Year: 2015

SPRINGFIELD — The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame recently announced the eligible candidates for the class of 2016, with Allen Iverson, Yao Ming, and Shaquille O’Neal among the headliners. A complete list can be found at www.hoophall.com.

The class of 2016, including those selected by the direct-elect committees, will be unveiled on Monday, April 4 at the Men’s NCAA Final Four in Houston. Enshrinement festivities will take place in Springfield on Sept. 8-10. Tickets for the various class of 2016 enshrinement events are on sale at www.hoophall.com.

State Announces Infrastructure-improvement Grants for Farms

By BusinessWest Staff December 31, 2015

BOSTON — The Baker-Polito administration recently announced that five Massachusetts farms with land permanently protected from development through the state’s Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) Program — including three in Western Mass. — have been awarded $400,000 in grant funding for infrastructure improvements.

“These agricultural investments help create jobs and make Massachusetts’ farms more competitive in the national and global marketplace,” said Gov. Charlie Baker. “Our administration is committed to supporting Massachusetts’ vibrant agriculture industry, which provides fresh, healthy food for the Commonwealth’s residents.”

The local grantees include Burnett Farm in Adams, $50,000 for barn expansion; Luther Belden Farm in Hatfield; $100,000 for dairy infrastructure improvements; and the Kitchen Garden in Sunderland, $75,000 for produce packing and storage building.

“The grants awarded will ensure that land protected for agriculture continues to support commercially viable farm businesses for current and future generations of Massachusetts farmers,” said Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito. “Through this year’s awards, farmers in the Commonwealth will be able to upgrade and expand their agricultural buildings, keeping their businesses safe and competitive.”

The APR Improvement Program, established in 2009, is funded by the federal Farm and Lands Protection Program and is administered by the Department of Agricultural Resources. The program also provides recipients with technical and business-planning assistance to identify the best use of funds to improve farm infrastructure and productivity.

Since 2009, AIP has provided more than $3.5 million in total grants (average $66,509 per farm) and $330,150 in technical assistance (average $6,229 per farm) to Massachusetts APR farms that own a combined total of more than 7,000 acres of protected farmland.

Springfield Museums Announce Lecture, Tour Schedule for January

By BusinessWest Staff December 31, 2015

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Museums’ monthly lecture and tour schedule continues in January with the popular Museums à la Carte lectures, which take place each Thursday at 12:15 p.m. in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts.

Admission is $4 ($2 for members of the Springfield Museums), and visitors are invited to bring a bag lunch (cookies and coffee are provided). For more information about Museums à la Carte, call (413) 263-6800, ext. 488. This month’s lectures include:

Jan. 7: “The Last Blasket King, Pádraig Ó Catháin, An Rí,” a talk by Gerald Hayes, co-author of the book of the same name that he wrote with Eliza Kane, the great-great-granddaughter of the last king of the Great Blasket near Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland.

Jan. 14: “Why, How, and the 343: Better Angels, The Firefighters of 9/11.” Dawn Howkinson Siebel, artist and creator of the “Better Angels” exhibit, shares her personal journey in creating this fascinating and powerful exhibit.

Jan. 21: “Leaving Our Mark: In Celebration of the Pencil — Artist’s Words and Views.” Steve Wilda, artist and organizer of “Leaving Our Mark,” will be joined by other artists featured in the exhibit, including Doug Gillette, Bill Simpson, Lesley Cohen, and Luciana Heineman.

Jan. 28: “The Klondike Gold Rush: A Chicopee Man Goes to the Yukon in 1898 (and Back).” Robert Romer, professor emeritus at Amherst College, brings to life the story of Chicopee’s John Gibson, an Irish immigrant who set out for the Klondike to seek his fortune.

As part of the Museums’ members-only “Continuing Conversations” series, museum docent Jim Boone will lead a guided gallery discussion immediately following the Jan. 14 talk at the Wood Museum of Springfield History, and docent Pat McCarthy will lead a post-lecture gallery discussion on Jan. 28 at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Art.

Elms College Athletics to Add Men’s, Women’s Outdoor Track Teams

CHICOPEE — The Athletics Department at Elms College will add men’s and women’s outdoor track teams in 2017.

“I’m excited about the prospect of adding this new sport to the 15 other men’s and women’s sports we already sponsor,” said Ellen McEwen, director of Athletics at Elms. “This addition to our Athletics Department can be very successful in this geographical area, especially under the leadership of our cross-country coach, Matt Dyer, who has a very strong background in the area of track. He put together the program proposal for us, and will be coaching both the men’s and women’s teams.”

The team will be about more than sport, according to Dyer. “We really care about giving back and carrying out the mission of Elms College and the Sisters of St. Joseph,” he said. “Our cross-country team does a multi-day, overnight service trip each fall, and I’m sure we will continue some similar mission and service work with our track programs. We really love and enjoy the process of working hard and growing together not only as students and athletes, but as people trying to serve a higher cause.”

Dyer has just completed his fourth season as head coach of the men’s and women’s cross-country programs at Elms. Hired in August 2012, he has helped direct both teams to successful finishes in the New England Collegiate Conference; the women’s team came in second in 2013 and 2014, and the men’s team was third in 2015. He was named NECC Women’s Coach of the Year in 2013.

College Farm Market Project Launched with $25,000 Grant

GREENFIELD — The Rural Community College Alliance has awarded a $25,000 grant to Greenfield Community College (GCC), Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), and the Franklin Community Co-op (FCC) to fund a new collaborative College Farm Market Project (CFMP).

GCC farm and food systems and business majors will work as interns with CISA and FCC to enhance and expand on existing opportunities with farmers’ markets in the Pioneer Valley. The project’s goal is to develop a replicable model for coordinating food- and farm-focused education, marketing, and sales that support the growing sustainable farm movement in Western Mass.

The RCCA grant will fund six three-credit paid internships for GCC students while the costs of the credits earned are covered by other grants the college has won. Three interns will work at FCC, and three will work at CISA. The grant also provides funds to defray some of the partner-agency staff time needed for this project and for staff to attend national and regional conferences to share information about the project with other colleges and organizations. This grant brings together three organizations that have significant impact on regional farm and food systems and will enhance coordination around food justice and development of farmers’ markets.

The internships housed at FCC will continue the work of fall 2015 GCC interns to create a mid-week farmers’ market in Greenfield, seeing its development from its opening this spring through the remainder of the summer and fall. At CISA, the GCC interns will focus on broader regional issues that affect farmers’ markets in general, further food justice and SNAP matching efforts, provide replicable templates for building market business structures, and expand the customer base for locally grown foods that promote sustainable models for farm viability. Staff and administrators from the three organizations will meet regularly to develop long-term structures for interorganization collaboration for strengthening agricultural cooperative supports in the region.

“This project enhances the learning of our students in farm and food systems and in business through work experience in which they can apply their academic work,” said Christine Copeland, SAGE assistant and internship coordinator at GCC. “It’s great for their career prospects, and they also make professional contacts and network with people in their field. Not least, they work in the farm and food sector, about which many of them feel passionately.”

State Adds 19 Cities and Towns to Green Communities List

BOSTON — The Baker-Polito Administration announced that 19 more cities and towns have been designated Green Communities by the Department of Energy Resources (DOER) and will receive more than $3.1 million for local clean-energy and energy-efficiency projects.

The Western Mass. communities added to the list, and their funding, include Adams ($166,865), Bernardston ($131,290), Egremont ($138,570), Stockbridge ($139,625), West Springfield ($222,765), and Windsor ($137,880).

“The Green Communities program demonstrates state and local governments can work together to save energy and taxpayers’ money, while making the Commonwealth a healthier place to live,” said Gov. Charlie Baker. “These 19 communities will be able to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy, reducing energy costs and reducing their carbon footprints.”

Added Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, “helping cities and towns reduce their energy consumption allows them to channel their financial savings into other municipal needs, like public safety, education, and municipal buildings. These grants further reiterate the Commonwealth’s ability to work with municipalities to ensure Massachusetts continues to be a leader in clean energy and energy efficiency.”

The 155 Green Communities are cities and towns of all sizes that range from the Berkshires to Cape Cod and are home to 54% of Massachusetts’ population. All Green Communities commit to reducing municipal energy consumption by 20% over five years.

“Through the Green Communities program, DOER is able to work with municipalities to find clean-energy solutions that reduce long-term energy costs and strengthen local economies,” said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton. “The commitment and hard work of these 19 communities to reduce their energy use and undertake clean-energy projects will help Massachusetts continue its leadership in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and emissions reductions.”

Partners for a Healthier Community Names Collins Executive Director

SPRINGFIELD — Partners for a Healthier Community (PHC) has confirmed Jessica Collins as its executive director.

Collins is a nine-year veteran of the Springfield-based nonprofit, where she previously served as interim executive director and deputy director. She will be leading the institute’s expansion of services in research and evaluation, coalition-building, and policy advocacy.

“Communities of color, members of the LGBT community, and people with disabilities face significant disparities in health in our region, Collins said. “Our mission is to address these inequities so that all people will have what they need to lead healthy lives.”

PHC was recently awarded the contract to lead the Community Health Needs Assessment for the 10 regional hospitals in Western Mass. in collaboration with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the Collaborative for Educational Services. “This assessment documents the existing health needs of each community and provides the data necessary to develop effective strategies to address health inequities,” Collins said.

Added Rev. Karen Rucks, PHC’s board chair, “having a local public-health institute to serve Western Mass. is invaluable. The staff of Partners for a Healthier Community bring an understanding of the context and communities in our region to their services. They are committed to building capacity in our region to better understand how to use data and to collect and report on specific issues that are worthy of collective attention.”

Prior to coming to PHC, Collins led community-based participatory research projects including the Shape Up Somerville program focused on the prevention of childhood obesity in Cambridge and Somerville. Other nationally recognized community-health initiatives led by Collins include efforts to address substance abuse and suicide prevention, as well as preschool oral health.

In addition, Collins announced the hiring of Jessica Payne as senior research associate. Payne brings 25 years of experience in program development, evaluation, and needs assessment. She has extensive knowledge of regional communities and public-health initiatives, and collaborates with partners and informants of varied backgrounds relative to age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, occupation, and region. Since 1988, her company, Jessica Payne Consulting, has provided research and evaluation services in the healthcare, education, community-development, marketing, and culture and arts industries.

TDI Fellow Laura Masulis Is Laser-focused on Springfield

Cover Story

Assignment: Springfield

Laura Masulis says working on initiatives to increase foot traffic downtown is among her goals.

Before last spring, about all Laura Masulis knew of Springfield was what she could see off I-91 as she drove back and forth to Wesleyan. But when she was chosen as one of MassDevelopment’s Transformative Development Initiative fellows, and the city was selected to be granted such an individual, she got off the highway, took a much closer look, and became intrigued, to say the least. A match was made, and now she’s heavily involved in all efforts to make downtown a destination.

Laura Masulis grew up in Nashville, which is known worldwide for its music industry and, in recent decades, a burgeoning healthcare sector. But for most of her adult life, she’s had what she called a soft spot for “old industrial cities.”

That sentiment helps explain why she considers her current assignment, as a so-called Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) fellow working in Springfield for MassDevelopment, a “match made in heaven.”

Indeed, Springfield’s long history as a manufacturing hub and current work to reinvent itself certainly resonated with Masulis as she was rating potential landing spots within the statewide TDI program as part of a matching process similar to the one experienced by graduating medical-school students.

“We rate them, and they rate us,” said Masulis, 28, as she talked about how she interviewed in Springfield, Lynn, and Haverhill, and officials in those communities ranked the various candidates as much as the candidates ranked potential destinations. “I ranked Springfield first, and they ranked me first, so it was pretty simple.”

But there was more than an industrial heritage that convinced Masulis that she wanted Springfield to be her home, figuratively and quite literally — she recently purchased a home in the Forest park neighborhood — for at least the three-year duration of her assignment.

There was also its many forms of diversity — Masulis majored in Latin American studies and economics in college — as well as the architecture downtown, cultural attractions, and, most importantly, vast potential for improvement.

“I was amazed by how visually beautiful the city was, in both the downtown and the neighborhoods — that surprised me,” she noted. “I was moved by the architecture, excited about the diversity of the community, and intrigued by all that’s happening; it’s definitely an exciting time for this city.”

Her general assignment is Springfield, but, more specifically, it’s a several-block area downtown that it is now called the Innovation District — a name that is slowly working its way into the lexicon but is still used almost exclusively by elected officials and development leaders. Perhaps more importantly, it has been designated by MassDevelopment as a TDI District, with the focus squarely on the first two words in that acronym — ‘transformative’ and ‘development.’

MassDevelopment literature outlining the TDI initiative defines that phrase this way: “transformative development is redevelopment on a scale and character capable of catalyzing significant follow-on private investment, leading over time to transformation of an entire downtown or urban neighborhood, and consistent with local plans.”

There are 10 TDI projects in various stages of progression across the Commonwealth, including those focused on the so-called TOD District in Holyoke, the Tyler Street District in Pittsfield, the One Lynn District in Lynn, the Merrimac Street Transformative District in Haverhill, the North River Neighborhood in Peabody, Downtown Gateway in Brockton, and the Theater District in Worcester.

In Springfield, the TDI District stretches, for the most part, from Main Street to just east of Chestnut Street, and from Bridge Street to Lyman Street. It includes the city’s entertainment district, Apremont Triangle, Stearns Square, the park located on the former Steiger’s site (now known as Center Square), and the so-called ‘blast zone,’ those blocks heavily damaged by the November 2012 natural-gas explosion.

As part of efforts to transform the identified districts, the Gateway cities can apply for what’s known as a ‘mid-career fellow’ to help develop and implement strategic initiatives. Springfield, Lynn, and Haverhill prevailed in the spirited competition for the first three fellows to be funded by MassDevelopment (three more will be assigned in 2016), and that brings us back to Masulis and that matching process.

Her assignment, which started in May, dictates that she works closely with several local development-focused agencies, including the city’s Economic Development Department, the Springfield Business Improvement District, DevelopSpringfield, the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, and others, and thus she’s been involved in a number of recent initiatives.

These include everything from movie nights at Stearns Square over the summer (The Princess Bride was among the films shown) to the recent pop-up Downtown Springfield Holiday Market; from Valley Venture Mentors workshops to public stakeholder meetings (the latest was on Dec. 17); from a project at Market Place involving UMass landscape architecture students (see related story, page 41) to the recent City2City trip to Chattanooga, Tenn. (her thoughts on that excursion later).

She said much has been accomplished, but much more obviously needs to be done to transform the district into a place people will not only want to visit, but also live in and start a business in.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Masulis about her assignment, the TDI District, and her thoughts on what the future might bring for the City of Homes — now her own home.

Developing Story

Masulis did her undergraduate work at Wesleyan University in suburban Middletown, Conn. But she’s spent the past several years working and going to school in Boston (she earned a certificate in nonprofit management and leadership at Boston University), and, as mentioned earlier, she grew up in Nashville.

So she’s used to streets teeming with people, and is thus well-acquainted with the energy — as well as the sense of security — that such a critical mass provides.

And those are two of the things she noticed were largely missing during her visits here early on — and are still missing, for the most part. She noted that the clubs along Worthington Street can be crowded — and parking spots hard to find throughout the entertainment district — on weekend nights, but her impression is that the streets are seemingly, and somewhat alarmingly, empty too much of the time.

“I was moved by the fact that there was so little foot traffic,” she told BusinessWest. “At night, you only feel unsafe because there’s no one around. That was sort of an eerie thing to experience when I first got here.”

It’s not officially written into her job description, but doing something about that quiet on the streets, the lack of foot traffic, is a very big part of why she’s here.

And that goal has been at the forefront of many of those efforts described earlier, from the movies in the park to the holiday market. But there is obviously much more to this assignment than announcing such events with chalk on downtown sidewalks, as Masulis could often be seen doing over the past several months.

Indeed, the work involves strategic planning, developing partnerships to carry out initiatives identified in those plans, meeting with the key stakeholders, and, overall, creating and maintaining a buzz about downtown and, more specifically, the TDI District.

Springfield’s Transformative Development Initiative District encompasses several blocks in the city’s entertainment district and so-called ‘blast zone.’

Masulis brings to these various duties a diverse background that includes work with social-service agencies and small businesses. She’s served as a program assistant for the Center for Women and Enterprise and as a business analyst for the Public Consulting Group, and also co-founded the still-operating Lawrence BiciCocina, a community bike and board workshop in Lawrence (another of those old industrial cities) to promote healthy lifestyles, sustainable and low-cost transportation, youth leadership development, and job training.

Most recently, she’s been a senior project manager for Interise, the Boston-based venture that stimulates economic growth in lower-income communities by helping established small-business owners grow and expand their ventures.

She said this background meshed effectively with what Springfield and its TDI District perhaps most needed — small-business recruitment, retention, and development efforts — and this contributed to those ‘match made in heaven’ sentiments.

Masulis admitted that, prior to last spring, about all she knew of Springfield was what she could see from I-91 as she traveled on that road to get to Wesleyan nearly a decade ago. When the city became one of the finalists to be assigned a fellow, she said she got off the highway for a weekend visit that focused on the downtown and the TDI District itself.

As she mentioned, she was somewhat unnerved by the lack of foot traffic — “sort of creepy” was another of the phrases she used to describe it — but looked past it to its many attributes and considerable growth potential, something she says many of those who live and work in the city have a much harder time doing.

“People from the outside can often appreciate the many assets of a city more than the people who are there every day,” she explained. “And I definitely experienced that with Springfield.”

What’s in Store?

As she talked about her assignment, Masulis said it is unique, in many respects, with regard to others within the broad realms of economic development and urban planning. Getting more specific, she said that, while there are certainly many meetings to attend — she didn’t attempt to guesstimate how many she’s been part of since arriving — her work mostly involves implementation, which is what she likes most about it.

And there is plenty of implementation to do, considering the various initiatives taking place in the city and the many partner agencies she works with. Which means that the calendar is full and each day is different.

“It’s an interesting role because I’m doing 15 things at once,” she explained. “I’m working with projects involving the Pioneer Planning Commission on the walkability of downtown and signage and pedestrian infrastructure. And the next meeting I’m at, we’re talking about recruiting restaurants for the district, and at the next meeting, I’m talking with property owners about improvements that need to be made and how they’re going to finance those.

“I’m meeting with residents who are talking about how they wish there was better lighting on their street,” she went on. “It’s a broad spectrum of issues and initiatives, and every day is a complete mix of things. And while geographically I’m very focused on this one district of downtown, all the issues are interconnected to the city and the region, so I wind up being part of these broader initiatives and conversations.”

As for the TDI District itself, Masulis said the basic mission is to make it a destination — or much more of a destination — for a wide array of constituencies. These include people looking for a place — or places — at which to spend a night out, individuals who want to do some shopping, entrepreneurs looking for a location to launch or relocate a hospitality-related enterprise, and people looking for a place to live. And she’s working with the various partner agencies to anticipate and meet the needs of those and other groups.

“This is an entertaining, dining, innovation district that has seen a couple of major investments made, but a lot of it has yet to be built out,” she said, citing the stunning transformation of the Fuller Block as an example of the type of development that could — and hopefully will — happen at dozens of buildings and vacant lots within the district.

“That’s a perfect model for what could happen to buildings across the district,” she said of the property, which now houses National Public Radio, the Dennis Group (an engineering company), and a host of other tenants. “And there have been others that have not been rehabbed, including those in the blast zone, on the extreme end.”

One of the keys to making such redevelopment happen is successful recruitment of new businesses, she said, adding that such work represents just one component of her work involving small businesses. Another is working with those that are already located within the district, she noted, adding that, while attracting new ventures is critical, so too is making sure existing ventures can thrive and thus serve as models for others.

“I’m doing on-the-ground work with the established businesses there — making sure they know what’s going on and have awareness of the various resources available to them,” she said. “And there’s also the work of recruiting businesses from around the region who could potentially open another location in Springfield.

“But I’m also part of the conversation about building out the small business and entrepreneurship pipeline in the region,” she went on, “and for filling in the gaps and having a more cohesive umbrella regarding all the resources available. We need to pull those together more tightly and in a more user-friendly way than what’s currently in place.”

The Right Place and Time

Still another factor that made Springfield a desirable landing spot, said Masulis, was the fact that her three-year assignment — which could go much longer — coincides with an obviously intriguing chapter in the city’s history and reinvention process.

Springfield’s TDI District is one of 10 across the state identified by MassDevelopment.

Beyond the elephant in the room — the $900 million MGM Springfield, which is scheduled to open its doors around the time Masulis’ three-year tenure wraps up — there are other initiatives, including the redevelopment of Union Station, the construction of a subway-car manufacturing plant in the east side of the city, a wave of entrepreneurial energy that manifests itself in the form of the various Valley Venture Mentors initiatives, the new innovation center downtown, and much more.

And Masulis feels privileged to be in a position to not just watch it happen, but play a role in how events transpire, especially with regard to the entrepreneurial piece of the puzzle.

“I feel very lucky to be coming in at this point,” she told BusinessWest. “I definitely recognize that there’s been a huge amount of work and sweat equity already put in to developing this entrepreneurship culture; I’m just here to provide some additional capacity to help keep it moving forward.”

As for the bigger picture — and where Springfield and its TDI District might be three years from now, or 10, or 20 — Masulis, acknowledging that she was taking that outsider’s perspective, even with eight months of work downtown under her belt, takes a decidedly optimistic view.

“Regardless of what happens with MGM, there is already a lot of positive energy in the city, and that includes the innovation and dining space,” she said, referring to the real estate within the TDI District that comprises her primary focus. “There’s a lot of momentum when it comes to the anchors that are already in place that we really want to build upon; what we want to do is fill storefronts with positive activity.”

The pop-up Downtown Springfield Holiday Market was an example of this, she said, adding that the initiative, based in the ground-floor space of the building most still know as Harrison Place, was designed to increase foot traffic while also giving retailers, who take on temporary, or pop-up space, a chance to try on downtown Springfield and see if the shoe might fit.

