people didn’t do anything for quite a few years and interest rates bottomed, but now they’re coming back up.” He noted that those climbing rates are causing people with residential and commercial building needs to move more quickly.

But as consumers make up for lost time, different levels of education about the right way to go about a project and the best return on investment will be the key to commercial and residential projects coming to fruition.

Features
Wellspring Initiative Strives to Create a Steady Stream of New Jobs

Fred Rose, left, and Evan Cohen

Fred Rose, left, and Evan Cohen say the upholstery cooperative has strong growth potential.

Bob Demerjian says he saw the ad last fall on a state website featuring job postings. It caught his eye for several reasons.

For starters, he had been unemployed for some time, and realistic opportunities to rejoin the workforce had become quite scarce. But there was something else. While waiting for such an opportunity to develop, Demerjian had begun to learn the somewhat obscure trade of upholstery, and had landed a few odd jobs. Escalating this activity into a vocation seemed unlikely, though.

Fast-forward a few months, and Demerjian is stripping the fabric off a chair that until recently occupied the lobby at the campus hotel at UMass Amherst. He is working in the spacious confines of Alliance Upholstery in a century-old building in Springfield’s South End where monkey wrenches were once made, and, decades later, Bottaro-Skolnick Furniture had its showrooms.

He is the first official employee owner of something called the Wellspring Upholstery Cooperative (WUC), and the hope, and expectation, is that there will soon be many more.

Wellspring is the name of a unique collaborative designed to create economic opportunities and revitalize Springfield’s neighborhoods. Launched in 2011 with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the program intends to use the purchasing power of the region’s largest employers to provide a market for new worker-owned companies that will create entry-level jobs and ownership opportunities for unemployed and underemployed residents.

These employers, also called ‘anchors,’ include Baystate Health, the Sisters of Providence Health System, Springfield Technical Community College, UMass Amherst, and Western New England University, and the hope is to add more, said Fred Rose, co-director of the Wellspring Collaborative at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass Amherst.

“It’s estimated that these major institutions purchase more than $1.5 billion worth of goods and services a year, and maybe less than 10% of it comes from the Springfield area,” he noted. “So there’s a big potential market for goods that we could produce locally, and we’ve been meeting with their purchasers and identifying possible opportunities.

“If we could shift just 10% of that $1.5 billion, we could create 2,000 or 3,000 jobs in this city,” he went on. “We want to build a capacity for these institutions to use their purchasing powers to drive some development.”

Rose said Wellspring was inspired by the many examples worldwide of worker-owned businesses successfully serving such anchors. Perhaps the most notable is the program known as the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. The initiative, which involves Case Western University, the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and other major employers, has grown to include a laundry, a solar-power operation, and a growers cooperative, said Rose, adding that the program has created hundreds of jobs.

But there are many other examples of how this concept works effectively, said Rose, citing the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain’s Basque region as another.

In Springfield, the Wellspring initiative has begun with an upholstery shop, said Rose, because there is recognized need for such services, an existing infrastructure in the form of the Alliance Upholstery facilities, and an important partner at the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, which has operated an upholstery program for years and provides a pool of employee candidates with some initial upholstery training.

But there could be other businesses underway in the near future, including a greenhouse operation that would supply fresh fruits and vegetables to those anchor businesses, as well as a laundry and other ventures.

The Wellspring initiative involves a number of partners in addition to those anchors, including Jobs with Justice, the New North Citizens Council, the Center for Popular Economics, Partners for a Healthier Community, GreenWorks, the Pioneer Valley Project, the Hampden County Regional Employment Board, Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services, MassMutual, and the United Way of Pioneer Valley.

That list reveals that the program is not only about jobs and economic development, said Steve Bradley, vice president of Government and Community Relations and Public Affairs at Baystate Health. It’s also about neighborhoods, and the overall health of the region.

“There’s a very direct correlation between income levels and both an individual’s and family’s health status,” he said when explaining why a health system would become involved in an economic-development endeavor of this nature. “Simply put, the poorer you are, the worse your health is going to be.”

For this issue, BusinessWest goes behind the scenes at the upholstery cooperative for a look at this intriguing operation, and also talks with a number of those involved with Wellspring to gauge its potential as a vehicle for generating economic development — and much-needed jobs in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Seats of Government
Evan Cohen, long-time owner of Alliance Upholstery, a venture that at one time took his name, said his trade is somewhat of a lost art.

Decades ago, he noted, there were a number of upholstery shops in Greater Springfield employing hundreds of highly trained craftspeople. Alliance is one of the few operations left, and it handles everything from new, high-end furniture to old sofas and chairs that need a new look and a new seat. But there is still a good deal of demand for services, as indicated by the number of projects in progress and in waiting on his shop floor.

Scattered in among those mostly high-end new pieces and some antiques have been some institutional projects, including 65 booth-like pieces from the Berkshire Dining Commons at UMass Amherst, several chairs from the mayor’s office in Westfield, assorted pieces from the campus hotel at UMass, and others.

These represent what Rose and others describe as the start of what could be a thriving enterprise, and the first of a series of businesses designed to keep a portion of that aforementioned $1.5 billion in the City of Homes.

“Our goal is to create a network of these businesses,” said Rose, adding that the ultimate success of the Wellspring initiative will be determined by how effective its organizers are at identifying need among those anchor institutions and creating efficient, profitable ventures to meet them.

Bob Demerjian

Bob Demerjian at work at the Wellspring Upholstery Cooperative

There is certainly ample evidence in both this country and abroad to suggest that worker-owned businesses supplying such anchors is a viable economic-development strategy, he said, adding that the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain have grown to 110 cooperatives employing more than 80,000 people in 2012. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s Evergreen program has grown to four businesses and has received national attention for its potential to revitalize blighted neighborhoods.

It will take years, if not decades, to approach those levels of success, Rose went on, adding that the long-range business plan is to generate smart, need-driven expansion that will meet Wellspring’s stated goals of creating jobs while also revitalizing neighborhoods.

Getting the WUC off the ground has been roughly a two-year initiative, and a learning experience on a number of levels, said Rose, one that involved everything from identifying partners to securing capital to attracting those first customers. And the operation takes Wellspring from words on an informational brochure to reality, which is an important first step.

“We learned a lot getting this business started,” said Rose. “We had to raise $145,000 in capital, and that was challenging, because not a lot of places want to put money into startup companies.”

Funding was eventually obtained from what Rose called a “socially responsible investor” in Boston, while a line of credit was secured from Freedom Credit Union, and a $15,000 grant was attained from the city’s small-business loan program.

And while funding was being located, organizers were creating partnerships with Alliance Upholstery and the Sheriff’s Department, which has contracts for upholstery work with many of those aforementioned anchors, but has limited capacity, so potential exists for handling overflow. Only a few people currently work at the WUC, said Rose, but there is potential to add another six or more before the end of the year.

Couching Their Remarks
Ira Rubenzahl, president of STCC, has been to Cleveland, and he’s toured some of the Evergreen facilities. He came away inspired, believing that Springfield could replicate some of that success.

“Cleveland is very impressive,” he said. “They have major institutions there like the Cleveland Clinic, which is an enormous operation. They’re on a much different scale there, but the concept works, and it’s something we can do here.”

Like others we spoke with, Rubenzahl said the worker-owned-business model has a number of attractive qualities that go beyond simple job creation. Indeed, there is a wealth-creation component to the initiative that could drive home ownership and prompt investments in the neighborhoods where these businesses are located.

“We believe that additional business development is important for the city, especially business development that could employ people of modest skills,” said Rubenzahl. “We have a lot of people in this city without college degrees who need jobs, and this idea of enabling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do it themselves has a certain attraction for us at the college. We think this is an important initiative, and we’re very supportive of it.”

Bradley agreed. He said Baystate became involved in Wellspring as part of its Community Benefits Program, and has been inspired by the program’s goal of stimulating development in areas of the city where there has been little private-sector investment in recent years.

The Baystate system provided the project with some seed money ($50,000) as well as some technical support, most of it from Frank Robinson, president of Partners for a Healthy Community. And the system is committed to helping initiatives like the WUC become reality because of their impact on overall health within a community, especially one like Springfield, which has nearly half its population living at or below the poverty line.

“When you look at the direction in which healthcare is moving, there is a greater focus on education, prevention of disease, and the promotion of wellness,” he explained. “And one of the factors in that equation is economic status; if we can help local people create and grow jobs in their neighborhoods through co-ops, then we can help raise the economic status of those individuals and their families, which will in turn create a much healthier community.

“We like to say healthcare is more than just acute care, and it’s more than just treating people who have serious disease,” he added. “It’s all of that, but it’s also about investing in the health of the community as a whole, and focusing on population health.”

Dan Keenan, vice president of Government Relations for the Sisters of Providence Health System, concurred.
“It’s simple — jobs are a key component to a healthy community,” by way of explaining the system’s involvement in Wellspring. “There’s been a lot of studies showing that a key health indicator is employment.”

Sofa, So Good
As he ripped the old fabric off that chair from UMass, Bob Demerjian used simple, direct, upbeat language to talk about Wellspring and the break it has provided for him.

“It’s good — I like the work,” he said. “I’m learning a skill that few people have. It’s an opportunity for me.”

And for the region as well, to tap into the buying power of those anchors and create businesses that may help change the fortunes of some Springfield neighborhoods.

Demerjian is the first Wellspring employee, and all those involved believe he will be the first of many.

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

Community Spotlight Features
Developments Strengthen Northampton’s Economy

Mayor David Narkewicz

Mayor David Narkewicz says new projects in Northampton range from redevelopment of blighted buildings to new construction.

On March 7, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was staged at two new auto dealerships on 347 King St. — Country Hyundai, which relocated from Greenfield, and Northampton Volkswagen, which moved from Damon Road.

Mayor David Narkewicz said the dealerships are among a bevy of exciting new projects that will increase vitality in Paradise City. “There is a lot of investment going on right now, which we are very pleased about,” he told BusinessWest.
Terry Masterson agreed. “There are 13 projects with a total value of $88.6 million that will add 203,000 square feet of office/professional floor space, 110 new hotel rooms, 73 housing units, and 83 assisted-living units,” said the city’s economic development director.

He and the mayor then offered a tour, figuratively speaking, of the community and its many commercial and residential developments. And there were stops in virtually every corner of the city.

They started on King Street. The auto dealerships were a $6 million investment, and were built by TommyCar Auto Group on the site of the former Kollmorgen Corp. Electro-Optical Division (now L-3 KEO), which moved to Village Hill. They will add about 50 jobs and generate about $85,000 in tax revenue, Narkewicz said, adding that there is a significant amount of activity happening in the King Street area.

This includes the redevelopment of the blighted former Price Chopper supermarket property by Colvest Inc. It is now called Northampton Crossing, and a new building has become home to Greenfield Savings Bank, while the existing Firestone building has been expanded.

The most significant change, however, is the conversion of 70,000 square feet of retail space into medical offices. Baystate Health moved a medical practice into the renovated building and added a laboratory, MRI and imaging services, and obstetrics and gynecology. “They leased about 60,000 square feet of the facility,” Narkewicz said. “This is a great reuse of the property and gives area residents additional medical options in one of our key commercial areas.”

The former Mobil station at 300 King St. was also redeveloped last year by PeoplesBank in Holyoke, which purchased the site and built a LEED-certified, green banking center. “This is a commercial corridor, and we are excited about all of the investment here,” Narkewicz said.

Meanwhile, another project slated to change the landscape is the construction of a 108-room Fairfield Inn on Conz Street. Narkewicz said developer Mansour Ghalibaf, who owns Hotel Northampton, has been challenged to meet the demand for hotel rooms at commencement and other times of the year.

“This will increase the city’s hotel-room inventory from 358 rooms to 470 rooms,” said Masterson. “And multiplying it by the current occupancy rate will equate to 100,000 people staying overnight each year when it is complete.”

Activity is also occurring south of the site on Route 5 in Atwater Business Park, where space in two, new 40,000-square-foot office buildings has been leased. “The first building is occupied, while the second is expected to be finished by the end of the year,” Narkewicz said, adding that Cooley Dickinson Hospital’s medical offices and Community Support Options are consolidated into one building, and the hospital plans to move additional medical practices into the second.

There are also plans to tear down the former Clarion Hotel and Conference Center and build a new hotel with 100 rooms. “The property has a big footprint, and there is a separate retail pad that could become a restaurant as well as room for an 80,000-square-foot office building in the back,” he said.

Moving north, to the site of the former Northampton State Hospital, residential and commercial development is escalating (more on that later), and downtown continues to thrive.

Terry Masterson

Terry Masterson says the majority of space in two new office buildings in Atwater Business Park has been leased by Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

“Downtown has no real vacancies; there are over 70 stores and 35 different types of restaurants and specialty shops,” Masterson said. “Talbots is celebrating 20 years in their Northampton store, and the Academy of Music programs draw more than 40,000 people to the city.”

And long-term planning continues to redevelop the Three County Fairground into a year-round exhibition facility for agricultural and cultural shows. “A new, 80,000-square-foot exhibition facility will be built, and renovations will be made to the existing buildings,” he noted. “In the coming years, the expanded facility will become a regional attraction for shows and exhibits with the potential to generate $50 million in commerce.”

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest continues that tour of Northampton, which reveals that an already-thriving city is building additional momentum in every sense of that phrase.

Grounds for Optimism
At Village Hill, the canvas that developers started filling in 15 years ago is fast becoming a masterpiece of mixed-use development, with more initiatives in progress or on the drawing board.

The Gatehouse, a 16,000-square-foot structure that integrated the former gates to the state hospital into its design, opened its doors last year. It hosts office and retail space, and is the first commercial building on the north side of the campus.

Fazzi Associates, a Northampton-based healthcare services firm, relocated to the Gatehouse from King Street and expanded into 20,000 square feet of office space, Masterson noted, adding that the building also contains a Liberty Mutual claims office, and a small coffee shop is being planned.

Although the Gatehouse is the first commercial structure on the north side of the development, it already was home to a number of residential developments that cross all price brackets.

“It’s impressive to drive through Village Hill and see the different types of housing and how balanced it is,” Masterson said, noting that Wright Builders Inc. built a six-unit subdivison of single-family homes last year and started the first phase of Upper Ridge, a four-unit townhome building. The company is expected to begin the second phase of its Upper Ridge at Village Hill project this spring.

That development will include a duplex as well as one three-story, six-unit, elevator-equipped apartment building. Each unit will have three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Pecoy Builders is also developing homes in Village Hills, said Narkewicz. The company has completed roughly half of a 24-unit subdivision of single-family homes that offers homebuyers nine plans to choose from in varying price ranges.

MassDevelopment, for Hospital Hill Development LLC, has invested more than $18 million in planning and infrastructure construction, and created the master plan for Village Hill, which is being marketed and developed in sections. In addition to the land currently out to bid on the back property, additional acreage remains to be developed, the mayor noted.

Overall, said Masterson, commercial, retail, and residential development occurring in the city is well-balanced. “We have hotel and retail space, along with senior housing,” he noted as he spoke about the new Christopher Heights project, a $13.4 million, 50,000-square-foot, 83-unit assisted-living facility being built at Village Hill by the Grantham Group.

“Half of the units will be affordable,” Narkewicz said, explaining that the master plan includes mixed-income development.
Meanwhile, many other developments are underway or in the planning stages in and around downtown.

Northampton Community Arts Trust has found a new home at 33 Hawley St. “They purchased a former health club [Universal Health and Fitness] and plan to create 12,000 square feet of exhibition space and a 250-seat black-box theater in it,” said Narkewicz. “Northampton Center for the Arts will be the key tenant.”

Also, the former Clarke School campus on Round Hill Road is slated to undergo a transformation. The Springfield-based OPAL Real Estate Group purchased 12 acres, which contain eight buildings, and plan a historic conversion of the structures that will include residential apartments and retail and office space.

“It’s a significant development because the campus was never on the tax rolls,” said Narkewicz, adding that efforts to bring more housing stock onto the market are critical, because officials believe more healthcare professionals will want to live in Northampton due to the expansion of Baystate Health and the fact that Cooley Dickinson Hospital has become an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The Northampton-based hospital and Mass General’s Cancer Center have also entered into an agreement to expand oncology services to Pioneer Valley residents, with plans to build a new cancer center in the city.

On the Right Track
Coinciding with the many commercial and residential developments are infrastructure initiatives designed to improve traffic flow and, overall, make it easier for people to commute to and live in Northampton.

For example, improvements are in the works for the fork in the road that drivers encounter when they take Exit 18 off I-91 and head into Northampton.

“The intersection is owned by the state, and it plans to redevelop it and turn it into a roundabout,” said Narkewicz, noting that design work is 75% complete. “It’s a much safer and more efficient way to move high volumes of traffic through a complicated traffic pattern.”

The city is also in discussions with the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce about the many new businesses that have opened at the juncture where Pleasant Street becomes Route 5.

“Several commercial buildings have been redeveloped, and this is an area we are trying to grow as a way of extending our downtown,” the mayor explained. “It’s evidence of an emergence of positive small business and retail growth, and the city is working with the chamber to improve parking to support the growth, traffic, and other pedestrian issues to extend the walkable district of Main Street. All these changes are bearing fruit.”

State officials also want Northampton to take over the section of Route 5 that turns into Pleasant Street. There are some environmental challenges, said Narkewicz, adding, “we’re looking at how we can create a better transition from the state highway to downtown. We have put in some traffic islands to demarcate the point when you leave the highway and enter the city zone to encourage new commercial development.”

City officials are also looking forward to the return of Amtrak service, which will transport passengers along the west side of the Connecticut River. It is part of a larger, $73 million federal project and calls for a shift in Amtrak’s Vermonter route, which will include new stations in Greenfield, Northampton, and Holyoke. “The state is working with us on plans to build a new railroad platform next to the track,” Narkewicz said.

Local businessman Jeremiah Micka has purchased the old rail station building with plans for its conversion, which will include a new sports bar on the north side of the structure, as well as a 200-seat banquet hall. The Tunnel Bar underneath the building will remain open, and the mayor said he is happy that the rest of the building will be redeveloped, as it was empty and on the market for several years.

Moving Forward
Masterson calls Northampton a leading city in Western Mass. “It has many diverse economic and demographic assets that generate economic strength locally and within the Pioneer Valley Knowledge Corridor region.”

Narkewicz agreed, and said Village Hill is a model development because it is close to downtown and residents can walk there, ride their bikes, or use PVTA buses. “Plus, it contains open space and community gardens. It’s an example of the sustainable growth Northampton is focusing on,” he said.

Growth that is taking place in every corner of the city.

Northampton at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1884
Population: 28,592 (2012)
Area: 35.8 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $15.39
Commercial Tax Rate: $15.39
Median Household Income: $48,864
Family Household Income: $56,844
Type of government:
Mayor, City Council
Largest employers: Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Smith College, City of Northampton

Departments Picture This

Send photos with a caption and contact information to:  ‘Picture This’ c/o BusinessWest Magazine, 1441 Main Street, Springfield, MA 01103 or to [email protected]

Person of the Year
_MG_9995MG_0211Attorney Laura Santaniello Gentile, Hampden County Clerk of Courts, was recently honored by the Springfield chapter of UNICO, the Italian-American Service organization, as its first Person of the Year, replacing the previous Man of the Year designation. At left: Gentile with her husband, Thomas Gentile, and her son, Thomas Gentile Jr. Right: Gentile receives the award from Frank Stirlacci, president of the Springfield chapter of UNICO.

Big Plans for the Plaza
SpfldPlazaCharles Irving, principal of the Davenport Companies (left), and Christopher Knisley, president and partner of Albany Road Real Estate Partners (second from left), recently entered into a joint venture to purchase the 440,000-square-foot Springfield Plaza shopping center on Liberty Street for $35 million. Present for the announcement were, from left, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, Springfield Chief Development Officer Kevin Kennedy, and Springfield City Councilor Orlando Ramos. In addition to the initial outlay, Davenport (which is also the development partner of MGM Springfield) and Albany Road plan on pouring another $5 million into the property in renovations.

Celebrate Springfield
AM7J7207AM7J7258AM7J7276DevelopSpringfield hosted its 3rd annual Celebrate Springfield dinner to observe Springfield and the many accomplishments the community has achieved over the past year. The Partner in Progress Award was given to three individuals who, through their leadership and ability to motivate and inspire others, have supported the Rebuild Springfield Plan. From left to right: Helen Caulton-Harris, left, director of Springfield’s Department of Health & Human Services, and Armando Feliciano, chairman of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority and a DevelopSpringfield board member, honor Colleen Loveless, executive director of Rebuilding Together; Feliciano and Caulton-Harris recognize Terry Powe, principal of Elias Brookings Elementary School; Suzanne Bharati Hendery, vice president of Marketing and Communications at Baystate Health, accepts the award from Caulton-Harris and Feliciano on behalf of honoree Mark Tolosky, former president and CEO of Baystate Health.

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.

FRANKLIN SUPERIOR COURT
David and Deborah Walker v. Rice Oil Co. Inc.
Allegation: Defendant failed to repair and maintain a propane heater in a good and workmanlike manner, causing the heater to fail: $400,000
Filed: 1/7/14

Sandy Moya v. Frontier Regional School District
Allegation: Racial discrimination and retaliation: $25,000+
Filed: 2/10/14

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT
380 Union, LLC v. Aspen Square Management Inc.
Allegation: Breach of lease agreement by failing to pay rent for three years: $500,000+
Filed: 2/18/14

Northeast Realty Associates, LLC v. Mohegan Resorts Mass, LLC, Mohegan Sun Mass, LLC and Michael Vito & Associates Inc.
Allegation: Breach of contract and related claims arising from the defendant’s pursuit of casino license in Revere, Mass. in breach of exclusivity agreement: $71,985,283
Filed: 2/21/14

People’s United Bank v. Berger Painting Inc.
Allegation: Default on promissory note: $196,000
Filed: 2/7/14

TD Bank, N.A. v. TCI Enterprises, LLC, Transcend Carriers Inc., James F. Jordan, and Susan W. Jordan
Allegation: Default on promissory note: $1,241,813.12
Filed: 2/6/14

Temis Inc. v. HCPro Inc.
Allegation: Breach of contract for services rendered: $108,712.87
Filed: 2/12/14

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT
Christy Webster v. Ear, Nose, & Throat Surgeons of Western New England, LLC
Allegation: Dissemination of confidential information: $24,999
Filed: 2/19/14

Gordon L. Goldsmith, Jr. v. Axiom Capital, LLC
Allegation: Breach of contract and failure to pay on stock purchase agreement: $3,774.24
Filed: 2/21/14

Truss Engineering Corp. v. Hanley & Williams Lumber Co. Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $5,538.72
Filed: 2/20/14

Western Mass Electric Co. v. Taylor Davis Landscape Inc.
Allegation: Negligent operation of equipment, causing damage to defendant’s property: $10,499.20
Filed: 2/11/14

Agenda Departments

Management Conference
April 2: Accountability is a hot issue in today’s business world. At the Holiday Inn in Enfield, Conn., the Employers Association of the NorthEast (EANE) will hold its 10th annual management conference, called “It’s All About Accountability.” The conference will address personal accountability and responsibility in achieving organizational results, based on Linda Galindo’s bestselling book, The 85% Solution. EANE is bringing to the area Kathleen Kelly, a master certified facilitator in ‘the Accountability Experience.’ She will teach supervisors and managers how to develop accountability and learn to accept no less than 85% responsibility for the outcomes of their actions. Conference breakout sessions will include: “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” “Taking the ‘Difficult’ out of Difficult Conversations,” “Tom’s Fired: Where Did Things Go Wrong?” “Taking Ownership for Your Own Professional Development,” “Digging Deep: Performance Improvement Through Real Coaching,” and “Ethical and Legal Obligations of Managers in Solving Workplace Issues.” For more information about the conference, contact Karen Cronenberger at (877) 662-6444 or [email protected]. To register, call (877) 662-6444 or visit www.eane.org.

Journey Around the World for Literacy
April 30: Link to Libraries invites you to travel to India, Asia, Latin America, France, Ireland, and Italy — all within the Delaney House and D. Hotel and Suites. A selection of ballrooms and suites will be transformed into different global destinations, complete with costumes, cuisine, décor, and local flavor. The event, which runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Delaney House on Route 5 in Holyoke, costs $25 per person, which includes multiple food stations.
An optional $10 buys unlimited sampling at specialty drink stations.
There will also be a cash bar. Funds will benefit literacy programs through Link to Libraries. To register, send a check,
payable to Link to Libraries Inc., to the following address: Link to Libraries, Attn. Karen Blinderman, Registrar, P.O. Box 958,
West Springfield, MA 01090. Your check is your reservation.

Not Just Business as Usual
May 1: The Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) Foundation’s Not Just Business as Usual event is a key networking event for business leaders in Western Mass. This annual celebration, in its fifth year, is a celebration of innovative thinking which gives participants the opportunity to learn from business experts while raising significant funding for the STCC WORKS scholarship program. It will be held at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. A cocktail and networking reception will be run from 5:30 to 7 p.m., with dinner and keynote speaker to follow from 7 to 9 p.m. This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Alan Robinson, award-winning author and associate dean of the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. Robinson will discuss his latest book, The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas. Drawing on his work with companies worldwide, Robinson will review the strategies needed to develop a management team open to grassroots innovation and the policies and practices that encourage — and those that discourage — employees’ ideas.
Robinson has advised more than 200 companies in 15 countries. Both tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available. Tickets are $175 each or $1,500 for a table of 10. For additional information or to become a sponsor, contact Christina Tuohey, STCC’s director of Annual Giving and Alumni Relations, at (413) 755-4475 or [email protected]. To purchase tickets online, visit www.stcc.edu/njbau.

40 Under Forty
June 19: The eighth annual 40 Under Forty award program, staged by BusinessWest, will be held at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House, honoring 40 of the region’s rising stars under 40 years old. Judges recently chose this year’s class from more than 150 nominations, a record. They will be announced, and their stories told, in the April 21 issue. More details on the gala will be revealed in upcoming issues, but tickets cost $65, and they typically sell out quickly. For more information or to order tickets, call (413) 781-8600.

Chamber Corners Departments

AFFILIATED CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.myonlinechamber.com
(413) 787-1555

• March 25: ACCGS Pastries, Politics and Policy, 8-9 a.m., at the TD Bank Conference Center, 1441 Main St., Springfield. The event will feature David Bassett, TSA federal security director at Bradley International Airport. Reservations are $15 for members, $25 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com or by contacting Cecile Larose at [email protected].
• April 2: ACCGS Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Delaney House, 3 Country Club Road, Holyoke. Mayor’s Forum, featuring first-term Mayor Edward Sullivan of West Springfield, second-term Mayor Alex Morse of Holyoke, and third-term Mayor Domenic Sarno of Springfield, moderated by abc40’s Dave Madsen. Reservations are $20 for members, $30 for general admission. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com or by contacting Cecile Larose at [email protected].
• April 9: ACCGS Lunch N Learn, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at Lattitude Restaurant, 1388 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Featuring “The Art of the Brand,” presented by Mary McCarthy of Andrew Associates. Attendees will learn the core elements of successful branding and the necessary building blocks that should be put in place in order to ensure that your brand successfully conveys meaningful messages that resonate with your customers or audience. Reservations are $20 for members, $30 for general admission, and may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com or by contacting Cecile Larose at [email protected].
• April 30: Beacon Hill Summit, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Hosted by state Sen. Gale Candaras. Spend a day at the State House and hear from key legislators, members of the Patrick administration in its final months in office, and our local delegation. Reservations are $180 and include transportation, lunch at the Union Club, and a wrap-up reception at the 21st Amendment. Reservations may be made online at www.myonlinechamber.com or by contacting Cecile Larose at [email protected].

AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700

• March 27: Taste a variety of margaritas and vote for your favorites, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 West Bay Road, Amherst. Step into the tropics and pretend you’re on a Caribbean island. This is a Division One competition between restaurant and business margaritas. Your votes will determine who will take home the coveted AACC trophies. Restaurant margaritas presented by Hadley Farms MeetingHouse and Bridgeside Grille. Business margaritas presented by Amherst Laser and Skin Care, New England Promotional Marketing, Scandihoovians, and Applewood at Amherst. Admission is $20 pre-paid, $25 at the door.
• April 3: Chamber Brown Bag Event (first of a three-part series), 12:30-2:30 p.m., at the Jones Library. Learn about the importance of understanding Google searches for business visibility and learn about online business presence. More than 90% of consumers start their buying process online, and your business may be falling through the cracks when it comes to search engines. The talk includes prospect preferences in online search, your business presence on Google platforms (interactive), local search and your business (interactive), content marketing strategy, and converting shoppers into buyers. The event includes a raffle of a free Google presence analysis and a $100 voucher. Bring your mobile devices. Admission is free.
• April 9: Chamber Breakfast, “The Power of Video,” 7:15-9 a.m. at the Courtyard by Marriott, 423 Russell St., Hadley. Learn about using videos to promote your business. Sponsored by Epic Filmmakers. Cost is $15 for members, $20 for non-members.
• April 23: Chamber After 5, 5-7 p.m., at Western MA Family Golf Center, 294 Russell St., Hadley. Cost is $10 for members, $15 for non-members.

CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101

• March 25: 20th Annual Table Top Expo and Business Networking Event, 4:30-7 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Exhibitor cost: $125 for a table. Admission: $10 in advance or $15 at the door. To register, contact the chamber at (413) 594-2101.
• April 16: April Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at the Kittredge Center at Holyoke Community College. Tickets: $20 for members, $26 for non-members.
• April 16: April Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at the Residence Inn by Marriott. Tickets: $5 for members, $15 for non-members.

GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

• April 10: Networking by Night, 5:30 p.m. More details to follow. RSVP appreciated. Contact us at (413) 527-9414 or [email protected]. Tickets are $5 for members, $15 for future members.
• May 02: Wine & Microbrew Tasting, 6 p.m., at Wyckoff Country Club. Unfamiliar with wines? Looking for the perfect wine for dinner? You’ve had the Wente Merlot and Chardonnay, but want to try the St. Michelle Riesling? Well, then, step up to the tasting bar. All of our guests (21 years of age and older) are welcome and encouraged to enjoy samples of more than 42 unique grape and fruit wines. Not interested in wine? That’s OK, because we have a microbrew tasting going on for you, too. One location, one price. Every year the event has grown. Tickets are $35 in advance or $40 at the door.

GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900

• March 25: 20th Annual Table Top Expo and Business Networking Event, 4:30-7 p.m., at the Log Cabin Banquet and Meeting House, 500 Easthampton Road, Holyoke. Exhibitor cost: $125 for a table. Admission: $10 in advance or $15 at the door. To register, call (413) 584-1900 or e-mail [email protected].
• April 2: Arrive@ 5, 5-7 p.m., at PeoplesBank, 300 King St., Northampton. Sponsored by PeoplesBank. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Register at [email protected].
• April 10: Seminar, “Art of Small Business,” first in a three-part series, 9-10:30 a.m., at the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton. Presented by Don Lesser of Pioneer Training. Tickets: $20 for members, $25 for guests. Registration is required due to limited space.
• April 21: Seminar, “Art of Small Business,” second in a three-part series, 8:30- 9:30 a.m., at the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton. Presented by Tina Stevens of Stevens 470. The program is free, but registration is required due to limited space.
• May 7: Arrive@ 5, 5-7 p.m., at King & Cushman Inc.; 176 King St., Northampton. Sponsored by Applied Mortgage Services Corp., King Autobody, and Goggins Real Estate. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Register at [email protected].
• June 4: Arrive@ 5, 5-7 p.m., at Black Birch Vineyard. Sponsored by Johnson & Hill Staffing Services, the Creative, and viz-bang! Cost is $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Register at [email protected].

GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618

• April 3: Social Media Workshop, 8:30-10:30 a.m., at the Holiday Inn Express, 39 Southampton Road, Westfield. Presented by Alfonso Santaniello, the Creative Strategy Agency. Topic: engaging across platforms — how to create engaging content, what types of content should you be creating, how to distribute content through various platforms, and the importance of tracking along the way. Cost: free to Westfield Chamber members, $25 for non-members paid in advance. Seating is limited; register early. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.
• April 7: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., at Renaissance Manor, 37 Feeding Hills Road, Westfield. The GWCC invites you to have coffee with Mayor Daniel Knapik in a very informal setting. Hear first-hand from the mayor about key issues and get an update on construction projects. The mayor also welcomes any questions or concerns you may have. Free, informative, and open to the pubic. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618, or e-mail [email protected].
• April 9: After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., at Czar Energy, 53 North Elm St., Westfield. Don’t forget your business cards. Great connection opportunities. Bring a prospective new member for free. Members: advertise your business with a table top for $50. Hors d’oeuvres served. Walk-ins welcome. Haven’t been to an After 5? Your first one is free. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members (cash at the door). To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618, or e-mail [email protected].
• April 30: Beacon Hill Summit, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Beacon Hill Summit, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Hosted by state Sen. Gale Candaras. Spend a day at the State House and hear from key legislators and members of the Patrick administration in its final months in office. Cost: $180, which includes bus, lunch, and reception. For more information, call the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.professionalwomenschamber.com
(413) 755-1310

• April 8: PWC Ladies Night, 5-7 p.m., at Baystate Health, 325 King St., Northampton. An opportunity to network socially with other female professionals in a casual and unique setting. Reservations are complimentary but required by contacting Dawn Creighton at [email protected]. The Professional Women’s Chamber is an affiliate of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.

WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
413-426-3880

• April 2: Wicked Wednesday, 5-7 p.m., at Insurance Center of New England, Agawam. Free for chamber members, $10 for non-members. Event is open to the public; non-members must pay at the door. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events hosted by various businesses and restaurants, bringing members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. For more information, contact the chamber at (413) 426-3880 or [email protected].
• April 16: Networking Lunch, hosted by Cal’s, 12-1:30 p.m. Must be a member or guest of a member to attend. Enjoy a sit-down lunch while networking with fellow chamber members. Each attendee will get a chance to offer a brief sales pitch. The only cost is lunch; attendees will order off the menu and pay separately that day. We cannot invoice you. For more information, contact the chamber at (413) 426-3880 or [email protected].

YOUNG PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
www.springfieldyps.com

• March 27: CEO Luncheon, 11:45 a.m to 1:15 p.m., at Health New England, Monarch Place, Suite 1500, Springfield. Guest Speaker: Peter Straley, president and CEO of Health New England. Sponsored by Adam Quenneville Roofing, Siding, and Windows and BusinessWest. Members-only event; space is limited. CEO Luncheons are first-come, first served; seats up to 20 maximum.

Departments People on the Move

Jessica West

Jessica West

Easthampton Savings Bank announced that Jessica West has been promoted to Branch Officer at the Northampton Street office. West served as Assistant Manager with Eileen Hickle as Branch Officer before her retirement at the end of February. She joined the bank as a Senior Teller for the Belchertown office in 2002, was promoted to Assistant Branch Manager in Belchertown in 2008, then Assistant Branch Manager at the Northampton Street office in 2012. West graduated from Springfield Technical Community College with an associate degree in mechanical technologies, and has taken various CFT courses.
•••••


Candace Pereira

Candace Pereira

The Gray House has inducted Candace Pereira to a three-year term on its board of directors. Pereira, a Commercial Lending Officer at United Bank since 2005, served most recently as Senior Credit Analyst following earlier positions as Senior Commercial Loan Associate and Mortgage Representative. Pereira holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts and an associate degree in business administration from Springfield Technical Community College. The Gray House is a small neighborhood human-services agency in Springfield whose mission is to help its neighbors facing hardships to meet their immediate and transitional needs by providing food, clothing, and educational services in a safe, positive environment in the North End of Springfield.
•••••

Denise Dukette

Denise Dukette

Hampden Bank
announced three new members to its Business BankingCommercial Lending group:
• Denise Dukette, Vice President, Commercial Credit Officer, joined the bank in June 2013, as Vice President and Credit Officer of Business Banking. She oversees risk management, credit underwriting, and operational support for the bank’s business-lending functions. Dukette brings more than 30 years of managerial and lending experience, having held leadership roles at commercial and community banks in the Springfield and Hartford markets, including Fleet Bank, TD Bank, and United Bank. She has managed credit departments, loan review, risk management, loan operations, and commercial lending, as well as working at a Western Mass. economic-development agency. Dukette earned a bacherlor’s degree in economics at Wheaton College and an MBA from UConn;



James Babcock

James Babcock

James Babcock, Vice President, Commercial Lending, has spent nearly all of his 25 years in commercial lending at community banks in the Northern Conn. market, including United Bank, Simsbury Bank & Trust, and First National Bank of Suffield. His new role will include business development in Massachusetts and reaching out into Connecticut. Babcock has a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and earned an MBA from Babson College; and






John Downs

John Downs

John Downs, Vice President, Commercial Lending, brings more than 30 years of managerial and commercial-lending experience, having held leadership roles at community banks including PeoplesBank and Chicopee Savings Bank. Downs earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from American International College and an MBA from Western New England University.
•••••



Michael Linton

Michael Linton

Michael Linton, Owner of Michael’s Party Rentals in Ludlow, recently graduated from the Certified Event Rental Professional (CERP) program, developed by the American Rental Assoc. (ARA), one of the party and event rental industry’s most distinguished certifications. Recipients of the CERP certification were recognized at the Rental Show, ARA’s annual trade show and convention, in Orlando, Fla. in February.
•••••
Rick’s Place Inc. recently announced that Donald Mitchell, Director of Projects and Facilities at the YMCA of Greater Springfield and current Vice President of the Board of Directors, succeeds founding board President William Scatolini, who, along with Dan Sheehan and Glen Garvey, established Rick’s Place in memory of their friend from high school, Rick Thorpe, who died in Tower Two of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Mitchell brings enthusiasm and experience to Rick’s Place; since 2008, he operated a local nonprofit in Springfield, assisting small businesses, and has served on a state board and several nonprofit boards. Scatolini’s tenure as President of the board from 2007 to 2014 helped to establish Rick’s Place, and he will continue his involvement with the organization as a member of the executive committee. Rick’s Place, which opened in March 2007 with six youth, provides support to grieving young people and their families. Seven years later, the nonprofit has worked with hundreds of youth throughout Hampden County.

Company Notebook Departments

Bay Path Launches Online MS in Accounting
LONGMEADOW — Taking into consideration many of the specific challenges facing accountants and other professionals in that industry, Bay Path College recently announced the launch of a master of science in Accounting (MSA) degree designed to respond to their needs. Now registering classes for May 2014, the exclusively online MS, with one- and two-year tracks, holds no classes during the busy season for accountants, January through April. Three concentrations are offered, public accounting (tax and audit), private accounting, and forensic accounting. The curriculum of Bay Path’s MSA is also designed to satisfy the educational requirements for licensure as a CPA in over 40 states, including Massachusetts and Connecticut. In January 2014, Time magazine reported that accountants were one of the top five jobs in demand by employers, and the Department of Labor recently cited the occupation as one of the leading areas of job growth in the next decade. The American Assoc. of CPAs has shown that accountants with a master’s degree are likely to earn upward of 20% more than those with a lesser degree. Kara Stevens, who chairs the program, has years of professional experience in accounting. “At Bay Path, we understand how to teach technical accounting and what it’s like to work in the accounting industry,” she said. “Our accounting faculty have worked in the professions where students are either coming from or hope to be a part of, and that’s an important differentiator with our MSA. This makes the degree more relevant to the students’ professional goals.” For more information about the program and other graduate degrees, visit graduate.baypath.edu.

STCC Launches STEM Starter Academy
SPRINGFIELD — Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) has announced a new summer program that will allow incoming students a chance to get an early start on their college credits while also exploring the possibility of a career in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. The STEM Starter Academy will allow participants to earn a $1,000 stipend; take free college courses, including the College Success Seminar “Essentials of Engineering and Math”; participate in field trips; and learn from guest speakers and STEM experts currently working in the field. To apply to the STEM Starter Academy, a student must be a Massachusetts high-school graduate from the classes of 2012, 2013, or 2014, submit an STCC admissions application for the fall 2014 semester and a STEM Starter Academy application, possess a grade-point average of 2.0 or above, and have parental consent (for those under 18 years of age). The application deadline is May 9. According to Dr. Robert Dickerman, STCC dean of the School of Math, Sciences, and Engineering Transfer, STEM graduates are in high demand. The STEM Starter Academy is an opportunity for students to gain a better understanding of the STEM field, learn about career possibilities, as well as earn college credit toward a future degree. “The goal of the STEM Starter Academy is to get students interested in STEM careers,” said Dickerman. “Students may not always think a STEM degree is for them, but we want to show them there are a lot of places that degree can take them. Being a part of the STEM Starter Academy is a phenomenal opportunity for local students.”

Monson Savings Awards Grant to Link to Libraries
MONSON — Steven Lowell, president of Monson Savings Bank, presented a community-service recognition grant to Link to Libraries. The nonprofit was awarded the foundation’s grant award for being in the top of the community-service organizations in the bank’s areas of giving. “ Support from the Monson Savings Bank Foundation not only supports our programs, but enriches the lives of the children in Ware, Palmer, Wilbraham, Hampden, and Monson,” said Janet Crimmins, president of Link to Libraries. “These are sites in which this organization distributes thousands of books each year. We are honored by the support of this bank and its staff who donate countless hours engaging with the children in their community.”

OMG Introduces RedLine AFR Roof Drain
AGAWAM — OMG Roofing Products of Agawam has introduced the RedLine AFR Roof Drain, a tool-free system that provides for maximum allowable flow for gravity-based, open-channel roof-drainage systems. The RedLine AFR mechanical seal can be activated by hand, eliminating the need for tools and significantly reducing installation time. In extreme rain events, a head of water can develop and create a pressurized flow in some roof-drain fixtures, leading to failures in the building’s plumbing system. RedLine AFR’s design, featuring the RedLine AFR Vortex Breaker, has been tested for maximum allowable flow and to minimize the danger of creating pressurized flow. The patent-pending RedLine AFR Backflow Mechanical Seal can be installed by hand, creating a perfectly symmetrical, watertight connection and preventing over-tightening or under-tightening during installation. “The RedLine AFR Roof Drain is revolutionary in that it lets contractors install watertight, maximum allowable flow drains in half the time it would take to insert new drains and a fraction of the time it would take to rework or replace the drains,” said Dan Genovese, product manager with OMG Roofing Products. “Installation is tool-free and can be done in a single turn with two fingers, increasing productivity and accuracy. More important, the RedLine AFR Roof Drain is engineered to get water off the roof at a flow rate consistent with the building’s internal plumbing system.” RedLine AFR is installed from the rooftop so as not to disrupt building occupants, and has a one-piece seamless body for strength and durability as well as a heavy-duty, cast-aluminum strainer dome and clamping ring. The 10-inch-long drain stem can accommodate most existing field conditions and can be field-cut or obtained in longer lengths if needed. An extra-large flange allows positive attachment of roof-flashing membrane, and flanges are available with TPO or PVC coatings for hot-air welding. Headquartered in Agawam, OMG Roofing Products is North America’s largest manufacturer of commercial roofing products, featuring specialty fasteners, insulation adhesives, drains, pipe supports, emergency-repair tape, edge-metal systems, and productivity tools.

Fairview Hospital Lauded for Patient Experience
GREAT BARRINGTON — Fairview Hospital has been recognized with a 2013 Outstanding Patient Experience Award by Healthgrades, a leading online provider of comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals. Fairview Hospital was one of nine hospitals in Massachusetts to receive this distinction, and the only hospital so recognized in Western Mass., ranking among the top 15% of all hospitals that were evaluated. The Outstanding Patient Experience Award recognizes the high performance of hospitals that have been evaluated by their patients in surveys collected after their discharge from the hospital by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). “Berkshire Health Systems is proud of the exceptional care that is being provided to our patients in South Berkshire by Fairview Hospital,” said David Phelps, president and CEO of BHS. “The consistent level of high-quality care that Fairview’s physicians, nurses, and staff give to their patients is clearly reflected in the survey results for which this award is based. Fairview patients repeatedly relay their positive experiences, and BHS and Fairview are committed to maintaining that level of excellence.”

Briefcase Departments

Bradley Passenger Traffic Up Five Straight Months
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — With January passenger statistics tallied, the Connecticut Airport Authority (CAA) has announced that Bradley International Airport (BDL) has continued an upward trend which began in September 2013. January’s 9% rise marks five straight months of positive year-over-year increases. This follows September (1%), October (4%), November (3%), and December (20%), as Bradley showed an overall 1% total growth in 2013 (5,421,975 passengers) compared to 2012 figures (5,381,860 passengers). Improvements to Bradley’s route offerings, which were implemented throughout 2013, have helped drive this upswing. These advances include American Airlines’ daily non-stop flight to Los Angeles, JetBlue Airways’ Fort Myers and Tampa daily non-stop service, and Southwest Airlines’ three daily non-stop flights to Atlanta through its wholly-owned subsidiary, AirTran Airways. Numerous customer-service enhancements have been instituted as well, such as the establishment of a frequent-parker program, expanded concession offerings, and improvements to passenger-processing wait times. “The Connecticut Airport Authority takes great pride in achieving this milestone of revitalization. One of our greatest selling points to our customers, in addition to our convenient terminal and on-airport parking facilities, is Bradley’s tremendous accessibility from anywhere in the Northeast,” said Kevin Dillon, executive director of the CAA. “We believe that the best is yet to come. We are excited about working with all of our stakeholders as we continue to aggressively seek additional daily non-stop destinations for our customers from one of the region’s most convenient gateways.” Bradley is the second-largest airport in New England, serving an extensive geographic area with a customer base that covers the entire Northeast. According to the most recent economic-impact analysis, Bradley contributes $4 billion in economic activity to the state of Connecticut and the surrounding region, representing $1.2 billion in wages and 18,000 full-time jobs.

State to Issue $30 Million in Residential Solar Loans
BOSTON — Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rick Sullivan recently announced $30 million for a loan program aimed at encouraging residential solar projects, complementing the Commonwealth’s new solar program to be launched this spring. “When we support our solar industry, we are choosing to shape our future rather than leave it to chance,” Gov. Deval Patrick said. “These programs will allow the solar industry in Massachusetts to continue to flourish and will make solar energy more accessible for residents across the Commonwealth.” Added Sullivan, “the solar industry in Massachusetts has seen tremendous success since Gov. Patrick took office in 2007. The solar financing piece will make it easier for residents to participate in, and benefit from, the Commonwealth’s clean-energy revolution.” The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) is currently working with partners and stakeholders to develop the program, expected to launch this spring when the final solar regulations are promulgated. “We continue to work with all stakeholders at the table to develop successful programs to maintain the steady growth of the solar industry,” said DOER Commissioner Mark Sylvia. “I’m proud of the open and inclusive process that led to these regulations and will inform the loan program.” The flow of loans to the residential market is expected to commence in the summer or fall of 2014. The new solar regulations, part two of the Solar Renewable Energy Certificate program (SREC-II), are designed to meet Patrick’s goal to install 1,600 megawatts of solar energy by 2020. SREC-II aims to ensure steady annual growth, control ratepayer costs, and encourage ground-mounted solar projects on landfill and brownfield sites, as well as solar units on residential rooftops. “Investing in solar is a win for both our economy and our environment. This investment, in particular, will help spur the residential solar market,” said state Sen. Benjamin Downing, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy. “Instead of drilling or mining for our power, we’ll be using our rooftops to fuel future growth. Gov. Patrick and his entire team deserve great credit for their leadership in making this investment.”

Teenagers Find Difficulty Accessing Job Market
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Teenagers are getting squeezed out of the labor force in record numbers as unemployment among the youngest workers continues to soar, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. The study found that the percentage of teenagers with jobs has plunged by nearly half over a decade, from 44% in 2000 to 24% in 2011. “If this were any other group, you would call it a Great Depression,” said Andrew Sum, the Northeastern University economist who co-authored the study. Competition from older, more experienced workers pushed into lower-skilled jobs because of the weak economy has crowded out teenagers from traditional jobs in retail, restaurants, and other lower-paying service industries, Sum said. This lack of opportunity could have long-term effects on teens, the labor force, and the broader economy as young people fail to gain the experience that might help them advance careers and become more productive workers, resulting in lower earnings over a working life. The Brookings study examined teen employment in 100 metropolitan areas. In New England, Portland, Maine fared best, with about 37% of teens employed. Providence, Hartford, and Boston all posted percentages around 34%. Teens who had paid employment in one year were more likely to work the following year, the study found. Conversely, said Sum, “if you don’t work at all, you are the least likely to work the following year.”

Partnership to Benefit Creative Businesses
WESTERN MASS. — The state recently designated the Pioneer Valley as part of Massachusetts’ Creative Economy Network and formally partnered with the Western Mass. Economic Development Council (EDC) on an initiative to help creative businesses increase their visibility, recruit talent, find appropriate space, borrow capital, and continue to grow. The designation doesn’t come with state money, but several organizations are planning to apply for state grants. Ann Burke, vice president of the EDC, told the Republican that more than 15,000 people in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties work in the creative economy, an umbrella term that encompasses writers, fashion designers, graphic artists, and advertising professionals, among others. DevelopSpringfield, the Fostering Arts and Culture Project in Franklin County, and the Hampshire County Regional Tourism Council are among the other groups participating. Burke said the EDC has already hosted networking get-togethers for these creative workers.

Union Station Project Gets Another $16.5M
SPRINGFIELD — The state Department of Transportation (DOT) has designated another $16.5 million toward the renovation of Springfield’s Union Station. The decision completes the $65.7 million funding package necessary to fully finance the first phase of the redevelopment effort. The total project cost is expected to be $83 million. Phase one of the project involves the construction of a 26-bay bus terminal for regional and intercity bus service; construction of a four-level parking garage; a 37,000-square-foot renovation of the train terminal’s first floor and grand concourse waiting area, including new ticketing and waiting space; and concessions and retail space, according to the DOT’s news release. Work at Union Station began in August 2010 and is expected to be completed in 2016. “Springfield is located at a strategic crossroads for both north-south and east-west interstate highway and railroad corridors in a key region of the Commonwealth,” said Richard Davey, MassDOT secretary and CEO, in a prepared statement. “With these additional resources, the city of Springfield is guaranteed that its potential as a major regional mobility hub will be realized.” As part of the second phase, the Redevelopment Authority would renovate the upper two floors of the terminal building and create an additional 64,000 square feet of commercial or retail space, as well as expanding the parking garage by 120 spaces.

Health Policy Commission Issues $10M to Hospitals
BOSTON — At its first board meeting of 2014, the Health Policy Commission (HPC) awarded approximately $10 million to 28 community hospitals, including seven in Western Mass., to enhance the delivery of efficient, effective healthcare across the Commonwealth. The funds, which range from $65,000 to $500,000 per organization, come from Phase 1 of the HPC’s Community Hospital Acceleration, Revitalization, and Transformation (CHART) Investment Program, which was established by the state’s landmark healthcare cost-containment law. The Western Mass. awards include: $476,400 to Baystate Franklin Medical Center to support expansion of telemedicine capacities to select inpatient and outpatient specialties, with the goal of reducing unnecessary transfers and costs, and connecting local providers to health information exchanges; $499,600 to Baystate Mary Lane Hospital to support expansion of telemedicine capacities to identified inpatient and outpatient specialties, in order to reduce unnecessary transfers and costs, connect local providers to health information exchanges, and support an evaluation of post-acute services and capabilities in the region; $500,000 to Holyoke Medical Center to support implementation of an electronic health record system in the Emergency Department; $233,134 to Mercy Medical Center to support the development of organizational capabilities, capacities, and culture change, in order to accelerate and sustain continuous quality and safety improvements; $344,665 to Noble Hospital to support the development of a centralized scheduling hub to coordinate appointments across multiple hospital units, and to support planning related to health information exchange connectivity; $395,311 to North Adams Regional Hospital to support co-location of behavioral-health services at primary-care practices in Northern Berkshire County; and $357,000 to Wing Memorial Hospital to support achievement of meaningful use stage 1 compliance. “These awards show that the HPC is committed to partnering with community hospitals to achieve the Commonwealth’s cost-containment and quality-improvement goals,” said David Seltz, executive director of the HPC. “We look forward to continuing this work until we build a more coordinated and affordable healthcare system in all corners of Massachusetts.”

Departments Incorporations

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

AGAWAM

Elite Appliance Inc., 172 School St., Agawam, MA 01001. Richard G. Melloni Jr., same. Appliance repair.

Amherst

New England Charter Service Inc., 150 Fearing St., Suite 3, Amherst, MA 01002. Hui Luo, 13825 31st Dr., #5H, Flushing, NY 11354. Bus touring and travel service.

Belchertown

Little Friends Child Care Center Inc., 58 Daniel Shays Highway, Belchertown, MA 01007. Elizabeth Sawyer, same. Child care.

Easthampton

Miranda Design Studio Inc., 281 Main St., Easthampton, MA 01027. Jason Miranda, same. Publishing service and graphic design.

Feeding Hills

Nesen Trucking Inc., 95 West View Lane, Feeding Hills, MA 01030. Nikolay Nesen, same. Trucking.

Granby

Premier Irrigation Inc., 49 Taylor St., Granby, MA 01033. Colby Nugent, 55 Taylor St., Granby, MA 01033. Installation and maintenance of irrigation systems.

Hampden

Earth Movers Excavation Inc., 65 Allen St., Hampden, MA 01036. Kara J. Hatch, same. Excavation services and site work for residential, commercial, and municipal projects.

Hadley

Wheel Equal Inc., 44 North Maple St., Hadley, MA 01035. Michelle Moore, same. To conduct scientific research to further the development, production and provision of wheelchairs and adaptive equipment for persons with disabilities.

Hinsdale

Frontline Service Solutions Inc., 81 New Windsor Road, Hinsdale, MA 01235. Anthony E. Hyte, same. Consulting.

Holyoke

Ministerio Evaniglistico El Reino De Los Cielo Se Ha Acercado Inc., 339 Hampden St., First Floor, Holyoke, MA 01040. Keilyn M. Betancourt, same. Religious church.

Morales Xpress Inc., 50 Holy Family Road, Holyoke, MA 01040. Noel Morales, same. Transportation of goods (trucking).

Lee

Piretti Tennis Inc., 625 Chapel St., Suite 1C, Lee, MA 01238. Richard F. Piretti, same. Tennis court construction and maintenance.

Monson

Main Street Restaurants Inc., 216 Main St., Monson, MA 01057. Paul S. Stone Jr., same. Restaurant.

Monson Fire Department Assoc. Inc., 121 Fenton Road, Monson, MA 01057. Mathew Walch, same. To provide a relief fund for any active member of the Monson Fire Department, honorary member of the association, and their immediate family who are in need of financial aid.

DBA Certificates Departments

The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of and March 2014.

AGAWAM

D Enterprises
142 South West St.
Debrah Olson

DD Therrien Antiques
270 Main St.
Darryl Therrien

Living Our Past
44 Brookline Ave.
Bruce Cortis

RG Landscaping
508 Barry St.
Ryan Granfield

Sandra Marie Photography
118 Maple St.
Sandra M. James

Top Flite Financial of Agawam
1 South End Bridge Circle
Todd Freeman

CHICOPEE

Just Plum Designs
75 6th Ave.
Holly M. Parker

Morrissette Home Improvement
16 Frank St.
Joseph Morrissette

ZB Dream Homes
61 Taylor St.
Dariusz Borkowski

GREENFIELD

Balan Music
15 Summer St.
Rodica Balan

Magical Child
134 Main St.
Mary Walsh-Martel

Martin’s Farm Compost
341 Plain Road
Adam Martin

Pierce Street Ironworks
80 Pierce St.
John Passiglia

Take Stock, LLC
289 Main St.
Elizabeth Gadua

Wendy’s International
138 Federal St.
Rachel Caderre

HOLYOKE

Archetype Painting
78 Vermont St.
Nathan M. Jacques

Excalibur DJ Services
35 Bayberry Dr.
Traci Lamica

Food Forest Farm
24 Jones Ferry Road
Jonathan Bates

Hillside Auto Sales
911 Main St.
Michael J. Krassler

PALMER

Bonan Realty
2085 Main St.
Nancy Kane

CPL Marketing
3161 Main St.
Christopher Lees

Success Signal Broadcasting Real Oldies
3 Converse St.
Marshall Sanft

SPRINGFIELD

Imagefloors, LLC
23 Cortland St.
Jovann Martin

J & R Auto
720 Berkshire Ave.
Ronique Evans

Javier Alexander Arcinieg
47 Margaret St.
Javier Alexander

Jesus Christ Enlightened
141 Union St.
Emanuel Brown

Johnson St. Convenience
6 Johnson St.
Theophilus Waldon

La Hispaniola Grocery
455 Belmont Ave.
Joanny Quezada

Linda Boutillette Electronics
1364 Parker St.
Linda L. Hoch

Locust Market
261 Locust St.
Victor Camilo

M & B Fashion
318 Bay St.
Miguel Chauca

Miss Teen Horizonte Massa
24 Warriner Ave.
Maria R. Lozada

Mr. Handy
41 Cambridge St.
Allan Comberbatch

New England Painters
211 Verge St.
Mark Trombley

Perfect Genius Production
67 St. James Ave.
Michael D. Grant

Quick Clean Cleaning
55 Dwight Road
Louis Loya

Rev. Merrie W. Kaye
374 Grand Valley Road
Merrie W. Kaye

Samuel Smith Photography
81 Oak Hollow Road
Samuel A. Smith

Santana Electric
15 Jimmy Court
Daniel Santana

Solkaribe Restaurant
1236 Main St.
Jacqueline Sanchez

Stamps Realty
313 Eastern Ave.
Moriah L. Wilkins

Sumner Variety Convenience
1197 Sumner Ave.
Isaac Carrero

Surdoue Couture
475 Breckwood Blvd.
Lisa J. Goodman

Teresa’s Mama’s International
137 State St.
Teresa Williams

WESTFIELD

Ground Units BJJ
16 Union St.
Alfonso Rodriguez

Livia & Amelia
140 Union St.
Ludmila Ciubotaru

Peer Brothers Trucking Company
1010 East Mountain Road
Peter M. Skrodzki

Snargle Inc.
29 Camelot Lane
Frank Blahut

Stephanie M. Haskins
2 Russell Road
Stephanie Haskins

T’s Household Services
9 Charles St.
Tina Ritchie

Westfield Creative Arts
105 Elm St.
Lester Walshin

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Bottega Cucina
46 Morgan Road
Hillenbrand, LLC

Cutting Edge Lawn Care
791 Piper Road
Jeffrey Zalewski

Darlene Kurman & Associates
158 Edgewood Road
Darlene A. Kurman

Goyette Project Management
650 Birnie Ave.
Gary G. Goyette

Lincare Inc.
53 Capital Dr.
Lincare Inc.