“That’s one strategy to get more retailers to come downtown and try it out,” she explained. “For us, the plan is to then transition them into longer-term leases in more permanent locations. In five years, we want to see a lot more foot traffic on the street, not just on workdays, but also at night and on weekends. The goal is fewer vacant storefronts and more people utilizing the green spaces that are already there.”

Masulis said she’s heard all about how vibrant Tower Square was decades ago, and also about Johnson’s Bookstore, Forbes & Wallace, Steiger’s, and all the other retail now relegated to the past tense. She said the goal moving forward isn’t about restoring the past, but creating something different, equally vibrant, and more reflective of the changes that have taken place over the past four decades.

“We have a very different community than we had 30 years ago,” she noted. “What’s going to be in the future is not going to be a perfect replication of what was.”

She acknowledged that the task of getting more people to live and do business downtown is a complicated process — people won’t live in the area until there are things to, and there won’t be things to do unless there are people living in and coming to the area. But she believes progress will come on both fronts, and this will generate continued progress.

“You need to work on both things at the same time,” she said of the commercial and residential aspects of the equation. “And you have to find a couple of risk takers who are willing to come out early before the proven model.”

She said the Chattanooga trip, while energizing, certainly, provided ample evidence of how much work remains to be done, but also how much progress Springfield has already made, especially with regard to creating opportunities and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots, something Chattanooga has not done as well.

When asked if Springfield could host a similar program now, or when it might be able to do so, Masulis said that, in many respects, she believes the city is already there, but that, in a few years, it will have many more success stories to put on display.

“In five years, Springfield will look very different, and I really hope that we’ll be in a position where people want to visit this city and we’re able to show that not only do we have these flashy projects that have been very successful, but we’ve made real strides in reducing inequality as well.”

At Home with the Idea

Those words ‘we’ll’ and ‘we’re,’ while seemingly innocuous, are rather telling when it comes to this fellowship and how Masulis looks upon it.

She’s not just someone working in Springfield on a project funded by MassDevelopment. OK, she is, but rather quickly, she’s become an integral part of the multi-faceted effort to revitalize and reinvent one of the old industrial cities she’s so fond of. And she’s using words like ‘we’re’ and ‘we’ll.’

More than that, she’s already talking about how that house in Forest Park may be home for much longer than three years.

In the meantime, she’s in the middle of something special — a match, as she said, that was seemingly made in heaven.

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

Bankruptcies

Bankruptcies Departments

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

Anderson, Stephen Spencer
Foley Anderson, Sara Adrian
37 Nutting Ave.
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/16/15

Awkal, Imadeddine A.
Awkal, Zeina O.
19 Lucerne Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Barklow, Jared Anthony
14 Providence St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Bean’s Glass Services, Inc.
Bean’s Auto Glass
Bean, Matthew Robert
18 Eastwood Dr.
Southampton, MA 01073
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/16/15

Berry, Peggy Sue
P.O. Box 154
Wales, MA 01081
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Brown, Christopher David
Brown, Meghan Marie
2157 Northampton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Camilleri, Donna M.
14 Upland Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Carrero, Jayson
185 New Ludlow Road
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Cerrone, Ross P.
Cerrone, Gloria J.
170 Savoy Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/25/15

Charette, Ronald G.
49 Laurel St
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Cross, Michael W.
68 Granville Road, Second
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Crouch, Jessica K.
a/k/a Ganieany, Jessica K.
57 B Northampton St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/25/15

Cruz, Carmen B.
49 Worcester Ave., 2nd Fl.
Springfield, MA 01107
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Dubrule Jr., Bruce G.
21 East Buckland Road
Shelburne Falls, MA 01370
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Ellinger, Shawn E.
P.O. Box 181
Huntington, MA 01050
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Facteau, Paul M.
55 South Shore Dr.
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Fay, Tracy A.
124 Wachusett St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/18/15

Franco, Evelyn
70 Broadway St.–Apt 144
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/25/15

Gamache, Liz
106 Pine Cone Lane
Ludlow, MA 01056
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/16/15

Gaylord, Kimberly A.
a/k/a Mitchell, Kimberly A.
146 Middlefield Road
Peru, MA 01235
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/27/15

Goodale, Judy A.
58 Edwards St., #301
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Hartwig, James P.
9 Pine St.
Adams, MA 01220
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/25/15

Hebert, Lee F.
75 South St., Lot #28
Bernardston, MA 01337
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Hottin, Arthur J.
28 Barrington Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Kichorowsky, Roman M.
a/k/a Kichorowsky, R. Michael
Kolenda, Elizabeth J.
1157 North Pleasant St., Apt. B
Amherst, MA 01002
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Kozera, Jr., Joseph E.
65 Briggs St., #2
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Kozynoski, Daniel J.
17 Bates Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Lawrence, Robert L.
10 Paula Ave.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/16/15

Leese, Killian John
P.O. Box 613
Stockbridge, MA 01262
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Massimiano, Jeanne S.
126 Blythewood Dr.
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Mitchell, Alwood T.
92 Long Pond Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Mr. Hamdi’s Tailoring
Yildiz, Hamdi
100 Hillside Road
South Deerfield, MA 01373
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Noel, Ann M.
3022 Pleasant St.
Bondsville, MA 01009
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/25/15

Orr, Sterling W.
146 Sawmill Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/17/15

Pagan, Maria Beatriz
21 Campus Plaza Road, Unit 25
Hadley, MA 01035
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Panasyuk, Nataliya A.
a/k/a Aleksandrovna, Nataliy
35 Chapel St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/27/15

Pappas, Jacqueline
PO Box 43
Russell, MA 01071-0043
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/27/15

Pare’, Warren L.
PO Box 486
Chicopee, MA 01021
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/19/15

Parent, Mary L.
48 Greenwich St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Pawell, James R.
10 Ave. C
Turners Falls, MA 01376
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/22/15

Ramos, Elizabeth
2207 Page Blvd.
Indian Orchard, MA 01151
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Ryan, Daniel J.
Ryan, Lori A.
45 Farquhar Road
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/18/15

Stahl, Jameson T.
10 Susan Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/27/15

Steinmetz, Jay D.
1 King Lane
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/18/15

Sullivan, Todd
116 W Orange Road
Orange, MA 01364
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Torrence, Sandra J.
26 Forestdale Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Walls, Gail Sheree
1055 Roosevelt Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Walsh, Gary D.
83 Birch St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/22/15

Wetterwald, Renee L.
714 Country Club Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Wheeler, Sandra Lee
985 Florence Road
Florence, MA 01062
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/20/15

Winterle, Carl E.
1540 Memorial Ave., Apt. 2B
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/23/15

Woodbury, Susan M
118 Clairmont Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 11/18/15

Yates, Christopher L.
Yates, Olivia
a/k/a Moses, Olivia
1418 Bay St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Zick, Vincent T.
Zick, Stephanie J.
399 South Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 11/24/15

Real Estate Transactions

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

161 Bald Mountain Road
Bernardston, MA 01337
Amount: $144,300
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Patrick K. Russell
Date: 11/23/15

BUCKLAND

34 Franklin St.
Buckland, MA 01338
Amount: $179,000
Buyer: Rebecca Deyo
Seller: Anna J. Humbert
Date: 11/23/15

3 Hillside Ave.
Buckland, MA 01338
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Patricia R. VanSchoyck
Seller: Viola Lyons RET
Date: 11/16/15

15 Monroe Ave.
Buckland, MA 01338
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Jesus Borra
Seller: Wendy S. Hodgdon
Date: 11/13/15

COLRAIN

123 Foundry Village Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $132,000
Buyer: 123 Foundry Road NT
Seller: Bayview Loan Servicing
Date: 11/23/15

2 Phillips Dr.
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Keith L. Hedlund
Seller: Luigi Ottaviani
Date: 11/16/15

CONWAY

317 Hart Road
Conway, MA 01341
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Jill B. Craig
Seller: Chris E. Singley
Date: 11/13/15

DEERFIELD

717 Greenfield Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
Amount: $234,439
Buyer: Peoples United Bank
Seller: Lawrence E. Jason
Date: 11/27/15

141 North Main St.
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $127,000
Buyer: Sonam Lama
Seller: Kathleen A. Rowe-Clapp
Date: 11/13/15

169 North Main St.
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Michael J. Pancione
Seller: Diana J. Tardif
Date: 11/19/15

3 Yellow Farm Road
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $263,000
Buyer: Amy V. Laroche
Seller: John R. Merantza
Date: 11/30/15

ERVING

19 East Main St.
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: John M. Spence
Seller: John McAuley
Date: 11/30/15

4 Moore St.
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $168,750
Buyer: David E. Finn
Seller: Douglas M. Finn
Date: 11/16/15

GREENFIELD

82 Barton Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $146,200
Buyer: Bank New York Mellon
Seller: Todd Baker
Date: 11/20/15

32 Cleveland St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $183,000
Buyer: Jeffrey M. Lively
Seller: Priscilla R. Chadwick
Date: 11/30/15

17 Factory Hollow
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $157,000
Buyer: George Murphy
Seller: Elizabeth D. Adams
Date: 11/13/15

14 Greenway Lane
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Paul J. Rotkiewicz
Seller: Rachael A. Katz
Date: 11/18/15

18 Linden Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Ryan S. Hellwig
Seller: Jessica D. Gordon
Date: 11/18/15

127 Shelburne Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $181,000
Buyer: Moira Taylor
Seller: Nancy L. Orth
Date: 11/30/15

77 Smith St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $178,000
Buyer: Verlander FT
Seller: Munsinger, Jeanne C., (Estate)
Date: 11/25/15

LEVERETT

125 Dudleyville Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Alexis Kuhr
Seller: Matthew J. Howell
Date: 11/13/15

LEYDEN

151 River Road
Leyden, MA 01337
Amount: $284,388
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Harry C. Kuenzel
Date: 11/13/15

MONTAGUE

9 Bernardo Dr.
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Stefanie Holmes
Seller: JLM Builders Inc.
Date: 11/13/15

66 Greenfield Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: James P. Bartus
Seller: William F. Allis
Date: 11/25/15

219 Turners Falls Road
Montague, MA 01376
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: William B. Stratford
Seller: Joshua R. Sawin
Date: 11/30/15

177 Turnpike Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: Sara L. Burgess
Seller: James P. Bartus
Date: 11/25/15

NORTHFIELD

8 4 Mile Brook Road
Northfield, MA 01354
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Craig E. Bodenstein
Seller: Vearling INT
Date: 11/25/15

ORANGE

66 Congress St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Paul G. Gil
Seller: Trista M. Dupell
Date: 11/20/15

73 East Road
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $187,000
Buyer: Douglas A. Cote
Seller: Peter K. Lyman
Date: 11/30/15

34 North Main St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Bombadillo LLC
Seller: Wallace M. Yohan
Date: 11/17/15

SHELBURNE

55 Frank Williams Road
Shelburne, MA 01370
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Josiah J. Simpson
Seller: Linda Gramse-Macdonald
Date: 11/20/15

SHUTESBURY

286 Montague Road
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Amount: $299,000
Buyer: Ann E. Brigham
Seller: Sarah Patton
Date: 11/30/15

SUNDERLAND

142 Hadley Road
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Monterey Rose LLC
Seller: Hoynoski RT
Date: 11/30/15

149 Hadley Road
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $715,000
Buyer: Monterey Rose LLC
Seller: Hoynoski RT
Date: 11/30/15

32 North Bears Den Dr.
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $515,000
Buyer: Robert T. Cartelli
Seller: John M. Snyder
Date: 11/17/15

56 Plumtree Road
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $269,000
Buyer: Vincent J. Tran
Seller: Herman Copen RET
Date: 11/16/15

WHATELY

14 Swamp Road
Whately, MA 01093
Amount: $257,500
Buyer: Stephen D. Gross
Seller: Earl E. & E. P. Morton RET
Date: 11/30/15

HAMPDEN COUNTY

AGAWAM

342 Adams St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $137,000
Buyer: Justin M. Pitoniak
Seller: USA HUD
Date: 11/30/15

1775 Main St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Clark Gore
Seller: 3B Realty Corp.
Date: 11/24/15

57 Poplar St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $177,387
Buyer: Bank New York Mellon
Seller: Barbara E. Bush
Date: 11/20/15

54 Raymond Circle
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $219,635
Buyer: USA HUD
Seller: Susan Gaughan
Date: 11/12/15

127 Roosevelt Ave.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Michael A. Devine
Seller: Robert E. Bushey
Date: 11/13/15

Rowley St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: VIP Homes & Associates LLC
Seller: Joseph A. Morris
Date: 11/23/15

331 Rowley St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: John R. Conte
Seller: Scott E. Skolnick
Date: 11/13/15

10 Royal St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $147,500
Buyer: Jesse E. Redmond
Seller: Justin Bard
Date: 11/30/15

29 Royal St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Michael J. Moriarty
Seller: Sarah L. Baker
Date: 11/30/15

16 Scherpa St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $146,000
Buyer: Jinhong Ma
Seller: Jackie Y. Tang
Date: 11/16/15

34 Sunrise Terrace
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $182,500
Buyer: Jeffrey A. Trauschke
Date: 11/27/15

94 White Fox Road
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Citizens Bank
Seller: Janice L. Conlin
Date: 11/12/15

94 Witheridge St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $139,000
Buyer: Roman Gurskii
Seller: Marie L. Viens
Date: 11/20/15

BLANDFORD

16 Julius Hall Road
Blandford, MA 01008
Amount: $253,000
Buyer: Leighton King
Seller: Arthur Hernandez
Date: 11/30/15

2 Sperry Road
Blandford, MA 01008
Amount: $128,715
Buyer: LNV Corp.
Seller: Lori A. Benedict
Date: 11/13/15

BRIMFIELD

70 1st St.
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Elizabeth E. Crosby
Seller: Russell J. Omer
Date: 11/17/15

74 1st St.
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Elizabeth E. Crosby
Seller: Russell J. Omer
Date: 11/17/15

144 Old Palmer Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $189,000
Buyer: Kathleen M. Gallant
Seller: Nicholas C. Truax
Date: 11/13/15

83 Sutcliffe Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Jacob W. Roche
Seller: Timothy J. Senecal
Date: 11/25/15

CHESTER

101 Middlefield Road
Chester, MA 01011
Amount: $199,000
Buyer: Jeffrey S. Wundt
Seller: Wade A. Whitaker
Date: 11/24/15

CHICOPEE

174 Ashgrove St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $159,900
Buyer: Merrill V. Champlin
Seller: Kos, Chester J., (Estate)
Date: 11/27/15

79 Casey Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $199,900
Buyer: Melissa M. Weibel
Seller: Brenda L. Kroeber
Date: 11/30/15

30 Cherryvale St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $254,900
Buyer: William J. Snow
Seller: Scott R. Saville
Date: 11/20/15

247 Chicopee St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $139,400
Buyer: USA HUD
Seller: Nationstar Mortgage LLC
Date: 11/18/15

38 Dorothy Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Jessica Ojeda-Tarrats
Seller: Adam T. Tetrault
Date: 11/30/15

15 Gaylord St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $289,000
Buyer: College Of Our Lady of the Elms
Seller: Marjorie C. Balicki
Date: 11/18/15

149 Grattan St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $118,000
Buyer: Lillian R. Gamelli
Seller: Randy Recchia
Date: 11/16/15

207 Jacob St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $167,000
Buyer: Francisco Rodriguez
Seller: Peter A. White
Date: 11/23/15

161 Lafayette St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Kyle Laplante
Seller: Donald R. Chapdelaine
Date: 11/23/15

22 Mill St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Ana I. Colondres
Seller: Jennifer R. Rurak
Date: 11/25/15

455 Oldfield Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Gustavo A. Santos
Date: 11/25/15

242 Rolf Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $129,500
Buyer: Heather J. Jagodowski
Seller: Rose Lukiwsky
Date: 11/20/15

76 Springfield St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $355,000
Buyer: Orange Park Management
Seller: HY Management LLC
Date: 11/27/15

51 Waite Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $239,500
Buyer: John Wilkie
Seller: Gail A. Kosiorek
Date: 11/18/15

176 Wildermere St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $232,500
Buyer: Douglas W. Prive
Seller: Geraldine A. Kasulinous
Date: 11/30/15

EAST LONGMEADOW

113 Brookhaven Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Timothy P. Crimmins
Seller: Mark C. Penndorf
Date: 11/20/15

65 Brookhaven Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Mark A. Jones
Seller: Stanley R. Shaw
Date: 11/13/15

Capri Dr. #27
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $149,900
Buyer: Kent Pecoy & Sons Construction
Seller: Bella Vista Land Holdings
Date: 11/18/15

15 Frankwyn St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Caitlin O’Brien
Seller: Racicot, Carole, (Estate)
Date: 11/20/15

81 Hillside Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $290,000
Buyer: Samantha J. Carey
Seller: Brandon O’Dell
Date: 11/25/15

393 Pease Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $352,000
Buyer: Michelle Segura
Seller: Dianne K. Jordan
Date: 11/20/15

271 Prospect St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $231,500
Buyer: Christopher M. Eckers
Seller: Maria Damico
Date: 11/20/15

292 Somers Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $247,000
Buyer: Russell Doane
Seller: Gerald N. Lantaigne
Date: 11/18/15

31 Yorkshire Place
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $296,200
Buyer: Aniello Gisolfi
Seller: Douglas Fisher
Date: 11/20/15

HAMPDEN

239 Allen St.
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: William A. Kerr
Seller: New England Power Co.
Date: 11/23/15

41 Bennett Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $375,000
Buyer: Ronald A. Kempf
Seller: Sandra R. Schermerhorn
Date: 11/20/15

118 Raymond Dr.
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $276,094
Buyer: USA HUD
Seller: Bank Of America
Date: 11/24/15

93 Somers Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $115,500
Buyer: Guy Dewolf
Seller: US Bank
Date: 11/12/15

HOLLAND

4 Cobham Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $218,000
Buyer: Richard Shonak
Seller: John M. Stevens
Date: 11/25/15

100 Maybrook Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Robert F. Terbush
Seller: Donna Pearson
Date: 11/30/15

20 Old Acres Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Douglas S. Columb
Seller: O’Connor, James B., (Estate)
Date: 11/17/15

26 Stony Hill Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Anne M. Villa
Seller: Stephen R. Dwyer
Date: 11/12/15

HOLYOKE

15 Clinton Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $214,500
Buyer: James M. Huston
Seller: Maria I. Neves
Date: 11/12/15

65 Lindor Heights
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $264,900
Buyer: Miguel Rivera
Seller: Susan J. Mikolajczyk
Date: 11/19/15

204-206 Locust St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $147,798
Buyer: Westvue NPL T
Seller: Michelle R. Gamache
Date: 11/18/15

10 Mackintosh Terrace
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Shepard Torres
Seller: Maria U. Griffin
Date: 11/25/15

179 Morgan St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Leonard A. Brouillette
Seller: Raymond Smalley
Date: 11/24/15

208 Southampton Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Eric D. Trompke
Seller: Michele M. Melnick
Date: 11/20/15

42 Washington Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $119,790
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Miguel A. Ortiz
Date: 11/13/15

Whiting Farms Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $2,000,000
Buyer: New Holyoke Realty LLC
Seller: Holyoke Gas & Electric
Date: 11/23/15

LONGMEADOW

123 Crestview Circle
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Laplante Construction Inc.
Seller: Todd M. Adelson
Date: 11/12/15

17 Crestview Circle
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Rebecca Kwasnik
Seller: Eric G. Gorenstein
Date: 11/13/15

105 Fenwood Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Christopher D. Legiadre
Seller: Brochu, Judith E., (Estate)
Date: 11/18/15

145 Franklin Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Tracey Messina
Seller: John G. Dee
Date: 11/20/15

109 Greenacre Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $349,000
Buyer: Christy L. Parziale
Seller: James H. Stewart
Date: 11/19/15

89 Lincoln Park
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Donald A. Overson
Seller: Sally Sadak
Date: 11/24/15

28 Meadow Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Tomroc Holdings LLC
Seller: Hodesh, Virginia A., (Estate)
Date: 11/23/15

196 Meadowlark Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $263,000
Buyer: Ira Smolowitz
Seller: William Raleigh
Date: 11/20/15

17 Ridge Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $327,500
Buyer: Dat N. Dang
Seller: Harold F. Alston
Date: 11/24/15

29 Wimbleton Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $239,900
Buyer: Maureen E. Crowley
Seller: Gerald A. Silvestri
Date: 11/20/15

67 Wimbleton Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $222,000
Buyer: Wimbleton Drive RT
Seller: Lisa A. Maxey
Date: 11/16/15

LUDLOW

58 Beachside Dr.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $186,000
Buyer: Susan Gamelli
Seller: William A. Alves
Date: 11/20/15

96 Clearwater Circle
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $370,000
Buyer: David Fernandes
Seller: Maria J. Goncalves
Date: 11/16/15

53 Davis St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $138,000
Buyer: David G. Abdou
Seller: Ghislain R. Mathieu
Date: 11/13/15

45 Jackie Dr.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $440,000
Buyer: Marco A. Alvan
Seller: Jose L. Marques
Date: 11/20/15

972 Poole St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: Albert P. Witkowsky
Seller: Jorge J. Fonseca
Date: 11/16/15

21 Skyridge St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Randi E. Pereira
Seller: Gary G. Bourbeau
Date: 11/12/15

220 Ventura St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $252,500
Buyer: Gil E. Gomes
Seller: Paul E. Hillsburg
Date: 11/17/15

MONSON

206 Brimfield Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Karen Palmerino
Seller: Elizabeth T. Foucher
Date: 11/30/15

20 High St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $226,000
Buyer: Jessica L. Klisiewicz
Seller: Pamela M. Wentworth
Date: 11/30/15

372 Main St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $237,213
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Jaime M. Miner
Date: 11/24/15

95 May Hill Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $229,900
Buyer: Jeanne R. Guertin
Seller: Anthony J. Norbut
Date: 11/30/15

265 Silver St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $234,500
Buyer: Christine A. Champagne
Seller: Jeanne R. Guertin
Date: 11/30/15