Pleasant Valley Real Estate
865 Memorial Ave.
Nicholas Katsoulis

Real Estate Career Institute
776 Westfield St.
Patrick Nolan

Sorrento’s Pizza of West Springfield
660 Kings Highway
Pasquale Albano

Departments Real Estate

The following real estate transactions (latest available) were compiled by Banker & Tradesman and are published as they were received. Only transactions exceeding $115,000 are listed. Buyer and seller fields contain only the first name listed on the deed.

FRANKLIN COUNTY

BERNARDSTON

3 Eden Trail
Bernardston, MA 01337
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Steven Kubisch
Seller: Springleaf Financial Services
Date: 02/21/14

DEERFIELD

236 Greenfield Road
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $730,000
Buyer: Massachusetts Dept. of Transportation
Seller: Gregory M. Gardner
Date: 02/12/14

5 Industrial Dr. West
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $3,800,000
Buyer: LNR Mass Partners LLC
Seller: Deerfield Plaza LLC
Date: 02/12/14

Settright Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: James M. Pasiecnik
Seller: William W. Melnik
Date: 02/21/14

GREENFIELD

40 Conway St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $132,400
Buyer: Andrew M. Cole
Seller: Robert K. Foley
Date: 02/20/14

25 Frederick Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $166,000
Buyer: Paul J. Levasseur
Seller: Stanley H. Karpinski
Date: 02/14/14

46 Grinnell St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $172,000
Buyer: Mitchell Penfield
Seller: Deborah A. Chauvin
Date: 02/14/14

MONTAGUE

28 Bridge St.
Montague, MA 01349
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Millers Falls Ent. LLC
Seller: Burek Cross Props. LLC
Date: 02/21/14

67 Oakman St.
Montague, MA 01376
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Casey R. Fahey
Seller: Paul C. Griffin
Date: 02/21/14

362 Turners Falls Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Margaret M. Vezina
Seller: Gennadiy S. Konakh
Date: 02/14/14

21 West Main St.
Montague, MA 01349
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Millers Falls Ent. LLC
Seller: Burek Cross Props. LLC
Date: 02/21/14

ORANGE

40 Shelter St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Robert S. St.Marie
Seller: Craig T. Deveneau
Date: 02/21/14

SHELBURNE

247 Main St.
Shelburne, MA 01370
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: 247-251 Main LLC
Seller: Bertha A. Rainville
Date: 02/20/14

HAMPDEN COUNTY

AGAWAM

45 Family Lane
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $366,500
Buyer: Nathan L. Hall
Seller: Albert R. Kingan
Date: 02/13/14

14 George St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $146,250
Buyer: Sergey Sholopa
Seller: Laviolette, Elaine, (Estate)
Date: 02/21/14

16 Meadow St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $197,500
Buyer: Racheal A. Paveglio
Seller: Karen E. Daponde
Date: 02/21/14

51 Robin Ridge Dr.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $235,187
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Catherine Fatemi
Date: 02/10/14

BRIMFIELD

28 East Hill Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $405,000
Seller: Dennis A. McCurdy
Date: 02/11/14

CHICOPEE

106 Bell St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $227,000
Buyer: Michael J. Dupell
Seller: Carl D. Roy
Date: 02/18/14

17 Factory St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $174,000
Buyer: Rachel E. Loomis
Seller: USA VA
Date: 02/12/14

62 Leona Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Ivelisse Vicente
Seller: Touchette, Dorothy G., (Estate)
Date: 02/19/14

122 Pine St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Paul Laflamme
Seller: Susan M. Rusiecki
Date: 02/18/14

28 Pleasant St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $118,000
Buyer: Marta Syper
Seller: Solecki, Karoline, (Estate)
Date: 02/19/14

463 Springfield St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: L. A. Conner Inc.
Seller: Lucilia Nogueira
Date: 02/11/14

60 Whitman St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $150,003
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: William E. Woods
Date: 02/13/14

EAST LONGMEADOW

227 Kibbe Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Larry D. Fishbein
Seller: Laplante Construction Inc.
Date: 02/14/14

17 Redstone Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $199,900
Buyer: Amro M. Osman
Seller: Margaret J. Crowe
Date: 02/19/14

26 Rogers Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $216,000
Buyer: Daniel Fritz
Seller: John L. Occhialini
Date: 02/14/14

200 Shaker Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $440,000
Buyer: ABE Property Mgmt. LLC
Seller: Caceres Ferez Gomez Realty
Date: 02/20/14

15 Wedgewood Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $139,000
Buyer: Megan L. Boylan
Seller: FNMA
Date: 02/12/14

HAMPDEN

158 Ames Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Carl A. Knodler
Seller: David H. Cox
Date: 02/14/14

HOLYOKE

1395 Dwight St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $124,936
Buyer: Lasalle Bank
Seller: Luis D. Rodriguez
Date: 02/20/14

2213 Northampton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Olga Alkattan
Seller: MKD Properties of Holyoke
Date: 02/18/14

LONGMEADOW

Lincoln Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Campagnari Construction LLC
Seller: Erika M. Crossman
Date: 02/20/14

LUDLOW

200 Chapin St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Atwater Investors Inc.
Seller: Pamela Wells
Date: 02/14/14

181 Massachusetts Ave.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Brad Dakers
Seller: Joann L. Hnatow
Date: 02/18/14

55 Paulding Road
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $253,000
Buyer: Daniel K. Saia
Seller: Gervasio Crespo
Date: 02/12/14

155 Tower Road
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Jennifer M. Pazos
Seller: Cynthia M. Pazos
Date: 02/13/14

MONSON

243 Moulton Hill Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $167,999
Buyer: Katie Defoe-Raymond
Seller: Bank New York Mellon
Date: 02/14/14

MONTGOMERY

1527 Southampton Road
Montgomery, MA 01085
Amount: $377,000
Buyer: Craig A. Dore
Seller: Matthew K. Wolanczyk
Date: 02/10/14

PALMER

31 Birch St.
Palmer, MA 01080
Amount: $163,863
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Kevin D. Armitage
Date: 02/11/14

4148 Main St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $177,500
Buyer: Dale L. Menard
Seller: Wesley T. Blask
Date: 02/19/14

360 Palmer St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $200,583
Buyer: MHFA
Seller: Lynn C. Trombley
Date: 02/18/14

RUSSELL

723 Woodland Way
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Richard C. Gallup
Seller: Mike Kamyshin
Date: 02/21/14

SPRINGFIELD

82 Biltmore St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $115,600
Buyer: Ryan E. Hutchins
Seller: MDK Prop Solutions LLC
Date: 02/10/14

28 Campechi St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $135,900
Buyer: Dana J. Anderson
Seller: Shannon Lawrence
Date: 02/18/14

1131 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Roxana Toledo
Seller: Silver Hammer Props. LLC
Date: 02/21/14

30 Corona St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Kyle A. Watt
Seller: William J. Boutin
Date: 02/19/14

93 Curve St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Israel J. Rosario
Seller: John Bechard
Date: 02/20/14

19 Dennis St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $131,500
Buyer: Patricia A. Cawley
Seller: William J. Kern
Date: 02/18/14

256 Edendale St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $124,000
Buyer: Bridge O’Connor
Seller: Eric A. Johnson
Date: 02/21/14

25 Elliot St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Long Wharf Financial
Seller: Angela Dennis
Date: 02/12/14

27 Elliot St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Long Wharf Financial
Seller: Angela Dennis
Date: 02/12/14

3 Glendell Ter.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $177,000
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Josefina Fernandez
Date: 02/10/14

116 Hampden St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $159,397
Buyer: USA HUD
Seller: MHFA
Date: 02/18/14

38 Madison Ave.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $199,900
Buyer: Christinas House Inc.
Seller: Cottage Hill Church
Date: 02/13/14

15 Mattoon St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $128,775
Buyer: Robert D. Porter
Seller: John Russo
Date: 02/20/14

48 Pine Acre Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $166,000
Buyer: Miguel A. Martinez
Seller: JJS 17 Acquisition Co. LLC
Date: 02/21/14

66 Rencelau St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $157,000
Buyer: James Maples
Seller: Christopher W. Gaff
Date: 02/20/14

799 Sumner Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $163,740
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Gregory J. Lyon
Date: 02/10/14

25 Walnut St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $320,000
Buyer: Strategic Acquisitions
Seller: SJE Properties LLC
Date: 02/18/14

SOUTHWICK

9 Jered Lane
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $393,000
Buyer: Marissa R. Monti
Seller: Janice S. Lafrance
Date: 02/20/14

WESTFIELD

39 Jessie Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $322,500
Buyer: Greg H. Connors
Seller: FHLM
Date: 02/14/14

82 Pontoosic Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $191,000
Buyer: Ryan M. Flynn
Seller: J&C Property Services Inc.
Date: 02/20/14

13 State St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $196,634
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Marcus A. Jaiclin
Date: 02/12/14

WILBRAHAM

10 Patriot Ridge Lane
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $460,000
Buyer: James Rocha
Seller: Christian A. Barthelette
Date: 02/21/14

17 Stirling Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $243,000
Buyer: Katherine Schmidt
Seller: Sean P. Devine
Date: 02/12/14

WEST SPRINGFIELD

67 Cornflower Dr.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Felix Lopez
Seller: Russo, Patrick F., (Estate)
Date: 02/21/14

50 East Gooseberry Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $141,500
Buyer: Douglas H. Dreyer
Seller: Mark A. Biseinere
Date: 02/21/14

121 Kings Hwy.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $174,000
Buyer: Wells Fargo Bank
Seller: Paula J. Dalzovo
Date: 02/11/14

78 Lowell St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: George M. Katsoulis
Seller: Stephen G. Danalis
Date: 02/14/14

84 Nelson St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $188,500
Buyer: Celine L. Young
Seller: Joseph L. Larrivee
Date: 02/21/14

380 Union St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $4,000,000
Buyer: 380 Union LLC
Seller: 380 Union St. Props. LLC
Date: 02/14/14

2146 Westfield St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $192,500
Buyer: Ryan C. Cramton
Seller: Richard F. Seidell
Date: 02/21/14

92 Wolcott Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $149,000
Buyer: Melissa E. Trombley
Seller: Sherri S. Sbalbi
Date: 02/21/14

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY

AMHERST

1141 Bay Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $316,000
Buyer: Amit Sharma
Seller: Nomi Kluger-Nash
Date: 02/14/14

17 Curtis Place
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Vhristina G. Salgo
Seller: Vincent J. Vullo
Date: 02/14/14

48 Longmeadow Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: J. M. Hess
Seller: Robbie S. Lauter
Date: 02/14/14

525 West St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $212,000
Buyer: Yili Chen
Seller: Margarita C. Zamora RET
Date: 02/14/14

BELCHERTOWN

23 Emily Lane
Belchertown, MA 01002
Amount: $379,000
Buyer: Jason F. Randall
Seller: JP Builders Inc.
Date: 02/14/14

454 Federal St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $161,500
Buyer: Lisa A. Laflamme
Seller: Ronald T. McClure
Date: 02/12/14

EASTHAMPTON

23 Button Road
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $351,245
Buyer: Kerrybeth A. Garvey
Seller: EH Homeownership LLC
Date: 02/10/14

9 Dragon Circle
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $206,500
Buyer: Jane N. Aulisio
Seller: Gentes, Joseph P., (Estate)
Date: 02/14/14

24 Grant St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $365,000
Buyer: LTL LLC
Seller: Mason F. Rapaport
Date: 02/14/14

25 Peloquin Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $206,500
Buyer: Amanda M. Guyette
Seller: Kathleen L. Emet
Date: 02/18/14

8 Pine Hill Road
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Boriana Canby
Seller: Jonathan W. Sicard
Date: 02/21/14

GRANBY

489 East State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: FMJ Realty LLC
Seller: Nathan A. Swistak
Date: 02/21/14

5 Mary Lyon Dr.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Christopher J. McCurdy
Seller: Melissa M. Croteau
Date: 02/14/14

139 South St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $212,000
Buyer: Kevin J. Longo
Seller: Kenneth W. Richards Sr. RET
Date: 02/19/14

24 Truby St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $169,900
Buyer: James D. Cronk
Seller: MacBrien, Arlene L., (Estate)
Date: 02/14/14

HADLEY

93 Bay Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Raymond R. Rex
Seller: Walter C. Wanczyk
Date: 02/19/14

HATFIELD

129 Depot Road
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $264,000
Buyer: Meaghan L. Tetreault
Seller: Glenn E. Moore
Date: 02/12/14

7 Elm Ct.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Barbara E. Folan
Seller: Birrington, Richard E., (Estate)
Date: 02/14/14

11 Prospect Ct.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: David A. Raimondi
Seller: FNMA
Date: 02/20/14

HUNTINGTON

County Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Hamlet Homes LLC
Seller: Mountain Stream Inc.
Date: 02/12/14

NORTHAMPTON

21 Crosby St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Cynthia L. Nolan
Seller: Julia A. Root
Date: 02/12/14

122 Pine St.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: William S. Laidlaw
Seller: Florence Congregational Church
Date: 02/14/14

9 Trumbull Road
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $534,000
Buyer: Eric N. Wolpin
Seller: Carolyn A. Booth TR
Date: 02/10/14

1526 Westhampton Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $615,000
Buyer: Timothy V. Parsons
Seller: Paul C. McCutcheon
Date: 02/14/14

PELHAM

29 Jones Road
Pelham, MA 01002
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Damien M. O’Halloran
Seller: Kenneth W. Doubleday
Date: 02/18/14

SOUTH HADLEY

145 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Halley R. Orfner
Seller: John D. Leonard
Date: 02/12/14

78 Lyman St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $159,000
Buyer: Thomas A. Lazio
Seller: Martha A. Berrouard
Date: 02/14/14

41 River Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $142,500
Buyer: J. L. Kidder
Seller: Scott M. Dredge
Date: 02/13/14

SOUTHAMPTON

8 Glendale Woods Dr.
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $293,000
Buyer: Phillip Gallaspie
Seller: Rita J. Ramsey
Date: 02/14/14

64 Pleasant St.
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $148,000
Buyer: Michael A. Sorokin
Seller: James R. Labrie
Date: 02/21/14

WARE

13 Kingsberry Lane
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: James Desabrais
Seller: Stanley R. Lamb
Date: 02/14/14

278 Osborne Road
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $239,900
Buyer: Michael J. Lacroix
Seller: Joel J. Harder
Date: 02/11/14

WESTHAMPTON

134 Easthampton Road
Westhampton, MA 01027
Amount: $192,000
Buyer: Paul C. McCutcheon
Seller: Thomas Martin
Date: 02/21/14

Bankruptcies Departments

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

Ames, Alfred G.
Sanders-Ames, Margaret R.
93 Redlands St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/21/14

Aponte, Andres
a/k/a Sanabria, Andres Aponte
20 Jardine St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Arkon Games LLC
Stock’s Eye
Stock, Robert Andrew
148 West St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Athas, Kenneth J.
62 Willwood St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/18/14

Baranowski, Linda M.
170 East St.
Chesterfield, MA 01012
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Bartolucci, Jennifer L.
30 Burleigh Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Blais, Scott Anthony
Richter-Blais, Karen Marie
48 Pineywood Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Boateng, Kwabena K.
a/k/a Boateng, Edmund
Amoakoh, Akua A.
289 Arcadia Blvd.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Bolling, Deanna N.
37 Bossidy Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Brennan, Patricia E.
1593 Mohawk Trail
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Brosseau, Sandra Jean
65 Craig Dr., Unit U-4
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/20/14

Camerlin, Timothy J.
15 Brainard Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Carter, Bruce M.
308 Montcalm St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Chantre, David A.
8 Ingram St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/24/14

Chantre, Shelly K.
42 High St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/24/14

Courtney, Lana D.
222 Federal St., Apt. B
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/18/14

Cruz, Ermelinda
58 Los Angeles St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Daniels, Bruce
15 Linden St., Apt. 1
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Duffney, Lisa R.
147 Arnold Ave.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Gonzalez, Edwin
24 Home St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Greenhouse, Enid Sally
108 Everett St., #202
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Guhl, Jay C.
Guhl, Teresa R.
30 Brookfield St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Hall, Joanna F.
209 Connecticut Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/25/14

Harrison, Jennifer L.
c/o Ostrander Law Office
P.O. Box 1237
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Holmes, Kevin Robert
Holmes, Elizabeth M.
266 Plainfield Road
Ashfield, MA 01330
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Holmes, Sonja N.
208 Meetinghouse Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Honeywell, Virginia May
107 Jabish St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

June, Michael J.
98 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/19/14

Koski, Matthew Stephen
Koski, Carolyn Camerota
307 Stafford Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Lafountain, Thomas H.
13 Roger St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/18/14

Lally, Michael T.
438 Spring St.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/25/14

Leveille, Michael R.
Leveille, Theresa
57 Pequot Point Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Massery, John A.
40 Vista St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/19/14

McGregor, Joseph Conrad
a/k/a Bethel-McGregor, Joseph C.
211 Francis Ave., Apt. A
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Merrick, Shad W.
Merrick, Michelle N.
106 Ridge Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Mettig, John Robert
Mettig, Gwendolyn Joan
29 Hampshire St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Morales, Lori L.
a/k/a Garcia, Lori
95 Methuen St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Palmer, Lily
145 Center St.
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/25/14

Perales, Jose A.
a/k/a Perales-Romero, Jose
126 Hastings St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Perrault, Leonard M.
Perrault, Ruth P.
112 Strong Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Polidoro, Rebecca Lynn
a/k/a Frazier, Rebecca Lynn
30 Melba St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Ricciardi, Adrienne E.
41 Marci St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/19/14

Robbins, Michelle J.
42 Quarry Hill
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Seguin, Craig
Correa, Sonhja
12 Chase Ave.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/17/14

Serrano, Victor M.
49 Cass St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/25/14

Shaw, Elizabeth E.
102 Blisswood Dr.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Sinopoli, David J.
154 McIntosh Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/25/14

Smith, Mary Alice
17 Caldwell Place
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/28/14

Smith, Ralph A.
Smith, Selinda M.
156 Lukasik St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Surbaugh, Dailene
52 Summer St., Apt. 2R
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/26/14

Tirrell, Pamela J.
31 Cleveland St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/21/14

Torres, Theresa M.
61 Russell St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/19/14

Velazquez, Alfredo
133 Springfield St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/27/14

Vizcarrando, Herminio A.
60 Virginia St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/21/14

Welles, Michael J.
8 Summit Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/21/14

Welles, Michelle Lynn
42 Vladish Ave.
Turners Falls, MA 01376
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/21/14

Banking and Financial Services Sections
Understand What Such a Commitment Would Require

Carolyn Bourgoin

Carolyn Bourgoin

As a business professional in Western Mass., there is a high likelihood that you have been approached (or will be approached) to serve on a board.

This region has a significant concentration of nonprofit and charitable organizations, and, therefore, there is often a need for capable and willing board members. When receiving such a request, the first step to take before accepting is determining what roles and responsibilities such a commitment would require.

All too often, however, the review of the organization’s tax filings, including the Form 990, is missing among those responsibilities. This is a significant task and should not be taken lightly.

As a board member of a charitable organization, you have a responsibility to periodically confirm with management that these items are accurate and current. But your responsibility with respect to the Form 990 does not end there, as the IRS expects management to provide the full board with a copy of the Form 990 prior to it being filed. The board may designate a committee to review the Form 990, but must disclose this on the 990.

This filing is open to public inspection on Guidestar and the Massachusetts attorney general’s website. The board should make sure the Form 990 properly represents the organization to potential donors and other interested parties.

Unfortunately, reviewing the Form 990 can seem like a time-consuming task, especially if you are unfamiliar with such tax documents. This article will provide suggestions on what to look for and highlight some of the more critical sections of the form.

• Start by scanning the first two pages of the return to make sure the summary comparison of financial information between the current and prior years makes sense, and that the mission statement is properly disclosed. The organization’s top three programs should be listed along with the related expenses and program revenues. Board members are responsible for ensuring that the organization’s charitable role is being effectively carried out in furtherance of its mission, so it is important to ensure that its programs are in line with its mission.

• Proper governance policies should be your next focus. The IRS encourages charities to adopt a written conflict-of-interest policy that requires directors and staff to act solely in the interest of the charity. The Form 990 questions whether such a policy was adopted and, if so, how the policy was monitored during the year. Also questioned are the policies used for setting executive and top-management compensation.

Both the IRS and the state attorney general’s office expect the board to be involved in approving the compensation and benefits of the CEO, including comparing the salary to other executives in similar fields. A board that is actively involved in setting executive compensation should be at lower risk for complaints being filed regarding excess compensation or private benefits inuring to top officials.

As more and more exempt organizations become involved in joint ventures or similar arrangements, the Form 990 questions whether a charity has adopted a written policy concerning its involvement in these investments. The IRS expects a tax-exempt organization to safeguard its assets and exempt status from a risky investment arrangement.

• A list of board members at year end must be disclosed. This helps determine whether the board is the appropriate size to carry out its duties for the organization. Very large boards may have a difficult time making decisions. In this situation, an executive committee with delegated responsibilities might be effective. Yet, small boards may lack the broad knowledge and skills to properly govern the organization. Regardless of the size of the board, the IRS expects that it not be dominated by employees and others who may not be independent because of family or business relationships. There are several questions on the Form 990 pertaining to this issue.

• Revenue sources disclosed on the Form 990 should be evaluated to determine whether the organization has unrelated trade or business income that may require a Form 990T (required to calculate any potential income tax). Certain partnership investments and activities that do not further the organization’s purpose may generate such income.

• Public charities that solicit funds, which are typically evidenced by the presence of contribution revenue on the Form 990, should make sure that they track and disclose fund-raising costs on the Form 990. Those that hire professional fund-raisers or grant writers must make additional disclosures on Schedule G. Fund-raising events should also be disclosed on this schedule.

• Board members of public charities should look over Schedule A, as the testing on this form determines whether the organization remains a public charity or is converted to a private foundation. While there are different tests to calculate public support, each excludes gifts from certain donors. If the public support percentage is nearing 33.3%, the organization is in danger of becoming a private foundation, and steps must be taken to broaden the overall public support of the organization.

• Transactions between the organization and disqualified or interested persons may require disclosure on Schedule L. This includes business transactions, depending on the amount, as well as grants or loans. One of the main goals of the new Form 990 is to enhance transparency, so it is essential that the organization properly disclose related party transactions.

These are some of the more significant areas of the Form 990. The form, easily obtainable on the Internet, is a reflection on the organization and the board. In order to fulfill your fiduciary duties as a board member, it is important that you have an understanding of this filing and take part in its review.

If you have questions regarding your organization’s tax filings, including the Form 990, be sure to contact your organization’s accounting professional.

Carolyn Bourgoin is a senior tax manager for the Holyoke-based public accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.;  (413) 322-3483; [email protected]

Opinion
A Potential Wellspring of Job Growth

To look around the facilities at Alliance Upholstery, located in the former Bottaro Skolnick building in Springfield’s South End, one might gain a new perspective on the phrase ‘humble beginnings.’

Alliance is a decades-old and very successful upholstery business that operates in what could only be called a no-frills environment — that’s an industry term of sorts — in the century-old building where monkey wrenches, one of Springfield’s many ‘firsts,’ were manufactured.

Sharing space with Alliance is something called the Wellspring Upholstery Cooperative, or WUC, the first in what will hopefully be a network of businesses created to tap into the huge buying power possessed by the region’s colleges, healthcare facilities, and other large institutions, and create worker-owned businesses — and much-needed jobs (see story on page 6).

Wellspring, which, as the name suggests, is designed to created a continuous supply of jobs and opportunities, was inspired by similar initiatives elsewhere, including the hugely successful Evergreen Collaboratives in Cleveland and the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain, which to date have created more than 100 businesses now employing more than 80,000 people.

Ventures like Wellspring have to start somewhere, and this one started with a few dozen booths from a dining commons at UMass Amherst, several chairs from the Westfield mayor’s office, and a few items from the campus hotel at UMass, projects that have kept the first WUC employees busy.

The hope, and expectation, is that there will soon be many more upholstery projects and employees to handle those assignments, and then the creation of more businesses, such as a greenhouse operation that could supply those aforementioned anchor businesses with fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as a commercial laundry, such as the one created by Evergreen, one of its most successful ventures.

We believe that it can happen, and will happen, largely because there are a number of anchor businesses and partners committed to making this a success. That first list includes Baystate Health, the Sisters of Providence Health System, UMass Amherst, Springfield Technical Community College, and Western New England University. The latter includes the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County, Partners for a Healthier Community, and the United Way of Pioneer Valley.

Beyond this large and solid base of support, though, is the understanding that a venture like Wellspring needs to work.

Indeed, economic development takes many forms, from attracting new businesses to helping existing ventures expand, to creating new business sectors, such as the biosciences. One that’s often overlooked is generating development in neighborhoods where private investment is rare, if it occurs at all, and Springfield has many of those.

Meanwhile, generating jobs in such neighborhoods is not only an economic-development issue, but a health issue as well — jobs are certainly a key component to a healthy community, and a lack of jobs is one of the factors that has made Hampden County the least healthy county in the state in recent years.

At the moment, the program created by all those aforementioned partners has created a wellspring of potential. In time, and perhaps not much of it, it may indeed become a key source of opportunities and jobs.

From the current humble beginnings, great things are possible, and likely. v

Features
Women’s Fund Event on May 1 Will Launch 100 Good Men Campaign

Kate Kane

Kate Kane

The name isn’t what one would expect from an event sponsored by the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts. And that, Kate Kane notes, is exactly the point.

“We have lots of women sponsors and donors, but not as many men,” said Kane, president of the Women’s Fund board, in explaining the rationale behind “100 Good Men – Bourbon, Cigars, & Stella,” an event slated for May 1 at Twin Hills Country Club in Longmeadow.

“This is a chance to broaden our scope of funders and reach out to people prominently attached to the business community in Springfield — to get more men involved in what, really, are critical issues for everybody,” she said, noting that key issues for the Women’s Fund include economic justice, freedom from violence, and access to education. “These are issues that affect the whole community, not just women.”

Thus, an event that appeals to men. Product sponsors include M.S. Walker for the bourbon, Williams Distributing for the Stella Artois beer, and Connecticut Cigar Co. Attendees will also enjoy an array of food stations, as well as live music. BusinessWest is the event’s media sponsor.

The goal, Kane said, is to get 100 professional men to pledge $1,000 — annually or over a two-year commitment — for WFWM projects.

“This is an outreach,” she said. “We have decided to put priority status on Hampden County, in particular men in the Hampden County professional community. Our ties in Hampden County aren’t as strong as they are in some other areas, and this should cement our connection to the community and hopefully broaden the base of people we can call on.”

The event is part of a larger effort, called the 100 Good Men Campaign, with several ambitions: to connect men in Western Mass. to the mission and impact of the Women’s Fund, to celebrate and publicly acknowledge men’s support of the women and girls in their lives, to educate the community about the cooperation between women and men in meeting social challenges, and to encourage men’s philanthropic support of the Women’s Fund.

The event runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m., and tickets cost $100. Like all money the Women’s Fund takes in, proceeds will be deployed in the four counties of Western Mass.