25 State St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Robert L. Meacham
Seller: Mary A. Meacham
Date: 11/25/15

MONTGOMERY

184 Pitcher St.
Montgomery, MA 01085
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Frank Pietrasiuk
Seller: Theresa M. Farina
Date: 11/13/15

PALMER

295 Burlingame Road
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Samuel T. Gay
Seller: Victor J. Granger
Date: 11/13/15

174 Chudy St.
Palmer, MA 01080
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Thomas A. Palazzi
Seller: Jones, Barbara E., (Estate)
Date: 11/25/15

36 Edgewood St.
Palmer, MA 01080
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Annunziata Cardaropoli
Seller: Ania M. Waite
Date: 11/13/15

1760 North Main St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $127,000
Buyer: Audrey M. Wilcox
Seller: Chester J. Bogacz
Date: 11/13/15

1088 Pleasant St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $127,500
Buyer: Nicholas D. Lee
Seller: Michael D. Staples
Date: 11/24/15

51 Highland Ave.
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $221,000
Buyer: Corey R. Sampson
Seller: Lee M. Kozikowski
Date: 11/30/15

52 Overlook Dr.
Russell, MA 01085
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: 52 Overlook Drive Land TR
Seller: John T. Leahy

581 Woodland Way
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $332,000
Buyer: Lee M. Kozikowski
Seller: Kyle A. Dulude
Date: 11/30/15

SOUTHWICK

4 Eden Hill
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: Carmine B. Santaniello
Seller: Mark C. Placek
Date: 11/30/15

7 Falmouth Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Peter M. Merceri
Seller: Gertrude R. Raymond
Date: 11/18/15

100 Fred Jackson Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Walter E. Drenen
Seller: George L. Darm
Date: 11/25/15

31 George Loomis Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $295,000
Buyer: Kirsten Prouty
Seller: Jason A. Wyse
Date: 11/30/15

5 Junction Station Road #5
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $339,000
Buyer: John E. Provencher
Seller: 20 Depot Square LLC
Date: 11/12/15

10 Oak St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Jake Malkoon
Seller: Paul Troy
Date: 11/13/15

133 South Longyard Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $233,000
Buyer: Patrick T. Call
Seller: David P. Whalley
Date: 11/30/15

SPRINGFIELD

379 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: NDA 385 Allen St LLC
Seller: Michael J. Mastronardi
Date: 11/18/15

385 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: NDA 385 Allen St LLC
Seller: Michael J. Mastronardi
Date: 11/18/15

527 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $550,000
Buyer: Sonal Patel LLC
Seller: O’Connell Oil Associates
Date: 11/16/15

Allen St. (NES)
Springfield, MA 01101
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: NDA 385 Allen St. LLC
Seller: Michael J. Mastronardi
Date: 11/18/15

32 Ashmont St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Courtney Merkman
Seller: Patricia E. Garrigan
Date: 11/16/15

46 Barrington Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Tong Wang
Seller: Peter A. Maneen
Date: 11/23/15

45 Bartlett St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $122,000
Buyer: Eddie Gonzalez
Seller: Nery Bernal
Date: 11/30/15

282 Breckwood Blvd.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Janyce L. Casey
Seller: Joseph Andrade
Date: 11/19/15

59 Chalmers St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $168,000
Buyer: Porfirio Agosto
Seller: Fitzgerald, Mary R., (Estate)
Date: 11/20/15

79 Chesterfield Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $137,500
Buyer: Rafael A. Vallejo
Seller: Mary A. Lynch
Date: 11/19/15

313 Christopher Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Daniel J. Schmaelzle
Seller: Jamary Rosa
Date: 11/12/15

76-78 Cleveland St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Susana Mercedes-Demota
Seller: Jose F. Urbieta
Date: 11/19/15

11 Colony Road
Springfield, MA 01106
Amount: $351,000
Buyer: Matthew C. Szostkiewicz
Seller: Kati T. Litten
Date: 11/12/15

162-164 Corthell St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $239,900
Buyer: Bobby Corona
Seller: MS Homes LLC
Date: 11/24/15

385-387 Eastern Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Springfield College
Seller: Save Our Kids Outreach
Date: 11/17/15

139 Ellsworth Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Pauline Loiselle
Seller: Christopher G. Reed
Date: 11/23/15

61 Emerson St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Tika Sharma
Seller: Georgia M. Fenderson
Date: 11/24/15

9 Emmet St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $136,000
Buyer: Marie Markham-Twana
Seller: Tiana Simmonds
Date: 11/20/15

59 Fox Hill Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Juan A. Lozada
Seller: Peoplesbank
Date: 11/30/15

9 Greenbrier St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $127,000
Buyer: Arbely Mejia
Seller: Lois A. Chase
Date: 11/16/15

45 Hadley St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $137,000
Buyer: Sandra A. Kelly
Seller: Erin M. Landers
Date: 11/30/15

60 Jeanne Marie St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $153,500
Buyer: Kofie Afriyie
Seller: TJM Properties LLC
Date: 11/12/15

43-45 Jenness St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Wells Fargo Bank
Seller: Alix L. Hogu
Date: 11/16/15

56 Kazbeck St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $152,000
Buyer: Angela M. Burke
Seller: Jane Sokolowski
Date: 11/13/15

47 Kulig St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $158,500
Buyer: Rashad M. Evans
Seller: Thomas A. Murphy
Date: 11/23/15

155 Lucerne Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Diana Marte
Seller: Pamela M. Marsh
Date: 11/23/15

242 Mallowhill Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Aaron Law
Seller: Melro Assocs.
Date: 11/24/15

98 Manchester Terrace
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $158,000
Buyer: Michelle Connolly
Seller: Barbara A. Young
Date: 11/23/15

184 Marmon St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $215,200
Buyer: Bunthany Thap
Seller: Denis G. Normand
Date: 11/20/15

70 Martel Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $185,900
Buyer: Evelee Acevedo
Seller: Kevin Czaplicki
Date: 11/25/15

84 Mayfair Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $117,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Susan M. Cocchi
Date: 11/19/15

110 Melha Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Jose J. Salas-Delgado
Seller: Raefat Tleis
Date: 11/20/15

174 Naismith St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Boysen M. Hodgson
Seller: Bretta Construction LLC
Date: 11/17/15

181 Naismith St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Maxine Allen
Seller: Bretta Construction LLC
Date: 11/12/15

101 Old Farm Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $209,616
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Aaron P. Pieczarka
Date: 11/13/15

25 Parkin St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $129,000
Buyer: Maritza Lozada
Seller: Maureen E. Crowley
Date: 11/20/15

304 Peekskill Ave.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $173,000
Buyer: Jamie Dupell
Seller: Albert P. Witkowsky
Date: 11/19/15

75 Penrose St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $143,000
Buyer: Jeannette Ortiz
Seller: Bernard F. Morris
Date: 11/30/15

51 Rencelau St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $164,900
Buyer: Anthony D. Sokoll
Seller: John Martin
Date: 11/30/15

47 Ridgewood Terrace
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: David R. Mosley
Date: 11/24/15

7 Signal Hill Circle
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Daniil Hatsitski
Seller: Stanley Czaplicki
Date: 11/13/15

1515 State St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $550,000
Buyer: COP Springfield LLC
Seller: Carlex Realty LP
Date: 11/17/15

570 Sumner Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $650,000
Buyer: Sonal Patel LLC
Seller: O’Connell Oil Associates
Date: 11/16/15

60 Switzer Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $192,400
Buyer: Jason P. Whitehead
Seller: FNMA
Date: 11/16/15

53 Timothy Circle
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Rosalyn Rodriguez
Seller: Angela Cosenzi
Date: 11/24/15

309 Trafton Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Aileen Delgado
Seller: Michael P. Sklarz
Date: 11/17/15

116 Wayne St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $154,900
Buyer: Florence C. Watson
Seller: Michelle A. Segura
Date: 11/20/15

40 Wayside St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $219,400
Buyer: Manuel Rodriguez
Seller: Kathleen M. Gagne
Date: 11/17/15

137 Whittum Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $122,500
Buyer: David F. Nicoli
Seller: Anthony Nicoli
Date: 11/12/15

116 Willowbrook Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $120,600
Buyer: Citimortgage Inc.
Seller: William Benoit
Date: 11/23/15

31 Winterset Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $197,425
Buyer: Jenna T. Collins
Seller: Cathie A. Schweitzer
Date: 11/25/15

201 Wollaston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $189,500
Buyer: Arturo M. Gonzalez
Seller: FNMA
Date: 11/27/15

WEST SPRINGFIELD

71 Avondale Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Joseph S. Wozniak
Seller: Leonor Gallant
Date: 11/16/15

141 Bonair Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $131,100
Buyer: Michael J. Giuggio
Seller: Lynn M. Usher
Date: 11/20/15

103 Circle Dr.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $164,000
Buyer: Amber M. Bitso
Seller: John M. Rulnick
Date: 11/30/15

1215 Elm St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Ralph R. Schmidt
Date: 11/25/15

27 Lower Beverly Hills
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $237,000
Buyer: Matthew P. Marchetto
Seller: Casey S. Fuller
Date: 11/13/15

55 Maple Heights
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Viachaslau Lavar
Date: 11/16/15

660 Morgan Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Kristen L. Mantoni
Seller: Paul J. Mantoni
Date: 11/13/15

186 Sikes Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $135,150
Buyer: MHFA
Seller: Sean D. Ginn
Date: 11/13/15

Tiara Lane #6
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Ryan P. Murray
Seller: Kolodziej Enterprises LLC
Date: 11/25/15

524 Westfield St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Jose L. Cintron
Seller: Ima R. Semprebon
Date: 11/16/15

WESTFIELD

11 Brenda Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $184,000
Buyer: Christopher Barna
Seller: Robert H. Lepage
Date: 11/13/15

247 Buck Pond Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $157,000
Buyer: Semen Kovalyuk
Seller: William Brown
Date: 11/27/15

47 Christopher Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Andrew Woodbury
Seller: Scott C. Andrews
Date: 11/24/15

17 Clark St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Thomas C. Preuss
Seller: David Perez
Date: 11/20/15

12 Evergreen Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $251,500
Buyer: Adam T. Tetrault
Seller: Colin D. Tansey
Date: 11/30/15

8 Frank Circle
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Jessica A. Tansey
Seller: David W. Dannolfo
Date: 11/30/15

11 Furrow St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $126,000
Buyer: Joshua A. Heath
Seller: Donna E. Dickinson
Date: 11/16/15

104 Glenwood Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $190,054
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Kathleen B. Jenks
Date: 11/25/15

38 Glenwood Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $249,900
Buyer: James A. Borowiec
Seller: Daniel M. Kane
Date: 11/25/15

8 Heritage Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Jennifer R. Rurak
Seller: Geraldine A. Brennan
Date: 11/25/15

287 Holyoke Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $183,000
Buyer: Greg J. Heath
Seller: Amanda M. Forgey
Date: 11/30/15

3 Locust St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $203,900
Buyer: David S. Weaver
Seller: Michael C. Ogilvie
Date: 11/19/15

84 Loomis Ridge
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Chelsie Cremona
Seller: David L. Halasi-Kun
Date: 11/18/15

15 McKinley Terrace
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $207,500
Buyer: Ronald C. Barry
Seller: John P. Douglas
Date: 11/30/15

30 Morgan Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $145,953
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Craig A. McLaughlin
Date: 11/16/15

30 Morgan Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $141,000
Buyer: Joseph Sampson
Seller: US Bank
Date: 11/24/15

N/A
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $171,000
Buyer: Krystal L. Ayala
Seller: Carl J. Ashley
Date: 11/20/15

N/A
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Vitaliy Skazhynyuk
Seller: Korrie Katsikis
Date: 11/30/15

130 North Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $305,000
Buyer: North Road TR
Seller: Ronald F. Conrad
Date: 11/18/15

44 Park St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $133,000
Buyer: Gerald J. Fratini
Seller: Muranko, Eanda, (Estate)
Date: 11/20/15

21 Phillip Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Michael J. Bokuniewicz
Seller: Dominick J. Blasioli
Date: 11/23/15

7 Sherman St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Florida Corp.
Seller: Nathan J. Wojcik
Date: 11/12/15

435 Southwick Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $179,900
Buyer: Chris A. Elliott
Seller: Irena Kozikowska
Date: 11/20/15

6 State St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $207,500
Buyer: Scott C. Andrews
Seller: Eric Eheander
Date: 11/24/15

127 Steiger Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $244,999
Buyer: Melissa L. Campana
Seller: Robert Mackay
Date: 11/19/15

WILBRAHAM

23 Carla Lane
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $385,150
Buyer: Phillip Brousseau
Seller: AC Homebuilding LLC
Date: 11/30/15

3 Greenwood Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Freeman Knowlton
Seller: Cynthia M. Drobiazgiewicz
Date: 11/12/15

5 Highridge Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $395,000
Buyer: Stephen R. Welch
Seller: Jamshid A. Afnan
Date: 11/12/15

10 Hunting Lane
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $370,000
Buyer: Michael P. Disa
Seller: Peter G. Meunier
Date: 11/30/15

12 Maple St.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $164,157
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Irene L. Thornton
Date: 11/19/15

407 Monson Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $202,000
Buyer: Jason Caron
Seller: William J. Henaghan
Date: 11/25/15

247 Soule Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: F. Joseph Horacek
Seller: Judith Howard
Date: 11/13/15

6 Woodsley Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $592,000
Buyer: CIL Realty of Mass. Inc.
Seller: James H. Anderson
Date: 11/30/15

6 Wright Place
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Nathan T. Walker
Seller: Carol A. Meaney
Date: 11/30/15

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY

AMHERST

15 Carriage Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $139,000
Buyer: Francine Krause
Seller: FHLM
Date: 11/20/15

26 Chesterfield Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $289,900
Buyer: Susan B. Cleary
Seller: Janet K. Price
Date: 11/20/15

111 Chestnut St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $450,000
Buyer: David P. Lepak
Seller: Smith, Judy B., (Estate)
Date: 11/25/15

157 East Hadley Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $191,800
Buyer: Metin Yavuz
Seller: Terry G. Oppermann
Date: 11/24/15

132 Farmington Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $332,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Kevin P. Joy
Date: 11/25/15

328 Lincoln Ave.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Patrick Conroy
Seller: GP Amherst LLC
Date: 11/27/15

137 Logtown Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $235,300
Buyer: Nicholas E. Stern
Seller: 137 Logtown NT
Date: 11/24/15

35 Owen Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $650,000
Buyer: James Bullock
Seller: John F. McCutcheon
Date: 11/17/15

90 Summer St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $627,300
Buyer: Karin N. Fischer
Seller: Sunwood Development Corp.
Date: 11/17/15

12 Teawaddle Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $615,000
Buyer: Thomas I. White
Seller: Hilary J. Lombard
Date: 11/16/15

214 West St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $318,000
Buyer: Michael Krebs
Seller: Izabela Sremac
Date: 11/24/15

BELCHERTOWN

15 Bay Path Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $348,250
Buyer: Aaron W. Gazaway
Seller: Stephen Smith
Date: 11/23/15

91 Eskett Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $196,000
Buyer: Cory M. McKenna
Seller: Eliza A. Summers
Date: 11/20/15

N/A
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $146,000
Buyer: Home Equity Assets Realty
Seller: Home Equity Assets Realty
Date: 11/17/15

369 South Gulf Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $563,400
Buyer: Jaber F. & Suzanne Gubrium TR
Seller: Marion S. Sulsky RET
Date: 11/20/15

12 Sarah Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $223,000
Buyer: Brian J. Long
Seller: Susan A. Bradway
Date: 11/19/15

368 Turkey Hill Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $568,000
Buyer: John S. Mastej
Seller: James F. Bachand
Date: 11/17/15

CHESTERFIELD

99 Cummington Road
Chesterfield, MA 01012
Amount: $290,000
Buyer: Jesse P. Clark
Seller: David A. Fields
Date: 11/25/15

EASTHAMPTON

12 Ballard St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Philip L. Knight
Seller: S&C Homebuyers LLC
Date: 11/13/15

14-16 Clinton St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $191,500
Buyer: Kuel McQuaid
Seller: Joanille A. Kmiecik
Date: 11/13/15

26-28 Clinton St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Bethany Meyers
Seller: Jesse M. Meyers
Date: 11/19/15

17 Deerfield Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $285,000
Buyer: Kevin J. Wilby
Seller: Matthew C. Boudreau
Date: 11/20/15

62 Division St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $219,900
Buyer: Adam D. Grygorcewicz
Seller: Mary T. Hart
Date: 11/30/15

110 Florence Road
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $405,000
Buyer: Jonathan N. Kelley
Seller: Stanley A. Boszko
Date: 11/20/15

9 Kingsberry Way
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: Aaron J. Damario
Seller: F&G Development Corp.
Date: 11/19/15

5-7 Oakdale Place
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $201,500
Buyer: Manhan Properties LLC
Seller: Pierre Orelus
Date: 11/30/15

37 Pine Hill Road
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $305,900
Buyer: John L. Morin
Seller: Neil J. Nusbaum
Date: 11/16/15

16 South St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Jeffrey Ketcham
Seller: US Bank
Date: 11/17/15

15 Wright St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Andrea Woodlock
Seller: David R. Root
Date: 11/20/15

GOSHEN

33 Phelps Lane
Goshen, MA 01032
Amount: $399,900
Buyer: David E. Guido
Seller: Maria L. Lauretano
Date: 11/20/15

GRANBY

1 Cold Hill Dr.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Katherine A. Kelly-Regan
Seller: Jeannette M. Kelly IRT
Date: 11/17/15

176 East St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Westover Metropolitan Development Corp.
Seller: Eric D. Trompke
Date: 11/19/15

31 Ferry Hill Road
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $238,000
Buyer: Linda M. Lapointe
Seller: Joshua Civelli
Date: 11/30/15

14 Griswold Circle
Granby, MA 01033
Buyer: National Equity Inc.
Seller: Susan C. Misiaszek
Date: 11/16/15

162 Kendall St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $131,250
Buyer: Home Improvement Assocs.
Seller: US Bank
Date: 11/18/15

HADLEY

46 Chmura Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Thomas J. Hughes
Seller: William J. Grabiec
Date: 11/25/15

HATFIELD

26 Chestnut St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Thomas J. Wickles
Seller: Steven P. Brunette
Date: 11/20/15

HUNTINGTON

7 Harlow Clark Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Amount: $273,000
Buyer: Brendon Schutter
Seller: Christopher Maddock
Date: 11/20/15

NORTHAMPTON

429 Bridge Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Balbir K. Singh
Seller: Shutt, Nancy K., (Estate)
Date: 11/13/15

30 Burncolt Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Barbara J. Johnson
Seller: Sean M. Sexton
Date: 11/19/15

1261 Burts Pit Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $166,000
Buyer: Keith R. Moors
Seller: Joann Toomey
Date: 11/16/15

20 Charles St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Black Sheep Development
Seller: Mary E. Walker
Date: 11/30/15

74 Chestnut Ave.
Northampton, MA 01053
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Nicholas M. Wojcik
Seller: Beaver Brook NT
Date: 11/19/15

145 Emerson Way
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $580,675
Buyer: Cathleen O. Wilson
Seller: Rosemund LLC
Date: 11/18/15

53 Ford Xing
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $428,083
Buyer: Linda J. Baker
Seller: Kent Pecoy & Sons Construction
Date: 11/18/15

65 Laurel Park
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $256,000
Buyer: Sandra K. Hanig
Seller: Kim J. Payne
Date: 11/24/15

175 Main St.
Northampton, MA 01053
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: J. J. Marney LLC
Seller: Nali Associates LLC
Date: 11/19/15

6 Maple St.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Johanna E. Radding
Seller: Michelle S. Dilts
Date: 11/16/15

50 Musante Dr.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $524,115
Buyer: Fernando M. Gorostieta
Seller: Kent Pecoy & Sons Construction
Date: 11/13/15

17 Perkins Ave.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Claire M. Hill
Seller: Edmund D. Lennihan
Date: 11/13/15

28 Rick Dr.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Debra Scoon
Seller: Elizabeth Jones

81 Ryan Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $295,000
Buyer: Susan C. Ashman
Seller: Stephen Hawley
Date: 11/25/15

171 South St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $530,000
Buyer: Gregory Schweitzer
Seller: Peter A. Pacosa
Date: 11/30/15

PELHAM

214 North Valley Road
Pelham, MA 01002
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Zacharie A. Agnerto
Seller: Lippincott, Maureen V., (Estate)
Date: 11/13/15

PLAINFIELD

291 West St.
Plainfield, MA 01070
Amount: $134,760
Buyer: Shane P. Daly
Seller: Bertha G. Higgins
Date: 11/24/15

SOUTH HADLEY

17 Bridge St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $737,500
Buyer: Laxmi Petroleum Inc.
Seller: Keya Petroleum Corp
Date: 11/20/15

19 Bridge St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $737,500
Buyer: Laxmi Petroleum Inc.
Seller: Keya Petroleum Corp.
Date: 11/20/15

6 Jacobs Way
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $299,900
Buyer: Stephen N. Black
Seller: Home Improvement Assocs.
Date: 11/16/15

169 North Main St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $275,900
Buyer: Mohammad A. Javaid
Seller: Brian J. Fitzgerald
Date: 11/20/15

404 Newton St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $118,800
Buyer: Wells Fargo Bank
Seller: Harold D. Mentiphy
Date: 11/17/15

9 Parkview Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Ryan M. Cauley
Seller: Mark E. Cauley
Date: 11/19/15

27 Riverlodge Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $382,507
Buyer: Kristine M. Maguire
Seller: Kimberly E. Spring
Date: 11/13/15

59 Searle Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $224,900
Buyer: Michael Jarmuzewski
Seller: William R. Graham
Date: 11/20/15

38 Washington Ave.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $153,000
Buyer: Danielle M. Carey
Seller: Jared Carver
Date: 11/13/15

SOUTHAMPTON

182 Brickyard Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $393,000
Buyer: Mary T. Hart
Seller: David Garstka Builders
Date: 11/24/15

282 Fomer Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Peter J. Pitoniak
Seller: Norton Garfinkle
Date: 11/19/15

73 Gilbert Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $475,000
Buyer: Benjamin J. Hogan
Seller: Edward H. Gwinner
Date: 11/16/15

11 Helen Dr.
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $231,000
Buyer: Laura A. Facteau
Seller: Benjamin J. Hogan
Date: 11/16/15

84 Strong Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Rachel L. Decker
Seller: Susan C. Ashman
Date: 11/25/15

121 White Loaf Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $366,033
Buyer: Joseph W. Westcott
Seller: Lisa M. Cruz
Date: 11/30/15

WARE

295 Palmer Road
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $121,000
Buyer: Ryan L. Cochran
Seller: Balicki, Mildred R., (Estate)
Date: 11/19/15

1 Walter Dr.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $218,000
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Karla L. Cooper-Jordan
Date: 11/19/15

WESTHAMPTON

Lyman Road
Westhampton, MA 01027
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Bryan J. Balicki
Seller: Donald B. Lyman TR
Date: 11/18/15

WILLIAMSBURG

106 Ashfield Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $167,000
Buyer: Marika N. Gerhart
Seller: Lisa A. Hall
Date: 11/30/15

6 Nash Hill Place
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $282,500
Buyer: Jesse S. Camp
Seller: Bernard J. Superba
Date: 11/24/15

WORTHINGTON

24 Indian Oven Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $216,202
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Adam Leach
Date: 11/13/15

46 Old Post Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $178,000
Buyer: Steven W. Strom
Seller: Jared L. Phillips
Date: 11/24/15

Key Healthcare-delivery Trends for 2016

Opinion

By KERRY ANN HAYON

As we head into 2016, it is important to think about some of the things that will impact physician practices in the year ahead.