Michelle Depelteau, who chairs the Women’s Fund’s corporate committee, stressed that the evening is not just for men. “Women will be there as well. The idea is reaching deeper into the business community with hopes of spreading a greater awareness of what the Women’s Fund is doing.”

Ten ‘honorary hosts’ will be introduced at the event, essentially the first handful of men to commit to financially supporting the campaign. These include Jeremy Casey, president of the Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield; Paul Doherty, partner with Doherty, Wallace, Pillsbury & Murphy; Jeff Fialky, partner with Bacon Wilson, P.C.; Bill Trudeau, president of the Insurance Center of New England; Bill Wagner, president of Chicopee Savings Bank; Anthony Cignoli, president of A.L. Cignoli Co., Michael Vann, principal at the Vann Group; U.S. Rep. Richard Neal; state Rep. Aaron Vega; and Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno.

“It’s an idea the committee came up with to move our mission forward,” Kane said. “It’s a fun idea, a little different for us, not something we’ve tried before. We’re going to test it and see how it goes.”

Added Depelteau, “we’re hoping to open people’s eyes to the potential they have to make a difference in our region. This event is about creating a just community for the women and girls who work among us.”

— Joseph Bednar

Commercial Real Estate Sections
The Experiments Continue in John Aubin’s Evolving Open Square

OpenSquareDPartAs John Aubin talked about Open Square, the massive former mill complex along the canals in downtown Holyoke that has been his passion for the past dozen years or more, he continually referred to it as an “urban laboratory” — for architecture, planning, sustainability, and economic development.

By that, he meant this was a place to experiment and drive innovation in response to an ongoing movement that has more people apparently willing and able to work, live, and locate businesses in urban settings, although many cities are struggling to take full advantage of that phenomenon.

To succeed in this environment and move the needle in Holyoke when it comes to attracting businesses there, Aubin said he doesn’t focus on filling square footage in an old mill. Rather, he’s committed to creating workspaces in which business owners can thrive.

“My business is really about creating an environment for people to live in, work in, socialize in, and play in,” he explained. “The real-estate development is almost secondary; as an architect, designer, and planner, that’s what I’m really doing — creating that environment.”

Aubin believes this philosophy is working and creating great progress in his laboratory. Over the past decade, he told BusinessWest, he’s been adding five new businesses a year, and all of these ventures are new to downtown Holyoke.

The tenant list now includes more than 50 companies employing more than 200 people in sectors ranging from healthcare to technology; from insurance to marketing; from finance to hospitality.

John Aubin, owner of Open Square

John Aubin, owner of Open Square

And the latest addition to that list could be one of the most significant.

VertitechIT, a networking and IT engineering company that provides a wide range of services to clients, many of the them in the healthcare sector, is planning to move into 3,500 square feet of custom-designed space on the mostly undeveloped third floor of what’s known as Mill 4. And it could expand into more than 9,000 square feet across the hall if the firm successfully consolidates currently outsourced services on that site, as planned, said the company’s president, Michael Feld.

“We’ll need that space for a 24/7/365 support center with probably 25 to 30 people in it,” Feld said, adding that, even if those plans do not come to fruition, the company will likely continue its pattern of doubling in size each year and will certainly need additional space.

VertitechIT’s new offices, which should be ready for occupancy next month, are an example of Aubin’s efforts to create an attractive, efficient, custom (that’s a word you’ll read again) work environment that makes Open Square — and Holyoke — an attractive destination for businesses across many sectors.

“We wanted a space that is quite presentable to clients, but the real value is to the engineers,” Feld explained. “For example, everybody loves whiteboards, so all the walls are curved, with large expanses of painted whiteboard so you can write on it. And our conference-room table is glass that you can write on as well.

“There are a lot of large screens in various places, and the desks are designed so that people can collaborate on projects,” he went on. “The whole site is a visual interpretation of the way we work.”

Looking forward, Aubin said he plans to continue his pattern of steady growth. What direction it will take is still to be determined as Holyoke continues its comeback from the extreme hard times of the ’70s and ’80s, fueled by the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs and demographic shifts that saw the nation’s first planned industrial city become one of the poorer communities in the Commonwealth.

Recent developments such as the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, the emergence of a creative economy, and a more positive outlook about the community could attract many different kinds of businesses to the city — and Open Square, said Aubin. Meanwhile, plans to bring rail service to Holyoke could open other kinds of doors, he said, adding that there is preliminary talk about the prospects for developing a hotel at one of the mills on the Open Square complex (more on that later).

For this issue and its focus on commercial real estate, BusinessWest toured Open Square, gaining a perspective on both the many new developments there in recent years and possible future development on this historic site.

History Lessons

As he elaborated on that notion of Open Square as a laboratory, Aubin referenced that trend toward urban living and working. He said Holyoke is squarely in the middle of this phenomenon, and perhaps better positioned than others to take full advantage of it.

“We all know that, over the past 10 years, the world has become more urban. Demand is growing for urban space,” he explained. “Holyoke, and many small cities in this country, have enormous potential — they represent a tremendous, untapped market. And what I do is take a design-based approach to taking advantage of that, to leveraging what is really a very strong market.

“There are a number of cities that are well-poised to take advantage of this market,” he went on, “but no one seems to be able to figure out how to do that — we’re seeing cities struggle with it. I actually consider Open Square to be a prime example of how to leverage that market.”

Setting the tone in this new and emerging urban landscape has been Aubin’s unofficial job description since he started filling in the canvas that is the historic mill complex his father purchased in the mid-’60s but then struggled to fill as Holyoke went into its long and pronounced tailspin.

The Great Recession that officially began in late 2007 and continued into late 2009 slowed his progress somewhat, but Aubin has been able to successfully fill nearly 100,000 square feet of space with everything from a successful events facility called Mill 1 (that’s where it’s located) to arts groups such as the Massachusetts Academy of Ballet, to energy and environmental companies such as Sovereign Consulting.

As he’s filled in floors on Mill 1 and Mill 4, he’s done so with the approach that, while he’s willing to experiment in his laboratory, there are limits on what he’ll try.

“As a private business, I don’t have the luxury of experimenting on things that are not going to work or where the costs are too high — I’ve been to able to identify markets and capture them, and ideas that don’t work were discarded quickly,” he said, adding that this reasoning explains why there is only one residential unit in the complex — one that Aubin lived in himself for a time and then Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse called home for a while before buying a house in the city — and also why there is a comparatively small number of artisans, specifically those who do what they do for a living, not a hobby.

“Housing is a good idea, a core idea, but you can’t do it in a vacuum,” he said, adding that conditions are not right for market-rate housing in Holyoke at the moment, primarily because two low-income projects in progress or on the drawing board — Lyman Terrace and the former Holyoke Catholic High School — will weaken demand for a higher-end product. “Market-rate housing is a long-term investment, and we hope to revisit it soon, but for now, it’s been tabled.”

So Aubin continues to focus his experiments on what he believes — or knows — will work, and this brings him back to that notion of creating attractive but also affordable environments in which to do business, but also in which to stage weddings and other types of events. And Open Square, with its great critical mass, provides seemingly endless opportunities for doing so.

“Because we have this great foundation, this wonderful building to work with, we’re able to do beautiful, custom-designed space at a very affordable rate that’s difficult to match,” he said while making a clear distinction between affordable and ‘cheap,’ something Open Square is not.

These ingredients allowed Aubin to successfully fill Mill 4’s second floor with what he called “studio space,” generally one large, open room with build-out costs much lower than what was created two floors up.

There, Aubin has created larger, custom spaces, up to 3,000 square feet, for an eclectic mix of clients, ranging from Common Capital to Cover Technologies, an environmental company, to Emergent Billing, which focuses on the healthcare industry.

Plans to create still-larger custom spaces on the third floor, which started with buildout for Sovereign Consulting, were sidetracked by the recession, said Aubin, but with the economy improving, those plans are now moving forward, starting with VertitechIT.

VertitechIT

This artist’s rendering shows the unique features in the space created for VertitechIT, including curved walls and a centrally located conference room.

Technically Speaking

In many ways, that company’s arrival provides an effective example of how Open Square is deepening its tenant list by creating custom work spaces that put Holyoke — and the mill complex — on radar screens they would not have been on years ago.

Launched in 2001, the company was located in Northampton for many years, where the fit wasn’t perfect, for several reasons, said Feld.

“It’s hard for companies like us to exist there — they want retail, and we’re not that type of organization; we don’t match what the town is looking for and is prepared to work with,” he said, adding that this mismatch was compounded by the fact that the company quickly outgrew its quarters.

“We were just hanging on by packing people into every corner. We loved Northampton, but we simply ran out of space and couldn’t put it off any longer,” he said, adding quickly that Holyoke wasn’t on his short, or even long, list of possibilities for relocation.

“My understanding of Holyoke was limited and quite negative,” he told BusinessWest. “But our operations person really runs our show, and she lives in Holyoke, and she was really pressuring me to come down here. When I finally met John [Aubin] and looked at the space, I was very surprised and very much interested.”

Then came meetings with the mayor, school department leaders, and business executives, and Feld came away with the opinion that Holyoke should be his new business address.

As he talked about the space he will occupy, Feld made early and frequent use of the word ‘custom,’ and even put the adjective ‘quite’ before it. The space will include:

• Three private offices for secure communications within the main work area;

• Flowing, open areas featuring three main work ‘pods,’ or islands creatively configured to enhance collaboration;

• Uniquely curved inner walls, a signature of Aubin’s accessible modern design, that are mounted with whiteboards, providing ample work surfaces within the pods; and

• A curved conference room whose central position emphasizes VertitechIT’s collective brainpower and focus on creating solutions for clients.

“We gave John our ideas, not expecting to see much in return,” said Feld. “But he understood exactly what we were trying to do and, more importantly, understood the reasons for it. It wasn’t just like he could simply translate his customers’ desires into designs — he actually understood the reasons for it and agrees with it, and it follows the way he thinks in general. It’s a match made in heaven.”

Looking forward, Aubin said the obvious goal is to create more of these matches as controlled experimentation continues in his urban laboratory. What shape it will take remains to be seen, he noted, adding that, in many ways, Open Square will evolve as Holyoke does.

Elaborating, he said the planned return of rail service could drive economic development in many ways, because it will make the city more accessible — to workers, business owners, and even tourists.

“We’re looking at what the future is for this region, how soon it will get here, and how quickly we can move on it,” he explained. “The train will certainly open up opportunities — it will make commuting easier and open up markets as far south as New York City.

“We’re already looking to market our events space further south because of the train,” he went on, “and we’re looking at the possibility of a hotel. Like with the event space, there are other options within this market, but I think we can create a unique option for a hotel. It’s something we’re going to take a close look at.”

Finish Work

Aubin’s business card reads ‘Architect/Principal.’

The juxtaposition of those words speaks volumes about how he views his broad-ranging responsibilities with the company. In short, he’s an architect first, and he believes his focus on design and creating attractive, efficient working environments is helping Holyoke and Open Square reach that vast potential he mentioned, taking full advantage of the shift to urban living and working.

At the moment, he has designs on continued growth and leveraging the tremendous asset his family has owned for close to a half-century now.

And he’s confident that the pieces are in place for that to happen.

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

Commercial Real Estate Sections
Chinese Rail Manufacturer Eyes Former Westinghouse Site in Springfield

Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., the world’s largest manufacturer of rail cars, is strongly considering establishing its first North American operation in Springfield, on the 40-acre former Westinghouse site on Page Boulevard.

The Chinese company has been talking to city officials about building a 125,000-square-foot rail-car assembly plant and 33,750-square-foot office building at the site. Ameristar most recently purchased the property for $16 million in 2012, one of three casino companies that initially proposed gaming developments in the City of Homes, but later pulled out of the competition.

“We are very excited to be in discussion with the city of Springfield as we identify and address the necessary steps to advance our goal of building a rail-car manufacturing facility in Springfield,” Changchun President Lu Xiwei said in a prepared statement. “The interest and support displayed by Springfield officials at this early stage encourages our partnership and demonstrates a mutual interest in this effort.”

Changchun executives met Tuesday with Mayor Domenic Sarno and with U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, among other officials.

Interest in the site was spurred by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s $1.3 billion program, announced last year, to replace and increase the capacity of its Red Line and Orange Line trains. According to the authority, the project will bring reliable, long-term relief to commuters who travel the Massachusetts Turnpike and rely on the Red and Orange lines to get to work and school.

Last October, the MBTA issued a request for proposals for the procurement to replace the 44-year old Red Line cars and 32-year old Orange Line cars. The project will deliver at least 226 vehicles — 152 Orange Line cars, replacing the entire fleet of 120, and 74 Red Line cars, with an option to increase the fleet to 132.

According to the MBTA, the new cars will provide improved reliability, accessibility, and energy efficiency. New features will include increased capacity and additional seating, wider electrically operated doors, four accessible areas per car, LED lighting, modern HVAC systems, and advanced passenger information and announcement systems.

The MBTA expects to award a contract for the cars by next winter, with the condition that the final assembly of the cars will take place in Massachusetts. Following extensive (and required) pilot train testing, Orange Line car delivery is scheduled to begin by winter 2018-19, and Red Line car delivery by the fall of 2019.

“Prompted by their participation in the request for proposals for the Orange/Red Line car procurement, [Changchun] representatives announced initial proceedings, including their selection of Springfield for its rich manufacturing heritage,” Changchun said in a press release, citing “ongoing conversations of support with state, city, local, and community officials.”

If the company, one of as many as nine vying for the work, gets the MBTA contract, it could employ 150 to 300 workers for at least 10 years. Using Springfield as a base, Changchun could conceivably expand further into the North American market.

The 60-year-old manufacturer has built more than 30,000 railway vehicles, exporting them to countries including North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

In recent years, it has moved into higher-profile markets such as Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil. Since 1995, Changchun has obtained more than $3 billion in export orders.

— Joseph Bednar

Entrepreneurship Sections
Click Workspace Puts Members on Collision Courses

Randall Smith, left, and Chris Landry

Randall Smith, left, and Chris Landry connected at Click Workspace and are now collaborating on a project.

‘Collisions.’

That’s the term Paul Silva absolutely wore out as he talked about what happens when entrepreneurs — or ‘crazy people,’ as he calls them — as well as creative types, such as writers, editors, musicians, and website designers, get together in close quarters.

“There are collisions — and lots of them,” said Silva, adding quickly that these developments take many forms, such as individuals collaborating on an idea that becomes a business concept. Or an entrepreneur finding an angel investor that can provide the capital to get an idea off the ground. Or a writer making the acquaintance of a social-media expert who has some suggestions on how she can better communicate with her readers.

All these scenarios and countless others have played out at a unique facility in Northampton called Click Workspace, or simply ‘Click,’ as most members call it. It is one of the more recent manifestations of a trend toward coworking, a style of work that involves a shared environment, said Silva, the nonprofit facility’s president, noting that it was inspired by much larger projects such as the Cambridge Innovation Center and the Innovation Pavilion in Colorado, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Ali Usman, who would later help start Click.

The basic concept behind coworking is simple. Create a work space where people can share a table or an office, provide fast Internet service, charge modest fees or rent, create a critical mass of those crazy people and creative professionals (who are also entrepreneurs), and wait — and not for long — for collisions to happen.

Like the one involving Randall Smith and Chris Landry.

Paul Silva

Paul Silva says collisions are at the heart of the mission at Click.

Smith is a digital strategist and founder of a venture called PowerLabs, which helps organizations use the Internet to recruit supporters and raise money by integrating data-driven digital strategies into their work. Landry is the founder of Landry Communications, a branding company that works with businesses, foundations, and non-government agencies to get their stories out.

The two came to Click Workspace primarily because they often found it better, for various reasons, than working at home, although they do that, too. The two started talking, then collaborating, and eventually wound up responding as a team to a request for proposals issued by the Chorus Foundation in Boston, which has a stated mission to end the extraction, export, and use of fossil fuels in the U.S.

“I got this RFP and instantly thought, ‘I need Randall on this job,’” said Landry. “Here’s a guy I probably wouldn’t have met if we hadn’t been working here; he’s the perfect person, and he helped us land the contract.”

Smith had similar observations.

“This wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t here,” he said of the Chorus work, which included a recent trip to Kentucky, where the foundation was presenting funds to several groups. “The biggest projects I’ve landed have been a direct result of my being here at Click.”

In addition to fostering collisions, the facility has also been the birthplace of several startups, most notably one called Fiksu, which specializes in cohesive mobile app marketing. Micah Adler, its president and founder, was one of the first members of the facility, said Silva, adding that he now employs dozens of people.

The obvious goal is to help foster more startups and generate many more collisions, said Silva, adding that the plan is for Click Workspace to expand. When, how, and where it will do this are the key questions still to be answered.

Expansion into larger quarters in Northampton is a possibility, but this will be difficult because of the high price of real estate there (the facility is currently getting an attractive deal on 1,000 square feet on Hampton Avenue), said Silva, adding that the more likely scenario is creation of additional offices in other area cities and towns.

Amherst is one possibility, but lease rates are quite high there as well, he went on, noting that downtown Springfield holds vast potential as a site, and exploratory talks with some building owners and managers are underway.

For this issue and its focus on entrepreneurship, BusinessWest examines the shared-workspace concept, the early success recorded at Click, and the prospects for expanding that operation to other communities.

Getting a Read

Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar. That’s the title of the latest work, in a genre known as young-adult fiction, to which Lisa Papademetriou, one of the co-founders of Click, has attached her name.

The tome, the third in the acclaimed Middle School series of books, was co-written with James Patterson, but she has many titles she authored herself, including Sixth Grade Glommers, Norks, and Me, The Wizard, The Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey, and How to Be a Girly Girl in 10 Days.

She said these are humorous books aimed at an audience she calls ‘tweens,’ those ages 8 to 12, and that she conceived some of her ideas and did a good bit of the writing at Click.

“I come here for two reasons,” she said, noting that she’s at the facility four days most weeks. “First, it’s good to interact with human beings — writing can be a very isolating profession. But also, I come to ask people about the best ways to use social media and to build a customer base, and also to focus on the business aspect of my writing.”

Indeed, when asked about collisions, a word used by just about everyone at Click, Papademetriou put her hands together and then pulled them apart abruptly with verbal commentary consisting of the one word: “boom.” It was a gesture aimed at indicating the magnitude of these developments.

“I’ve had several very productive collisions here,” she noted. “In fact, I was just raving to my husband that I had one just last week that was so helpful in terms of using Facebook and interacting with fans in a way that’s meaningful to them.”

These are the kinds of synergistic developments that the founders had in mind when they conceptualized Click Workspace in late 2011.

Silva, who was not involved with the organization then but knows the history, recalled it this way: three serial entrepreneurs, Papademetriou, Usman, and Rocco Falcone, were looking for space in which to conduct their operations and develop new ones, and turned their focus to Northampton.

“The smart thing to do would have been to find an office somewhere and split it three ways and be done with it,” said Silva, who is known to spice his commentary with humor. “But they’re entrepreneurs, so they’re not smart. We do crazy things. What they said was, ‘what we really would like is to be around crazy people; there’s this coworking thing that really hasn’t come to this area — let’s try that.’”

Usman, whose latest venture, Credit Market Intelligence, provides software engineering to Fortune 100 companies, noted that the trend toward coworking space began five or six years ago, and when he would visit New York or Boston, he would visit such facilities.

“I would say to myself, ‘wow, this is great,’” he recalled. “I spent a lot of time convincing people that they should start one, and when I realized I wasn’t being very persuasive, I just banded together with some other people and started Click Workspace.”

Like others, he said the facility allows him to be around, and work with, talented people across a number of sectors and specialties. It’s an environment and constituency that can inspire ideas and fuel growth for a business.

“As an entrepreneur, I need access to talent, so it’s very good for business,” he explained. “If I need social-media help, Randall is there; if I need some technical help, I have a number of people I can turn to; if I need anything about entrepreneurship, Paul is there … it’s a lot of fun.”

Click occupies roughly 1,000 square feet and includes a main room with several tables that can host perhaps 12 to 15 in what is called ‘open space,’ with those seats priced at $175 per month. There are also three small offices with two or three desks that run for $350 per month.

The facility also includes a few conference rooms that are shared by members, as well as a copier, a kitchen, and nearby classroom space.

“It has everything you’d find in an office but a boss,” said Silva with a laugh.

Time and Space

Young-adult fiction writer Lisa Papademetriou

Young-adult fiction writer Lisa Papademetriou is one of Click’s founders and one of its strongest advocates.

Overall, this atmosphere has proven very conducive to collisions — and the opportunities and jobs that they generate.

While each story told by the members is different, there are many similar threads, such as the factors that inspired them to come to Click in the first place.

Landry, who had worked in the nonprofit realm for 20 years before going into business for himself, seemed to speak for everyone when he said simply, “I got tired of working at home — it’s too easy to get distracted, and I wanted people to bounce ideas off.

“That’s what I found here — smart people, people I could just grab and say, ‘what do you think of this?’” he went on. “It’s fun, it’s smart people, it’s thinkers — it gives me what I need. I don’t always come here; some days, if I’m editing video, it’s easier to sit at my dining-room table, or if I need a break I’ll go sit at a coffee shop. But it’s great to have this as my home base. It makes me more productive.”

John Galvin, who’s been coming to Click for more than two years now, feels pretty much the same way.

A magazine writer by trade — he’s written pieces for the New York Times, National Geographic, and Wired — he left that field nearly a decade ago and started a company called One Day University, which he called the “ultimate day of college.”

“We’d bring in professors from across the country to give their best one-hour lecture to an audience of mainly adults ages 50 to 75 who were thrilled with the idea of learning from the best minds in the country without having to take a test or pay $50,000 a year,” he said, adding that he sold the business in 2009 and soon thereafter started the Strategic Media Group.

He works with a host of organizations to create engaging content for their audiences, a concept known as content marketing. And he’s hired a number of individuals working at Click to handle graphic design, promotional materials such as signage, proofreading, and more.

“I travel a fair amount, but when I’m in town, I’ll be in here working — it’s a great environment,” he explained. “It has all the benefits of an office without all the office politics.”

Ali Usman

Ali Usman, another of Click’s founders, says it’s patterned after initiatives in Cambridge, Denver, and other cities.

Looking forward, both Silva and Usman said coworking space is a concept with staying power, and they will look to expand it in Western Mass.

While Northampton has a large number of people who fit the coworking profile, the concept doesn’t easily lend itself to expensive commercial real estate, at least in this region. The Cambridge Innovation Center, which hosts more than 600 companies, now occupies 207,000 square feet in Kendall Square, and recently announced plans to open a major outpost in Boston’s Financial District with enough space for about 300 startups.

“I tried to expand in Northampton first,” said Silva, “and I had some very pleasant interactions with landlords, but the market rates are such that it’s not feasible; they’ve got too many people from New York coming here who are really happy to pay New York prices for Northampton real estate.”

So, at the moment, most of the focus of expansion talks centers on downtown Springfield, said Silva, as that’s where many young entrepreneurs are coming together — Valley Venture Mentors meets monthly in Tower Square, for example, and Paragus IT founder Delcie Bean has relocated that company temporarily into Harrison Place — and the real estate is, in theory, anyway, more attainable and affordable.

But a facility like Click represents a challenge, as well as sizable risk for a landlord, said Silva, adding that he usually has to offer an education in the potential benefits, which are sometimes difficult to envision.

“I say to landlords, ‘you have small fish come to you all the time, and it’s not worth your time to deal with them, but you know that if someone feeds the small fish, they may grow up to be big fish — you just don’t want to be in that business,’” he explained. “‘So give me some space, and send all the small fish to me; we’ll feed them and care for them and nurture them. Some of them are going to die, but some of them are going to grow up to be big fish, and they’re not going to fit in our tank.’”

Despite some inherent challenges to getting them off the ground, Usman said, coworking facilities represent the future of incubation and efforts to foster entrepreneurship.

“I really believe coworking spaces will be in every large town — New York probably has 60 coworking spaces, if not more, and almost every major city has them,” he noted. “And many of the startups now are through coworking space — they don’t get their own office space, but they just go to a coworking facility.

“If you want to promote entrepreneurial activity, you have to have coworking space,” he went on. “Greenfield should have a facility. Westfield should have one.This is the wave of the future.”

When Something Clicks

Smith and Landry don’t know how long they’ll be working for the Chorus Foundation, or how much the contract will eventually be worth to them.

What they do know is that it’s highly unlikely that their partnership, and this assignment, would have come about had they not both been working at Click.

Theirs was a highly effective collision, one that Silva and others hold up as a model for what can, and often does, happen when creative minds and crazy people share a table, a copier, a conference room, and an office without a boss.

The goal now is simply to create more of them.

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

Banking and Financial Services Sections
Banking Leaders Say Retailers Should Bear Burden of Data Breaches

SecurityWhen it comes to data breaches and identity theft, Target isn’t the only target.

The retail chain made news of the worst sort in December when it reported a security breach that compromised the financial information of tens of millions of customers.

The fallout affected the banks that issued the credit and debit cards that were compromised, and since that event, banking-industry leaders have been speaking out about the impact of such breaches on their operations.

“When a retailer like Target speaks of its customers having ‘zero liability’ from fraudulent transactions, it is because our nation’s banks are making customers whole, not the retailer that suffered the breach,” said James Reuter, executive vice president of Colorado-based FirstBank, representing the American Bankers Assoc. (ABA) in testimony before the Senate Banking Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance.

“Banks swiftly research and reimburse customers for unauthorized transactions,” he continued, “and normally exceed legal requirements by making customers whole within days of the customer alerting them.”

High-profile breaches like the one that befell Target have reignited a long-running debate over consumer data-security policy. The issues being discussed include what security and breach notification standards should apply to businesses, and who should be responsible for covering the costs of fraud resulting from breaches.

For its part, the ABA believes Congress should pass data-security legislation that holds retailers and others to high, uniform, nationwide standards for safeguarding sensitive customer information, just as banks have long had a similar obligation to protect their customers’ sensitive financial information. The ABA is also advocating that those responsible for data breaches should be responsible for their costs.

For its part, Target admitted it didn’t read the signs of a potential problem in December.

Just a few days before Christmas, Target disclosed that a data breach compromised 40 million credit and debit card accounts between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. A few weeks later, the retailer said hackers also stole personal information — including names, phone numbers, and e-mail and mailing addresses — from as many as 70 million customers.

“Like any large company, each week at Target there are a vast number of technical events that take place and are logged,” said company spokeswoman Molly Snyder in a statement soon after the incident. “Through our investigation, we learned, after these criminals entered our network, a small amount of their activity was logged and surfaced to our team. That activity was evaluated and acted upon. Based on their interpretation and evaluation of that activity, the team determined that it did not warrant immediate follow-up. With the benefit of hindsight, we are investigating whether, if different judgments had been made, the outcome may have been different.”

According to Target, hackers broke into its network by infiltrating a vendor’s computers. Then the criminals installed malicious software in the checkout system for some 1,800 Target stores across the U.S. The sheer scope of the crime could eventually surpass the 90 million customer records compromised in 2007 when thieves stole data from T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods stores.

Target’s chief information officer, Beth Jacob, resigned recently, and the store said it is overhauling some of its divisions that handle security and technology. It is also accelerating a $100 million plan to roll out chip-based credit-card technology, which it claims is more secure than traditional magnetic-stripe cards.

Far-reaching Problem

The data-breach issue extends far beyond a major retailer or two, and is an irksome one for banks. The Identity Theft Resource Center reported more than 600 consumer data breaches in 2013 — a 30% increase over 2012.

Reuter testified that banks receive pennies for each dollar of fraud losses and other costs they incur in protecting their customers from fraud, and that, while banks bear more than 60% of reported fraud losses, they have accounted for less than 8% of reported breaches since 2005.

Data breaches can fall into two categories: unintentional and intentional. An unintentional breach — often due to the negligence of an employee who mishandles or inadvertently exposes data — does not always lead to fraud.

Intentional breaches occur when data is accessed, viewed, stolen, or used by someone who is not authorized to do so — in many cases, criminals who target the company in an attempt to steal consumers’ personal and financial information, either to use it to commit fraud or to sell it to others. This often leads to new financial accounts in the victims’ names, counterfeit cards, and phishing scams.

Debit-card fraud accounted for 54% of industry loss, followed by check fraud at 37%, and online banking and electronic transactions at 9%, according to the ABA. Typically, Reuter said, when fraud occurs or is likely to, banks will close the account, eat the loss, and reissue the card. Meanwhile, banks stopped $9 out of every $10 of attempted deposit-account fraud in 2012, according to the ABA’s 2013 Deposit Account Fraud Survey Report.

“Financial fraud, including identity fraud, is a very real risk that must be taken seriously,” writes Frank Keating, ABA president and CEO. “The best way to contend with financial fraud is to prevent it from ever happening in the first place. Banks use sophisticated technology and monitoring techniques, intricate firewalls, and other methods of securing customer data, but there are steps consumers must take as well.”

The ABA offers a number of tips to help consumers protect themselves from becoming victims of financial fraud:

• Don’t provide your Social Security number or account information to anyone who contacts you online or over the phone. Protect your PINs and passwords and do not share them with anyone. Use a combination of letters and numbers for your passwords and change them periodically. Do not reveal sensitive or personal information on social-networking sites.

• Shred sensitive papers, including receipts, bank statements, and unused credit-card offers before throwing them away, and keep an eye out for missing mail from creditors.

• Consider enrolling in online banking to reduce the likelihood of paper statements being stolen. Monitor your online accounts regularly for fraudulent transactions. Sign up for text or e-mail alerts from your bank for certain types of transactions, such as online purchases or transactions of more than $500.

• Order a free copy of your credit report every four months from one of the three credit reporting agencies.

• Make sure the virus-protection software on your computer is active and up to date. When conducting business online, make sure your browser’s padlock or key icon is active. Also look for an ‘s’ after the ‘http’ to be sure the website is secure.
For mobile devices, use the passcode lock, which will make it more difficult for thieves to access your information if your device is lost or stolen.

Everyone’s Business

Stronger vigilance by all parties — retailers, banks, and consumers — will make a dent in the incidence of data theft, Reuter said, although it won’t stop all of it, which is why the ABA continues to press Congress on the issue.

“Banks, retailers, processors, and all other participants in the payment system must share the responsibility of keeping the system secure, reliable, and functioning in order to preserve customer trust,” Reuter testified.

“That responsibility should not fall predominantly on the financial-services sector,” he added. “Banks are committed to doing their share, but cannot be the sole bearer of that responsibility. Policymakers, card networks, and all industry participants have a vital role to play in addressing the regulatory gaps that exist in our payment system, and we stand ready to assist in that effort.” n

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Construction Sections
Northern Construction Builds Bridges to Success

Shawn Clark

Shawn Clark, project manager and operations coordinator at Northern Construction Service

Pressure is replacing two well-traveled highway bridges in one weekend — or losing $1 million for missing the deadline.

But that’s exactly what Northern Construction Service, based in Palmer, is taking on this summer in Southington, Conn., when it lifts the existing bridges off their supports this July and replaces them with new bridges it has been fabricating at the scene for the better part of a year — all within a 56-hour weekend window aimed at minimizing impact on commuters.

“We’ve had this job since last June, and after almost a year of prep, we’re only going to disrupt the public for a weekend,” said Shawn Clark, Northern’s project manager and operations coordinator. “And if it’s not done by Monday, there’s a million-dollar penalty.”

The bridges, which carry eastbound and westbound traffic on Interstate 84 over Marion Avenue in Southington, are 51 years old and in need of replacement, Clark said. Northern won the contract for the $6 million project last spring, and excavation, tree-clearing, and utility work began in November.

The technique being utilized is new to the Conn. Department of Transportation. The new spans are being fabricated on site in staging areas adjacent to the bridges. Interstate 84 and Marion Avenue traffic will remain open during the entire fabrication period, with occasional, temporary lane closures for other work associated with the project.

On the big weekend in July, the pre-fabricated structures will be moved from the staging areas using massive machines called self-propelled modular transporters. The existing bridges will be removed, and the new spans set into place on the existing abutments, which are in good condition.

Easthampton’s Manhan Bridge

Northern replaced Easthampton’s Manhan Bridge five weeks ahead of schedule.

In addition to the $1 million penalty if the project extends into Monday’s morning commute, ConnDOT has included a $250,000 incentive if the new bridges are open before 10 a.m. Sunday. Don’t put it past Northern to make that goal.

“We like to push,” Clark told BusinessWest. “Our company is not afraid to work overtime, generally at our own expense.”

Take the Davitt Memorial Bridge in Chicopee. Northern replaced that span, which connects Route 116 with Springfield Street — an $8.2 million project — 14 months ahead of schedule. The bridge was closed for just over a year and reopened last July.

“In Chicopee, the DOT offered incentives to work through the winter, to work overtime to meet the deadline,” he said, noting that overtime is already common at Northern during good weather.

“It took us seven or eight months to get going on the Davitt Bridge, and we still finished more than a year early,” Clark said, telling a similar story about the $3.7 million project to replace Easthampton’s Manhan Bridge, which closed last June and reopened in October, five weeks ahead of schedule.

“We had that job for probably eight or nine months before we closed the road, making sure everything was in order, utilities relocated,” he noted. “Then we worked overtime, Saturdays, Sundays — and, again, it went well.”

Clearly, Northern Construction specializes in bridges — as well as road and highway construction; concrete construction, including dams, seawalls, and foundations; excavating and grading; water, sewer, and drainage systems; building construction and relocation; and a host of other projects.

The company — owned by John Rahkonen and John Divito, who work out of offices in Palmer and Weymouth, respectively — has grown significantly in its 19 years of existence, employing up to 150 personnel at peak times and boasting about $45 million in projects annually.

“We’ve been growing or at least maintaining, luckily,” Clark said. “The recession was tough on us, but we’ve had work.”

Getting Around

Chicopee-(2)

Success stories like the Davitt Memorial Bridge in Chicopee — which was closed just over a year and reopened more than a year ahead of schedule — are due to the exhaustive work Northern does long before a bridge closes to traffic.

Success stories like the Davitt Memorial Bridge in Chicopee — which was closed just over a year and reopened more than a year ahead of schedule — are due to the exhaustive work Northern does long before a bridge closes to traffic.

As he noted, that work begins long before a road or bridge closes. “From the time you’re the low bidder, you have to sign contracts, which takes a couple of months,” Clark said. That’s followed by research, dealing with utilities, and a host of other administrative tasks before work can even begin.

Northern works for public and private entities in the six New England states and New York, and that diversity is key to its continued success, he added. “Private work has been slow, with the recession, so public work is all we have right now. But Massachusetts is having budget problems, and work has been sporadic. So, last year, we did five jobs in Connecticut; before that, we’d had only one in the company’s history.”

Bridge work is a big issue across New England, with thousands of aging spans in need of repair or replacement. In Massachusetts, the Accelerated Bridge Program, a $3 billion commitment to repair or replace 259 bridges, was launched in 2008.

“There’s plenty of disrepair. That’s why we have the Accelerated Bridge Program,” Clark said. “This is one of the worst states in terms of infrastructure, and you have to do something.”

He added that the state has moved toward more rapid bridge replacements, pre-fabricated structures, and financial incentives for contractors, all aimed at reducing inconvenience to the public.

“It’s a tough field. Bridges are demanding, and you need skilled personnel to do the work,” he noted, adding that companies need significant administrative expertise as well. “Compared to 30 or 40 years ago, there are more rules, regulations, liability — every ‘i’ has to be dotted. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing; it definitely discourages competition to a certain degree. But it also makes it more challenging.”

To perform such work on accelerated schedules, Clark noted, requires a high level of teamwork with each state’s DOT. “We get in people’s good graces by getting it done quickly. Not only does that require the cooperation of everyone involved, the DOT has to be on board with it. We can’t do it without them, and they can’t do it without us; it’s a team effort.”

Northern recently won a 2013 Design Award from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute for Best Rehabilitated Bridge, a $9.4 million project in Smithfield, R.I. that the company completed — of course — six weeks early.

The Stillwater Viaduct over the Woonasquatucket River is a landmark of sorts, eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, both for its association with a massive bridge-building campaign in the 1920s and 1930s and for serving as an example of an open spandrel arch bridge.

When it was rehabilitated in 2012, designers had to be careful to maintain the original design aesthetics. The use of pre-cast concrete not only allowed workers to replicate the original features of the bridge with modern performance, but it was critical to completing the project within a seven-month window. The existing arch rings and pier columns were also restored during construction.

“Maintaining the look of the old bridge was very important to the owner,” said Bharat Patel of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, engineer of record for the project. “We were able to stay way ahead of schedule without compromising quality, and everyone in the community was pleased with the results.”

And, of course, much of that success came from the work completed long before the bridge closed. “We took six months before we closed that road,” Clark said, noting, however, that accelerated schedules aren’t always possible, especially when a bridge remains open during the entire project. “Some projects have to be done in phases. You do part of the bridge, part of the bridge, part of the bridge, to keep traffic flowing.”

From the Ground Up

Northern Construction keeps people moving in quite a different way when it comes to its long-standing relationship with Six Flags New England.

No, it doesn’t actually build new rides, but it has handled concrete, earth, site, and utility work for a number of new attractions, including this year’s major addition, the Sky Screamer, a swing ride that will tower 400 feet above the park — twice as high as the current tallest ride.

Meanwhile, Northern is versatile enough to have been called upon for emergency road work along the Mohawk Trail in 2011 after Hurricane Irene washed out stretches of the roadway. Following the immediate repair, it won bids for a $6.7 million repair of Route 2 in Florida and a $3.3 million job in North Adams.

“As soon as it hit, we were summoned to go up there,” Clark said. “We have the resources and organization to do it. We know what equipment is needed, and what work can be done without sacrificing other projects.”

It also takes a company that knows how to juggle the bureaucratic demands of both the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was involved in funding the road repairs. “That’s when you get into submitting invoices; every load of gravel has to be documented,” he explained, adding that the end result was a 700-page document. “You’ve got to coordinate it, do the paperwork, and administer it to get paid in an effortless manner. This was a big event.”

After all, who doesn’t want to be paid?

“Our owners have always insisted that our workers get paid every week for what they do,” Clark said. “And as a contractor, we need to get paid to be able to do that — to recover our money, keep the cash flowing, make sure everyone is getting paid. It allows us to take care of our personnel.

“You hear stories of contractors who don’t pay their wages,” he continued. “There are plenty of great contractors out there, but also companies that have issues. Our employees are our most valuable resource, and we want them to get paid.”

It’s all about strong relationships — between project owners and contractors and employees. After all, Northern Construction knows how to build bridges.


Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Opinion
Coworking Spaces Can Be Idea Factories

For many years now, we’ve been preaching the virtues of inspiring and facilitating entrepreneurship as a sound economic-development strategy, one that is often overlooked by many.

Indeed, that phrase ‘economic development’ is usually associated with filling industrial parks or convincing foreign automakers to build a 1 million-square-foot factory in one’s community. And that’s one way to go about it, granted a very difficult way.

The more old-fashioned way is to encourage the creation of startups and then finding ways to help them grow — and stay — in one’s region. It takes longer, but the results are often more sustainable. This is why we have encouraged groups and initiatives such as Valley Venture Mentors (VVM) in their efforts to help get businesses off to the ground and then get to that next level.

And also why we’re quite impressed with what’s going on at 20 Hampton Ave., Suite 150 in Northampton.

This is the address of Click Workspace (see story on page 12), a unique facility that its founders and current president Paul Silva, also involved with VVM, say specializes in “collisions.”

These are meetings of the minds that often turn into business opportunities in the form of collaborations, assistance that might help an idea come to fruition or a business take a critical next step, or startups that could eventually employ dozens of people.

Click Workspace has seen all of the above, and repeatedly. Maybe the best example of such a collision involves Randall Smith and Chris Landry. The former is a digital strategist and founder of a company called PowerLabs. The latter is the founder of Landry Communications, a branding venture that helps organizations get their stories out. The two met at Work Clickspace and quickly determined that their skills were complementary. They wound up responding as a team to a request for proposals from Boston-based Chorus Foundation and won a sizable contract from the agency.

There are countless other examples of how these collisions work, and they provide ample evidence of the fact that the region needs to find ways to create more of them.

Those involved with ‘Click,’ as it’s called, are interested in taking the concept to other area cities and towns, and we hope they are successful in doing so.

They need some ingredients to fall into place for that to happen, though, including a critical mass of entrepreneurs and creative professionals and affordable commercial real estate, something they somehow managed to find in Northampton, despite the long odds against doing so.

Their next target should be downtown Springfield, and there is already movement to establish a facility there. It’s a common-sense step, because there is considerable activity involving entrepreneurship in the city’s central business district — VVM meets there regularly — and there could be much more in the years to come with UMass having an active presence and initiatives underway to create a larger, more vibrant creative economy there.

What’s needed is a space where the minds can meet and collisions can happen.

There is already much happening when it comes to economic development in Springfield, from the planned $800 million casino complex in the South End to the long-awaited revitalization of Union Station to UMass Amherst’s planned satellite center. These should all create more vibrancy and more interest in the City of Homes, but what’s needed is more focus on inspiring entreprenership and spurring new small businesses.

A coworking facility that can replicate some of those collisions happening at 20 Hampton Ave. in Northampton would be a great place to start. n

Banking and Financial Services Cover Story Sections
St. Germain Investment Management Gets Personal

COVER0314bWhen gauging the reputation of St. Germain Investment Management, Tim Suffish says, one measure is the number of non-clients who call out of the blue.

“It happens all the time,” he said. “People call with questions, and we just give the advice. We’re more than happy to take the calls. It’s a sign that the company is doing things right when random people call us and are reaching out for something. They’re always shocked and appreciative when one of the financial advisors spend time on the phone with them with no expectation of anything in return.”

Suffish, the firm’s senior vice president of equity markets, said it’s a reflection of the name St. Germain has built in Greater Springfield for the past 90 years. But the company, launched by D.J. St. Germain in 1924, hit some, well, depressing times in its early days.

“D.J. did fantastic with his investments the first five years. Then 1929 came along and wiped out a decent portion of his net worth,” said Mike Matty, the company’s current president, adding that surviving the Great Depression sparked the firm’s long-standing focus on investing conservatively.

“He realized that not losing an investment is every bit as important as making money. That has guided our conservative philosophy, and it’s the way we continue to make money,” Matty said. “During the most recent downturn, eight or nine people said to us, ‘we know we’re not going back to the old highs,’ and yet, this week, we’re at new highs. We hit a billion last year in assets under management.”

Matty, however, prefers to talk about people, not numbers, when considering how St. Germain has grown since the days of D.J.

Mike Matty

Mike Matty, president of St. Germain Investment Management

“It’s easy to start a business, but it’s tough to stay in business 90 years. The way you do that is treat the clients right, and we’ve done a terrific job with that philosophy,” he said. “We have a great team here; they could all work in Boston or New York, or wherever they want to be. But we all like working here in Western Mass.; we all want to be here.”

Suffish said there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with helping clients — whose only exposure to retirement savings to that point might be a company-sponsored 401(k) plan — really think about what they want from their golden years.

“They’re thinking about retirement, planning to leave their job and go from earning and putting money away for retirement to taking money from their retirement account,” he said. “It’s huge. People who haven’t gone through it don’t realize how … not traumatic, necessarily, but how serious it is, and the consideration and planning that goes into it.

“Once you’re into retirement, you want to make the most of it, so you don’t outlive your money,” he went on. “That’s our meat and potatoes; the most important thing we do is sitting down and talking with clients, people entrusting us with everything they have to last them through their last days.”

Human Touch

Matty said St. Germain had long been known strictly as an investment manager, but about a decade ago, the company began to broaden its scope to all-around financial planning.

“We now do comprehensive financial planning with people. We take a look at where their income streams are in retirement; are they adequately covered? And we’re the go-to call for people on other financial questions — buying a car, refinancing a house, whatever it may be, we get a call. That’s worked out very well for us.

“Life has gotten much more complicated these days,” he continued. “People get exposed to an immense amount of information overload on the Internet. Can you sit down and Google it? Sure, but you’ll see 150,000 results. People say to us, after trying to figure it out on their own, ‘I want to talk to someone who actually walks the walk before I do this.’ That’s what we’re great at.”

Mike Matty, left, and Tim Suffish

Mike Matty, left, and Tim Suffish say their most important job is talking one-on-one with clients and understanding their expectations for life after retirement.

Matty and Suffish are both CFAs, or chartered financial analysts. “CFAs are the financial-analysis equivalent of CPAs,” Matty said. “We’re super-knowledgeable, highly trained people. It’s New York or Boston expertise, accessible in Western Mass. at a reasonable cost.”

Suffish said a client was in reviewing his account recently and saw a photograph of D.J. St. Germain with a 1930s-era Packard. “He said, ‘I remember going for a ride in that car.’ The company has been here a long time, and the experience has been consistent. People change sometimes, but the St. Germain way keeps people here a long time.”

Still, the company has experienced a growth spurt in the past decade. When Suffish came on board in 2004, he was the seventh employee; now 20 people work there. But that growth has not come at the expense of the personal touch that has long been a priority.

“When people pick up the phone and call us, they get a receptionist, not voice mail. An automated voice drives people crazy,” Matty said. “It’s one of many small touches, one of the things that sets us apart from a lot of other financial firms out there. If you’ve got a half-million parked with a big brokerage firm, you’re a cog in the wheel there. To us, you’re a client. You’re going to hear from us, and we want to hear from you. You’re not just a nameless, faceless account number. We want to get to know you.”

And know your partner as well — even if that meeting comes late in the game.

“In a lot of cases, one spouse will open an account,” he said, and after that client dies, “we almost become a surrogate spouse for the survivor because they know nothing about the household finances.”

In such cases, the survivor’s concerns often boil down to one simple question.

“They ask, ‘can I live in the lifestyle I know now? That’s all I need to know.’ They don’t want to talk about realized gains versus unrealized gains. They say, ‘I’m a machinist. I’m hiring you guys to manage the money because that’s what you do.’

Such clients appreciate a conservative approach that stays the course, Matty said. “To us, the name of the game is giving people most of the upside and preventing them from losing much on the downside. More people get scared out of the market by losses than pulled into it by greed. And they pull out at exactly the wrong time.”

Age-old Concerns

Matty said a client’s age plays a factor in asset allocation, or what percentage of money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and other vehicles.

“We’ve extended out in the past few years beyond just a conservative stock philosophy,” he added, noting that equity-income accounts — a type of mutual fund that invests in companies with a history of solid dividend payments — have become a prominent part of the roster.

“Even with what we do on the management side, making sure we build a diverse portfolio, those types of stocks are still going to be a bumpy ride,” Suffish said. “When there’s a scare overseas or interest rates do something funny, those stocks will move around a bit.” But, he added, building a portfolio that focuses on income generation through dividend growth is a good fit for many clients.

Beyond that, conventional wisdom on asset mix has shifted over the years, he said. It used to be that subtracting one’s age from 100 gave the recommended percentage of assets in stocks. Now, it’s closer to 120 minus one’s age.

“But everyone is unique,” he added, and financial advisors must take into consideration factors like Social Security projections, pensions, retirement-account balances, expected inheritance, and overall lifestyle expectations.

“If somebody is 75 years old and has all their needs met by income sources like pension and Social Security, that client can afford to be more invested in stocks,” Suffish said. “The most important thing at St. Germain is the conversation between the financial advisor and the client. It’s not like picking Coke over Pepsi; that’s a very small factor. The most important thing is the conversation between the financial advisor and the client, us knowing them and their situation, and getting the financial mix right.”

It’s definitely a more complex financial world, Matty said.

“Fifty years ago, when you turned 65 years old, you could rely on Social Security and probably had a pension. Life expectancy was not a whole lot longer after retirement, and you had some pretty reliable income sources. People had more homogeneity,” he told BusinessWest.

“Now, we have 65-year-olds taking up skiing. They plan to live 30 more years. People are saying, ‘I don’t think Social Security is going to be there for me.’ Virtually no one has a pension anymore. There’s no homogeneity,” he went on. “A client might say, ‘I’ve got aged parents, and I’m taking care of a special-needs son, who will probably live with me forever. And there’s longevity in my family; people live into their 90s.’ Everyone is unique. In these circumstances, we really need to spend time getting to know you.”

Clients run the gamut, Matty said, from individuals with accounts large enough to grab the attention of a larger firm to people who have worked hard their entire lives to amass a couple hundred thousand dollars, or less.

“I tell these folks, ‘I know to you it’s a lot of money; it’s all you’ve got. I want to treat you with respect.’ We absolutely can take on folks who have millions, but if your money is significantly less, that’s fine by us too. People here are not paid on commission. They’re perfectly happy to sit down with a guy with $150,000 or a guy with $1.5 million.”

Committed, Not Commissioned

That policy of no commissions is uncommon in the industry, Matty said. “I don’t want to incentivize people here to do anything other than what’s in the best interest of the client. If they have cash in the bank, let them keep it in the bank. I’d rather spend time working with people, making a little bit off them every year, and keep them another 90 years, rather than get a big commission off them, then go out and find new clients next year. We have people here whose great-grandparents had accounts — people who have been here since the 1930s.”

St. Germain’s independence also allows advisors to give non-biased information, he said. “We’re not trying to sell any products to you. And at a lot of financial firms, people who work at the firm don’t have their money invested there. That’s not the case here.

“We live here, we work here, and we’re part of the community here, and we do our share to support the community that has supported us for the past 90 years,” he continued. “We try to give back at both the corporate level and personal level; virtually everyone here is volunteering or serving on boards, as well as all the financial support we give.”

Still, Matty said, what many clients appreciate most is simply being able to call and speak to someone with answers.

“I think we’re easy to talk to,” he said. “It’s a simple point, but it means an awful lot. Some people might prefer a website, but I find, especially as people get older, they want to call and talk to the same person, and not have to explain their circumstances every time. As clients get older, they really appreciate that.”

It’s an approach that has worked since D.J. St. Germain drove that Packard around Springfield — and will continue long after those who remember him are gone.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Entrepreneurship Sections
Serial Entrepreneurs Scale New Heights with Qnect

From left, Jef Sharp, Jeff Hausthor, and Henry Lederman

From left, Jef Sharp, Jeff Hausthor, and Henry Lederman created QuickQnect, software the connects the joints in a steel structure via an automatic process.

Jef Sharpe and Jeff Hausthor are on the edge again. The cutting edge, that is.

The entrepreneurs, who have been partners in five business ventures, joined Henry Lederman last October to start a new company called Qnect, and are launching a new software product called QuickQnect at the three-day NASCC Steel Conference in Toronto.

They say the product will revolutionize the way the joints in a steel structure are connected. “The idea of turning this manual process into a software solution is brand-new, and QuickQnect is up to 100 times faster than the conventional way of connecting the joints in a building,” said Sharp, adding that the service is available in the cloud.

Lederman, who has spent 42 years in the steel-detailing industry, developed an early version of the software that has already been used in 11 buildings, including structures at UMass and Harvard. And when BusinessWest spoke to the three entrepreneurs, they were looking forward to introducing their breakthrough product at the Toronto conference, which is expected to attract more than 3,500 structural engineers, steel fabricators, erectors, detailers, and educators involved in the design and construction of fabricated steel buildings and bridges.

Lederman said QuickQnect combines two critical components of the steel-connection process into one, eliminating weeks or months of manual labor required to connect each joint in a multi-story steel structure.

He created the new software to stay competitive in an industry that has cut costs by outsourcing work overseas. Developing it was a process, but the first step was recognizing there was room for improvement in the three-dimensional system used by steel-detailing companies.

Lederman’s history includes high-profile projects, including the World Trade Center Memorial Museum in New York City and Tata Hall at Harvard University. He has been a speaker at industry events and is a leader in detailing innovation.

“It’s fun starting something from scratch that has never been done before. And what this new product [QuickQnect] does is pretty extraordinary. But developing it was tempered by my desire to see it in its fullest commercial form,” he said.

That pursuit brought Lederman together with Sharp and Hausthor last fall. They were introduced through a friend, and his original plan was simply to get ideas from the successful entrepreneurs.

But the meeting proved to be serendipitous. Sharp and Hausthor were looking to start a new business, and Lederman was impressed by their background and knowledge. “They had amazing expertise, as they had grown other companies and also had IT experience. They had what I needed to take the company beyond what I had envisioned,” he said. “They viewed things I might have had doubts about as minor obstacles.”

Sharp and Hausthor said working with Lederman met the criteria they have established for a new venture (more about that later) as they know what it takes to transform a novel idea into a product, then market it successfully. But it’s work they truly enjoy.

“It’s exhilarating to start a new company, and even though there is risk, stress, and tension, there is also a feeling of accomplishment you can’t get with most 9-to-5 jobs,” Sharp said. “And this is an amazing company.”

Each of the entrepreneurs has different skills, and their titles at Qnect reflect their honed talents. Sharp is CEO, Hausthor is COO, and Lederman is CFO. They all agree that education is critical and learning must be an ongoing process. “It’s an interesting path, and the importance of entrepreneurs can’t be fully stated,” Sharp said.

However, he was quick to add that it takes a team effort to be successful. “Identifying great people is the most important job of a CEO.”

Lederman concurred. “There are many amazing business people doing wonderful things, but it’s very hard to find the right resources,” he said.

Still, they are confident they will reach their goals because their product will save time and money. But it took sophisticated engineering skills to create the software that automates a manual process. “Two hundred calculations are necessary for every joint, and there can be upwards of 2,000 joints in a building,” Hausthor said as he spoke about a building, constructed with the pre-commercial version of the software, that had 11,000 joints.

Sharp said they have also put together an exceptionally talented development team.

“I’m confident they will be unstoppable in building and expanding our software breakthrough. The design of the joints in a building is really important, and reducing months of work to a few hours drives everything else, including the cost of using steel, which is the most environmentally friendly solution for large buildings and is 97% recyclable,” he noted, adding they hope to identify powerful local investors.

Storied Past

The three men have impressive backgrounds. Lederman has built three successful companies, Sharp has founded six, and Hausthor has directed IT and software-development efforts and operations logistics for six firms.

“I like all new technology and enjoy investigating new things,” Hausthor said.

Sharp and Hausthor have been partners in five ventures and love being on the cutting edge of development. They also share a passion for helping the planet.

“It’s exciting to do things that have never been done before,” said Sharp. “You can start a business by buying a franchise in which everything is set up for you. But it’s not as creative or interesting as starting something from nothing and building something of great value that will last.”

His first business was a mobile food service he named the Clam Scam, which he launched when he was in college.

His next venture was started in 1999 after he moved to Western Mass. from New York, where he had been running a manufacturing company called Gravity Graphics. “I had a burning idea for a dot.com company that would sell excess manufacturing capacity online,” he said.

The idea didn’t require resources or capital, since he simply wanted to make more efficient use of what already existed on the planet. “Having a company that has an impact on the world has always been important to me, and in the past, green has always been a theme,” Sharp told BusinessWest.

Hausthor, who joined Sharp in the business known as XSCapacity, was a self-described “Fortune 500 guy” before they met. He had been a programmer analyst for Deloitte, an associate at Morgan Stanley, a technical specialist for Sony Electronics, and a project manager for Sony Corp. of America.

A friend introduced the two men, they had lunch together, and a short time later, Sharp asked Hausthor to help him start XSCapacity.

The idea appealed to Hausthor. “I had moved to Western Mass. and was working from home. I was in charge of 40 people in New Jersey, but I felt isolated,” he said. “So I made the jump.”

The idea took flight as other firms adopted the novel idea of using real estate, autos, and more to maximum capacity. “XSCapacity was a concept,” Sharp explained. And although they were reasonably successful in building their product and raising money, the company became part of the dot.com collapse.

Their next venture was TechCavalry in Northampton, which provided computer service for small businesses and homes. “We needed to do something quickly which we could fund ourselves that would provide us with relatively instant revenue,” Sharp said, adding they sold the firm in 2012 after 11 years, and it is still in business today.

Although TechCavalry was successful, “we felt compelled to do something good for the world that would have a positive impact,” Hausthor said. So in 2006 they founded Qteros Inc. with two other partners.

“The company was created to start green companies,” Sharp said. “We worked nights and weekends, and it took us nine months to find our first project.” They combined talents with Susan Leschine, a professor at UMass Amherst, who had discovered a microbe that made ethanol from cellulose.

“But we had to scale up the technology, as it was still at the test-tube level at UMass,” Hausthor said. “We had to make it into a product that needed to go into a $200 million facility. We were still running Tech Cavalry, and suddenly we were microbiologists at a facility in Marlborough.”

Sharp describes the time as “a whirlwind. We hired two scientists a month and grew quickly.” They secured a government grant, and their backers included the petroleum giant BP. The firm had 50 employees when the pair left in 2008, although Sharp continued to serve on the board of directors until 2012.

They were discussing what to do next when Sharp met Steve Frank from Florence, who had started a supercomputer business and was looking to expand. “He convinced us it should be our next company,” Sharp said, adding that Paneve, which has grown into a large data firm today, made a new type of computer chips.

But when the operation moved to Colorado at the behest of its engineers, and its Amherst office closed, Sharp and Hausthor decided to remain here and began a new search for another startup, which occurred when they met Lederman.