• Patients are increasingly seeking healthcare-delivery services that are both accessible and quickly responsive to their needs. In 2016, convenience will continue to be a key factor in where patients choose to receive care, and emerging technologies will enhance accessibility to care by bringing care-delivery options to patients’ fingertips.

Store-based, limited-service clinics have made an impact on routine care delivery over the past few years and will continue to cater to patients who are in need of prompt treatment for low-acuity illnesses and injuries; quick access to sports, camp, or other physicals; administration of vaccines; or any other walk-in type of low-acuity illness. Meanwhile, urgent-care centers continue to be a focus for patients who are in need of immediate care but don’t warrant an emergency-department visit. In 2016, the continued pressure of high-deductible health plans will be one driver in patient decisions to obtain care in these environments.

• Integration of telemedicine into health-plan payment policies will expand access to physicians for patients both in terms of convenience and enhanced monitoring of chronically ill patients. 2016 is expected to be the year when physicians and their practices strategize on how to incorporate telemedicine into their operational and care-delivery processes for their patient population.

• Emerging technologies — such as the ability for physicians to connect with patients via a mobile-phone application — will change the physician-patient relationship. Additionally, FDA-approved mobile-phone applications, diagnostic wearable devices, and condition-specific monitoring devices will start to augment the largely consumer-driven self-monitoring health market. It is expected that technology development in this area will grow vigorously in 2016.

• Over the past few years, data has played a significant role in healthcare. This trend will continue, with practices increasingly focusing on understanding the practice’s patient population. New approaches will likely elevate the ability of the practice to monitor the health of chronically ill patients, determine the currently healthy patients that may be at risk down the line, and identify potential gaps in care. In 2016, data flow between systems will increase, which will help create linkage points between health systems, physician offices, outpatient centers such as store-based limited service clinics, urgent-care centers, and the patient.

Patients will likely play an increased role in creating actionable data, providing physicians with instant feedback as to their current condition and data points relevant to their care. As systems improve and data capture outside of the traditional office visit becomes more reliable, patient-population health management will be an area of focus, opportunity, and ongoing change in the years ahead.

• Patient-centered care, of which a core component is patient experience, has been a focus for many practices over the past few years. The inclusion of patient experience in accountable-care models, the meaningful-use program, and patient-centered medical home models certainly escalated focus in this area. Increased efforts around transparency of patient-experience scores, which many organizations started to explore in 2015, will start to influence where patients decide to receive care next year.

In 2016, an increased focus on collaboration and communication between patients and physicians will result in more emphasis on ‘relationship-centered’ care to account for the back-and-forth communication and shared decision making that has been found to promote patient engagement and support enhanced patient outcomes.

What does this all mean for physician practices? Similar to 2015, 2016 will be a year where we continue to focus on transitions and enhancements to systems, processes, and continued innovation in terms of delivery and payment models. Practices will work to engage their patients in new ways and, as a result, will have an opportunity to innovate and try new things while maintaining the excellent care that they already provide. v

Kerry Ann Hayon is director of the Mass. Medical Society’s (MMS) Physician Practice Resource Center. This article first appeared in Vital Signs, an MMS publication.

Architecture EL Brings Passion to Its Myriad Projects

Architecture Sections

Purposeful Design

Kevin Rothschild-Shea at a residential project site.

Kevin Rothschild-Shea launched his architecture firm seven years ago, just as the economy was starting to sour. But, though a combination of diversity, flexibility, and a commitment to service, he has seen his business not only survive, but grow. It helps that he’s got a number of what he calls “socially responsible” jobs under his belt, as he has a passion for working with clients who serve people in need.

Kevin Rothschild-Shea has designed buildings for a wide variety of residential and commercial clients, but he takes particular pride in projects with a social benefit.

Take the child-care center his firm, Architecture EL, designed in Chicopee for the Valley Opportunity Council. “They’re very excited to see a new building replacing a very small, old, out-of-date structure,” he said of the partially state-funded project. “For us, it’s a nice little job, but for them, it’s a big project that’s been a long time coming.

“It involved creating a space that’s bright and clean — not just a room, but a room that creates an opportunity for learning and positive experiences,” he went on. “For some of these kids, it’s the nicest place they’ll get to go all day.”

He also cited the E. Henry Twiggs Estates, a 75-unit affordable-housing project in the Mason Square neighborhood of Springfield. The client, Home City Housing, is a “great organization with the goal of maintaining affordable housing for people in the area. That’s a really significant project that we’ll be drawing through the wintertime, and we hope to start construction in late spring or early summer.”

Meanwhile, “we did some work with the Community Survival Center in Indian Orchard — space planning, space analysis,” Rothschild-Shea explained. “They’re an organization that continues to grow and provides a great service to people in need. I feel fortunate I’ve been able to work with them.”

Rothschild-Shea uses the word ‘fortunate’ often, occasionally applying it to the success of his own company, which he launched in 2008, into the teeth of an economic meltdown, followed by a lengthy recession. But he says he’s happy to be very busy today.

“The economy is typical of Western Massachusetts — there seem to be hot spots,” he said. “I’ve been busy while other people have been slow, and I’ve been slow while I’ve seen others swamped. It’s hard to get a read on it. So maybe I should just keep working.”

That said, “we’ve been pretty fortunate. We’ve had a good variety of work and great clients, and we were fortunate to survive the recession, and not only survive, but we managed to grow,” he went on, noting that the company has expanded from a two-person operation in 2013 to five employees today, and recently moved into new offices that effectively doubled its physical space. “That’s a good sign of our growth and the work we have on our plate.”

Bold Beginnings

Rothschild-Shea has told the story of how he loved helping out around the house as a child, which inspired him to pursue a creative, hands-on career. After graduating from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, he took a job with a small architecture firm for 18 years before deciding to strike out on his own. “I just jumped in feet first and said, ‘let’s get to work.’”

A rendering of the new Valley Opportunity Council early-education center in Chicopee.

Architecure EL — the acronym stands for Environment Life — was built on the idea of direct design. It’s more common than ever, in fact, to partner with owners and contractors in the design and construction of a building, whereas, a decade ago, those elements were bid separately. “The construction-management type of partnership atmosphere is much more common than we saw in the past.”

Setting up shop in East Longmeadow, he said, many customers assume the EL is an acronym for the town, “but the reality is, we want to be environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, and design the best space we can that’s comfortable to work and live in.”

Meanwhile, the industry — reflected in both customer demands and Massachusetts codes — is increasingly making green-friendly building the standard, not the rule, he said. “The codes require pretty high-performing buildings as a baseline. But from there, we always want to do better.

“When we were starting out, our simple approach was to do good design that was responsive to our environment, sensitive to the world we live in, whether that means making homes energy-efficient or salvaging materials and recycling building products.”

That’s the ‘E’ in a nutshell. The ‘L’ stands for life, and is a more amorphous idea, but just as important. “That’s the whole experience — making a space comfortable, whether it’s your house or office or truck-repair center. The core is making it rewarding to work or live in that space.”

Rothschild-Shea has weathered varying economic climates, he said, by focusing on personal service — working closely with clients from design conception through construction and occupancy — but also on flexibility and diversity, taking on most any type of proposal.

Download a PDF chart of area architecture firms HERE

“We are pretty diverse for a small practice — everything from small studies and accessibility projects and single-family additions and renovations right on up to significantly scaled commercial and residential work,” he said.

For example, this past year saw the completion of Marcotte Ford’s commercial truck center in Holyoke, a 17,000-square-foot, 160-bay facility unlike any in Western Mass., he noted. “It can handle pretty much any vehicle — a lot of municipal and police work, SWAT vehicles, ambulances, right on up to big transport vehicles like retirement homes have.”

As part of the Ford’s ‘landmark design’ program, Rothschild-Shea’s firm will also handle Marcotte’s next job, which is giving its main showroom a facelift, expanding some office space, and completely renovating the service center.

“We’re also continuing to do small office improvements for the Insurance Center of New England,” he noted. “We worked with their Agawam branch a year or so ago, and now we’re doing some improvements at an office in Gardner.”

A rendering of one of the affordable-housing units at the E. Henry Twiggs Estates, a Springfield project set to begin construction in 2016.

Architecture EL also designed Hatfield’s town offices, with an opportunity to bid on additional work coming up in the next year or two. The firm designs plenty of residential work as well, including a recent project on the Connecticut River for a retired couple, replacing a small cottage.

Whatever the job, Rothschild-Shea said, “the core of it is good service. Being small, we’re able to be responsive and efficient and more economical with our time than perhaps a larger company.”

Problem Solver

When asked what drives him the most, Rothschild-Shea paused for a moment before answering simply, “the problem solving.”

“For me, whether I’m designing a house or a service center, success lies in coming up with solutions — whether it’s creating an economical space, or one that’s energy-efficient, creative, comfortable, whatever. It’s taking the physical constraints and the site constraints and massaging that into a successful solution.

“That’s the core of what we do,” he went on. “All the imagery and design and final product are byproducts of solving a problem. That’s the core of good service — understanding the problem and solving it in a creative architectural fashion.”

It’s easier to focus that passion on each job now that the economy has improved, the construction industry is warming up, and architects are focused on more than survival.

“We’re seeing some great municipal work happening recently — maybe not as many schools as before, but there’s a fair amount of public work out there,” he said. “The economy seems to be strong and moving, and we’re looking forward to more of that socially responsible work we’ve been fortunate enough to do. We’re certainly looking forward to expanding on that, whether it’s affordable housing or things like the Survival Center.”

Meanwhile, phase two of the Twiggs project is coming online as well — just one more opportunity for Rothschild-Shea to do well for clients that are doing good.

“I’m fortunate I get to jump on board with these organizations that existed long before I did, and help support their missions,” he told BusinessWest. “There are still a lot of gaps in the economy, and so many people continue to struggle, and it’s nice to help fill in those gaps.”

After all, “people have to live and work in what we draw,” he went on. “So it’s a responsibility on a lot of levels; it’s not just a contract, per se. It is a nice feeling, like we’re making a difference.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

HCC Plans $43.5 Million Renovation of Campus Center

Education Sections

A New Front Door

Bill Fogarty shows off the water-collection apparatus in G-313.

The number outside the door is G-313. But everyone knows it as the ‘digital video studio.’

It’s a well-equipped facility — done over as part of a $2 million renovation of the media center in Holyoke Community College’s campus center in 2008 — and, in most respects, it looks like a modern classroom.

Except for the black tarpaulin positioned just below the ceiling near the middle of the room.

This is an elaborate apparatus, actually, with the tarp hung so that the water leaking from the ceiling flows down and to the center, where it then passes into a hose that empties into a five-gallon bucket sitting on the floor.

“Pretty attractive, huh?” asked Bill Fogarty, HCC’s vice president of Administration and Finance as he offered a tour of the campus center, something he’s done quite often lately, but not for the reason he’d like.

Indeed, he’s certainly not showing off the facility, also known as Building G, hence G-313. Instead, he’s pointing out what the HCC community has had to put up with since … well, pretty much since the day the sloping, concrete facility opened its doors in 1980.

Fogarty’s not sure what month or day that was, but from what he’s heard anecdotally, the building has leaked since just after the ceremonial ribbon was cut — or at least the first day it rained.

Efforts to remediate the problem have continued for the past 35 years, mostly with stopgap measures like those in G-313. Funding for a permanent solution has come only after innumerable tours offered by Fogarty and others and countless “dog-and-pony shows,” as he called them, featuring color photos of the digital video center and several other facilities with water-collection systems of varying levels of sophistication.

The wait (for funding, anyway) finally ended last summer, when the state announced it was awarding $2.5 million for a massive renovation effort, the final monetary piece needed for what will be a $43.5 million project that will — in 30 months or so, according to current estimates — lead to tours of a much different kind.

When it’s over, the project to square off the campus center, thus eliminating the angles contributing to the water-damage problems, and add roughly 8,000 square feet will yield a facility that is in many ways state-of-the-art, student-friendly, and doesn’t leak.

It will in many ways give the school a new feel — and entry point, said its long-time president, Bill Messner.

“This will allow for a front door, which is something we’ve never had before,” he explained, adding that, despite its importance, the campus center is accessible only from a series of stairs leading down from the Frost Building, the main administration building, or from the adjoining Kittredge Center for Business & Workforce Development.

Plans call for an elaborate makeover of the dining-services facilities; a new home for the campus bookstore, which is currently housed in cramped, and, yes, leaking space on the ground floor; a new admissions office; and improved traffic flow to all those facilities.

The renovation project will create some headaches and logistical challenges — books will be sold only online for the length of the construction project, and dining facilities will be temporarily relocated to the already-crowded Frost Building next door, for example.

But the end result will be a facility that will certainly help the college as it works to attract students — HCC competes across many programs with Springfield Technical Community College, only eight miles away — and greatly enhance the experience for those who choose to attend.

Leaking Information

The campus-center project is the latest in a number of projects over the past decade or so that have in many ways transformed an HCC campus that first opened in the mid-’70s, and has been showing its age in many respects.

The 57,000-square-foot Kittredge Center, which opened in 2006, was a major addition to the campus, as was the new Center for Health Education, which opened its doors this past fall in the former Grynn & Barrett Studios building on Jarvis Avenue, just a few hundred yards from the campus (see story, page 22).

In the planning stages is a major renovation of the Marieb Building, which will house the HCC Center for Life Sciences on its first floor.

These and other projects have been undertaken to improve the student experience, create new learning opportunities, and improve student-recruitment efforts, said Messner, adding that the campus-center renovations were blueprinted for all the same reasons.

But at its core, this project was undertaken — and it’s been years, if not decades in the making — to eliminate design flaws, and thus water-infiltration issues and resulting building-material failures, that have plagued the building literally since the day it opened.

Indeed, as he offered his tour of the campus center, the last of what’s considered the “original” buildings on the campus, Fogarty showed BusinessWest several facilities with leaks and various forms of water-collection equipment, including other classrooms, the storage area in the bookstore, and a room just off the dining-services facility which, because of persistent leaks, has been used only for storage over the past several years.

“It’s been a chamber of horrors,” said Fogarty, adding that the college community has essentially had to live with the problem. And in recent years, that became increasingly difficult, creating a sense of urgency that culminated in more of those dog-and-pony shows, which helped prompt the state to include $2.5 million for the project as part of a larger package for capital projects. The balance of the cost is being funded through state bonds.

In a nutshell, the project calls for, well, building a new nutshell.

Officials at Holyoke Community College say the campus center has leaked since the day it opened in 1980.

“To solve the problem, we’ve explored a number of options,” Fogarty explained. “And it’s been determined that the best way to approach this is not to simply over-clad the building, but to square it off — to actually build a new exterior of the building.

“The idea is to square it off and have it look more like the Kittredge Building,” he went on. “That’s because the campus center is not a very attractive building. And while it’s more consistent with the rest of the campus, it’s the building that’s in the worst shape.”

Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2017, and it will require closing down the structure for the duration of the project. That reality will force some imaginative responses, said Fogarty, because the campus is already cramped.

But the end product will be well worth the inconveniences, he went on, because it will give the college a campus center that is far more welcoming, student-friendly, and easy to access.

“We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for new students and new families coming to the campus to find this parking lot and then have a straight shot to admissions,” said Fogarty, citing just one example of how the renovated Building G will represent a substantial improvement over existing conditions.

Messner agreed. “Admissions is currently buried down on the second floor of this building [Frost, the main administration facility], and it’s a very unappealing situation,” he explained, “particularly when you’re trying to attract and impress and serve potential new students.

“So this is not only going to be much more attractive and conducive to a welcoming environment,” he went on, “it’s also going to cluster an array of services around admissions that lend themselves to serving potential new students — the testing, the advising, and more.”

Another example would be the plans for the new bookstore, to be relocated from its current basement home.

“Right now, you have to make an effort to find the bookstore; it’s just not conveniently located,” said Fogarty. “What we want to do is bring the bookstore to the second floor, and have that facility, the dining services, and the student-activity services all on the same floor, and all opening up to a common corridor.”

Dry Subject Matter

Fogarty said he’s essentially done giving tours of the campus center — at least for the next two and half years or so.

But he expects he’ll doing a lot of them afterward, showing off a facility that will be modern, accessible, easy to use, and, best of all, dry.

Indeed, G-313 will look like a modern classroom — without the water-collection apparatus.

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

EpiCenter Helps Clients Manage All Aspects of Their Business

Sections Technology

Growing Concerns

EpiCenter President Jeff Glaze

Jeff Glaze was happy running a successful family business, a manufacturing company that, at its peak, employed 120 people. But when the climate changed in that industry — at a time when he was becoming heavily involved in a business-consulting model known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) — Glaze decided to transition into that latter business full-time. He called his new enterprise EpiCenter, and, almost five years later, once again finds himself at the forefront of his field.

Jeff Glaze thought the second-generation manufacturing company he led in Westfield would survive a lot longer than it did, “but the rules changed.”

It’s a story with a happy ending, however — not that it’s anywhere close to ending. Instead, EpiCenter, the business-consulting company that emerged four years ago from his previous enterprise, is growing by some 20% per year, boasting a national and international reach.

“We were a contract manufacturer of metal nameplates, labels, and signs; 80% of our business was making nameplates for companies,” Glaze said of a family business called Decorated Products that his father launched in the 1950s and peaked in the 1990s with 120 employees at the Westfield plant.

“Frequently, our niche was items that had to be UL-approved, giving safety information. They weren’t just pretty; they had to be functional also, carrying a serial number and critical information about how to operate the equipment safely,” he explained, with national clients including Black & Decker, Singer, Craftsman, and Tappan Appliances.

“In 2007, we won the Pioneer Valley Business Excellence Award, modeled on the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award,” he went on. “We wanted to be the very best we could, to set the highest standards so our customers would be happy with us and know we were providing the best-quality products.”

But by then, the writing was already on the wall.

The turning point came in 1994, when President Clinton granted most-favored-nation status to China, opening up the Chinese market for American companies, which started moving to China and building factories and paying workers 5 cents an hour instead of $15, Glaze recalled.

“I’ll never forget the day Black & Decker called,” he said, noting that Decorated Products manufactured a stainless-steel gauge for a radial arm saw. “For 10 years, we were shipping 4,500 parts a week. In 2001, the Black & Decker guy called during lunchtime and said, ‘well, Mr. Glaze, it’s $4.15 from you, $2 from China. So, how much inventory do you have?’ And that was that. We were losing customers.”

However, a parallel story was emerging. Decorated had been working with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider that went out of business during the late 1990s. “Any large manufacturing facility has this type of system; it’s a necessity if you’re going to be efficient and meet customer requirements,” Glaze said.

An ERP system — essentially a suite of business-management software and consulting services that helps clients manage business functions ranging from IT to accounting to human resources — is so critical, in fact, that Glaze and several of the failing provider’s other clients hired one of its employees to keep those functions afloat.

Eventually, Glaze became involved with Epicor, an international leader in ERP. “They had a great product and had grown over the years, and I wanted to make sure we partnered with someone who’d last a long time; I didn’t want the same thing to happen again.”

The EpiCenter team includes about 25 local employees and dozens more scattered across the country.

Soon, he got involved in a local Epicor user group, a group of committed users who provide suggestions and feedback on service changes and enhancements. Later, he became president of Epicor’s New England user group, started attending national conferences, and ascended to president of a global user group in 2005, representing 20,000 users of the software around the globe.

Consulting for Epicor had become a major part of his business — so much that, in 2006, Glaze told BusinessWest, “the president of Epicor said, ‘why don’t you become a partner? We’ll give you some training, and you can do the same things you’re doing now, helping customers use the software, but we’ll pay you to do it.’”

A few years later, Decorated Products was no more, and EpiCenter was born.

Avoiding Disaster

There was, of course, the issue of all the employees that had worked at Decorated — for a long time, in many cases. The manufacturing business didn’t seem viable anymore, a sentiment Glaze’s children seconded and thirded.

“They said, ‘realistically, it’s not a great business model; we’re not really interested in continuing it.’”

Still, “nothing is more hurtful than laying people off,” he continued. “Fortunately, I had a friendly competitor in Stafford Springs, called Willington Nameplate. I said, ‘why don’t you buy my manufacturing company so my remaining employees have a place to go?’”