By that time, the duo had developed criteria to determine whether a business opportunity fit their needs. “It has to have good people,” Sharp said, adding that it’s important to him to have control of who is hired. “The product also has to be reasonably close to being ready to sell, as we have already owned two companies that spent a long time in the development stage. When we joined Henry, he was already using a pre-commercial version of the product, but wanted help scaling up and driving the business. The chemistry was good, and it was an excellent combination of our skills.”

Hausthor agreed. “The product also has to be protectable in terms of patent and other intellectual properties and has to be a technology that helps the world,” he added.

The fact that Lederman’s business was local made it especially appealing, he added. “We had met people in Boston who wanted our help, but we didn’t want to drive long distances or have to fly to do business.”

Conscious Choice

Sharp says starting new companies has become a way of life. “It’s pretty cool knowing that you can start something from an idea. But no entrepreneur does it alone. It’s very much a team effort, and it’s critical that the team gets credit, because without them you could never be successful.”

Sharp admits it’s not for everyone. “Starting your own company can be very exciting, but it can be just as exciting to join a young company,” he said, reiterating the importance of a strong team.

But people like Sharp, Hausthor, and Lederman will always thrive on work that is on the cutting edge.

“I was an entrepreneur before the word was coined,” Sharp said, “and what is really exciting is that we are always doing things that haven’t been done before.”

Environment and Engineering Sections
With the I-91 Viaduct, Future Prospects Are Up in the Air

91ViaductDPartNick Fyntrilakis, vice president of Community Responsibility for MassMutual and frequent spokesperson for the financial-services giant, urged the state to hit the ‘pause’ button when it comes to a planned $260 million project to replace the stretch of Interstate 91 that runs through the center of Springfield and is known as the ‘viaduct.’

He used that term at a well-attended public hearing on the massive public-works project late last month, and in reference to another, much broader possible plan for the stretch of I-91 that slices through the very heart of the city’s central business district — taking it down to street level or perhaps even below street level, thus facilitating the process of reconnecting the city with the Connecticut River for the first time since construction of the highway began a half-century ago.

“We see this as a possible game changer, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix a 60-year-old problem in the city of Springfield — being disconnected from the riverfront and the access to economic-development opportunities that exist there,” he told those assembled, and especially Michael O’Dowd, project manager for the Mass. Department of Transportation (DOT). “If this [repair] project proceeds as proposed, it’s going to be very difficult to see $260 million of work just go away based on another design that comes up through the planning effort.

“If we go down this road,” he went on, again referring to the repair project, “we’re going to miss an opportunity, and we’re going to have this viaduct for the next 40 or 50 years, which I don’t think the majority of the community is looking for.”

And therein lies the problem, or controversy, arising at a time when most would expect public officials and business leaders to be thrilled, or at least happy, with the prospect of the federal and state governments spending a quarter of a billion dollars to fix a very tired stretch of road.

repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 cannot wait

Officials with MassDOT say the proposed repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 cannot wait due to the deteriorating condition of the roadway and cost of continually patching it.

But there are other concerns as well. They include logistics — the proposed repair project, even on a planned accelerated construction schedule, would take probably three years to complete, and prolonged closings of several off-ramps and partial closures of the parking garages under the highway would be unavoidable — as well as timing. Indeed, the project could coincide with the now-likely construction of an $800 million casino between State and Union streets, just a block or so from one of those aforementioned off-ramps.

But the pause that Fyntrilakis and others are seeking — to study a potentially bolder endeavor involving the viaduct — is not likely, or even advisable, said O’Dowd.

That’s because this section of I-91 is deteriorating rapidly, and the state is spending about $2 million a year annually on what amount to patch jobs that do little but buy the city some time. And, in his opinion, it can’t buy any more.

“This is something that needs to be done now,” he said at the public hearing, putting the accent on that last word as he talked about the financial and safety considerations that he believes should deter any delays in getting started.

But beyond those aspects of hitting ‘pause’ on the viaduct work, there are also economic-development concerns, said Jeffrey Ciuffreda, president of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield.

He told BusinessWest that discussions about an extensive ‘repair-in-place’ project involving the viaduct have been ongoing for some time. But they took a far more serious tone — and the initiative moved into a faster lane, if you will — after the second level of the I-91 South parking garage had to be closed for an extended period due to falling concrete from the deck above.

“That convinced people that this was serious — it really showed the economic impact upon Springfield,” he said, adding that there are several buildings downtown that don’t have attached parking and rely on the I-91 lots. “When they closed that floor of the parking garage and told everyone to park in I-91 North, that overloaded that system, and we started realizing how dependent downtown Springfield is on two or three parking facilities.”

Frank DePaola

Frank DePaola says accelerated bridge construction, or ABC, should allow crews to complete the repairs of the viaduct section of I-91 in three construction seasons.

So it appears that the repair project will proceed as planned, with a contract slated to be awarded later this year and work to commence possibly next spring. This will be a long and likely painful period for those who live, work, and do business in the downtown area, said Ciuffreda, adding that it will be his agency’s goal to help minimize the disruptions through planning and communication.

For this issue and its focus on environment and engineering, BusinessWest focuses on those steps and many other aspects of what is turning into a controversial project long before any work actually begins.

Concrete Examples

It’s called ‘accelerated bridge construction,’ another term simplified to the acronym ABC.

And, as the name implies, it involves processes and materials — such as pre-fabricated sections of highway decking — that enables projects such as the proposed I-91 initiative to be completed in less time than under more traditional methods, said Frank DePaola, MassDOT highway administrator.

Before elaborating on just what’s involved, he told BusinessWest that the state has already had some experience with ABC, and it’s due to get quite a bit more in the years to come, because there are many elevated sections of highway like Springfield’s I-91 viaduct, most of which were built about the same time — the mid- to late ’60s, as the Interstate Highway Project was reaching its zenith — and they’re in generally the same condition: poor.

A partial list would include the I-90 (Mass. Turnpike) viaduct in Boston, the Route 79 viaduct in Fall River, the McCarthy Overpass in Sommerville, and a section of I-93 North that also passes through Sommerville, he said, adding that some have been repaired and others are awaiting work.

Reiterating O’Dowd’s comments, he said the work in Springfield cannot, and should not, be put off much longer.

“Over the years, the water, the salt, and just the weather elements have weathered the deck, so that without predictability, sections of the deck fall out, and we have to go out there and patch holes in the deck,” he explained. “We’ve spent, on average, $2 million a year patching the holes in the deck.”

Beyond this cost, and the safety element driven home by the closing of the upper level of the parking garage, there is a “nuisance factor” as well, he said, noting these patch jobs he described entail shutting down lanes of the highway for sometimes long stretches at a time.

Rather than continue with this frustrating, Sisyphean approach, the state has proposed an ambitious, and expensive, plan to replace the decking on the 67 spans of northbound highway within the viaduct and the 62 spans on the southbound section.

If all goes as planned, the contract for the repair project will be awarded later this year, and work is expected to commence late this fall. The plan is to keep two of the three lanes in both the north- and southbound sections open at all times, said DePaola, noting that, while 14 sections of I-93 were replaced in 10 weeks by shutting that section of the highway down completely, a similar strategy is neither necessary nor recommended for Springfield’s viaduct.

Keeping two lanes of traffic open on both the north- and southbound sections of the highway will reduce the overall inconvenience from the project, but there will undoubtedly be an impact on commuters as off-ramps are closed and traffic is detoured onto East Columbus and West Columbus avenues and other arteries, said O’Dowd at the public hearing.

Exits 6 and 7 on I-91 South will be closed, and traffic detoured to a temporary ramp to be constructed north of exit 8 to provide access to downtown Springfield via West and East Columbus avenues. The on-ramps to I-91 North from both State and Union streets will also have to be closed, he went on. I-91 northbound access will be provided via East Columbus Avenue, with I-291 access provided via a detour off East Columbus Avenue to Liberty and Dwight streets.

Ramping Up

Ciuffreda, who has many not-so-fond recollections of the I-91 ramp-reversal project that accompanied the opening of the new Basketball Hall of Fame, said residents, business owners, and those who work downtown couldn’t be blamed for being skeptical about vows to minimize the disruption from the planned I-91 project.

Indeed, the ramp project took far longer than originally estimated, and the impact was considerable. And those same things can be said about the Memorial Bridge reconstruction that took place 20 years ago, and the more recent repairs to the South End Bridge.

But Ciuffreda believes there is also room for optimism with regard to the I-91 initiative.

“The state has come a long way with how they go about construction projects like this one,” he said, citing the I-93 repairs as one example. “It’s going to be a major, major construction project, but they feel pretty comfortable — and I feel pretty comfortable — that they can minimize the downside of it.

“Clearly there will be disruptions — you can’t do a major construction project without them — but I think they’ve learned enough to expedite it and to minimize the adverse effects.”

But the 17-day run of the Big E each fall will severely test the patience, and the abilities, of those trying to keep the traffic flowing, he added quickly, noting that construction might have to be shut down during the fair’s run, and other steps, such as shuttling visitors from remote locations, might have to be undertaken.

And if a license is granted for MGM’s proposed South End resort casino, as expected, and construction begins later this year — that’s the current timetable — two of the biggest construction projects in the region’s history would be going on at the same time, and within a few hundred feet of each other.

Overall, effective communication with the public about the project, specific phases, lane and off-ramp closings, and other considerations are vital to efforts to minimize disruptions and the impact on commerce, said Kevin Kennedy, Springfield’s chief development officer.

“My issue is to make sure there’s enough communication so that we know where they’re working so we can tell people who work and come to downtown Springfield and use our parking facilities what’s going on and what the best route to get here is going to be,” he said. “It’s going to uncomfortable for a while, and no one likes that, but the idea that we can get a good fix, rather than a patch job, is good for Springfield in the long run.”

As for that broader vision for the viaduct and improved access to the river that Fyntrilakis mentioned, there is a study, being conducted independent of the repair project, that is exploring options.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno has repeatedly called for something “bold and visionary” in his public comments on the matter, and State Transportation Secretary Richard Davey said it might be possible to take some sections of the elevated highway down to grade level or just below.

But there are myriad questions that will be need to be answered, about everything from what the soils can handle to how other barriers to the riverfront, such as East and West Columbus avenues  and the rail line just east of the river would be negotiated; from how such a project would be funded to whether the state and federal governments would invest heavily again in a road they just paid $260 million to fix.

“Once the repair project starts, it will take some of the options off the table for getting to the riverfront, but I’m not sure it takes all of them off the table,” said Ciuffreda. “We may have to settle for a lesser connection than we ideally would like. That’s just the hand we’ve been dealt. It’s a crumbling road, and if it ever went down to one lane, that would just cripple the economy.”

Bottom Line

How that hand will be played remains to be seen, but it appears that the pause sought by Fyntrilakis and others is not in the cards.

And for that reason, projecting down the road, for the short and long term, will be difficult. That’s why, when it comes to Springfield and its controversial, half-century-old viaduct, so many things are still up in the air.

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

Bankruptcies Departments

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

Abair, Richard Leo
735 Memorial Dr., #31A
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/07/14

Alkhabi, Mohammed
17 Crown St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Amelotte, George A.
P.O. Box 215
West Warren, MA 01092
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Baranowski, Linda M.
170 East St.
Chesterfield, MA 01012
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Bartolucci, Jennifer L.
30 Burleigh Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Bergeron, Eugene J.
Dudley, Lynn L.
36 Charles St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Blare, Timothy J.
Blare, Kelly S.
778 Wheelwright Road
Barre, MA 01005
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/03/14

Bolling, Deanna N.
37 Bossidy Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Carter, Bruce M.
308 Montcalm St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Cleveland, Timothy L.
White-Cleveland, Shannon L.
797 Conant Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Coleman, Jeffery A.
Coleman, Elizabeth M.
35 Edgewood Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Cullen, David G.
96 Bearsden Road
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Daniels, Bruce
15 Linden St., Apt. 1
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Degnan, Michael
Degnan, Kellie
27 Gerrard Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/12/14

DiNicola, Joseph P.
92 Cole Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/13/14

Fay, Christopher T.
Rust, Amy C.
54 Rosedell Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Gelinas, Julie A.
147 Wilson Ave.
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Gonzalez, Victor
10 Chestnut St., Apt.
Springfield, MA 01103
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Gouger, Steven L.
Gouger, Susan M.
390 Batchelor St.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Griffin, Marianne
84 Main St., Apt. 1B
Northfield, MA 01360
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/13/14

Hebert, Cynthia T.
a/k/a Ragone, Cynthia T.
38 Luden St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Hilltown Chiropractic
Czerniak, Mark E.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Katykhin, Yelena
Katykhin, Oleg
1371 Southampton Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Kingsley, Fred G.
Kingsley, Sandra T.
P.O. Box 1461
Warren, MA 01083
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/12/14

Kluender, Virginia
4 Church St.
Gilbertville, MA 01031
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/07/14

Leveille, Darryl J.
129 Tannery Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/12/14

Lewis, Leslie B.
6 Alpine Trail
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Makucha, Alexei
Makucha, Irina
97 Hawks Circle
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Merrick, Shad W.
Merrick, Michelle N.
106 Ridge Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Mondeau, Craig M.
19 School St.
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Myette, Joseph P.
16 Gillette Ave.
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 01/31/14

Nest Inc.
258 Malboeuf Road
Ware, MA 01082
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/07/14

Pare’, Warren L.
PO Box 486
Chicopee, MA 01021
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Pease, Michael J.
Pease, Rebecca J.
120 North Main St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Perales, Jose A.
a/k/a Perales-Romero, Jose
126 Hastings St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Richter-Blais, Karen Marie
Blais, Scott Anthony
48 Pineywood Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/14/14

Rivera, Ivan R.
PO Box 5052
Holyoke, MA 01041
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Sorrell, Russell C.
19 Deerfield St.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/06/14

St. George, Clarence S.
35 Park Ave.
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/07/14

Suarez, Salvador
Suarez, Cindy
505 Allen Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Summers, John C.
54 Farnum Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Texidor, Carmen A.
58 Elmwood Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Torres, Luz E.
58 Orange St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Turner, Raymond E.
Turner, Linda L.
1583 Riverdale St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Tyrell, Judith M.
29 Bartels St.
Springfield, MA 01128
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/04/14

Wilkesman, David K.
19 Apple Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/10/14

Wilson, Walter L.
206 Homestead Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Wood, Jason
157 Corinth St.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Woodard, Kevin M.
10 White St.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/11/14

Woodard, Walter C.
Woodard, Angelina M.
5 School St.
Lenox Dale, MA 01242
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 02/12/14

Community Spotlight Features
Economic Transformation Continues in Pittsfield

Community Development Director Douglas Clark

Community Development Director Douglas Clark says diversity is the key to sustained growth in Pittsfield.

Mayor Daniel Bianchi says downtown Pittsfield is continuing to evolve, and the establishment of a new, multi-million-dollar Innovation Center is moving forward. In addition, a new vocational technical high school is planned as part of a workforce-development initiative, and the city is taking a regional approach to growth.

“We have a lot of good things going on and are progressing nicely,” he told BusinessWest.

Douglas Clark concurred. “We want to be diverse. You have to grow on multiple fronts,” said the city’s community development director.

The Innovation Center holds real promise, and $6.5 million has already been earmarked for the project as part of the Commonwealth’s Life Sciences Bond Bill. It will be built in William Stanley Business Park, which encompasses 52 acres on the grounds of the former General Electric Pittsfield Works. The park opened in the summer of 2012 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its first tenant, Mountain One Financial Center, but since that time, plans for the Innovation Center have taken center stage.

Clark said the original plan called for a ‘life science center,’ but the name was changed to reflect the fact that Pittsfield has more plastic and advanced-manufacturing companies than life-science companies.

The 20,000-square-foot center will provide space for the development of new products, support services, and specialized equipment. Companies will pay a membership fee to use the facility, and will be able to lease space for first-stage commercialization.

“It will provide them with access to new, expensive equipment such as a 3-D printer. Plus, we envision support services with intellectual-property rights, patents, and a range of other things a startup might need,” Clark said. “We also hope to foster connections with one or more research universities, such as UMass or RPI [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute], and become connected to high-speed computer service through the Mass Broadband Initiative. Our hope is that, if a company’s first-stage commercialization is successful, they might move into their own building.”

The center will contain a clean room with a controlled level of contamination, which advanced-manufacturing companies require to produce medical devices and other sensitive equipment.

However, Clark said the room will also offer educational opportunities. “Berkshire Community College could run training in the clean room and tie it into their curriculum.”

Progress has been fueled through a number of groups. Bianchi created a Life Science Task Force to develop ideas for the site, New England Expansion Strategies was hired to conduct outreach and feasibility studies, and Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA) is doing everything possible to move the project forward via loans and technical assistance. “We are not lying idle,” said the mayor.

Clark agreed. “The task force meets to discuss initiatives, including how Pittsfield can capitalize on life-science industries. They are a strategic focus of the Commonwealth, and we are hoping not to be left out of the discussion,” he said, adding that PEDA has commissioned a study of advanced manufacturing in the Berkshires.

An example of a success story is Nuclea Biotechnologies Inc., which develops and makes diagnostic tests for cancer and diabetes. It moved to Elm Street about a year ago, and recently received a $510,000 state tax incentive from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to develop more manufacturing in Pittsfield and create 25 jobs.

The city and PEDA have also joined forces to entice a rail-car manufacturer to the business park.

“The MBTA [Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] has issued a request for proposals for an $850 million contract to build railway cars for their Orange and Red Line trains,” with the stipulation that they must be assembled within the state, Clark said. “So a few weeks ago, the city put forth an offer of $1 million, and PEDA offered another $1 million incentive to try to bring a rail-car manufacturer here.”

Proposals are due in May, and any firm coming to Pittsfield will need to develop a parcel and erect a new building in the park, which could cost up to $20 million. But Clark said PEDA has a foundation suitable for construction, and the offer has led to meetings with a number of rail-car manufacturers. “It could bring 200 to 250 jobs to the city,” he added.

Potential for development also exists in Downing Industrial Park, and city officials are in discussion with a high-tech company about the former Meadwestvaco Resource building there, which has been unoccupied for years. If the company decides to settle in the city, Bianchi said, it will add about 100 scientifically oriented jobs to the area.

And although GE closed its transformer and aerospace operation in Pittsfield more than two decades ago, its presence is still evident. GE Advanced Materials, now owned by SABIC Innovative Plastics, has made Pittsfield its North American headquarters, and General Dynamics occupies many of the old GE buildings and is a major employer for the area.

Expanding Metropolis

The city’s downtown, which has undergone a transformation over the past decade, continues to evolve. Pittsfield has received $1.7 million to complete work on its main common, which Bianchi describes as “the largest, most centrally located urban block in the city,” and an additional $2 million in grants has been allocated for Phase 3 of the downtown streetscape-improvement project.

Community Development Specialist Laura Mick noted that infrastructure improvements have been ongoing since 2005, when a concerned citizens advisory committee told city officials the area needed more aesthetic appeal, better lighting, and improved pedestrian safety. “So we updated the master plan. We wanted to create a new image.”

To that end, new sidewalk treatments and LED decorative lighting have been installed; bump-outs were shortened, which makes it safer to cross the streets; and benches, bike racks, new trees, and a rain garden have combined to change the landscape.

Mick said Phase 3 of the plan, which will kick off this spring, will continue the improvements and include a bicycle lane.

The project has brought new restaurants and retail shops to the area, and Bianchi said there is not much vacant space left as developers continue to take advantage of tax credits and repurpose buildings that had sat abandoned for years.

They include the former Berkshire Bank building on 54 North St. Last month, NBT Bank opened a full-service location on the first floor, which will serve as the central location for its Berkshire County presence. Office space on the second floor has also been leased out and is being rented by attorneys. “The building is unique, and the bank fills a gap downtown,” Bianchi said.

A block away, Allegrone Construction is converting the old Goodrich House behind City Hall into about 20 market-rate apartments. That project is nearing completion, but Allegrone has plans for a similar makeover in the nearby Onota building.

In addition, Tierney Construction recently announced construction of a new boutique hotel with 43 rooms and space for meetings. It will occupy 68,000 square feet in two connected brick buildings that run from 273 to 297 North St. “Tierney will also maintain the two restaurants that are there now, and hope to get started on the hotel in 12 to 18 months,” Bianchi said.

Other efforts to promote vitality include a parking-management study commissioned by the city to ensure it is using available space wisely. “These things all work together to create a vibrant downtown,” Clark said.

Change is also occurring nearby. “We are seeing little restaurants, shops, and ethnic markets opening,” Bianchi said, adding that they offer Polish, Far Eastern, and Columbian products.

In addition, an architect hopes to put greenhouses inside the former Eagles building in the Morningside neighborhood, located a few blocks from downtown. “It would complement the farmers’ market that opened last year,” Bianchi said.

The arts community is also thriving. “Pittsfield used to be the ‘hole in the donut’ as far as the arts went, but with the Colonial and Berkshire theaters, Great Barrington Stage, the Beacon Cinema, and our First Friday Art Walks, we have filled that hole,” Clark said.

Bianchi said Barrington Stage opened a second venue about three years ago in a former Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, and the city’s newest art project, which is in the works, is a retrospective that will show how art and industry intertwined throughout Pittsfield’s history.

“The GE plant created glass bushings that were almost a crossover between art and industry,” the mayor said, citing one example. The undertaking will include televised interviews of residents who will recall the heyday of the mills.

In addition to arts and entertainment, Clark said the city offers recreation in the form of a state forest, a ski area, three golf courses, and two large lakes within city limits. But the arts overlay district and these venues are not enough to attract and retain skilled workers, so city officials are working in conjunction with other groups on workforce development.

To that end, a new vocational technical high school will be built on the grounds of Taconic High School, where enhanced programs to prepare people for careers in advanced manufacturing can be developed with partners such as Berkshire Community College.

Bianchi said the city is working with the Mass. School Building Needs Authority on the high school. DAR Associates in Waltham was selected to do the design, and it expects to have several concepts to choose from that will result in either a renovation and expansion of the existing building or a brand-new school. “The new school is integral to helping businesses grow,” the mayor said.

Moving Forward

Progress is expected to continue as people from many walks of life continue to join forces.

“We have a community that knows how to work together and really pull together for mutual purposes, and we are able to turn to the state and federal government and show them investments downtown which inspire them to invest in us,” Bianchi said. “We also have had good public and private partnerships for the last 10 years, and Mass Business Development is interested in helping us with a lot of these projects.”

Clark concurs. “Things don’t change in a linear, predictable fashion,” he said. “They spiral up or down, and right now, Pittsfield is in a good upward spiral.”

Pittsfield at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1761
Population: 44,737 (2010); 45,793 (2000)
Area: 42.5 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: 16.70
Commercial Tax Rate: 34.47
Median Household Income: $35,655
Family Household Income: $46,228
Type of government: Mayor, City Council
Largest employers: Berkshire Health Systems, General Dynamics Advanced Info Systems, SABIC Innovative Plastics

* Latest information available

Environment and Engineering Sections
WNEU Team Chosen to Compete in Prestigious Solar Decathlon

E-Board members, from left, Garrett Bieksza, Samuel McLaren, Adison Vanina, Tiffany Behuniak, and Justin Parlapiano

E-Board members, from left, Garrett Bieksza, Samuel McLaren, Adison Vanina, Tiffany Behuniak, and Justin Parlapiano, will have leadership roles in the biathlon project.

Samuel McLaren was talking about anxiety, a few sleepless nights, 16-hour days, and the pressure of meeting tight deadlines.

And that was just the application process.

There is certain to be much more of all of the above as he and more than 100 other students at Western New England University, which will lead one of 20 teams that prevailed in that application phase, take part in something called the Solar Decathlon.

Over the next 22 months or so, students across a number of disciplines, from environmental engineering to mathematics to mass communications, will design, fund, and build a completely solar-powered, net-zero home, then test it, disassemble it, transport it to Irvine, Calif., where it will compete with those 19 other entries, disassemble it again, and ship it back to Springfield.

“This is an enormous task, obviously,” said Kenneth Lee, professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at WNEU, who was on hand for the 2013 Solar Decathlon, and pronounced it a working display of energy innovation in action. “It’s going to require teamwork, lots of hard work, and a strong focus on innovation.”

McLaren, a junior who transferred to WNEU from Housatonic Community College, and one of several students on the project’s leadership team, or Engineering Board, or E-Board, agreed.

“It’s already been a lot of work — we worked on this tirelessly last semester, getting our application ready,” he said, adding that those long days and sleepless nights, which extended into the intersession, were obviously worth it.

Indeed, on Feb. 13, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which stages the decathlon, announced that WNEU and two collaborating partners, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama and Universidad Tecnologica Centroamerica in Honduras, would be competing against the likes of Stanford, Yale, California Polytechnic State University, Vanderbilt, and many other top schools, in this country and abroad.

The winning team will receive a cash prize, said Lee, adding quickly that the more important rewards — which will go to all of the more than 2,000 contestants — include the experience of working with others to plan and execute the project, and also working on the cutting edge of innovation in energy efficiency.

The biannual event is called a decathlon because, as the name suggests, there are 10 contests within the larger competition. Teams will be judged on architecture, market appeal, engineering, communication, and affordability — components that will be juried — as well as ‘comfort zone,’ hot water, appliances, home entertainment, and energy balance, which will be measured (home entertainment will also be juried).

For this issue and its focus on environment and engineering, BusinessWest talked with Lee and several of the students who will be leading WNEU’s participation. They all described it as a unique opportunity to take what is being taught in the classroom and put it to work in a real world that is searching for ways to become more energy-efficient.

Bright Ideas

The scope of the Solar Decathlon became clear at a meeting involving many of the students who will participate.

The auditorium on the ground floor was packed with more than 100 students across a number of disciplines. More than a dozen would move to the front of the room to discuss specific aspects of the project that they would lead, and essentially recruit members for those teams.

These specific assignments ranged from planning and design to public relations; from interior design (led by a young woman who admitted she knew nothing about engineering, but didn’t need to) to fund-raising and soliciting sponsors.

And Lee summed up the principle that will drive each of these tasks, but especially the design phase, when he told those assembled, “we need innovation, innovation, innovation. We’re going to have to separate our house from everyone else’s, and the only way to do that is to apply innovation to everything we do.

“This is going to be the experience of a lifetime,” he went on,” he went on, during what could be described as an informational session presented in the form of a pep talk. “This is probably the best experience you’re going to get in your undergraduate career. You’re going to work hard — I’m going to make sure of that — and you’re going to have to earn your way on this team.”

Innovation has been the watchword since the Solar Decathlon was first staged in 2002. Since then, a total of 192 teams and nearly 17,000 students, representing 33 countries, have taken part.

Those numbers will increase with the 2015 competition, which will include eight returning teams and 12 new squads; four of the teams will have partners from international schools. The field looks this this:

• California Polytechnic State University;

• California State University in Sacramento;

• Clemson University;

• Crowder College and Drury University;

• Lansing Community College, Kendell College of Art and Design, and Ferris State University;

• Missouri University of Science and Technology;

• New York City College of Technology;

• Oregon Institute of Technology and Portland State University;

• Stanford University;

• State University of New York, Alfred College of Technology, and Alfred University;

• Stevens Institute of Technology;

• University of Florida, National University of Singapore, and Santa Fe College;

• University of Texas at Austin and Technische Universitaet Muenchen;

• University of California Davis;

• University of California Irvine, Saddleback College, Chapman University, and Irvine Valley College;

• Vanderbilt University and Middle Tennessee State University;

• West Virginia University and University of Roma Tor Vergata;

• Western New England University, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, and Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana; and

• Yale University.

Those teams will looking to duplicate the success of Norwich University in Vermont, which took home the Byron Stafford Award of Distinction (named after one of the event’s original organizers, who passed away last year) for something called the Delta T-90 House, which, according to last year’s program guide, “is guided by the beliefs that high-performance, solar-powered dwellings should be available to all and that good design is not a function of cost.”

Seeing the Light

At present, the WNEU team’s entry doesn’t have a name, a design, or even a budget, said Tiffany Behuniak, a sophomore studying civil and environmental engineering and project engineer for the decathlon bid, noting that these pieces to the puzzle will fall into place over the next several months.

She conjectured that the WNEU team’s application struck a chord with those reviewing the entries because of the international partners, the fact that the school had committed $24,000 to the project and raised another $26,000, and other tangibles and intangibles.

And since word came from the Department of Energy that WNEU’s team had been chosen to compete, the process of filling out that team and assigning work has commenced with the necessary degree of urgency.

“We’re getting all of members together and splitting people into groups based on what they want to work on,” Behuniak explained. “And then we’re going to start all of our training and design work, getting more sponsorships and doing more fund-raising. There is a lot going on all at once.”