Willington agreed, and the vast majority of Glaze’s workers joined the Willington team, and EpiCenter emerged as a full-time ERP business — and a successful one, with about 60 employees scattered across the U.S; of 140 Epicor partners worldwide and 100 in the U.S., it ranks in the top five in overall size.

“A company might buy software from Epicor or someone else and ask us to implement it for them. We can sell to them as well and implement our expertise in all facets of running their business — accounting people, tech people, operations,” Glaze explained. “We try to become an ongoing resource for our customers, too. We’re their outside ERP firm.”

Enterprise resource planning is used by organizations to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from many business activities, including product planning, costs, service delivery, marketing and sales, inventory management, shipping … the list goes on, and ERP systems are highly adaptable to each client.

EpiCenter has some financial-services clients, but 80% of its customers are in manufacturing and distribution. “We have expertise in capacity planning and scheduling, job costing, and much more,” Glaze saide. “This is very important to all kinds of manufacturing companies.”

While some companies might opt to handle those functions internally with Quickbooks and other software, he continued, they often wind up with a hoghepodge of systems that don’t talk to each other, and they require human capital to enter information from one system to another.

An effective ERP solution, on the other hand, can cut overhead by 30% to 50% in certain cases, he went on. “Nobody has to re-enter information three or four times. As a result, you have better communication, reduce inventory, improve scheduling, improve profitability, keep overhead down … it really is a necessity. When you have a company that’s doing $10 or $20 million in sales, especially in the manufacturing world, it’s pretty hard to operate without that.”

Because the software is scalable, Glaze said, some startups will become partners, and the ERP expands as they do. “Those are the fun ones. It’s really great to see those success stories in Massachusetts. A lot of biotech companies we have as customers have certainly followed that model.”

Most EpiCenter clients are small to medium-sized businesses. Large, Fortune 500 companies may opt instead for platforms like Oracle and SAP. “Those systems are much larger and require a large, technical staff to keep them going. They do a great job, but they’re not appropriate for smaller companies.”

About 25 of EpiCenter’s employees work in Westfield, while the rest are spread out across the country, either in satellite offices in New Jersey, New Mexico, and Minnesota, or working from their homes, ready to travel where clients are.

“The limit on growth, for us, is finding qualified people. We need people with all these different backgrounds,” Glaze said. “We recruit nationally; it’s a very rigorous screening process and very vigorous training process. Basically, I need to add one or two consultants a month.

“Customers don’t want to train us in how to run their business, so the qualifications to be a consultant with us are pretty stringent,” he went on. “We have, in a few cases, hired people right out of school and brought them along with lower-level support work until they get enough experience to do consulting, but they’re much better off with a degree in business or engineering and five to 10 years experience using the EPR system, so they can hit the ground running. If we can’t find those people, we’ll certainly train.”

More Than Customers

Glaze was quick to stress that EpiCenter clients are more than customers. He told of one Worcester company whose IT official needed to donate a kidney to his son, so EpiCenter sent one of its own people there to do his job until he returned to work. “That’s the level of support we give. We feel very strongly that our customers are like our family, and we want to treat them right.”

That said, he concedes that, for a company doing $500 million annually in sales, EpiCenter is a bit of a secret in Western Mass.

“We work nationally and go where people ask us to go,” he told BusinessWest. “But we’re a great option for companies in Western Massachusetts.

“We’ve been in a tough economy, and while there are some bright spots, this region has lost a tremendous amount of manufacturing,” Glaze went on. “But there are some niche areas that are doing well, and that’s great; we’re serving those industries that are doing well — and we can make them that much more successful.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Incorporations

Departments Incorporations

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

BRIMFIELD

Laser Converting Concepts Inc., 109 Brookfield Road, Brimfield, MA 01010. Gregory Flamand, same. Laser manufacturing.

CHICOPEE

FLNY 413 Mass Motorcycle Club, LTD, 91 New Ludlow Road, Chicopee, MA 01020. Michael Jenkins, 132 West Alvord St., Springfield, MA 01108. Non-profit organization Motorcycle Club; support and charitable purposes supporting local community events; contributing and supporting local schools and other charitable organizations.

EAST LONGMEADOW

The Gentlemen’s League Inc., 5 Ruffino Road, East Longmeadow, MA 01028. John Pantera, same. Charitable, religious, educational, and scientific purposes to raise money for the betterment of young men in Western Massachusetts and collaborate with other charities focusing on vesting in youth.

HADLEY

Meghan’s Light Inc., 1 Rocky Hill Road, Hadley, MA 01035. Linda Kenny, 71 Homer St., Feeding Hills, MA 01030. Support finding a cure for cystic fibrosis and inspire hope and courage in patients, families, and communities impacted by the disease.

HOLYOKE

Pheet Inc., 10 Hospital Drive # 306, Holyoke, MA 01040. John Swierzewski DPM, same. Manufacturing, promoting, distributing and selling foot hygiene products, including cleaners, powders, creams, implements used to clean and care for feet.

NORTHAMPTON

The Studio Potter, A Nonprofit Corporation, 231 Elm St., No. 1R, Northampton, MA 01060. David McBeth, 111 Landrum Dr., Martin, TN 38237. Record, publish, and promote critical dialogs in ceramic arts and fine crafts through a semi-annual journal.

SPRINGFIELD

David G. Street, P.C., 175 State St., Suite 300, Springfield, MA 01103. David Street, 121 Moulton Hill Road, Monson, MA 01057. Provision of legal services to the general public.

Ministerio Vencedores Para Cristo Inc., 843 Beacon Circle, Springfield, MA 01119. Sylkia Rivera, same. Non-profit organization spreading the word of God in the area; feeding hungry and bring hope to needy.

SSD Tactical Training Inc., 100 Verge St., Unit 2, Springfield, MA 01129. Crystal Williams, 50 Holy Cross Circle, Ludlow, MA 01056. Fire-arms safety training, self-defense training, and retail sales.

SVK Dental PC, 1225 Liberty St., Springfield, MA 01104. Dr. Srinivas Desaneedi, 1401 Rockwood Drive, Saugus, MA 01906. Dental offices.

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Professional Traffic System Inc., 425 Union St., West Springfield, MA 01089. Michael O’Donnell, same. Engage in transporting general commodities.

WILBRAHAM

Cima Restaurant Corp., 2200 Boston Road, Wilbraham, MA 01095. Melinda Sullivan, 178 Roosevelt Avenue, Springfield, MA 01118. Full- service restaurant.

Company Notebook

Company Notebook Departments

Monson Savings Bank Seeks Community Input on Charitable Giving

MONSON — For the sixth year in a row, Monson Savings Bank is asking the community to help plan the bank’s community-giving activities by inviting people to vote for the organizations they would like the bank to support during 2016. “Every year we donate over $100,000 to organizations doing important work in the communities we serve,” said Steve Lowell, president of Monson Savings. “For several years now, we’ve been asking the community for input on which groups they’d like us to support, and we’ve been so pleased by how many people participate. We have learned of new organizations through this process, and we also just like the idea of asking our community for input. As a community bank, we think that’s important.” To cast their vote, people can visit monsonsavings.com/in-the-community.html. On that page, they will find a list of organizations that the bank has already supported in 2015 and may provide up to three names of groups they’d like the bank to support in 2016. The only requirement is that the organizations be nonprofit and provide services in Hampden, Monson, Wilbraham, or Ware. The voting ends at 3 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 15. The bank pledges to support the top 10 vote getters and will announce who they are by the end of January.

Bay Path Employees Donate to Baystate Children’s Hospital

LONGMEADOW — In keeping with Bay Path University tradition, an area nonprofit organization has been selected to receive donations from the Bay Path community in celebration of the holiday season. This year, Baystate Children’s Hospital will be the recipient charity of contributions from the university. Baystate Children’s Hospital, located at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, remains the only accredited children’s hospital in the region and delivers a high level of care to infants, children, and adolescents. The hospital is equipped with 110 beds, including 57 bassinettes, and provides more than 50 inpatient and outpatient services. Donations from Bay Path faculty and staff will include much-needed items such as toys, games, strollers, and books, among other essentials, and will be collected for the hospital today during the university’s annual employee holiday party. Bay Path employees will be honored for their years of service to the university during the party as well.

Clinical & Support Options Recognizes Employees

AMHERST — Clinical & Support Options Inc. (CSO) honored eight employees for their outstanding commitment to the community at its annual staff appreciation and holiday event on Dec. 4. These awards are presented annually to recognize the exemplary contributions made by employees in the course of their work. More than 325 guests attended this lively event, which was held at the UMass Student Union Ballroom. The Exemplary Administrative Support Award, which honors an administrative support employee whose work has been notable for its excellence, went to Marceina Purdy, back-end billing specialist in Northampton. The Outstanding Leadership Award, which recognizes outstanding leadership, vision, and initiative in support of the agency’s mission and objectives, went to Sara Stodulski, Springfield outpatient supervisor. The Exemplary Direct Service Award, honoring an employee whose direct-care work has been notable for its excellence, went to Ben Tozloski, Greenfield outpatient clinician. Chris Jones, Athol crisis clinician, was recognized with the Morale/Spirit Award, which honors the employee who, in the course of their work, has done the most in contributing to the agency’s employee morale. Nicole Lemire, Greenfield family-support worker, was recognized for Outstanding Commitment to Recovery. This award recognizes a person who promotes and integrates the principles of recovery and a trauma-informed approach by actively modeling such principles in his or her work. The award for Community Service Leadership went to Ariane Krumholz, director of Quality Improvement. This award honors a staff member who has provided exceptional personal dedication and a commitment to excellence in bringing communities together at the grass-roots level to assure that the agency meets the needs of those it serves. The Exemplary Team Award, which recognizes a program, department, or committee that has functioned as an exemplary team, whether formally or informally designated, went to the team at the Bridge Family Resource Center in Amherst. Finally, CSO honored Rich Nadolski, director of Clubhouse services, for his 30 years of service at CSO. “Our employees work tirelessly every day supporting our clients and making our communities healthier,” said President and CEO Karin Jeffers said. “I am honored to be a part of this team and recognize these employees for their dedication and excellence.”

Country Bank, Wolf & Co. Construct Housing in Haiti

WARE — In October, a team of officers and a trustee from Country Bank traveled to Haiti as part of a mission of the Be Like Brit Foundation. During the seven-day excursion, the group built a home in the community of Grand Goave, while connecting with children at the foundation’s nearby orphanage. Country Bank was joined on the trip by Mark O’Connell, CEO of Wolf & Co., an accounting firm with offices in Boston and Springfield, along with five members of his team. Dubbed ‘Team Double Trouble,’ each group built a new house, benefiting two of the area’s disadvantaged families. Housing is still greatly needed more than five years after the earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation. The team from Country Bank cleared the lot, hand-poured the foundation, and framed and finished the structure. All the lumber, concrete, and water to the two remote building sites were carried by hand by the teams. “As community bankers, we are deeply involved with the families in need in our own region,” said Paul Scully, president and CEO of Country Bank, who traveled with the group. “Our journey with the Be Like Brit Foundation provided us with greater appreciation of the support that people need around the world. It was a life-changing experience for our group on both a personal and professional level, as the trip served as a corporate team-building and bonding opportunity. I am deeply proud to be surrounded by a team of such dedicated and caring individuals.” In addition to their time building, the teams toured the Mission of Hope International facilities, including a school, computer lab, and library. They also attended church with the children on Sunday and came back to serve lunch the following day. The orphanage was built in memory of 19-year-old Britney Gengel, the Rutland, Mass. native who perished in the 2010 Haiti earthquake while on a service trip with her college, Lynn University.

Baystate Rug & Flooring Helps Tornado Victims

SPRINGFIELD — When tornadoes carved a 39-mile path through the landscape of Western Mass. on June 1, 2011, thousands of lives were impacted. Even today, many of the tornado victims are still dealing with the aftermath, including Isidoro and Alejandrina Mulero of Springfield. Their home in the Six Corners section of the city sustained significant damage to the roof, siding, windows, and foundation. After four years, the Muleros’ home is almost habitable thanks to volunteers from the community as well as Habitat for Humanity and Revitalize Community Development Corp. (formerly Rebuilding Together), who refurbished the damaged structure. Now, all the family needs is to have the flooring installed, for which Baystate Rug & Flooring, a local, family-owned provider of flooring with locations in East Longmeadow and Chicopee, has donated labor. According to Margarita Mulero, the daughter of Isidoro and Alejandrina, the family reached out to Baystate Rug & Flooring at the recommendation of a pastor at a local church. “We were looking for someone whose heart would go out to them, someone who could volunteer their services to help finish the repairs to the house,” she said. “Baystate Rug & Flooring was the company that was suggested, and when we contacted them, they expressed interest in helping us.” Jorge Morgado, vice president of Baystate Rug & Flooring, noted, “at Baystate Rug and Flooring, we live by the motto ‘how can I make today a better day?’ When we learned about the Mulero family of Springfield, who were struggling to get back into their tornado-damaged home, we wanted to help in some small way. Donating installation services is one way we can demonstrate our commitment to making each day better for our community.”

What We’d Like to See in 2016 (Part 2)

Opinion

In the last episode of ‘what we’d like to see in 2016,’ you might recall that we desired to see — and actually expect to see — progress on a number of fronts — everything from efforts to promote entrepreneurship to workforce-development initiatives in light of retiring Baby Boomers; from strategies to bolster the once (and still) proud manufacturing sector to what we called a ‘normalizing of relations with MGM’ after an unnecessarily stormy 2015.

For part 2, we have something else for the wish list — something probably more elusive but in many ways just as important. Let’s call it an attitude shift, or adjustment.

You know what we’re talking about, and it goes by different names in these parts. Some would label it an inferiority complex, while others, those who are slightly more cynical, might describe it as a ‘can’t-do attitude.’

It’s the sentiment that there’s something wrong, or lacking, in this region, and that we can’t ever rise above it and be like Boston or Cambridge, or even Lowell or Worcester. Such sentiments are reinforced every December when BusinessWest presents its annual Economic Outlook. Economists from area colleges and universities and AIM talk about how great the state’s economy is doing, and then present the obligatory caveat — ‘except in Western Mass.’

So there are some good reasons why this attitude prevails, especially when one considers the city of Springfield, the unofficial capital of this region.

Indeed, when people talk about it glowingly (which isn’t that often), it is almost always with the past tense that they get the job done. That’s what’s needed when we talk about everything from vibrancy downtown to the state of the manufacturing sector, to the health and vitality of specific neighborhoods. The good old days were decades ago, and by most accounts, especially from those who fuel the inferiority complex, we’re not likely to see them again, at least anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the skyline of the city — maybe the most telling sign of progress when it comes to a metropolitan area — simply hasn’t changed (unless one counts the MassMutual Center) since Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Mike Dukakis was in the State House. That’s a long time to go without a major new building initiative. In the 30 years prior to that, the downtown changed dramatically.

And this brings us back to our hope for an attitude adjustment. It’s not going to instantly change our fortunes, but it certainly can’t hurt.

We have to accept the fact that this region is not going to Boston, any more than Albany or Troy can be New York City, or Augusta can be Atlanta, or Bethlehem can be Pittsburgh. And in the meantime, there is a lot to be proud of here — a high quality of life, affordability, culture, history, tradition, and some extremely livable communities.

What we don’t have … OK, that’s a long list. We don’t have a large biotech sector or major technology employers or a robust financial-services sector. Perhaps more importantly, we don’t the vibrant nightlife and myriad entertainment options often needed to attract and retain the professionals needed to fuel all of the above.

But people are working on it. Dramatic change won’t come overnight, but it’s very easy to envision a Springfield, and therefore a region, that is more vibrant — and still has all those other qualities listed above.

How easy? Much more easily than any time in the past 30 years.

Will it happen? Maybe. We’ll even offer a ‘probably.’ And an attitude adjustment might just help get it done.

MassDevelopment Designates 3 TDI Initiative Fellows to Work in Pittsfield, New Bedford, Brockton

MassDevelopment has selected Pittsfield, Brockton, and New Bedford for its second round of Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) fellows to advance local redevelopment visions in those cities’ TDI Districts. The TDI Fellows, who will have experience in city planning, community partnership building, real estate, and economic development, will work in their host districts for three years in collaboration with local partnerships. These fellows follow the successful initial placements earlier this year in Haverhill, Lynn, and Springfield.

“This grant is another recognition that Pittsfield is moving forward,” said Sen. Ben Downing (D – Pittsfield). “Support through the TDI program will help revitalize the Tyler Street corridor and build on the great work of local business and community organizations.”
MassDevelopment is accepting qualifications for these new fellows positions, which will begin in spring 2016, on its website. Staff members from Peabody and Worcester will participate in this round as adjunct fellows, joining cohort activities such as monthly meetings, skills building, site visits, and regional leadership development.

Brockton, New Bedford, and Pittsfield are three of the 10 Gateway Cities selected in December 2014 as the pilot TDI Districts in Development—along with Haverhill, Holyoke, Lynn, Peabody, Revere, Springfield and Worcester. As a part of the program, each will receive a range of real estate development services to support local visions for redevelopment, and to catalyze and leverage investments and economic activities. Everett and Malden are receiving directed regional planning and implementation assistance to advance their Districts’ TDI visions.

MassDevelopment selected the three cities based on a demonstrated need for personnel to support the TDI Districts’ plans. The 10 Districts in Development for the program’s pilot year were chosen from the 26 gateway cities’ submissions to the 2014 Call for Districts, in which all identified local collaborative partnerships, strategic district visions, and community engagement plans. Gateway cities that were not designated this pilot year are eligible and encouraged to submit for future rounds. All 26 gateway cities, in addition to all Massachusetts cities and towns, will continue to receive and be eligible for typical MassDevelopment services.

“The first three Fellows have quickly become indispensable parts of the economic-development communities in Haverhill, Lynn, and Springfield by partnering with local organizations to create redevelopment opportunities,” said MassDevelopment President and CEO Marty Jones. “We look forward to the new faces that will arrive in Brockton, New Bedford, and Pittsfield to support those cities’ visions.”
MassDevelopment, the state’s finance and development agency, works with businesses, nonprofits, financial institutions, and communities to stimulate economic growth across the Commonwealth. During FY2015, MassDevelopment financed or managed 294 projects generating investment of more than $2.5 billion in the Massachusetts economy. These projects are projected to create about 6,100 jobs and build or rehabilitate about 2,000 residential units.

Court Dockets

Court Dockets Departments

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

HAMPDEN SUPERIOR COURT

Coyote Realty LLC v. Total Wellness Center d/b/a Clean Slate
Allegation: Breach of lease agreement: $220,000
Filed: 10/9/15

Vincent P. Traina Jr. v. People’s United Bank, Jill DeSouza, and Anthony Ferraro
Allegation: Defamation and slander: $1,300,000
Filed: 11/10/15

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT

Building Specialties/Architectural Hardware Inc. v. James J. Welch & Co. Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of services, labor, and materials: $86,450
Filed: 10/28/15

Catherine O’Neill v. Quik Foods Inc., d/b/a Burger King
Allegation: Negligent maintenance of property causing personal injury: $14,294.10
Filed: 11/18/15

Dietz Construction Co. v. James J. Welch & Co. Inc.
Allegation: Non-payment of goods sold and delivered: $102,392.98
Filed: 11/16/15

NORTHAMPTON DISTRICT COURT

Ernesto Jaimes, by his mother Omayra Gonzalez v. Motor Realty Co., d/b/a Townline Motel
Allegation: Bedbug infestation causing personal injury: $5,000
Filed: 12/9/15

PALMER DISTRICT COURT

Alexis Levesque v. Horizon’s Restaurant & Bar
Allegations: The plaintiff bit into a plastic object in her sandwich causing painful oral and dental injuries: $5,000+
Filed: 12/10/15

SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Estelle Moses v. Columbia Gas of MA
Allegation: Breach of duty of care and negligence causing personal injury: $11,780.50
Filed: 11/18/15

Jamy and Teresa Lazarack v. Warren Truck and Auto Repair
Allegation: Fraud and unfair and deceptive trade practices: $3,937.61
Filed: 12/3/15

Luz Lazala v. Columbia Gas of MA
Allegation: Negligence causing explosion and loss of rental income: $23,000
Filed: 11/17/15

New England Industrial Uniform Rental Service v. Siemon Co.
Allegation: Breach of contract for rental and cleaning of industrial garments: $9,685.33
Filed: 12/8/15

Picture This

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]

Opening Pitch

Former Red Sox knuckleball pitcher Tim Wakefield (back row, center) joined Farmington Bank executives and employees during the grand-opening celebration of the bank’s new branch at 61 North Main St., East Longmeadow. Wakefield — Farmington Bank’s new celebrity spokesperson — signed baseballs and posed for photos as part of the bank’s Family Day of activities. The East Longmeadow branch is the second office Farmington Bank has opened in Western Mass., following 85 Elm St. in West Springfield.

A Cut Above

Modern Salon recently named the 2015 class of Excellence in Education honorees in its sixth annual program recognizing leadership and best practices among cosmetology schools, and DiGrigoli School of Cosmetology was chosen to represent excellence in the category of Community Involvement, Marketing Innovation, School Culture. “We received applications from cosmetology schools across the country and look forward to celebrating all the 2015 Excellence in Education honorees and sharing their stories. It is truly a great time to pursue a beauty education and career, and the program at DiGrigoli School of Cosmetology exemplifies that fact,” said Modern Salon Editorial Director Michele Musgrove. Paul DiGrigoli, president and CEO of the DiGrigoli School of Cosmetology, added, “I’m so grateful to have such a stellar faculty and team. They have supported and created an environment of positivity and energy that constantly and continuously helps take our students’ minds and careers to another altitude. I am proud to say that the future professionals who graduate from the DiGrigoli School of Cosmetology have received jobs from some of the best salons in our area. We will continue to reach for greater heights to provide all of our students with higher education, and we are so honored to be receiving this prestigious award for the fourth year in a row.”

Commercial Real Estate

Commercial Real Estate Sections

A listing of available commercial properties

Click HERE to download the PDF chart

In Memoriam: Mike Balise IS a Difference Maker

A few months before he succumbed to cancer, ESPN anchor Stuart Scott stood at the podium at the ESPY Awards to accept the Jim Valvano Award for Perseverance.

In his moving remarks, Scott, in essence, told those assembled that when someone’s cancer fight ends, we should refrain from saying that he or she “lost their battle.” That fight is often won, he went on, because the individual confronted the disease with courage, the conviction to live their life to their fullest, and determination not to let cancer dictate whatever time they had left.

Those words certainly rang true recently with the news that Mike Balise, co-owner of Balise Motor Sales, passed away at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute roughly 15 months after being diagnosed with incurable stomach cancer at the age of 50.

There is certainly no debate about who won this fight — Mike did.

He battled the disease with his indomitable humor, determination to continue, for as his long as he could, his work not only with the company, but within the community as well — efforts that ranged from raising awareness of the need for more cancer-treatment facilities in this region (and money to build those facilities), to buying winter coats for area young people in need.

Last September, BusinessWest talked with Mike and some members of his family about his fight, and his determination and courage certainly came through. So much so that one could easily make the argument that no story the magazine has published in its 32-year history resonated more with readers. See story HERE.

Indeed, there were countless calls and e-mails from individuals conveying the message that they were greatly inspired by Mike’s ability to battle a death sentence with poise, dignity, and a desire to focus not on his plight, but on how he could do even more to help others.

A common refrain from those who reached out was “I’ve never met Mike, but reading this, I wish I could.’’

Those comments, as well as Mike’s long track record of philanthropy and community involvement, resonated with the decision-makers at BusinessWest this fall when they convened to decide whom to honor with the magazine’s Difference Maker award next spring.

They considered and then chose to honor Mike knowing fully well that it was very likely that his seat would be empty at the gala in March. But he will honored along with the others who will be announced next month, because he has been, and remains, an inspiration in so many ways, and is thus clearly worthy of that title Difference Maker, and always will be.

And when his name is introduced to those gathered at the Log Cabin in March, it will not be through use of the past tense — because he isn’t done being a Difference Maker. His inspirational life — not simply those last 15 months or so — will ensure that this is the case.

As for that cancer fight — from the minute Mike was diagnosed, everyone knew how it would end. All those who knew Mike could also predict how the battle would be waged; with courage and conviction. And that’s why we shouldn’t say the fight was lost.

Because it wasn’t.

New Health Sciences Center Provides Room to Grow

Education Sections

HCC enhances the learning experiences for students in a number of programs

Michelle Sherlin with ‘Noelle,’ the obstetrics simulator at Holyoke Community College’s new Center for Health Education.

They named her Noelle.

She is the “obstetrics simulator” used by students at Holyoke Community College, and by Michelle Sherlin’s count, she’s given birth 16 times this semester, give or take a few deliveries.

Noelle has long been part of the curriculum, if you will, for students in various health and science tracks at HCC, but since she and the Health Sciences Department moved into the former Grynn & Barrett Studios building on Jarvis Avenue, she’s been playing a bigger part.

Indeed, in the new facility, Noelle has her own spacious hospital bed (a significant upgrade over her previous digs), which is visible from a larger, better-equipped screening room, from which students’ performance can be watched and assessed.

The simulator is now more mobile, said Sherlin, a registered nurse and simulation specialist within HCC’s Health & Natural Sciences Division. By that, she meant that it’s easier for Noelle to get to students and for students to get to Noelle, which means she can take part in more learning experiences — from those aforementioned deliveries to a late-term X-ray administered recently by students in the Radiologic Technology program.

In many respects, Noelle’s story captures the essence of the Health Science Division’s move into the 22,000-square-foot facility, acquired by the college in late 2012 and repurposed through a $7.6 million initiative that culminated in a ribbon cutting last fall.

There is more room, yes — considerably more room, and that’s a big part of the story. And there’s also new equipment, more than $600,000 worth it, which is usually defined with the term state-of-the-art.

Kathy Hankel says the new Center for Health Education has greatly enhanced the educational experience for HCC students.

But the real story, said Kathy Hankel, dean of the Health Sciences Department, is how all of the above has enhanced the learning experiences for students in a number of programs, and how it has made HCC better able to compete for students seeking entry into the region’s large and diverse healthcare sector.

“We’ve been able to greatly enhance the educational experience for our students,” she explained. “We simply have the ability to do so much more than we could before.”

When the Grynn & Barrett building went on the market in 2012, Hankel said, college administrators saw a tremendous opportunity to substantially upgrade the Health Sciences facility then housed in the Marieb Building, one of the original structures on the HCC campus.

To describe those quarters, Hankel first summoned an adjective, then an adverb for some additional effect.

“It was cramped — horribly cramped,” she explained. “We did a lot of things over there (at Marieb) with our labs and simulators, but it was so difficult for all the students to get the true benefit of the simulation and lab experience we offered because we were so cramped.”

The new Health Sciences Center now houses the school’s two-year RN program, its LPN program, the Medical Assistant program, and the “Fundamentals in Health” class that has served as a feeder program for the various health disciplines.

The building houses staff offices and conference facilities, as well as a wide array of simulation rooms — all equipped to mirror what would be found in a hospital — as well as classrooms, labs, screening rooms, and more.

To say that the new quarters would retire that term ‘cramped’ is an understatement. Indeed, four months after officially moving in, Holly Martin-Peele, program chair of the Radiologic Technology Department, says she’s still having a hard time getting used to all the space.

Indeed, as she gave BusinessWest a tour of her facilities, she referenced a classroom; a radiology simulation room, or mock X-ray room, as she termed it, which recreates what would be found in a hospital; the so-called QC area, or ‘image-critique’ facility, which also doubles as a lab and study area; and a storage room.

“Before, in the old building, we had basically a big classroom that had a couple of antique X-ray machines in back that we couldn’t find parts for anymore,” she explained. “We can do so much here.”

Sherlin concurred, and successfully quantified the improvements in addition to qualifying them.

She said there are now eight simulators in use at the facility, double the number at Marieb, and more students are using them, and in myriad ways.

“We’ve done more than 360 simulations since the beginning of September,” she explained. “Previously, that was about what we did in a year and half; we did as many simulations in one semester as we used to do in three.”

More important than those numbers are what they mean in terms of the learning experiences of those performing the simulations.

“The quality of the educational experience has grown dramatically,” she told BusinessWest, “because students are really able to get comfortable with the technology, deepen their skills, and do a lot of critical decision making, because of simulation, that they didn’t have the ability to do before, because there was just no space.”

— George O’Brien

Holiday Sales Up 7.9% This Year

The holiday shopping season isn’t quite over yet — many of those who received gift cards have yet to hit the stores — but a study has shown that it is already a solid one for retailers.

Indeed, retail sales were up 7.9% between Black Friday and Christmas Eve compared to the same period a year ago, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, which studies transaction and survey data on purchases made with credit cards, cash, and checks. The report found that e-commerce provided crucial holiday momentum this holiday season, with sales up 20% in that realm.

Wilbraham Monson Academy Looks to Build on Recent Momentum

Education Sections

Rock Solid

Head of School Brian Easler

Growing up, Brian Easler said he was anything but the proverbial ‘prep-school guy.’ He attended public high school and then went into the Army, serving in Desert Storm. But he always had what he called a fascination with the private-school life, or the world presented in Dead Poets Society. Today, as head of school at Wilbraham Monson Academy, a role he assumed after 16 years in various posts at the school, he’s leading roughly 500 students, faculty, and staff now living that life. More importantly, he’s working diligently to keep the school on a long run of growth, increased diversity, and vibrancy.

There’s an intriguing tradition at Wilbraham Monson Academy.

It’s called the ‘senior stone,’ and it dates back to when this 211-year-old institution was known as Wilbraham Academy, and with the class of 1947.

It was with those individuals, all young men (the institution went co-ed years later), that the school began the practice of giving each graduating senior a stone, which would then be placed in the Rubicon, a stream that runs through a portion of the campus, where it remained until it was soft enough for the student to chisel his name and class year on it. The stone would then be placed atop one of the many stone walls on campus.

In recent times, maybe the past 20 years or so, students have taken to trading that soaking and chiseling work for bringing their stone to a professional engraver for some more elaborate messages, noted Brian Easler, head of school at WMA, adding quickly that the old method is still practiced by some and, by most accounts, is staging what amounts to a comeback.

“Over the past four years, there’s been a real movement back to people chiseling their own stones,” he said, “to the point where the dean’s office has set up a half-dozen canvas tool bags with a hammer, a chisel, and safety goggles, and students can sign out a kit.”

Both engraving practices are certainly in evidence along the low wall placed across the front of Rich Hall, the main administration building named for one of the school’s early trustees, Isaac Rich. There, one will find simple names or even initials obviously hand-chisled, as well as detailed, professional engravings, many mixing words with ornate images.

In many ways, that front wall, and the Senior Stone tradition itself, speaks to how this respected preparatory school balances tradition with changing times, technology with time-honored practices, and evolution with history.

In most respects, it is a delicate balancing act, one that Easler has led since becoming head of school in 2014, and been a part of since arriving on campus 17 years ago to lead alumni affairs and the school’s annual fund.

He would quickly move on to the role of dean of students, and later add the title associate head of school. When Rodney LaBrecque announced he was stepping down from the corner office, a search for a successor commenced. It wasn’t a long search — or as long as most — because the movement to place Easler in that position took on a life of its own.

Indeed, a Facebook page created by a member of the class of 2000 called ‘Brian Easler for WMA headmaster’ had more than 1,200 members within three days. “That roughly accounts for almost every student who graduated during my time as dean of students,” he noted. “And also some of the kids I kicked out.”

Download a PDF chart of the region’s private schools HERE

Roughly 18 months into the job, Easler admits that he’s still growing into it, something he certainly didn’t expect (more on that later). And as he sliced through his many responsibilities and worked to sum them all up, he said the assignment comes down to simply maintaining what has been a lengthy and healthy run of growth, continued diversity in all its forms, increasingly global reach, and overall vibrancy at WMA.

But there’s nothing simple about that broad task.

Indeed, this is in many ways a challenging time for prep schools and colleges alike, as they grapple with declining populations of young people, immense competition for top students, global economic turmoil, and the need to maintain high standards of quality when it comes to admissions in the wake of these issues.

Couple these factors with ever-rising tuition costs, and the mission for WMA and all schools like it is to make sure value is among the assets it has to offer.

“We know that birth rates are declining, and that means school populations are declining, which means that competition is getting tougher for schools,” he said in describing the current operating climate. “And we’re also in an environment where tuition is going up. In order for us to balance what we cost with the value of what we provide, we need to have the most effective and most intentional financial plan — and focus on our mission — that we can.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Easler about the many kinds of balancing acts going on at this institution, and his vision for this school with a future that appears, well, rock solid, and in a number of ways.

School of Thought

Easler has taken a rather intriguing path to the large office at Rich Hall assigned to the head of school, one that he probably couldn’t have imagined when he was in high school himself. And that’s because that setting was at the opposite end of the spectrum from where he is now.

“I went to public school in Maine, and was not a private-school guy,” he explained, adding quickly that, for a variety of reasons, he became fascinated, for lack of a better term, with the private, boarding-school realm.

The senior stone has been a tradition at Wilbraham Monson Academy since 1947.

“My first experience with private schools came when I was lifeguarding at the University of Maine,” he explained. “There was a gentleman who came in to swim every day who graduated from Eaglebrook (in Deerfield). He would tell me stories about his middle-school days there, and that created this fascination for me with boarding schools.”

It would later be fueled by Dead Poets Society, the movie starring Robin Williams about the fictitious Welton Academy, and other factors, including a chance encounter with the WMA campus while Easler and his wife were travelling from their new home in Springfield to Palmer.

But despite this evolving fascination, Easler seemed in no way destined for the career that would eventually take shape.

Indeed, upon graduation from high school, he joined the Army and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division’s Long-range Reconnaissance and Surveillance Detachment. As a Ranger team leader of a six-man squad, he would be awarded the Bronze Star for actions while engaged in combat operations behind enemy lines during Desert Storm.

After his stint with the Army concluded, he attended the University of Maine at Farmington, where, in a nod to Dead Poets Society perhaps, he majored in literature and minored in philosophy.

Easler noted that he first applied to Wilbraham Monson to be an English teacher — at the suggestion of one of the school’s retiring English teachers, who became the subject of one of his assignments at Springfield College, where he earned a master’s degree in Education.

He didn’t get the job, he explained, at least in part because he seriously lacked the skills necessary to coach field hockey, which was part of the job description.

But he certainly made some kind of impression. That became obvious a while later, as he was mulling where to go next, when the phone rang.

“It was the head of school, Richard Malley,” said Easler. “He said, ‘have you ever considered serving education in a role other than teaching?’ — and I had no idea what he was talking about.”

What Malley had in mind was the job as director of alumni affairs and running the annual fund, a job Easler wasn’t sure he could handle, but accepted anyway.

“He took a chance on me because I had no experience, and I took a chance because I didn’t know how to be alumni director,” he explained, adding that, 17 years later, he’s still at WMA because, as he put it, “I never had any desire to leave.”

As mentioned earlier, he would soon be promoted to dean of students, and in 2005, he became assistant head of school. He told BusinessWest that he thought those positions and their myriad responsibilities — everything from creation of a new evaluation system for teachers to leading students on educational trips to the Amazon jungle, to working with the town to install a new street-crossing light system — would adequately prepare him for his new role.

It turns out he was right. Well, sort of.

“I felt like I knew the job, that I had it all figured out,” he told BusinessWest. “As it turned out, I had no idea.”

School of Thought

What Easler said he’s learned over the past year and a half is that this job entails wearing many hats and assuming many roles.

“In one day, I can be dealing with parking-lot-assignment issues, auditors and lawyers, happy parents, billionaire alumni, and international dignitaries,” he said, adding that those in that latter category are often also alums. “At various times, you have to play the role of counselor and mayor, judge, priest — not in a particularly religious sense, but in terms of providing counsel to people when they’re at a time of need — and more.”

He’s taken on all those roles and others as he’s undertaken the twin challenges of maintaining the recent momentum at WMA and coping with the myriad challenges facing all private schools at this time. And they are, of course, interrelated.

“Our student body has grown in size and quality to the point where we’re full,” he said, describing his tenure at the school specifically. “And our school culture has changed significantly over the past 14 years.”

Elaborating, he said there are now students from 31 different counties and 11 states, escalation of a pattern — one that has earned WMA the nickname ‘the global school’ — that began in 1854, when the school became the first institution of its kind to admit a Chinese student.

International students now comprise one-third of the current student population of 420, which is a percentage the school embraces. But the term ‘diversity’ applies not only to countries of origin, Easler stressed, but other realms as well, including socio-economic status.

And maintaining this diversity is critical because it provides a rich learning experience that goes well beyond the classroom, one that students appreciate long after their stone is placed into a wall, he explained.

“It’s very important to the students to have a diverse campus because, when they come back from college, they tell us that even their college communities are not as diverse and inclusive as ours,” he explained. “My guess would be that this perception of theirs is not a statistical perception — the breakdown of the student populations are not dissimilar to ours. But the perception of it is different, because we’re much smaller.

Brian Easler says WMA provides students with diversity and an opportunity for “social engineering” that that they miss when they move on to college.

“On a college campus, they have more of everyone, so it’s much easier to isolate yourself with whoever’s like you or whoever’s from where you’re from,” he went on. “We’re such a small community that that becomes virtually impossible. What students experience here is like social engineering or forced inclusivity, so that students, by nature of our program, and in a totally healthy way, find it necessary to engage with others who are not like them. And what they learn from it as a result is that they enjoy this, and they miss it when they go to college.”

Moving forward, the mission is obviously to continue this social engineering while also providing students with a high-quality education, and overall experience, that will prepare them not only for college but everything that life can throw at them afterward, said Easler.

And, in these times of declining populations of young people, heightened competition for top students, and rising tuition rates, schools like WMA are challenged to maintain their high standards, become ever more efficient, and focus their resources on programs and initiatives that will advance the institution and improve the overall student experience.

And this brings Easler back to that word ‘value.’

“It’s all about aligning ourselves, our mission, and our expenses so that our budget reflects our mission,” he told BusinessWest. “You can tell what an institution’s real mission is by looking at it’s budget; people spend their money on what’s important to them — and so do institutions.”

And at WMA, what’s important is the learning experience, he went on, adding that, over the past two years, as part of what could be described as strategic planning, the school has identified what’s important and adjusted the budget accordingly.

“We’ve become more lean and efficient as an institution, and more responsive to our parents and alumni,” he explained, adding that the school has boiled what’s important down to three basic criteria: the student experience, the mission, “and what keeps us attractive to our current or potential customers.”

No Stone Unturned

Looking ahead, and far down the road, Easler said WMA has plenty of sidewalks and roads near which to build walls to display the stones of graduating seniors for decades to come.

Beyond that, it has the other necessary ingredients as well — history, tradition, diversity, a willingness to adapt to changing times, and the ability to balance all of the above.

That, and a head of school who may not have been a prep-school guy growing up, but has forged a successful career leading and mentoring those who are.

That’s one reason, from nearly all accounts, why this venerable institution will weather the many challenges facing it and remain rock solid.

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

UMass Landscape Design Students Bring Attention to Downtown Springfield

Architecture Sections

Lighting the Way

The spray-chalk displays drawing people to the Holiday Market are one way to make an impact downtown with little cost.

Frank Sleegers wants his classroom to extend far beyond the UMass campus.

“For these students, it’s not just the work they do to get grades, but they actually care about what they do; they see their work is important and can make an impact,” said the urban design professor at UMass Amherst.

He was speaking of a recent project by a group of landscape architecture students, who worked with the Springfield Central Cultural District to improve the downtown pedestrian walkway known as Market Place and attract more activity there.

Morgan Drewniany, director of the Cultural District — an organization launched in 2014 to cultivate arts and activities and generate interest downtown — said the student “interventions,” as she and Sleegers called the work, involved bringing light to Market Place with paper lanterns and using spray-chalk designs on downtown sidewalks to get people thinking, and talking, about Market Place as a destination.

The short-term project was intended to coincide with the opening of the Downtown Springfield Holiday Market, a joint project of the Springfield Business Improvement District (SBID) and the Cultural District intended to boost retail sales downtown during the holiday season by bringing artists and vendors to spaces located between 1331 and 1391 Main St. and throughout Tower Square.

“One group of students incorporated spray chalk, directing people to the Holiday Market and Market Place itself as well, and really getting people talking about walking and walkability downtown,” Drewniany told BusinessWest. “The other group utilized a series of paper lanterns to bring light to the space, to create more of a welcoming environment, somewhere people really want to linger and spend more time checking out the shops.”

A third group project is working on a longer-term project downtown to be unveiled this spring, she added, giving no details but calling it “an innovative, moveable park.”

Market Place, also known as Market Street, is a pedestrian-only walkway running parallel to Main Street from Falcons Way to Harrison Avenue. A bustling space in the days of Johnson’s Bookstore, today, the walkway typically gets little use except as a cut-through between the downtown towers and the MassMutual Center.

Drewniany said Sleeger’s students had been working on city-improvement ideas for several years through the Office of Planning and Economic Development, a partnership supported with a small Community Development Block Grant. Since its formation, the Cultural District now oversees the projects, which typically take place twice a year, during the fall and spring semesters.

“This year the city planner was able to loop me into the students, to really make their plans a reality,” she said. “Whereas a lot of the students’ ideas in the past had been incorporated into future city plans, we were able to do an independent project where students were able to see their ideas realized. The city has the capacity to make things happen in a few years; we, as a cultural district, are able to focus on it and make it happen in a couple of months.”

Real-world Experience

Sleeger said the Springfield projects usually involve undergraduate students in the fall and graduate students in the spring.

“We’ve worked in a number of neighborhoods that needed some help, that were disadvantaged, where sidewalks were crumbled, things like that,” he told BusinessWest. “Last year, we did an intervention downtown with high-school students from Putnam [Vocational Technical Academy]. Because the city liked our approach, we were able to do some short-term interventions.”

Indeed, last spring, students from the UMass Graduate Urban Design Studio — after consulting with Springfield residents, city Planning and Economic Development officials, the Cultural District, Focus Springfield, small entrepreneurs, and Putnam students — staged six installations throughout downtown Springfield using what Sleegers calls ‘tactical urbanism,’ an emerging form of urban design that seeks to enliven cities with temporary interventions that are inexpensive and easy to install.

The ongoing partnership between the UMass program and the city is “a great idea that also educates the students who come to Springfield,” Sleegers said. “They see what’s here — a city with great potential. We can do something with very little money that has a high impact. That’s typical of other cities as well; parts of the country are struggling, and cities don’t have big bucks, but we can make them better.”

For discussions of longer-term improvements, students have worked with entities ranging from planning officials to the SBID to DevelopSpringfield. In one project, they developed ideas to enhance safety at the X neighborhood in Springfield, aiming to improve pedestrian crossing and making aesthetic enhancements.

“We’re proud of these contributions, and we have a great working relationship with the city,” Sleegers said, noting that the Springfield Design Center — which opened in Court Square in 2009 as a collaboration among UMass programs in Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Architecture and Design, and Agriculture — is now housed in the UMass Center at Springfield, located in Tower Square.

“We continue to work on other ways to make our work more visible,” he said. “These interventions have positive effects, and we get a great response.”

Art and Commerce

Sleegers said too many people have yet to discover the potential of downtown Springfield, and that his students are only helping to showcase it. “Our conversations with the shop owners of the Holiday Market were most inspiring. Their presence transformed the place immediately. I want to get our students involved and embraced. These experiences make them grow and succeed.”

Drewniany said she would like to see the connection between the Cultural District and UMass continue to grow.

“For Springfield to continue its growth and success, we really need to capitalize on all the relationships we have, and work with students who have some real ideas to help bring us to the next level of being a really innovative city,” she said, calling her organization “economic development through arts and culture,” which includes landscape design.