Students at the partnering international schools will be working with those at WNEU on individual projects, mostly via skype, said Lee, adding that, when the endeavor reaches its final stages, some of these students will come to the Springfield campus for actual hands-on involvement.

Adison Vanina, a sophomore electrical engineering major and project manager for the decathlon bid, said that, for all those involved, this will be experiential learning of the highest order, and an invaluable experience that could help open doors to careers in the green-energy field.

“When Dr. Lee first introduced this to us, it seemed like a great opportunity to build our experience in engineering,” he said, “and also take what we’ve learned in the classroom and put it to practical use, while also working in a team environment.”

While many of the aspects of the project involve science, architecture, and engineering, there are other components that make it a truly campus-wide initiative, said Lee.

He cited, for example, the communications segment within the decathlon. In that competition, a jury of communications professionals evaluates Web content, an audio-visual presentation and information, the quality of on-site graphics, the delivery of messages to target audiences, and the use of innovative (there’s that word again) methods to engage audiences.

And then, there’s the fund-raising aspect to the project, which, while it is not scored as part of the actual competition, is obviously vital to its success. The Department of Energy provides some funding, as does the university, said Lee, but the team must pound the pavement and be creative to cover the full cost of building the home (projected to be $250,000 or more) and also additional expenses, especially those involving getting the house — and the students who built it — to California and back.

All those we spoke with said this project is at its very earliest stages and there are many unknowns ahead, which is one of the more intriguing aspects of this effort.

What is known is that there will be many more of those long days and possibly sleepless nights in the months to come.

Whether the WNEU team can take the top prize in the 2015 competition remains to seen, but one thing is clear: this will be a well-earned day in the sun for all those involved.


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

Departments People on the Move

Thomas Newton

Thomas Newton

Thomas Newton recently joined the South Hadley-based advertising and marketing firm Allen Media Inc., as a Relationship Manager. Newton has customer-service skills and a background as a marketing and sales executive, and will work directly with clients to optimize their presence in the market by applying his expertise in marketing, branding, advertising, and communications. Previously, Newton was Vice President of Marketing and Operations at Point Software Inc. in East Longmeadow; Regional Marketing and Promotions Manager at Comcast Spotlight in Bloomfield, Conn.; Director of Marketing & Promotions at Saga Communications in East Longmeadow; and other senior management positions at Charter Communications, Starz/Encore Networks, and Continental Cablevision.
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Kevin O’Donnell

Kevin O’Donnell

BerkshireBanc Investment Services, an affiliate of Berkshire Bank, announced the promotion of Kevin O’Donnell, CFP to Vice President. O’Donnell is a Financial Advisor with Commonwealth Financial Network, and started with Berkshire Bank’s trust department in April 2006 as an Investment Representative. In 2011, he was promoted to Financial Consultant/Associate Vice President at BerkshireBanc Investment Services. O’Donnell has logged more than 15 years of experience advising clients as a financial advisor at Bank of America Investments, UBS Financial Services, and Merrill Lynch. O’Donnell, who was recently named a “Top Next Gen Independent Broker/Dealer Advisor” for 2014 by REP magazine, graduated from Fairfield University’s School of Business with a BS in management, holds the FINRA Series 7, 31, 63, and 65 securities registrations, and has earned the Certified Financial Planner certification. He holds life, accident, and health insurance licenses.
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Dakin Humane Society recently welcomed two new members to its Board of Directors:
Jean Deliso is President and Owner of Deliso Financial & Insurance Services, which specializes in comprehensive financial planning. A member of New York Life’s Chairman’s Council and a consistent qualifying member of the Million Dollar Round Table, Deliso is a 2013 Court of the Table Member and a member of the Chairman’s Council. She is a graduate of Bentley College; and
Michael Simolo is an Estate Planning and Business Attorney at Robinson Donovan, P.C. Simolo, a graduate of Cornell Law School, has worked as an estate-planning, estate-administration, probate-litigation, and business attorney since 2003. With Robinson Donovan, P.C. since 2009, Simolo is a frequent speaker on estate-planning issues and is the president of the Pioneer Valley Estate Planning Council.
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Inspired Marketing recently announced the following changes at the Agawam-based marketing and events-planning firm.
Jill Monson-Bishop, CIO-Chief Inspiration Officer, was recently chosen to serve on one of Springfield City Council President Michael Fenton’s new ad-hoc committees, the Workforce Development Committee;
• Stephanie Killian has been promoted to Senior Event Planner and Project Manager. She began with Inspired Marketing as an intern and has four years experience planning corporate events. Her specialties include nonprofit and corporate event management, creative marketing solutions, media planning/buying, and organization. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications with a concentration in event planning from Bridgewater State University;
Lauren Mendoza has been hired as Executive Administrator and Event Assistant. Mendoza was previously with United Personnel and joined the Inspired Marketing team at the beginning of 2014. A graduate of UMass Amherst, she has a degree in business and management. She specializes in general project support, editing and proofing, media relations, and event assistance; and
• The 2014 Advisory Board structured to advance growth of the company includes the following board members: Michael Fenton, Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C.; David Ference, TD Bank; Nick Gelfand, NRF Real Estate; Bill Horowitz, AdviCoach Business Advisers; Regina Jasak, Jasak Independent Insurance; Scott Monson, Rock 102/Lazer 99.3; Marybeth O’Meara, Comcast; David Smith, H.L. Dempsey; Pamela Thornton, United Personnel; and Michael Weber, Minuteman Press.
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Jordan Diaz was recently named Information Technology Coordinator at Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. Diaz will be responsible for tech support, computer inventory maintenance, and software/operating system upgrades. He works with Paragus Strategic IT to keep MBK on the cutting edge of the industry’s cloud-computing management system. Previously, Diaz worked as an IT Support Technician at ServiceNet Inc. in Northampton, and has a background in customer service. Diaz attended Springfield Technical Community College and is a CompTIA-certified Network and Security Technician.
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Steve Lowell

Steve Lowell

Monson Savings Bank recently announced that Steve Lowell, President and CEO, was elected to the Steering Committee of the Mass. Financial Education Collaborative (MFEC) and presented at the first annual State House Financial Capability Day on Feb. 27. MFEC is a group of nonprofits, private institutions, government agencies, and other entities from across Massachusetts that was established by former commissioners of the legislatively mandated Mass.Asset Development Commission. This statewide network of innovative organizations works together to increase economic stability in Massachusetts through financial education, personal savings, and access to wealth-building assets such as homes, cars, college educations, and small businesses. Lowell was appointed to the Steering Committee due to his leadership in developing Monson Savings Bank’s robust financial-literacy programs, which include teaching financial literacy in area schools; providing workshops on important financial topics; developing a portfolio of products and services for children, teens, and college students; and the bank’s soon-to-be formally announced partnership with MassSaves.
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Timothy Steffen

Timothy Steffen

Tia Allen

Tia Allen

Northwestern Mutual recently promoted Timothy Steffen to Director of Recruitment and Tia Allen to Campus Recruiter. Steffen has been with Northwestern Mutual since 2010 and was previously the Director of Campus Recruitment. As Director of Recruitment, he is responsible for coordinating and managing all district network office recruiting efforts, and oversees the campus recruiter. He is a UMass graduate. Allen, who joined Northwestern Mutual in May 2012, will lead the internship and recruiting effort as Campus Recruiter. She is a graduate of Worcester State University with a degree in business administration.
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Elizabeth Beaudry

Elizabeth Beaudry

Denise Perkins

Denise Perkins

NUVO Bank & Trust Co., a locally owned, independent, small-business bank in Springfield, recently announced the promotions of Elizabeth Beaudry and Denise Perkins, both with the bank since its opening in 2008. Beaudry, formerly the Senior Commercial Credit Analyst and Information Technology Administrator, now serves as NUVO’s Commercial Credit Officer and Information Technology Officer. She will supervise and review the credit-approval process, evaluate the financial condition of commercial-loan applicants, conduct cash-flow analysis, and assist with administration and maintenance of the bank’s commercial-lending portfolio. Additionally, Beaudry will maintain administrative duties for the bank’s main network and manage day-to-day technology tasks, including all hardware, software, network, and computer-related issues. Beaudry has worked for several local banks, including Woronoco Savings Bank, Westbank, Florence Savings Bank, and Berkshire Bank. She is an alumnus of Bay Path College, where she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in business executive management. Perkins, formerly NUVO Bank’s Corporate Secretary, now serves as the Corporate Administrative Officer. She is in charge of human resources, payroll, shareholder relations, as well as the administration of the board and other corporate-related functions at the bank. With 30 years of banking experience, Perkins’ career began at the Farm Credit Banks of Springfield, and in 1987, she joined the Springfield Institution for Savings (SIS), where she developed and administered a community-relations dropout-prevention program for at-risk youth, which received national attention, as well as leading other educational collaborative partnerships for the bank. In 1994, Perkins joined the Westbank corporate offices as the Executive Assistant to the President. Perkins is an alumnus of Cambridge College, where she completed a graduate studies preparation program.
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The Old Sturbridge Village Board of Trustees recently voted unanimously to extend the contract of the museum’s President and CEO, James Donahue, through June 2017. Donahue’s leadership of the nonprofit organization has been lauded since he began in 2007, due to his ability to prompt significant performance improvements, including stabilizing attendance, increasing education field trips, and fund-raising, positioning the museum for a brighter future. Donahue led the reopening of the historic 10-room Old Sturbridge Inn and 29-room Reeder Family Lodges at the village in 2013, expanding the village’s operations to include museum, dining, retail, and lodging. Donahue was formally recognized for leadership and achievements at the 26th annual Massachusetts Governor’s Conference on Travel and Tourism this past October when he was awarded the Larry D. Meehan Award, presented by Gov. Deval Patrick.
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The Ware-based Positive Path Counseling Center announced that Gary Blanchard has been awarded the Counselor of the Year Award from the Mass. Assoc. of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselors. The award is presented annually to an addiction counselor who demonstrates excellence.

Business of Aging Sections
Glenmeadow Renovates, Responds to Lifestyle Changes

Tim Cotz, president and CEO of Glenmeadow

Tim Cotz, president and CEO of Glenmeadow

A few weeks ago, Tim Cotz, president and CEO for the past 20 years at Glenmeadow, noticed one of his housekeepers wished an elderly resident ‘happy birthday’ on Facebook.

Of course, he’s impressed with an octogenarian who is active on Facebook, but he said he’s even more pleased to see one of his staff reaching out to her, because it’s the personal bonds among the staff and residents that make Glenmeadow — an independent- and assisted-living complex in Longmeadow — feel like home.

In fact, Cotz can be found pouring coffee every weekday morning at 7 a.m., walking around opening shades for more light, and pouring glasses of chardonnay at a late Friday afternoon cocktail hour; his daily, hands-on style is a physical illustration of what he expects of his 110 employees in all their different roles. This philosophy, and an open ear to requests for change, have helped Glenmeadow grow successfully over the past 20 years, weather the Great Recession, and recently complete a $4 million renovation (more on that later).

Cotz describes Glenmeadow as “unique” in the business of senior living because it’s a stand-alone, nonprofit facility, while most of its competition is religious-based, for-profit, owned by private entities, or merged into large conglomerates.

He told BusinessWest that, while he’s always worked to enhance services and meet the expectations of his residents and their families, it’s a much more vocal demographic these days.

“I don’t think we can ever be a place where we say, ‘this is what we do, this is what we offer, that’s what it is,’” said Cotz, who noted that the organization’s original managers, which became a board in 1985, was long run by a group of ladies; in its 130-year history, Cotz is the first male to have the leadership role in Glenmeadow. “We’re ever-evolving.”

As another example, he mentioned a new addition to the staff, whose role is to help residents with their technology needs. Requests for assistance with iPads, iPhones, laptops, and the general need to keep up with social media is as important to residents, he said, as it is to everyone else today.

When Glenmeadow opened its new facility 17 years ago, “we had one person here with their own computer,” Cotz explained. “Now we have wi-fi throughout the building, and a majority of the folks have computers, so we’re looking at how we continue to enhance those services.”

For this issue’s focus on the business of aging, BusinessWest toured Glenmeadow to learn more about an elder residence with a long history in Greater Springfield, and how that nonprofit is catering to a demographic requesting amenities and programs reflecting a younger mindset than ever before.

Welcome Home

Working in long-term care since 1970, Cotz started as an orderly in college, and graduated from Hartwick College with a bachelor’s degree in healthcare before earning his master’s from George Washington University.

From 1982 to 1988, he served as executive director of the Geriatric Authority of Holyoke, then led Berkshire Health Systems in Pittsfield for five years, before transitioning to Glenmeadow, which at the time was located in downtown Springfield.

Doorstop Café

Tim Cotz said the $4 million in recent renovations includes the Doorstop Café, a popular meeting place for residents as well as visiting friends.

Explaining Glenmeadow’s history, Cotz said the nonprofit was founded in 1884 with donations and bequeaths, making it the oldest residential nonprofit for the elderly in Springfield. Originally named the Springfield Home for Aged Women, it was created to provide shelter and care for female seniors.

“Every city at the time had a ‘poor farm,’ and that’s where old people went,” Cotz told BusinessWest.  “But the citizenry of Springfield felt that they deserved a better option.”

The first structure was a home behind the current Red Rose Pizza in Springfield’s South End, which then moved to a mansion on the corner of Chestnut and Carew streets (the building is now used for alcohol and drug rehabilitation services), and by the 1960s the name was changed to Chestnut Knoll.

When the facility needed more space, it purchased a 20-acre plot of land from Daniel O’Connell’s Sons in 1993, just over the Springfield line in Longmeadow, and construction for the current facility was completed in 1997. The richly landscaped campus and buildings now boast 113 independent apartments (14 more were added in 2000 to the original 89 units), boasting full kitchens and baths, plus 34 assisted-living apartments with kitchenettes.

Demand for units has been fairly consistent over the past two decades, Cotz said. The recession impacted the nonprofit a bit in 2008 and 2009, causing the waiting list to shrink, but residents have consistently filled the apartments. After the recession, not only did the waiting list fill up again, the changing style of how seniors want to live created demands of a different sort.

Great Expectations

Specifically, Cotz pointed out two societal shifts that have affected Glenmeadow over the past decade. First is the trend toward ‘aging in place,’ which the facility turned into a revenue generator in 2001 with the introduction of Glenmeadow at Home, a non-medical, private-duty, home-healthcare company for those living there.

“People are living so much longer and living healthier, and typically there are periods where they need some additional support. So now we can hire our own staff, train them, do the background, and supervise them,” he explained. Residents also have the option to hire outside workers for those extra services, if they so choose.

The goal is to provide non-medical services that help elders stay comfortably in their home, which includes companionship, handyman service, transportation, meals, dog walking, and more. By 2003, Glenmeadow at Home expanded to caring for anyone 62 and older in the Greater Springfield community. Calls to clients’ personal physicians for medical attention are part of the services, and that eventually evolved into care management in the home to coordinate all the services that an elder would need as their medical care requirements increase. Today, Glenmeadow at Home employs 80.

The second trend Cotz has observed is a renewed focus on fitness and lifestyle programming.

“The population we’re serving is clearly looking for more options for wellness, so much so that 83% of the people in this building exercise regularly,” he explained, which has led to an expansion of wellness services on site.

“When we opened 17 years ago, we had a room about this size, and if people brought an exercise bike, we’d store it in there,” Cotz said, pointing around his office, which comfortably holds a desk, a table, and two easy chairs. “Well, now we have three trainers on staff, Nautilus equipment, and numerous exercise classes each day, from stretching to balance to Tai Chi, PiYo [a blend of Pilates and yoga], and aquasize.”

This attention to physical and mental wellness, Cotz told BusinessWest, is due to behavioral differences among three generations: the Silent Generation (born 1925-1944) and the GI Generation (1905-1924), which together which make up a large portion of Glenmeadow’s older residents, and the older edge of the Baby Boom Generation (1945-1964), who are now entering the facility or on the waiting list.

“They are very different populations; the expectations of people we’re serving are changing,” said Cotz. “My parents’ generation, the GI population, were kind of ‘give me a cot and a cup of coffee, and I’m good to go.’ But the people in their early 70s coming in clearly have higher expectations in terms of amenities, programs, and services.”

The standard independent-living facility — with individual living units, one large dining room, and some separate rooms for a lounge, library, puzzles, and crafts — are from a bygone era. Now, the demand for more contemporary open space and more choices for meal times has changed the entire look and feel of Glenmeadow’s first floor.

The complex recently invested $4 million in renovations to tear down interior walls, open up meeting rooms, add more windows for natural light, expand the wellness area, and split the formal dining room to create the casual Doorstop Café, as well as more administrative space for the growing Glenmeadow at Home.

Living Social

Another concern is the alarming trend of cognitive loss, ranging from general senility to vascular-related dementia to Alzheimer’s disease. Both Glenmeadow and Glenmeadow at Home aim to identify the first signs of impairment and the supports necessary to keep people independent for as long as possible.

While Glenmeadow is a private-pay business, the nonprofit accepts donations through requests and estates, and has an investment portfolio of $15 million. Those investments can help those that outlive their resources; Cotz said the facility has never discharged anyone due to inability to pay.

In addition, a few years ago, Glenmeadow began offering the use of its facilities to non-residents for only $25 per month. With little advertising, membership escalated to more than 80 people after renovations were completed last fall. Members take advantage of the pool, use the fitness programs and equipment, and grab soup or coffee at the Doorstop Café, Cotz said. “It allows the public to realize first-hand what could be their next home.”

That’s certainly worth a Facebook ‘like’ or two.

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Business of Aging Sections
Breakdown of Cartilage Between Joints Leads to Osteoarthritis

Dr. Leonard Wagner

Dr. Leonard Wagner says the most noticeable symptom of osteoarthritis is joint pain, but people also experience tenderness, stiffness, and loss of flexibility or range of motion.

More than 27 million Americans suffer from stiff joints and/or pain caused by osteoarthritis, or OA. It is the most common form of arthritis, and although growing older does not cause it, 50% of people over age 65 have some form of OA and suffer from degenerative changes in their joints. Still, the condition is not inevitable, and the pain it causes can often be alleviated.

“There are a lot of people who never develop arthritis, and there are others who do have it whose lives can be markedly improved with appropriate attention,” said orthopedic surgeon Dr. Leonard Wagner of Springfield.

Dr. James Schumacher agrees. “Osteoarthritis a very common disorder, and if you look hard enough, you can find it in everyone 40 or older, particularly in the spine,” said the rheumatologist from Riverbend Medical Group in Chicopee. “But the progression of the disease is very slow and takes place over decades.”

OA can affect the neck, back, hip, knee, shoulder, feet, thumb, or fingers. “Arthritis means inflammation of the joint, and osteoarthritis can affect just one or two joints, compared to other types that can involve the entire body,” Wagner said. The most noticeable symptom is pain in or around the joint, but people can also experience tenderness and/or stiffness and loss of flexibility or range of motion. Some also report a grating sensation or sound in the joint when they move.

The problem is caused by a breakdown of cartilage, which is a tough, elastic, fibrous connective tissue between the bones in the joint that provides them with cushioning. When it becomes too thin, the bones rub together, which leads to inflammation, stiffness, pain, and loss of movement.

But Schumacher says pain increases gradually and is dependent on many factors, such as a person’s weight and how much stress is put on the joint. In addition, what doctors find on X-rays or magnetic-resonance imaging does not necessarily correlate to the degree of pain people experience, he told BusinessWest.

However, some factors, such as obesity, make the problem worse, especially when the knees are affected. Wagner says every extra pound translates to three to four pounds of extra stress on the knee in people with OA. “So if you gain 10 pounds, the knee thinks you gained 40 pounds.”

Keeping active is important, but can be difficult because the more pain a person has, the less likely they are to exercise. “It’s a downward spiral,” Schumacher said. “If you can’t exercise, it’s easy to gain weight, and the more you gain, the more it hurts to exercise.”

Dr. James Schumacher

Dr. James Schumacher says the progression of osteoarthritis can be very slow, gradually worsening over decades.

However, exercising in a pool is a viable compromise and especially useful for people with OA in their knees, hips, or back. “Even walking in a pool will help,” Schumacher said, adding that some people use college or hotel pools rather than joining a gym. “You don’t have to be a lap swimmer. All you have to do is walk around. But it’s hard to get people interested in going to a pool in the winter.”

Progressive Condition

In addition to obesity, which can make OA worse, other factors put people at risk for the condition. “We don’t really know why osteoarthritis develops, but it is believed that genetics may play a role,” Schumacher said.

There is also a correlation between past injuries and symptoms. They include sports mishaps, car accidents, or a bad fall. In fact, the Arthritis Foundation says researchers have determined that 10 to 20 years after a traumatic injury to the knee — such as an ACL or meniscus tear — about 50% of patients will develop OA.

“The knee is very prone to injury,” Schumacher said. “But any joint can be involved, and if there is a deformity or slight variation in normal structure, it may lead to osteoarthritis.”

The condition occurs over time, and is often referred to as ‘wear-and-tear’ arthritis. Wagner explained that cartilage has a very slippery surface. That surface, combined with a small amount of fluid, keeps the joints lubricated.

However, as the cartilage degenerates or thins out, its surface becomes more like sandpaper, which prevents the bones from gliding easily. As the thinning progresses, they can begin to rub together. “It leads to inflammation, and as the body produces more inflamed cells, there is more and more pain and stiffness,” he said.

At first, pain may be infrequent and only occur with weather changes or when engaging in a strenuous activity. “But as time goes on, the symptoms become more of an issue,” Wagner said, adding that knees tend to be particularly painful because they are weight bearing and people cannot avoid using them because they need to walk.

However, there are measures people can take to help prevent OA. They include maintaining a healthy weight, taking care of injuries when they happen, and staying active. “You don’t need to go to the gym four times a week,” he said. “People just need to keep moving. Every walk you take or every time you take the stairs will help.”

Schumacher agrees. “All exercise counts, even walking from the far end of a parking lot. People who do this are actually getting good exercise. If you only do it once in a while, it will be more difficult, but a small amount is better than nothing, because the body does remember.”

Treatment Options

Wagner says there are a number of modalities used to cope with disabling pain. Many people use canes or walkers. “They can also get injections which decrease inflammation. And certain anti-inflammatory medications can also help to decrease inflammation and discomfort and may make your life more enjoyable. A lot of people take ibuprofen or Aleve and find it is beneficial. But it is important to pay attention to the directions because there is a potential of irritating the stomach.”

Schumacher agreed, and said people who take prescription medications or have other medical conditions should check with their doctor before embarking on a self-treatment plan of over-the-counter medications, as drug interactions and stomach inflammation can occur. “The doctor needs to look at the whole picture and decide what is a reasonable risk.”

Both physicians also urge people with pain that continues over time to visit their physician. “It’s useful to talk to your doctor about your symptoms, get a diagnosis, and find out what treatment is best,” Schumacher said. “A physical exam can detect changes in function, range of motion, and tenderness. We also use X-rays and MRIs to test the severity and extent of osteoarthritis, although there is a lot of variation in symptoms compared to these studies. But our aim is do what we can through medical management.”

However, Wagner says many people fail to schedule a doctor’s visit because they assume they know what is wrong with them and what the physician will prescribe.

“But just because you have pain in a joint doesn’t mean it’s arthritis or you need a particular treatment plan,” he explained. “For example, it’s possible to have pain and swelling in a knee from torn cartilage, even though the person may not remember getting injured. Or someone may have worked too hard in the garden and have tendinitis, which rest and over-the-counter medication will take care of.”

Surgery provides relief for many people, but is not scheduled until other treatment options are exhausted. “Joint replacement is usually the last option,” Schumacher said. “It is a big procedure, and it’s expensive, but for those who are barely able to get around, it can be quite helpful.”

Future Outlook

Osteoarthritis stems from a variety of causes, but is definitely associated with aging. “It is seen in younger people, but that is usually the result of injury or previous trauma to the joint,” Schumacher noted.

And although there is a lot of interest in what makes cartilage deteriorate, it is hard to study.

“Our understanding of why and how osteoarthritis happens is not very good, so even when it is detected early, we don’t have a treatment to change the outlook,” he told BusinessWest. “But it definitely pays to protect your body from injury, control your weight, and stay active.”

Business of Aging Sections
Rise in STDs Among Seniors Prompts Calls for Education, Compassion
Suzanne McElroy

Suzanne McElroy says the proliferation of advertising promoting senior relationships comes with little education regarding the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.

‘Do you have protection for safe sex?’

That’s certainly not an uncommon question to ask these days, given the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the widespread awareness of these afflictions.

But when Suzanne McElroy asks the same question of her clients, “they look at me with this shocked expression and ask, ‘why would I need that? I’m too old to get pregnant.’”

And that’s a big part of the problem when it comes to a growing — and alarming — trend that has emerged in recent years: a surge in the number of reported STDs among what would be considered older populations, those age 50 and up. Indeed, most of these individuals are probably too old to get pregnant, but they’re definitely not too old to contract STDs and the various health issues that accompany them.

As a franchise owner of Home Instead Senior Care, based in Springfield, McElroy knows the reality of what is happening behind closed doors with her clients, who range in age from the mid-70s to over 90, and the many issues that the aging process brings. But she also knows the disturbing statistics regarding STDs in seniors.

One of the most notable published reports is the American Assoc. of Retired Persons’ “Sex, Romance, and Relationships,” released in 2010. It surveyed a nationally representative sample of middle-aged and older people about their sex lives. These are the major findings:

• Three out of 10 respondents said they had sex at least once a week, including almost half of those who were single but dating or engaged, and 36% of those who were married;

• 85% of men and 61% of women said sex was important to their quality of life; and

• Just 12% of single men and 32% of single women who were dating reported always using condoms during sex.

That last bullet point is the really disconcerting stat, said McElroy, and just one of the reasons the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone be tested once for HIV, and those who engage in risky sexual behavior should add chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis to their yearly screening tests.

Elaborating, McElroy said there are two myths concerning this subject. One is that seniors don’t have sex, which is untrue, and the other is that they can’t contract sexually transmitted diseases, which is equally false. “We started an initiative around seniors and STDs, and true, it was a little shocking, and some didn’t want to be associated with it because they saw it as ‘unseemly,’ but we have to dispel these myths.”

McElroy said older Americans account for a relatively small percentage of new STD diagnoses overall, and diseases in general are escalating in the Baby Boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) because there are simply more of them. However, the rate of STD diagnosis in those ages 50 and over has doubled over the last decade, and that constituency includes a large portion of the Baby Boomers as well as what is left of the Silent (1925-1944) and GI (1905-1924) generations.

“Also, many seniors may have married at, say, 19, and never had any other partners, and the only thing they know is that condoms prevent pregnancy,” McElroy continued, adding that it’s the reason her company offers a conversation-starter booklet called The 40/70 Rule, designed to stimulate dialogue between seniors and their children on a host of issues, including sex (more on that later).

Leslie Kayan, Healthy Aging Program coordinator at the Franklin County Home Care Corp., is a strong supporter of any conversation that opens seniors up to talking about sexuality. As a community health educator, she’s taught sex education to teens, parents, teachers, church leaders, and healthcare providers.

A Baby Boomer like McElroy, Kayan grew up during the ‘free love’ generation, a culture with an openness and knowledge about sex and STDs, which she said will carry over to her senior years. “But anyone who is older than I am is extremely unlikely to ever have had any formal sexuality education,” she said. “Many of them have been married for years, and now they are widowed and out there, at risk for the first time. And safe sex isn’t even on their radar.”

“If you look at sexuality as part of the human condition from puberty till the day we die, it just doesn’t stop,” McElroy added. “It goes through cycles, but it doesn’t stop just because we reach a certain age.”

McElroy pointed to the proliferation of senior online-dating services like www.ourtime.com, www.seniorpeoplemeet.com, and www.findseniorsonly.com; the enormous revenues for erectile-dysfunction (ED) drugs like Pfizer’s Viagra ($2.5 billion in 2012) and Eli Lilly’s Cialis ($1.93 billion in 2012); and the growth in senior and assisted-living facilities that promote socialization. The messages are tantalizing, with little education to go with them, she said.

Don’t Sleep on This Problem

McElroy has 35 employees who are fully trained in all aspects of non-medical care of seniors. To keep that training up to date and relevant, she does extensive research into a variety of subjects, including sex and the older populations.

And in many national publications that have addressed that topic, she’s seen the words ‘seniors’ and ‘frisky’ together in the same sentence, and this juxtaposition does not amuse her.

“How demeaning that readers are totally picturing two white-haired people having ‘fun,’” she said in a voice tinged with a mix of anger and frustration. “How about two white-haired people who are lonely because they lost their spouse?”

Dr. Stephen Levine

Dr. Stephen Levine says the issue of STDs is far from the surface, and it’s usually a difficult subject for seniors to bring up with family members.