“Young people — and employers who have employees who are young — are really looking at the amenities a city has, not just how cheap rent is. They want to see we have galleries, that we have cool events happening, public art you can walk around. We really see that as something necessary for the future of the city.”

In a sense, those luminarias and chalk designs are just another way to light the path to that goal.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Nominations Are Open for the 40 Under Forty Class of 2016

40 Under 40

10 Years of Inspiration

Ten years. Four hundred names. Incalculable impact.

When BusinessWest unveils the 40 Under Forty class of 2016 in April (nomination form HERE), it will celebrate 10 years of introducing readers to the most accomplished and inspiring young professionals in Western Mass. — with no end in sight to that pipeline (40 Under Forty Past Honorees HERE).

“I’m totally impressed by how many young leaders are here,” said Jeffrey Sattler, president of NUVO Bank & Trust Co., one of five judges of last spring’s class of 2015. “Many are not necessarily known in the community, but they’re doing incredible things.”

The judges’ jobs have become increasingly difficult over the years; the past two groups of nominees were the largest in the program’s first nine years, and BusinessWest hopes for — and expects — a similar surge of interest for the class of 2016.

“I was amazed at how many applicants there were last year,” Sattler said. “The judges were from different walks of life, with their own perspectives — I’m from a finance background, while someone else may have been from the nonprofit world — but we came to similar conclusions on a lot of people.”

One of the strengths of the program, said Peter Ellis, president of DIF Design in Springfield and a member of the class of 2011, is that it focuses on all sectors of the economy, from the trades to white-collar careers to nonprofits. “This is a highly talented region, and this showcases that. There’s a certain level of prestige being known as part of the 40 Under Forty; it really propelled my personal brand and the brand I represent.

“It was flattering,” he said of his selection almost five years ago. “It wasn’t the first year, and by then it was considered a prestigious honor. People were aware of what the award was, so it was great to be part of that class.”

As president of the Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield (YPS) — which counts dozens of members among the past decade’s honorees — Ellis can testify that being named to the 40 Under Forty is a coveted prize.

“YPS is the perfect demographic for this, not only from an age perspective, but where they are in their careers and the energy and vision they carry with them,” he said. “The winners are obviously from different backgrounds, but there’s a synergy to what our mission is at YPS and how we serve our membership.”

Continued Excellence

This year will also mark the return of the Continued Excellence Award, the winner of which will be unveiled at the 40 Under Forty gala on June 16.

Last year, BusinessWest inaugurated the award to recognize past 40 Under Forty honorees who had significantly built on their achievements since they were honored. The five finalists for that award last year were Kamari Collins, Jeff Fialky, Cinda Jones, Kristin Leutz, and the eventual winner, Delcie Bean IV.

“So many 40 Under Forty honorees have refused to rest on their laurels,” said Kate Campiti, associate publisher of BusinessWest. “We wanted to honor those who continue to build upon their strong records of service in business, within the community, and as regional leaders. Last year’s five finalists have certainly done that, and we expect this year’s nominees to be equally inspiring.”

Whether nominating someone for the 40 Under Forty class of 2016 or for the Continued Excellence Award, however, Sattler was quick to note the importance of thoughtful, complete nomination forms.

“Some forms last year lacked enough information for me to judge them higher; they lacked meat,” he said. “Because we’re assessing so many candidates, someone might be hurt if their application is either incomplete or doesn’t provide enough detail.

“If they’re going to take the time to nominate someone,” he went on, “bring out as much information as possible — not just their education and work experience, but what they do in the community and who they are as a person. This might be a great business résumé, but what else do they do? There are so many different ways to look at a candidate that might help a judge.”

Campiti agreed. “That’s where it starts, with the nomination,” she explained. “It needs to be complete, it needs to be thorough, and it needs to essentially answer the question, ‘why is this individual worthy of a 40 Under Forty plaque?’”

The nomination forms for both awards request basic information, said Campiti, and can be supported with other material, such as a résumé, testimonials, and even press clippings highlighting an individual’s achievements in their profession or service to their community. Nominations must be received by the end of the business day (5 p.m.) on Feb. 12 for the class of 2016, and April 1 for the Continued Excellence Award.

Separate panels of independent judges will score nominations for both awards. The 40 Under Forty class of 2016 and the five Continued Excellence Awards finalists will be notified by mail by the end of February.

This year’s group of 40 will be profiled in the magazine’s April 18 edition, then toasted at the June 16 gala, always a can’t-miss, standing-room-only event, Campiti said. The identity of the Continued Excellence Award winner will be kept under wraps — even from the honoree — until that date as well.

Delivering Promise

Sattler said the diversity of the nominees was perhaps what impressed him the most when tasked with judging close to 150 entries last year.

“We looked at males, females, from a number of industries — it’s a true picture of how our business climate is developing, and it’s impressive,” he said, placing particular emphasis on the many entrepreneurs honored over the years, and the types of challenges they had to overcome to launch and sustain their enterprises — which, again, should be part of the story told in the nomination packets.

“Many people don’t realize what it takes to be successful; they impressed me,” he said of last year’s class. “I’d be proud to have any of these 40 working with me on a board of directors. And I hope they provide added motivation to others to become leaders in the community.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Building Permits

Building Permits Departments

The following building permits were issued during the month of December 2015.

AMHERST

78 Old Sunderland Road, LLP
78 Old Sunderland Road
$2,500 — Repair front of building

Claudette Beaudreau
534 Main St.
$17,000 — Remove and replace shingles

Railroad Street Partners, LLC
55 N. Pleasant St.
$13,000 — New roof

Slobody Development Corporation
101 University Dr. Suite B6
$130,000 — Office alteration

Vestry of Grace Church
14-18 Boltwood Ave.
$14,000 — Repair lightening damage to chimney

CHICOPEE

CDB Realty, LLC
49 Dwight St.
$20,500 — Remove and re-lay brick veneer

Petros Mirisis
456 Front St.
$69,000 — Renovations to convert space to an ice cream shop

Tunstall Corporation
118 Exchange St.
$13,000 — Strip and re-roof

HADLEY

Andre Laflamme
75 River Dr.
$20,000 — 20’ x 62’ addition to existing building

F.L. Roberts, Inc.
456 Russell St.
$58,000 — New one story addition to rear of building

Town of Hadley
100 Middle St.
$100,000 — New roof

LUDLOW

Burger King
419 Center St.
$115,000 — Commercial alterations

Colvest Wilbraham, LLC
450 Center St.
$264,000 — New construction

DPW
198 Sportsmen Road
$685,000 — Roof replacement

Steve McDaniel
534 Center St.
$4,500 — Re-shingle roof

NORTHAMPTON

Coolidge Northampton, LLC
241 King St.
$55,000 — Convert one unit into two spaces

Smith College
Mendenhall Center
$92,000 — Renovation to women’s faculty locker rooms

Smith College
49 College Lane
$93,000 — Rebuild the deck at the Conference Center

Smith College
25 Henshaw Ave.
$140,000 — Renovate lobby, classroom, corridor at Capen House Annex

PALMER

J. Stolar Insurance Agency
2001 Calkins Road
$110,000 — Renovate office space

Roger Parker
89 State St.
$32,000 — Re-frame and re-roof building

SBA Network Services
Wilbraham Street
$15,000 — New antenna

Collins Crochiere Construction Services, LLC
1010 Thorndike St.
$243,000 — Office renovation

SPRINGFIELD

CBRE New England
1355 Liberty St.
$575,000 — New roof

Falvey Linen Supply
100 Brookdale Sr.
$30,000 — Interior demo for future build out

Liberty Medical Building
125 Liberty St.
$42,000 — Renovations for a medical office

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Fathers & Sons Audi
434 Memorial Ave.
$5,827,000 — Two-story automotive and sales facility

Normandeau Realty
41 Hayes Ave.
$25,500 — Re-roof

Doing Business As Certificates

DBA Certificates Departments

The following Business Certificates and Trade Names were issued or renewed during the month of December 2015.

AGAWAM

Servpro of Springfield
71 Ramah Circle
Olga Gold

AMHERST

Next Wave Power Technologies
131 Middle St.
Michael Biron

Round the Corner Brownie Company
3 Laurel Lane
Dawn Lepere

Solarpunk Press
58 North East St.
Faith Gregory

Visual Concepts
170 East Hadley Road
Yvonne Mendez

CHICOPEE

Connie’s Cuts
104 Lauzier Terrace
Connie Mendes

ELB Realty
239 Naragansett Blvd.
Bruce Topa

Harmony House
66 View St.
Judith Trudell

Odor is Gone
57 Clarendon Ave.
Oksara Bukansova

Royal Coach Sales, LLC
658 Fuller Road
John Garcia

The Ticket Master
28 Myrtle St.
Luke Vincente

HADLEY

63 East Realty, LLC
63 East Realty, LLC
Babak Gojgini

Advance Auto Parts
346 Russell St.
Michael Norona

Affordable Autos of Hadley
11 Railroad St.
Norman Wilber

Elements Massage
379 Russell St.
Marmich, LLC

Hadley Hops
83 Rocky Hill Road
David Moskin

Hadley Tax
229 Russell St.
Robert Lowney

Kentucky Fried Chicken
3 South Maple St.
Michael Houston

HOLYOKE

Dunkin Donuts
225 Whiting St.
Lori Martins

Heritage Auto Transport
49 Laurel St.
Nathan Charette

Jackson Law
573 Northampton St.
Karen Jackson

Paper City Tattoo
1735 Northampton St.
James D. Riddle

Shammas Pizza
172 Sargeant St.
Joseph Ortiz

NORTHAMPTON

Sage & Cedar Landscaping Home Improvement
284 Spring St.
Brian Eaton

The Research Group
51 Day Ave.
Nancy Mihevc

Urban Exchange
233 Main St.
Silvia Namburgev

PALMER

Fredette Construction
3 Fairfield Dr.
Andrew Fredette

M.G. Janitorial Services
405 Springfield St.
Margaret Guberous

Rogue Chocolatier
2022 Bridge St.
Colin Gasko

S.V. Cleaning
1084 Pleasant St.
Sergey Ukranets

SPRINGFIELD

Fraternity of Grace
1 Federal St.
Robert J. Greeley

Fresh Cut
56 St. James Ave.
Ernesto Padilla

Gentiva Health
2069 Roosevelt Ave.
Kim Hill

Hanna’s Diner
184 Main St.
Hanna Kucharzyk

Hiraldo Transport
244 Sumner Ave.
Miguel Hiraldo

Honor Foods
207 Liberty St.
Burris Springfield

JKJM Studios
115 State St.
Jamarri Kwame

LW Development, LLC
104 Dunmoreland St.
Lancelot Watson

MW Kitchen
81 Ranney St.
William Sanchez

Maxim Seamless Gutters
21 Cluster Circle
Maksim Barabolkin

Moda Lola
86 Renee Circle
Alice Gonzalez

O’Connell Care at Home
1 Federal St.
Francis P. O’Connell

Phenomenal Beauty
10 Orange St.
Ysabel Santana

Pipetek
49 Judson St.
Graham J. Boggis

Plus One Convenience
907 Carew St.
Sageer Nawaz

Presto Digital Transfer
472 Main St.
Christopher David

Primus Mason Credit Union
815 State St.
Greg Ellerbee

WESTFIELD

Direct Home Improvement
71 Wyben Road
Mark Sychev

SmokedBear Industreez
1 Crown St.
Kyle Thomas Smith

The Hairport
148 Elm St.
Mike’s Barber Shop

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Century Auto Service
1615 Riverdale St.
Peter Plantatis

Diamond Gold Connection
389 Park St.
Corporation GX

Maxim Healthcare Services
25 Capital Dr.
Centrus Premier Home Healthcare

S.T.A.N.
791 Piper Road
Stanley Zalewski

Storrowton Tavern
1305 Memorial Ave.
Vintage Inc.

True Crew
204 Baldwin St.
Jeffrey Gil

Wholesome Barn
78 Highland Ave.
Maksim Zhuk

Briefcase

Briefcase Departments

MGM Springfield Wins Final License Approval

SPRINGFIELD — MGM Springfield announced it has received its final state license approval from the Mass. Gaming Commission (MGC), clearing the way to begin construction. The MGC specifically found that all feasible measures have been taken to avoid or minimize impacts of the project and damage to the environment. “We are grateful to the MGC commissioners for their detailed deliberations and patience with this process,” said Michael Mathis, MGM Springfield president. “This comprehensive review has helped MGM Springfield evolve into the most community-facing and integrated property MGM Resorts has ever built.” Separately, the proposed design changes must still be approved by the city and the MGC. Updated MGM Springfield design plans were made public in September, and company executives appeared at a public presentation in Springfield in November to outline the design plan, highlighting changes that allowed for both design and cost efficiencies, as well as to provide a new project cost estimate of more than $950 million. “This approval has been a year in the making,” Mathis said. “We are eager to bring this back to Springfield and work with the city to get final signoff for impactful demolition and construction.” The Springfield City Council is expected to discuss and vote on a casino overlay district on Monday, Dec. 21. MGM Springfield representatives will be at the meeting. The new year will be busy for MGM with the commencement of active construction. MGM Springfield construction-management representatives will host ongoing information sessions with interested minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses, and the opening of the relocated MGM Springfield Community Office.

Massachusetts to See Income-tax Decrease

BOSTON — Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito announced that the final economic trigger was met in order to lower the state’s income tax from 5.15% to 5.10%. The income-tax cut for all Massachusetts residents will become effective on Jan. 1. “Meeting the requirements needed to reduce the income-tax rate is a sign that the Massachusetts economy remains strong,” Baker said. “Allowing citizens across the Commonwealth to keep more money in their pockets will allow the state’s economy to continue growing in 2016.” Added Polito, “the will of the voters has persevered. It’s been 15 years since the voters first made this decision, and every chance we get to provide more discretionary income is a good day for the Commonwealth and the taxpayers.” Kristen Lepore, secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, noted that “the fiscal year 2016 budget revenue assumed effects of the lower tax rate to 5.10% and has been accounted for in the balance sheet. This is good news for the taxpayers with no new impact on the state’s fiscal outlook.” A ballot initiative passed in 2000 called for the state’s income tax to be reduced to 5% over time. Legislation was passed in 2002 that tied reducing the tax rate by 0.05% each tax year (until the Part B income tax rate is 5%) to certain economic triggers. First, the inflation adjusted growth in baseline tax revenues for the preceding fiscal year has to exceed 2.5%. The second trigger, completed on the 15th of each month between September and December, certifies that the inflation-adjusted growth in baseline tax revenues over the previous three months of the current calendar year compared to the same periods of the prior calendar year is greater than zero. Once the statutory triggers are met, the rate is lowered by 0.05% until it reaches 5% percent. The charitable deduction will be restored the year after the tax rate is lowered to 5%. The last time all growth thresholds were met was in 2014.

DevelopSpringfield Issues Grants for Façade Improvements

SPRINGFIELD — DevelopSpringfield recently awarded several façade-improvement grants through the Corridor Storefront Improvement Program (CSIP), which provides grants of up to $10,000 per storefront for exterior improvements to first-floor businesses located on State and Main streets in Springfield. A grant of $30,000 was provided to Boynton Property Group for work related to its rehabilitation of the shopping plaza located at 666 State St. in the city’s Mason Square area. Funds provided were allocated toward new signage, enhanced lighting, and new windows to the plaza, home to a restaurant and beauty salon. Silverbrick Group has been making major renovations to the former Morgan Square property at 1593-1607 Main St. The project includes redevelopment of the apartments, creating Silverbrick Lofts as well as renovations to first-floor commercial space. A grant of $60,000 was provided to support installation of new, energy-efficient windows and doors for six units on the ground floor. This contribution augmented the substantial investment by the project’s developers which, in addition to the newly refurbished apartments, also includes major repairs to masonry work on the upper stories of the property. Silverbrick is located in Springfield’s downtown Innovation District, a priority redevelopment area. Finally, as a part of Nadim’s Mediterranean Grill’s recent redesign, DevelopSpringfield provided a $10,000 grant to aid in the façade enhancement, including new windows, signage, and awning. The restaurant, located at 1380-1390 Main St., has undergone a major redesign inside and out. Nadim’s made further investments to improve the inside dining room as well as the patio dining experience. “DevelopSpringfield is pleased to support these Springfield businesses in their efforts to make lasting improvements, which impact not only their own activities, but also benefit neighboring businesses as well,” said Jay Minkarah, president and CEO of DevelopSpringfield. “We are proud to be among the partners working to support and strengthen longtime and new business ventures in our city.” DevelopSpringfield’s Corridor Storefront Improvement Program was established in 2009 with the support of the city of Springfield and other private funders, to enhance the visual appeal of State and Main streets while providing assistance to businesses making investments in these two key corridors within the city. For more information on CSIP, visit www.developspringfield.com and click on ‘programs,’ or contact Minkarah at (413) 209-8808 or [email protected].

More Than 140 Become U.S. Citizens at Ceremony in Springfield

SPRINGFIELD — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently presented more than 140 candidates for naturalization to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson administered the Oath of Allegiance to America’s newest citizens during a naturalization ceremony at the UMass Center at Springfield. Guests and speakers included Robertson; Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno; Daniel Montagna, director of Operations at the UMass Center at Springfield; and Luis Chaves, director of the USCIS Lawrence Field Office. The citizenship candidates originate from the following 44 countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bhutan, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Germany, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Somalia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Vietnam. For more information on USCIS and its programs, visit www.uscis.gov.

State Legislation Establishes Workforce Investment Board

BOSTON — Gov. Charlie Baker recently signed legislation establishing the Massachusetts Workforce Investment Board to improve the public workforce system and enhance regional economies around the Commonwealth by focusing on employers’ growing need for skilled workers. “With changes to the federal workforce-investment laws, we now have an opportunity as a state to redefine and reimagine how we create skill-building programs,” Baker said. “Creating strong regional economies by designing programs that meet the demands of workers and businesses in each region is important to driving economic growth and new job opportunities for our residents.” Required by federal law and currently defined by state statute, the Massachusetts Workforce Development Board advises the governor and the secretary of Labor and Workforce Development with the mission to build a strong workforce system aligned with state education policies and economic-development goals. “To help people find good jobs, we are flipping the model to be demand-driven for employers, which, in turn, will help more people find jobs that suit their skill sets,” Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Ronald Walker II said. “We need to create a system that better meets the needs of employers who struggle to find talented workers.” The legislation, “An Act Establishing a State Workforce Development Board,” is based on a bill introduced Baker in June reconstituting the state’s Workforce Investment Board, reducing its membership from 65 members to 33, and ensuring the makeup of its membership continues to comply with federal requirements under the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). WIOA was signed into law by President Obama on July 22, 2014, reauthorizing the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 after more than a decade to transform the nation’s workforce system, and to invest in a skilled workforce. The Workforce Development Board is charged with developing plans and policies, which are approved by the governor, to coordinate services through one-stop career centers and workforce boards. The board also issues policy recommendations to align the public workforce system and improve performance accountability, and will develop strategies to promote workforce participation of women, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities across industry sectors.

Unemployment Rates Down in Massachusetts

BOSTON — Seasonally unadjusted unemployment rates are down in all labor markets in the state, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics compared to October 2014, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported. During the month of October, seasonally unadjusted unemployment rates went down in eight labor market areas, increased in six areas, and remained the same in 10 other areas of the state. Twelve areas added jobs over the month, with the largest gains in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Springfield, Brockton-Bridgewater-Easton, and Worcester areas. The Lowell-Billerica-Chelmsford area had no change in its jobs level over the month, while seasonal losses occurred in the Barnstable and Lynn-Saugus-Marblehead areas. In order to compare the statewide rate to local unemployment rates, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the statewide unadjusted unemployment rate for October remained at 4.5%. Last week, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported the statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.6% for the month of October. The unemployment rate is down 0.9% over the year. The statewide seasonally adjusted jobs estimate showed an 11,000-job gain in October and an over-the-year gain of 80,600 jobs. Meanwhile, the New England Information Office of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released New England and state unemployment numbers for October 2015. The New England unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.6% in October. One year ago, the New England jobless rate was higher, at 5.6%. The U.S. jobless rate was essentially unchanged from September (5.0%).

Chamber Corners: Upcoming Events

www.explorenorthampton.com

Chamber Corners Departments

AMHERST AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.amherstarea.com
(413) 253-0700

• Jan. 12: Chamber Annual, noon to 6 p.m., at Osteria Vespa, 28 Amity St., Amherst. Help us show our gratitude to our current chamber board President Nancy Buffone and welcome our new chamber board President Julie Marcus. Cost: $25 for members, $30 for non-members.

• Jan. 13: Chamber After 5, 5-7 p.m., at Energia Fitness, 173 Russell St., Hadley. This will be an evening of networking, mixing, and mingling. Light appetizers and adult beverages will be served. Cost: $10 for members; $15 for non-members.

GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101

• Jan. 13: Multi-chamber Lunch & Learn with Robert McDonald, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Topic: “Run an Effective Meeting.” Learn how to provide common rules and procedures for deliberation and debate in order to place the whole room on the same footing and speaking the same language. Tickets: $35 per person.

• Jan. 20: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., at Munich Haus Restaurant, 13 Center St., Chicopee. Cost: $23 for members, $28 for non-members.

• Jan. 27: Business After Hours, 5-7 p.m., at Masse’s American Bistro, 1329 Memorial Dr., Chicopee. Sponsored by the Greater Chicopee and South Hadley/Granby Chambers of Commerce. Cost: $5 for members pre-registered, $15 for non-members.

GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414

• Jan. 21: Annual Meeting, 5-8 p.m., at The Delaney House, 3 Country Club Road, Holyoke. Join with your fellow Greater Easthampton Chamber members, 5-8 p.m., as we elect directors and officers for 2016, along with annual awards voted by members. Hosted by the Delaney House, 3 Country Club Road, Holyoke. Sponsored by Easthampton Savings Bank. Business Person of the Year: Janel Jorda, Web-tactics Inc. Business of the Year: Duseau Trucking, LLC. Community Service of the Year: Greg Malynoski, Look Memorial Park and Garden House. Presidents Award: to be announced at dinner. New this year, Ambassador of the Year: to be announced at dinner. Tickets: $35 per person. Register online at easthamptonchamber.org.