Her staff knows that respect is to be shown to senior clients’ behaviors because many are living in retirement communities that facilitate socialization among eligible, but also lonely, seniors, McElroy said.

“Maybe it’s romance and maybe they’re just ‘hooking up,’ but it’s not something that is funny or temporary, and it’s certainly not something that is perverse or wrong.”

McElroy’s staff does not diagnose, but rather observes any minute changes in clients like variations in appetite, urination, odors, rashes, etc., that may suggest further investigation by a doctor. According to McElroy, the biggest issue that seniors face is how the outside world sees them. It’s the widespread assumption that they don’t have sex that she said is dangerous.

“Because there is no talk about it, no education, there’s a lot of embarrassment,” she told BusinessWest. “Children will talk about healthcare proxies and living wills, and whether dad can still drive, but don’t think about asking dad about his dating or sex life now that mom is gone.”

Dr. Stephen Levine, who has practiced since 1979 in his Holyoke-based family practice and is affiliated with Holyoke Medical Center, agrees.

“The issue of STDs is far from the surface, and it’s usually the last thing that’s brought up,” he said. “It’s not something that can be allowed to be mistaken or overlooked, and needs to be discussed with the practitioner who is seeing the individual.”

Routinely, said Levine, his elderly patients have questions about physical changes that come with age and ask about ED treatments or lubrication for dryness, albeit somewhat indirectly. “A woman or a man may ask, ‘is there anything you have that can help me?’ and they know what they’re talking about, and I know what they’re talking about, and then the discussion goes in the direction of things that can be helpful, so it’s definitely on the majority of seniors’ minds that I see.”

Times are different, Levine went on, because the advent of ED drugs like Viagra for men and estrogen creams for women over the past decade has solved some of the issues of sex and aging. Now, with medical intervention, seniors are able to perform physically, with little effort, via a ‘little blue pill,’ a tube of cream, or hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

But the conversation has to start somewhere for these seniors when it comes to new sexual partners.

“Having sexual relationships is normal, expected, and OK, but it’s clear that this group is exposing one another to the possibility of STD risks,” said Levine.  “Bottom line, at the start of a life-changing situation like a new relationship, testing for everything one can think of that could be transmitted sexually is a good starting point.”

Ignoring the threat of STDs, especially if they go undiagnosed, can be detrimental, Levine said, because several types of STDs can be harbored without symptoms, including syphilis, chlamydia, HIV, and hepatitis B. Syphilis, in later stages, he explained, could cause dementia, which brings up one of the difficult issues in diagnosing STDs in the elderly: many STD symptoms are similar to the normal aspects of aging.

McElroy admitted that some of her clients who normally have issues with urinating — very common in older ages — would never identify that issue as a symptom of an STD, yet it could be one.

Elaborating, Levine added, “if something doesn’t appear to be anything other than a typical aging problem, the patient will probably have no intention of being tested, but they could be infected and unknowingly be spreading infection to one or multiple partners.”

Conversation Starters

Sherill Pineda, president of Care @ Home in East Longmeadow, has become very familiar with both the concept that seniors need a healthy sex life, and the issues related to STDs.

She started a volunteer Zumba dance group for seniors called Groove and Learn, which offers exercise as just one way to stave off Alzheimer’s disease, but to also learn about other aging issues. At a certain point, the more than 25 participants, mostly senior women, wanted to talk about sex, and Pineda realized there was a definite need for more openness and awareness regarding seniors and their inability, for whatever reason, to find answers for themselves. She also realized that awareness had to spread to the senior healthcare community, which was not nearly as open as it should be, for all the other seniors in the Western Mass. region.

Last May, Pineda staged a seminar called “Never Too Old for Love” at the Western Mass. Eldercare Conference at Holyoke Community College. The symposium, crafted for nurses, social workers, and the public, drew more than 350 people, and 66 of them were seniors. (This year’s event will be held on May 29).

Pineda explained that depression is a big issue with many of her clients, largely due to the loneliness and isolation that seniors feel, especially after losing a spouse. “When I talk about ‘Never Too Old for Love,’ it’s not purely about sex; some people just want companionship, and wherever that leads, that’s their private business. As healthcare professionals, we need to be mindful about what is causing depression and other unusual changes in seniors. They are still longing for the one-on-one emotional needs and the physical aspect of it, and they’re just like us; they don’t think of themselves as old.”

Pineda has found that seniors typically won’t talk about their sex lives with their grown children, “but they are more than willing to open up to healthcare professionals, because sometimes their kids will say, ‘you’re too old for that.’”

McElroy agreed, noting that Home Instead has a resource called The 40/70 Rule, a booklet that contains suggested conversation starters concerning myriad issues in the aging process. “It means that if you’re 40, and your parents are 70, then conversations about all sorts of things should start happening.”

She said the publication has realistic ways of opening that door to at least promote a conversation between a senior and his or her physician.

Her best advice for the children of seniors, their caregivers, and doctors is to not assume anything. Financial issues, end-of-life wishes, questions or concerns about sex … no one knows unless they ask, or at least open up the opportunity for real discussion.

Spread the Word

Research, news articles, education on the part of healthcare providers, and acceptance within immediate families is what McElroy, Kayan, Pineda, and Levine say will help remove the barriers to talking openly about seniors and their sexuality.

McElroy even sees this STD issue as a trend that will likely evolve over the next decade in the form of a welcome decline in prevalence because the more open-minded individuals in their 50s, 60s and early 70s have already integrated the Internet into their lives from their work life, and information and more education will make a huge difference in their knowledge of STDs and the concept of healthy sex.

“It’s all about respect and dignity,” she said, “which dictates that, if something isn’t hurting someone, I don’t care how old you are, you should be allowed to participate in it, safely.”

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Briefcase Departments

ESE Bid to Black Out Casino Events Rejected
BOSTON — The state Gaming Commission has rejected the Eastern States Exposition’s (ESE) bid for recognition as a venue that would suffer financial damage from the $800 million casino that MGM Resorts International plans to build in Springfield. The commission voted 3-2 to deny the request on the condition that MGM impose a blackout on potentially competing events during the 17 days of the Big E, the fair that generates about 85% of the Eastern States Exposition’s revenue. If the 17-day blackout fails to protect the Big E, the exposition can reapply for status as an ‘impacted live entertainment venue, the commissioners said. Eugene Cassidy, president and CEO of the West Springfield-based ESE, said the nonprofit will consider filing a lawsuit against the commission to overturn the ruling. The had called for a longer blackout period, including 45 days before the fair and 30 days after, to offset MGM’s competitive advantage. West Springfield is still negotiating a surrounding-community agreement with MGM to mitigate the casino’s impact, as is Longmeadow. MGM has successfully negotiated surrounding-community mitigation agreements with Ludlow, Agawam, Wilbraham, East Longmeadow, Chicopee, and Holyoke. The agreements with Agawam and Chicopee call for each community to receive $125,000 up front with annual payments of $150,000. Ludlow, East Longmeadow, and Wilbraham are set to receive $50,000 up front with annual payments of $100,000. The Holyoke agreement calls for $50,000 up front and $1.28 million over 15 years.

State Issues Innovation Challenge Grants
BOSTON — Glen Shor, state Secretary of Administration and Finance, recently announced 37 projects slated to receive funding from the $4 million Community Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant program. Now in its third year, the program incentivizes and supports regionalization and other cost-saving initiatives that will change the way local governments do business to maintain service delivery and stretch every taxpayer dollar as far as possible. “The CIC program is a major component of the Patrick administration’s commitment to provide cities and towns with the tools to effectively manage resources and provide services to their residents,” said Secretary Shor. “This program provides an opportunity for neighboring communities to build partnerships, share services, and use their resources wisely.” Added state Sen. Steven Brewer, “investing in the relationships between local governments, school districts, and regional organizations is fundamental for growth and innovation in our state. The Community Innovation Challenge grant program has provided millions of dollars to unique projects around the Commonwealth, and I look forward to seeing the positive effects that it will have on the towns and organizations in my district.” As the most rural county in Massachusetts, the member towns of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments have long recognized the value of sharing services and expenses. “CIC grants have been a great and invaluable resource for the expansion of regionalization efforts in Franklin County,” said Linda Dunlavy, executive director of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. “CIC funds have enabled us to open a regional dog shelter that serves 14 towns and has housed more than 200 dogs and adopted out 40% since its opening in late 2012. CIC funds have also created a regional health district that brings efficiency, accessibility, and professionalism to 10 small, rural towns. Including the 37 projects receiving funding this year, the Patrick administration has invested $10.25 million in 95 projects over a three-year period.

Diocese Announces Plan to Rebuild Cathedral High
SPRINGFIELD — The Diocese of Springfield confirmed last week that it will rebuild the tornado-damaged Cathedral High School, aided by approximately $29 million in federal disaster aid. Bishop Timothy McDonnell said in a press conference that the diocese will obtain demolition permits and move forward with design of the new school at that site in East Forest Park. A $38.5 million agreement was announced between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the diocese for damage to the school caused by a tornado on June 1, 2011. FEMA will cover about $29 million for tornado damages and related costs, and the diocese will cover the balance. The FEMA funds are earmarked for Cathedral and St. Michael’s Academy middle school and preschool, also damaged and relocated after the tornado. The diocese also recently reached a settlement of nearly $50 million with its insurance company, Catholic Mutual, for the Cathedral damage. Nearly $10 million more in insurance funds were issued for other diocesan buildings and costs. Cathedral has been located at a leased school in Wilbraham since the tornado, and St. Michael’s is currently housed in what used to be Holy Cross Elementary School in West Springfield.

State Awards $11 Million to Housing Authorities
BOSTON — Continuing the effort to preserve the state’s public housing authority portfolio and increase the number of affordable public housing units available, the Patrick administration announced nearly $11 million in funding to improve, preserve, and reoccupy the Commonwealth’s state-funded public housing units. The capital funding will be used for a number of initiatives, including supporting repairs required to get current vacant units back online, creating more accessible units for people with disabilities, and preserving the current housing stock by making the units more sustainable. “Affordable public housing is in high demand across the state,” said Undersecretary of Housing and Community Development Aaron Gornstein. “These additional dedicated funds will provide local housing authorities with new tools and funding to extend the life of our current housing stock and also more quickly house seniors and families looking for affordable housing.” The four types of funding being awarded to 170 housing authorities are: $3,598,970 in sustainability funds to upgrade building components in order to save energy and water; $4,125,365 in health and safety funds to reduce site and common-area hazards that could pose a danger to residents; $721,053 in vacant unit funds to renovate and reoccupy units needing costly rehabilitation that have been vacant for more than 60 days; and $2,517,778 in accessible unit funds to help housing authorities make progress toward having 5% of their units fully accessible. 

Penn National Snags Slot Parlor License
PLAINVILLE — The state Gaming Commission awarded the state’s lone slots parlor license to Penn National Gaming for its proposed development at the Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville. The decision came down to Penn National or the proposed Massachusetts Live! slots parlor in Leominster. A third proposal in Raynham, known as Parx Casino at Raynham Park, was out of the running early. The planned slots parlor in Plainville will include 1,250 slot machines as well as a sports bar, a high-end restaurant, and a food court. Harness racing will continue at the track. Penn National had originally pursued a resort casino in Springfield’s North End, but Mayor Domenic Sarno close to back a larger, competing proposal by MGM Resorts International. The new Plainville parlor could open as soon as spring 2015, according to Penn National, but a temporary slots parlor may be constructed within the next six months at the track if the commission approves. The price of the license is $25 million and must be paid within 30 days.



Palmer Site Owner Seeks to Block Mohegan Sun Bid
PALMER — The owner of the Palmer property where Mohegan Sun had proposed a casino are seeking a court judgment to prevent the company from pursuing another gambling project at Suffolk Downs in Revere. Northeast Realty Associates, which controls 152 acres in Palmer, argues that the casino company violated contracts with the landholder by allegedly engaging in secret talks with racetrack representatives, then intentionally ran a lukewarm referendum campaign for the Palmer project, contributing to its defeat at the polls in November. The lawsuit came less than a week before Revere residents went to the polls to approve a citywide referendum on Mohegan Sun’s plans to build a $1.3 billion gambling resort on land belonging to Suffolk Downs. In a statement, Mohegan Sun said the Connecticut-based company “devoted over five years and more than $25 million to create a world-class resort casino proposal in Palmer. But on Nov. 5, 2013, the community made a decision, which we have respected.”

Employment on Rise for Manufacturing in U.S.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Manufacturing jobs accounted for 18.6% of all employment growth in January, a sign of strength for the U.S. manufacturing sector, said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM). “It’s still far from a resurgence, but the jobs picture in manufacturing is certainly better than it was last decade. And the latest jobs report offers fresh evidence that it is possible to create manufacturing jobs in America again.” However, he added, “we believe better public policies would bring about a real resurgence. That would mean balancing our trade in goods, investing in infrastructure and training, combating currency manipulation overseas, and boosting innovation. And even though manufacturing may be one of the brighter spots in this jobs report, we’re still well below the pace needed to achieve the president’s goal of adding 1 million such jobs in his second term.”

Hiring Outlook Brightens in Landscape Architecture
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Business conditions remained stalled for the landscape-architecture profession in the fourth quarter of 2013, but may be entering a turnaround, according a survey by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). Although billable hours and inquiries for new work dipped during the fourth quarter, about half of all firms indicated plans to hire in early 2014 — a sign they are expecting more work. Some 75.7% of respondents reported stable to improved billable hours, a decline from the third quarter of 2013 (80.6%). Another 74.9% reported stable to higher inquiries from potential clients for new work, similar to what had been reported in the previous quarter (78%). Year to year, 81.5% of respondents indicated that fourth-quarter billable hours remained about the same or were higher. Additionally, 81.5% claimed steady or increased inquiries for new work compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. Of all firms with two or more employees, nearly half (48.5%) indicated they plan to hire in the first quarter of 2014. Half of all firms with 50 to 99 employees plan to hire an experienced landscape architect in the first quarter of 2014.

Cover Story
Mike Mathis Has Become the Face of MGM Springfield

MikeMathis600x200A year or so ago, Mike Mathis could walk the streets of downtown Springfield in relative anonymity.

These days … well, not so much.
He said he was buttonholed recently by a business owner on Worthington Street who gave him a tutorial on the wide range of musical talent that resides in this region and advised him to exploit it. And a few days ago, he was recognized by the person working behind the counter at a car-rental agency, who asked about job opportunities — not for himself, but for family members who had left the area and were interested in coming back.

There have been many similar episodes over the past several months, and there will certainly be exponentially more for what everyone expects will be years to come.

That’s because Mathis is the face of the $800 million casino project proposed for Springfield’s South End, and, increasingly, that face is being recognized, a development he doesn’t mind at all.

Indeed, Mathis, whose business card now reads ‘president, MGM Springfield,’ likes talking with people about what could be called his project, although there is already a sizable team working on it. And more than that, he loves hearing from individuals about how this initiative could dramatically change things for the city and the region — and in positive ways.

‘Transformative’ was the word he said one state official used to describe the MGM Springfield project, and he’s not at all shy about borrowing that term.

Actually, he’s not shy about much of anything, a character trait he says is one of many necessitated by, and also honed by, life as the son of an Army officer who moved his family a number of times during his career.

“It was a wonderful childhood,” Mathis told BusinessWest, listing stops in Atlanta, Monterey, Calif., Frankfurt, Germany, and Huntsville, Ala., among many others. “The nature of moving around that often, and the whole culture of military kids and schools, is that you make friends really quickly. It forces you to be outgoing, and you need to be open to a lot of different cultures, because you’re going to experience them. So I give a lot of credit to my dad and my mom for helping me to get there in terms of my personality.”

Those qualities he listed have served him well in a career that started with a New Jersey law firm just after he earned his juris doctor at Georgetown University, but soon saw the dateline shift to Las Vegas, where he would become involved in one of the biggest projects in the industry’s history — that is, until the recession stopped it in its tracks (more on that later).

He would eventually be recruited by MGM Resorts International, where he would rise to the title of vice president of the Global Gaming Department, a position that would take him from Vegas to Macau, Japan, countless other stops, and eventually to Springfield, which, by the fall of 2012 had become ground zero in the fight for the coveted Western Mass. casino license.

MGM’s proposed casino

Mike Mathis made frequent use of the word ‘transformative’ to describe the impact MGM’s proposed casino will have on Springfield and the surrounding region.

By last fall — Nov. 4, to be exact, the day Palmer voters said ‘no’ to Mohegan Sun’s plans to build a resort casino just off turnpike exit 8 — the MGM proposal was the proverbial last plan standing.

That phrase has been used quite extensively in the press, and Mathis doesn’t like it at all. He told BusinessWest that it conveys the sense that MGM will win this license — if that’s what happens — seemingly by default.

Instead, he said, MGM will have triumphed because it had the best plan, one that prevailed over Penn National’s bid to build a gaming complex in Springfield’s North End in what became the first stage of the license competition, and one he believes is a potentially groundbreaking concept for an urban gaming facility — what the company calls the ‘inside-out casino.’

“I think this project is going to set the bar for any other opportunities that a gaming company has to develop in a downtown urban environment,” he said, making reference to this plan’s focus on melding with its surroundings and putting the emphasis on family entertainment, not gaming. “If all goes well, people will look back at what we did in Springfield as the standard.”

For this issue and its focus on the casino era, BusinessWest talked at length with Mathis about everything from his career in this industry to the state of MGM’s proposal to the nagging presence of a referendum initiative that could undo everything that’s transpired since the gaming legislation was passed in the fall of 2011.

And in keeping with his character, he wasn’t shy about speaking his mind.

In the Background

Mathis remembers that it was a dark February day, one when the mercury barely touched 20 degrees. Those were the conditions when he and his wife, Lisa, whom he met while both were pursuing law degrees at Georgetown, boarded a plane at New York’s JFK airport to take up a fellow classmate’s advice to explore job opportunities in Las Vegas.

“It was 75 and perfect when we landed,” he said with a broad smile, adding that the weather was just one of many factors that would entice the couple to pack up and move roughly 2,500 miles west.

The bigger factor was that Las Vegas was at what would later be identified as the early stages of a massive building boom, one that this entrepreneurial couple wanted to be a part of.

MGM’s planned ‘inside-out’ casino

Mike Mathis says MGM’s planned ‘inside-out’ casino could set the standard when it comes to urban gaming facilities.

Backing up a bit, Mathis said his childhood spent moving from base to base, and the character traits it generated, definitely had an impact on his eventual career track and made it much easier to pick up and move across the country.

“My upbringing in a military family helps define my in a lot of ways,” he explained. “It’s not surprising to me that I’ve been attracted to hospitality and international development, because I’m very comfortable traveling, and I like experiencing new environments.”

He saw many environments in his youth, starting with the desert in Arizona, where he was born. Over the next decade and a half, his father’s work would take the family to the Southeast — Atlanta and Huntsville — and then to the West Coast and Monterey, a somewhat lengthier stint that was perhaps his favorite.

“We were there for four years,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how great that assignment was until we moved to New Jersey for middle school and high school.”

There was also a lengthy stay at a base near Frankfurt, one that afforded the family opportunities to travel throughout Europe, experiences that made a lasting impression on the young Mathis.

“My parents have always been great about exploring our environments and surroundings,” he said. “This was a working-class family, but my parents always put a priority on traveling. And my wife and I really go out of our way to make sure our kids see the world.”

Mathis probably couldn’t have imagined just how much of the world he would eventually see when he was wrapping up his law degree at Georgetown. He did a clerkship with a firm in New Jersey and a summer internship with a large Wall Street firm, experiences that exposed him to trial work and sophisticated corporate practice, respectively.

He eventually opted to return to New Jersey and spend more time in the courts.

Meanwhile, Lisa, who was in the same class with him at Georgetown, took a job with a Wall Street firm. Their schedules didn’t allow them to spend much time together, he said, and soon there was discussion about whether she would seek opportunities in New Jersey or he would do likewise in Manhattan.

Instead, they would both go to Las Vegas.

“We both got jobs with two of the top law firms in Las Vegas, who were happy to recruit some professionals from the East Coast because they were looking to broaden their practices,” Mathis recalled, adding that, within that first year, they both represented clients in the gaming industry; he worked with Las Vegas Sands, and Lisa with Caesars. Those stints eventually led to offers for in-house positions, which they both accepted.

Mathis spent the six years working with Las Vegas Sands, which he called a great learning experience, one in which he worked on not only the Venetian and Palazzo resort casinos, but also an expansion into Macau and the process of taking the company public.

“It was a really intense period with a lot going on, and I was right in the middle of all of it as a junior lawyer,” he explained. “It was just an incredible experience.”

He later accepted an offer to join Boyd Gaming and be general counsel for its flagship development on the Las Vegas strip — Echelon Place, at the site of the historic Stardust casino. The $4 billion venture would have included four hotels, a 140,000-square-foot casino, and the 650,000-square-foot Las Vegas ExpoCenter, but construction was halted in August 2008, roughly a year after it started, just as the effects of the Great Recession, which would devastate the Las Vegas economy, were starting to be felt.

While work at the site never resumed, Mathis considered his time at Boyd another key learning experience.

“Bill Boyd, who’s a legend in this industry, was an attorney who transitioned into an operator, so he was a great role model for me,” he said. “He was a very hands-on individual, very successful, very wealthy, but famous for working every day and knowing everyone’s names at each of the properties. I really respected that, and wanted to model my career after that type of engagement with the business, and with the people. He had a big impact on my outlook.”

Mathis described the demise of Echelon Place as the low point in his career — “I had only experienced the boom” — but he stayed with the Boyd group until 2011, when he accepted a position with MGM as vice president of Global Gaming Development for MGM Hospitality.

In that capacity, he has been one of the key players in advancing MGM’s latest developments — resort casinos in Macau, Delaware, and Springfield. And late last year, that focus was narrowed when he was made president of MGM Springfield.

Solid Bet

As he talked with BusinessWest in MGM’s offices in the TD Bank building — facilities crammed with architectural renderings and an elaborate model of the Springfield proposal — Mathis made it clear that he wasn’t taking anything for granted as the race for the Western Mass. license heads for the finish line. Nor was the company doing any coasting — another word he hears often — because there is no competition left.

“We’ve continued to work as if this were a five-operator race,” he said, referring to the number of companies that were bidding for the Western Mass. license in the final days of 2012 before the attrition started. “That’s what has helped make it such a detailed project; we felt a need to nail down a lot of specifics so that we could distinguish ourselves from our competitors. And that’s pretty unique to have as complete a design and as complete a program as we had early on.

“And we’ve continued to follow the Gaming Commission process, which is a very specific process,” he continued. “It requires engagement with surrounding communities, which has been ongoing, and it requires engagement with different entertainment venues. We’ve had a series of hearings in front of the Gaming Commission, and we passed suitability earlier in the year. We continue to keep our heads down and work and not take anything for granted.

“We’re at the point now where, from a development-operations standpoint, we can’t be arrogant about it, but we have to assume that we’re going to win the license,” he went on. “And we need to be ready to implement the project on day one.”

Overall, there are many aspects to the work being undertaken by the company at this juncture, roughly three months before the five-member Mass. Gaming Commission (MGC) is expected to decide the fate of the Western Mass. license.

There are some design elements to be finalized, he explained, as well as work to line up vendors (see story, page 19), secure tenants for the large retail component of the gaming complex, and ensure that a trained workforce will be in place when the doors open — sometime in 2017, if all goes according to plan.

But there are other, perhaps less obvious matters to contend with, he went on, using the broad term ‘education’ to categorize them.

Elaborating, he said that the gaming industry has been entrenched in Las Vegas and Macau for decades. Elected officials and the public at large are familiar with the concept and understand the business and what it brings to a community.

But in Massachusetts, it’s all foreign territory.

“And because of that, we need a lot of engagement at the local level,” he explained. “I feel the need to continually educate people not only in Springfield but across Western Mass., and make sure that everyone understands that this is a project that we think benefits not only the host community, but the region as well.

“This is unique for me personally,” he went on. “Prior to MGM, I just developed projects in Las Vegas, and it’s an entirely different process there.”

Locally, the process has a new and quite intriguing wildccard — an effort to repeal the state’s gaming legislation via a statewide referendum that would appear on this November’s election ballot. State Attorney General Martha Coakley ruled that the petition to put the matter on the ballot was unconstitutional because it would “impair the implied contracts between the [gaming] commission and gaming license applicants” and illegally “take” those rights without compensation.

Backers of the referendum then took their case to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which is expected to rule on the matter this summer, a few months after the Gaming Commission is likely to have awarded licenses for Western Mass. and the Boston area.

MGM has joined a coalition, which also includes other gaming companies, host communities, and backers of casino gambling, that was created to fight the repeal effort, which Mathis said could have a “chilling effect” on his company’s plans for a few months until the matter is decided.

“If we’re fortunate enough to win the license in May, to have the potential repeal hanging over our heads as an industry makes it difficult to do certain things,” he said, listing as examples some of the early financial commitments related to construction and other capital-intensive expenditures. “And that’s unfortunate; there will be a two-month window where we’re going to have to watch and see what the court does. It’s certainly not the way you want to kick off the project.”

For the immediate future, the company will be an interested spectator as Penn National Gaming, the recently announced winner of the contest for the state’s lone slots parlor license, decides how it will proceed with the repeal matter looming.

“The Commonwealth has invited our industry into this jurisdiction, and we’ve made a substantial investment in terms of time and money,” Mathis said. “We have other lines of business, and MGM will survive if this is repealed, but I think about the host community and all the potential that we promised them with this project, all the employment. These host communities will be impacted as much as anyone if this whole process is overturned.”

Odds Are

While monitoring the repeal effort and awaiting what everyone expects will be the green light from the Gaming Commission, the MGM team, and Mathis in particular, continue a dialogue with Springfield officials about the project, while also talking with and listening to area residents about this huge endeavor.

“What’s really great about this opportunity, and fairly unique because of the statute, is how much of a partner the city is through the host-community agreement,” he explained. “We always want to stay on the same page about all the things that we’re working on, and with other things that are happening in the city as well.”

And there are many initiatives on the drawing board or already underway, he went on, which makes the casino project even more intriguing.

“Even before we arrived in Springfield, [Chief Development Officer] Kevin Kennedy and the Economic Development office had been doing some really great things to make sure that Springfield continues to grow and improve its economic foundation,” he told BusinessWest. “There were a lot of great things happening in Springfield before we came on board, and we’re catalysts for future growth.

“Whether it’s Union Station or the UMass satellite campus moving in, I think Springfield is on the verge of a renaissance,” he went on. “And we’re excited to anchor that.”

And while there are a number of people involved with the MGM Springfield project, including several working in the downtown Springfield office, Mathis is the point person.

That’s why he’s far less anonymous than he was a year ago, and also why he’s hearing, and answering, a wide variety of questions — in the press, on the street, in the line at the breakfast buffet at the Sheraton, and, yes, at the counter at the car-rental agency.

And as might be expected (or not, as the case may be), a good deal of these queries have to do with employment opportunities — this project is expected to create 2,000 construction jobs and nearly 3,000 permanent jobs — and that makes Mathis feel even better about it.

“It’s really about jobs, and I wasn’t prepared for that,” he explained. “I’m sort of humbled by the idea that I walk around and people see the opportunity for a career in me; that’s a tremendous responsibility.

“People are really focused on when we’re going to open, when we’re going to start hiring, and what’s required for hiring,” he went on. “There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not approached in a very respectful way by citizens wanting to know about those opportunities. I’ll have an encounter with someone where it’s not about them getting a job, but about their brother, who’s an ironworker, or it’s about their daughter, who’s graduating next year, and they want to keep her home and interested in a career here.”

This return-to-Springfield aspect to this project is one of the more surprising, and also inspirational, story notes to date, said Mathis, and one of the many reasons why he makes use of that term ‘transformative,’ which he attributes to Jim Rooney, head of the Mass. Convention Center Authority, while noting that others have used it as well.

“I find it ironic that Springfield and Western Mass. are in the middle of the Knowledge Corridor, and it’s very difficult to keep that talent in state,” he went on.

“I think we have the ability to give some of the local talented young people a career opportunity and give them a reason to stay, and that will have a spin-off impact on other industries that will be able to tap into that growing labor pool.”

A Winning Hand?

When he and Lisa moved to Vegas, Mathis said, it was with the expectation that it would be a relatively short stay, like many of those stops from his youth.

But it lasted more than a dozen years, and thus provided ample evidence of how it’s difficult to forecast how one’s career path, or life in general, will unfold. So he’s not making any predictions about how long this assignment in Springfield might last.

What he does know, though, is that, if this project proceeds as planned, anonymity will become increasingly elusive.

That’s what happens when you’re the face of something transformative.


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