GREATER HOLYOKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.holycham.com

• Jan. 13: January Coffee Buzz, 7:30-8:30 a.m., at Holyoke Medical Center, 575 Beech St., Holyoke. The Chamber Coffee Buzz is a networking event designed to help our members make connections before starting the workday, and is open to all members of the GHCC. The event takes place on a quarterly basis on the second Wednesday of the month at various member locations. Meetings will include networking and a continental breakfast, followed by introductions from each attendee, business presentations by the host (optional), and time to exchange business leads and information at the end of each meeting. We are fortunate to offer these events free of charge to our members thanks to our series sponsor, Lyon & Fitzpatrick, LLP. Although non-members are welcome to attend in order to get a feel for our programs, non-members are limited to two Coffee Buzz events before joining the chamber.

• Jan. 14: Legislative Coffee Hour, 7:45-9 a.m., at the Summit View/Hamel’s Catering, 555 Northampton St., Holyoke. Join Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni as he discusses the challenges and opportunities facing the Commonwealth, Holyoke, and area businesses for the upcoming year. Cost: $25 for members with reservation, $35 for all others.

• Jan. 15: Leadership Holyoke, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. A series of seven days comprise Leadership Holyoke 2015-16. Faculty members from Holyoke Community College will participate as instructors and facilitators, and community leaders will participate as speakers and discussion leaders. Tuition is by program and is due at the start of the course. The fee also covers continental breakfasts, the graduation luncheon, and a trip to the State House in Boston. The program is for business people learning to become community leaders. Tuition costs $595.

• Jan. 28: Winners Circle 2015 Reception, 5-7 p.m., at the Yankee Pedlar, 1866 Northampton St., Holyoke. This event honors local and state elected officials. Cost: $27. Call the chamber for tickets or more information at (413) 534-3376.

GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

• Jan. 6: January Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Country Hyundai, 347 King St., Northampton, sponsored by Acme Automotive Center. Arrive when you can, stay as long as you can. A casual mix and mingle with your colleagues and friends. Cost: $10 for members.

• Feb. 3: February Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Union Station, 125A Pleasant St., Northampton, sponsored by Keiter Builders Inc. and others to be announced. Arrive when you can, stay as long as you can. A casual mix and mingle with your colleagues and friends. Cost: $10 for members.

GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618

• Jan. 11: Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m., hosted by Tiger’s Pride Restaurant, Westfield Technical Academy, 33 Smith Ave., Westfield. Free and open to the public. Call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618 to register.

• Jan. 13: Chamber After 5 Connections, 5-7 p.m., at Roots Aquatics, 217 Root Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be provided. Join us for a great networking opportunity and don’t forget your business cards. Cost: $10 for members, $15 cash for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618.

• Jan. 25: Estate Planning & Asset Protection Workshop, 8-9:30 a.m., at Holiday Inn Express, 39 Southampton Road, Westfield. Presented by attorney Albert Gordon. Cost: free for chamber members, $30 for non-members. To register, call Pam at the chamber office at (413) 568-1618. Coffee and pastries provided.

SPRINGFIELD REGIONAL CHAMBER

www.myonlinechamber.com

• Jan. 6: Business@Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., hosted by Western New England University, Rivers Memorial Hall, 1215 Wilbraham Road, Springfield. Sponsored by United Personnel and Colony Care. We’ll look at the upcoming presidential election, and you can vote. Featuring political consultant Anthony Cignoli and live polling by the Western New England University Polling Institute. Cost: $20 for members ($25 at the door), $30 for non-members. For more information, call Sarah Mazzaferro at (413) 755-1313.

WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880

• Feb. 3: Wicked Wednesday, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Partners Restaurant, 485 Springfield St., Feeding Hills. Wicked Wednesdays are monthly social events hosted by various businesses and restaurants. These events bring members and non-members together to network in a laid-back atmosphere. Cost: free for chamber members, $10 at the door for non-members. For more information, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].

• Feb. 18: Networking Lunch, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Lattitude, West Springfield. 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 to attend is the cost of lunch. Attendees will order off the menu and pay separately that day. Note we cannot invoice you for these events.  For more information, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].

• Feb. 24: Legislative Breakfast, 7-9 a.m., at Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. The breakfast will feature a panel of legislators, including state Sen. James Welch, state Sen. Donald Humason, state Rep. Nicholas Boldyga, state Rep. Michael Finn, Agawam Mayor Richard Cohen, and West Springfield Mayor Will Reichelt. Cost: $25 for members, $30 for non-members. For more information on ticket sales, call the chamber office at (413) 426-3880 or e-mail [email protected].

In Memoriam: Mike Balise IS a Difference Maker

Opinion

Mike Balise

A few months before he succumbed to cancer, ESPN anchor Stuart Scott stood at the podium at the ESPY Awards to accept the Jim Valvano Award for Perseverance.

There is certainly no debate about who won this fight — Mike did.

A common refrain from those who reached out was “I’ve never met Mike, but reading this, I wish I could.’’

Because it wasn’t.

Ware Aims to Revitalize Town, Promote Growth

Community Spotlight Features

Community Spotlight: Ware

Stuart Beckley says Ware is on the cusp of a rebirth.

“Ware is somewhere worth investing in.”

That’s the new tagline for this Hampshire County community of nearly 10,000 people. That statement is already true, said town officials who spoke with BusinessWest, but a host of initiatives are underway to make it even more so, and to make the slogan resonate with those who hear or read it.

Indeed, major efforts are underway in Ware to stimulate growth and economic development, projects focused on everything from increasing access to higher education to expanding public transportation.

“There’s a lot going on, and it’s an interesting story, but no one entity is responsible; it’s a core effort aimed at revitalization,” said William Braman, president of the Ware Business & Civic Assoc., or WB&CA.

Tracy Opalinski agreed, and said several initiatives were initiated or advanced last year, when the Edward and Barbara Urban Charitable Foundation decided it wanted to do something to make a significant impact in the town.

Opalinski, a trustee of the foundation, told BusinessWest it gave the town $45,000 to hire community marketers to provide a visioning statement, community branding, wayfinding, and economic-development services, and since that time, the foundation has donated another $50,000 for execution of the wayfinding system, which includes logos and new signage.

Progress began after the initial donation was made, and Arnett Muldrow & Associates Ltd. was chosen via a request-for-proposals process.

“They’ve done this for more than 180 mill towns in the country,” Opalinksi noted, adding that the firm mailed a survey to business owners and got a 65% response, held 15 focus groups, and conducted 50 interviews with a cross-section of people from the community that included representatives from businesses and industries, youth, retired residents, outdoorsmen, and artists, to discover what they wanted and needed in terms of services.

Arnett discovered an untapped potential for new and expanded restaurants to make $24 million and small to medium-sized businesses to make $139 million in sales each year.

“They found a need for a small, independent furniture store, a family and women’s clothing store, and an outdoor store,” Opalinski said, adding that Ware is a hub for the surrounding 15 towns in the Quaboag region.

The project was completed in April, and one of the most significant suggestions involved establishing a community-college satellite program, since education and workforce development are critical to economic stability and growth. Coincidentally, the WB&CA had begun working on the same goal four months earlier.

“Their initiative included the Ware Literacy Group, the Ware Business & Civic Association, Country Bank, the Behavioral Health Network, Quabbin Wire, Baystate Mary Lane Hospital, the town, the Franklin and Hampshire Regional Employment Board, Pathfinder Vocational Technical High School, and, most importantly, the Quaboag Valley Community Development Corporation in Ware, which helps businesses start, stabilize, and grow,” Opalinski said.

She added that the WB&CA has a number of teams, including one that does advocacy work for businesses, and another group focused on helping property owners on Main Street fill empty space. That subcommittee contacted Greenfield Community College, Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, and Holyoke Community College, and asked if they were interested in establishing a satellite site in Ware.

The reaction was positive, and since Ware falls under HCC’s geographic territory, it has taken a lead role in the project, although the other two schools and Springfield Technical Community College are involved and contribute to what will be known as the Community College Educational Incubator.

“This is the first time in history that four Massachusetts community colleges have worked together on a project like this,” Opalinski said, noting that many businesses have contributed to the effort, and the facility will open in February in a space donated by a business in a prime location on Main Street.

“Businesses in this area are starved for qualified employees, so we’re trying to create our own feeder program and build a base so people can live and work locally instead of having to move far away or commute to find employment,” she noted.

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest looks at the many initiatives taking place in Ware and how, collectively, they make that new marketing slogan ring true.

Solid Growth

As officials in Ware noted, progress is being made on a number of fronts.

Town Manager Stuart Beckley noted that an international manufacturing firm known as G&G Medical Products recently purchased an underutilized mill that was owned by American Disposables and is investing about $1 million in the building.

He said the structure was run down, and the town just approved a 10-year tax break for the company to rehabilitate it and move in. That equates to about $6,500 each year, in addition to assistance the company will receive from the state.

“The purchase took about a year,” Beckley noted. “We worked closely with the company, and they told us they plan to add 70 employees over the next five to 10 years, which is huge for Ware.”

He added that workforce development is a primary focus for officials.

“This is a working-class town with lower incomes than most of Hampshire County, so jobs are important,” Beckley said, adding that some businesses are in the process of downsizing. For example, Kanzaki Specialty Papers recently put in a new treatment plant that allows for more efficient operations.

“Over time it will set them up for new products, but it has cost us 25 jobs in the last year,” he noted.

In addition, Baystate Mary Lane Hospital may move its inpatient services to Baystate Wing Hospital in Palmer, which would eliminate 35 more jobs.

However, hospital officials have approached the town and are working with them and local service agencies to identify other potential uses for that space.

“We hope that, since Baystate owns other hospitals, it will bring its services here or enhance the emergency room in Ware; it’s very important to the town as well as to the other 15 communities in the Quaboag region,” Beckley continued, explaining that Ware is one of the major commercial and service hubs for these small, outlying towns.

While efforts are being made to retain and create jobs, other initiatives, and especially the program involving area community colleges, are designed to help ensure that a qualified workplace is in place.

Initial offerings will include free basic education classes and workshop-training certificate programs in culinary and hospitality, which will run for eight to 12 weeks. Organizers hope to add a certified nursing assistant program in the spring, along with a bank of computers next fall that people can use to register for college or to take classes, since not everyone in the region has access to a computer.

“The goal is to offer coaching, enrollment, and certificate programs to students in the Quaboag region because towns such as Hardwick and West Brookfield have the same transportation issues as Ware. It’s located at the outermost corner of Hampshire County, so there is no viable transportation between Springfield or other cities aside from a car,” Braman said.

Opalinski added that many working people already travel a half-hour or more to get to work and are unlikely to drive an additional hour back and forth to college classes in the evening, even though it could improve their lives. Meanwhile, although people can take online courses, only 30% of students complete programs on their own. However, studies show that adding an instructor and fellow students, which will happen in Ware, pushes the graduation rate to 90%.

Meanwhile, other forms of economic development are taking place. As one example, efforts are being made to market Ware as a place with great recreational opportunities, since the access points to the southern portion of Quabbin Reservoir are in town.

“We plan to stage a fishing tournament in 2017 in partnership with the Quabbin Reservoir; it’s a hidden jewel and has been named the 37th-best spot in the country for bass fishing,” Beckley noted, explaining that the tournament is one of a number of activities on the drawing board that will focus on the outdoors and scenic beauty of the town.

“Ware is a great place to live; housing is very affordable, and our public schools are about to get a very positive accreditation. The report will show how much has been done in the past five years in terms of creating quality education,” he continued, explaining that, in the past, Ware lost many students to regional school systems due to a lack of programs, but that is expected to change due to the addition of new technology, advanced-placement courses, and strengthening of basic coursework.

In addition, new streetscape and infrastructure improvements are planned for 2019. “We’ll repave roads and install new lighting and sidewalks on Main Street,” Beckley said.

Future Outlook

The town manager describes Ware as a “community that cares,” which is highlighted by the amount of effort residents and businesses are putting into current revitalization efforts. “There is a lot of local pride and belief that the community can and will grow,” he said.

Along with measures taken to create a new master plan for the town, which is expected to be complete next year, marketing the Quabbin Reservoir as an ideal place for recreation that includes fishing, hiking, hunting, and boating will continue.

“Ware regularly celebrates the Quabbin’s history, and two years ago we held a 75th Anniversary Ball commemorating its creation,” Beckley said.

Improving public transportation is also a recognized priority. “There’s also an effort underway to collaborate with a group called Growing Transit & Growing Communities that is made up of businesses and municipal leaders from the 15 towns in the Quaboag region,” Opalinski said, adding that the Quaboag Valley Community Development Corp., Ware Business & Civic Assoc., Behavioral Health Network, Citizens for Palmer Rail Stop, and two regional planning commissions have banded together to improve and add to public transportation offerings and meet on a regular basis with the state Department of Transportation Rail & Transit Division to explore existing models and develop unique solutions for transportation.

“Ware is a special place that’s about to undergo a rebirth and blossom,” Beckley said as he summarized all that is taking place and might transpire in the years to come.

Opalinski concurred. “People and groups were doing good things on their own, but now we are supporting each other and working together,” she said. “As a result, Ware is poised for tremendous growth and development.”

Ware at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1775
Population: 9,872 (2010)
Area: 40.0 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $19.65
Commercial Tax Rate: $19.65
Median Household Income: $36,875
Family Household Income: $45,505
Type of Government: Open town meeting
Largest Employers: Baystate Mary Lane Hospital; Kanzaki Specialty Papers; Walmart; Quabbin Wire & Cable Co Inc.
* Latest information available

People on the Move

Departments People on the Move

Christopher Casale

Chicopee Savings Bank recently welcomed Christopher Casale to its Financial Services Center as an investment services sales associate. Casale has been advising clients on investments and insurance as a registered representative for more than 30 years. In 1982, he started his career with E.F. Hutton & Co. and most recently worked at United Bank, where he served as a personal banker and assistant vice president of investments. Casale has earned his Series 7, 63, and Investment Advisor Representative designation through LPL Financial as well as his license in life, accident, and health insurance. He graduated in 1982 from American International College with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

•••••

John O’Rourke III has been appointed to the position of controller at Bay Path University. O’Rourke will work closely with Vice President for Finance and Administrative Services Michael Giampietro and the staff of the university’s Business Office to account for and manage its financial assets. His responsibilities include overseeing payroll, accounting, receivables and payables, grant accounting and compliance, and the Bursar’s Office. “John O’Rourke is highly skilled in financial analysis, auditing, and strategic planning,” Giampietro said. “We are excited to have him join the university staff.” O’Rourke brings to the university more than 15 years of experience in finance and accounting. Prior to joining the Bay Path staff, he served as comptroller for Holyoke Community College, and has additional experience as an investment accountant for MassMutual Financial Group and staff accountant for Lester Halpern & Co. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from UMass Amherst.

•••••

The Gray House recently inducted five new board members to three-year terms.
• Jan Rodriguez Denney is director of Elder Affairs for the city of Springfield. She holds a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from UMass and a master’s degree in human resources development from American International College. She serves on the board of Partners for a Healthier Community, Springfield Food Policy Council, Regional Employment Board, YWCA, Incorporated Emerson Wright Foundation, Greater Senior Services Inc., and Springfield College Board.
• Sean Ditto is a project executive with Consigli Construction Co. in Hartford, Conn. He has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Norwich University.
• Karen Garcia is a family specialist with the New England Farm Workers Council. She works with the homeless to help them address their issues so they are able to sustain affordable housing.
• Sr. Catherine Homrok is one of the founders of the Gray House. She entered the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1959 after graduation from St. Jerome High School in Holyoke. She received her bachelor’s degree from Elms College and her master’s degree from Emerson College. Currently, she serves the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield as its director of Pastoral Ministries.
• Tina-Marie Quagliato is director of disaster recovery and compliance for the city of Springfield. She has been employed by the city for almost 11 years, with varying roles in housing, community development, and neighborhood stabilization. She is on the board of trustees for the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School of Excellence in Springfield and the board of directors for the United Way of Pioneer Valley, Emergency Food and Shelter Program. She has volunteered with Keep Springfield Beautiful, Habitat for Humanity, Open Pantry, and the Mattoon Street Arts Festival.
The Gray House is a small, neighborhood human-service agency located at 22 Sheldon St. in the North End of Springfield. Its mission is to help neighbors facing hardships to meet their immediate and transitional needs by providing food, clothing, and educational services in a safe, positive environment. For more information, visit www.grayhouse.org.

•••••

Corina Belle-Isle has joined Gage-Wiley & Co. Inc. in a dual role, serving as a financial advisor and also holding a new position the investment firm recently created: director of business development. In her leadership position, Belle-Isle will work with President Christopher Milne to set firm and wide objectives and identify methods to reach these goals. She also will have a responsibility to develop, coordinate, and implement plans designed to increase existing business and capture new opportunities. “Creating this new leadership position represents one more incremental step in our long-term goal of advancing Gage-Wiley as a comprehensive boutique wealth-management firm mand ensuring we are well-positioned to support the growing and complex needs of our clients,” Milne said. Belle-Isle’s varied background includes experience in financial services, real estate, corporate sales and marketing, small-business ownership, and nonprofit development. Rounding out her business knowledge and experience are her creative pursuits; last year, she served as the principal and curator of the Quinn Marin Gallery Project in Rockport. “The common thread among all her experiences is a demonstrated success in business development and building strong relationships,” Milne said.

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Berkshire Bank announced that Kathryn Dube has joined the bank as first vice president and wealth business development leader. Dube brings more than 30 years of banking and financial-management experience to her new role. She has held progressively responsible positions in retail banking and wealth management in the Western Mass. and Connecticut markets. Prior to joining Berkshire Bank, she served as senior vice president of private banking at TD Bank, where she was responsible for sales of wealth products and services and generating new assets. She served as senior vice president, regional retail market manager for TD Bank as well, managing a network of 35 stores and $2 billion in deposits. Dube holds Series 7 and 66 FINRA licenses. She attended the University of Connecticut, New England College of Finance, and Bryant College. Involved in numerous community endeavors, she is the current chair of the United Way Women’s Leadership Council in the Pioneer Valley, a member of the organization’s board of directors, and co-chair of the Endowment Committee for the United Way. Having previously served as chair and vice chair for the United Way of Pioneer Valley, she was selected as the organization’s Volunteer of the Year in 2014.

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Phillips Insurance Agency Inc. announced that account executive Sam Fortsch has earned the prestigious accredited adviser in insurance (AAI) designation. This degree was earned after he successfully completed the Liberty Mutual Commercial Lines Producers School, an intensive, six-month training program that included multiple classes and nine exams. Fortsch joined Phillips Insurance in July 2014 after four years of active-duty service in the U.S. Army. He left the Army as a captain after two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne. He holds a bachelor’s degree from UMass. Fortsch has developed a strong expertise in the energy, automotive, technology, and craft-brewing industries in a short time, said Joseph Phillips, president of Phillips Insurance. “The same level of commitment that he brought to serving his country, he has brought to serving his clients.” Fortsch is servicing existing clients and cultivating new business opportunities throughout New England. Phillips Insurance Agency, established in 1953, is a full-service risk-management firm with a staff of 23 professionals. The agency handles the personal and commercial insurance needs for thousands of individuals and businesses throughout New England.

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Richard Venne, president and CEO of Community Enterprises Inc., announced the appointment of Gary Daniele as director of Greenfield Community Employment and Training Programs. He is responsible for the effective management of all aspects of employment and training services in Greenfield, and will implement the organization’s mission and values by supporting individuals to make positive changes in their lives. Daniele was previously employed by the state of Oregon as a branch manager for vocational rehabilitation. He has more than 25 years of experience in employment, vocational, and residential supports for individuals with disabilities, and was awarded the Department of Human Services Director’s Excellence Award in 2014. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Roger Williams University. Community Enterprises is a human-service organization that provides employment, education, housing supports, and day supports for people with disabilities. Headquartered in Northampton, it maintains 27 service locations throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Kentucky. The Massachusetts offices include Springfield, Holyoke, Pittsfield, Greenfield, Worcester, Salem, Gloucester, and Somerville. The nonprofit organization, which started as a small program at Northampton State Hospital, has grown to a $22.5 million business.

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Yvonne Diaz

Ramon Financial Services announced that Yvonne Diaz is joining the company as a benefits consultant. She will design and service employee-benefit programs for new and existing clients. Diaz brings 16 years of industry experience, including 10 years as an account executive at Health New England. She received her bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Bay Path College and is currently a member of Leadership Pioneer Valley’s Class of 2016.

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AFC Doctors Express announced the appointment of Dr. Vincent Meoli as regional medical director. With 10 years of experience, Meoli will be responsible for developing clinical guidelines for treatment of patients, assisting in recruitment of new medical staff, coordinating patient care with administrators and medical assistants, and developing ongoing teaching programs for all medical staff. “I am thrilled to join AFC Doctors Express as the new regional medical director,” Meoli said. “I have seen the company develop over the past few years as a leading healthcare resource, and I am excited to bring my passion for patient-oriented healthcare to this emerging source of collaborative medicine.” Meoli completed his emergency-medicine residency program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2006 and received his doctor of medicine degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 2002. He is an active member in the American College of Emergency Physicians, an organization that works to promote high-quality emergency care and continuing-education opportunities. Meoli is also involved in the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, a program that promotes access to superior emergency care by emergency-care specialists. “Our mission is to deliver high-quality healthcare and provide an exceptional experience for patients who are sick, injured, or who just need to see a doctor,” said Rick Crews, president of Medvest, LLC. “After a long search, we have found the best candidate that not only shares in our dedication to patients, but is also talented.”

Agenda

Agenda Departments

‘Firearms of Famous People’

Through April 24: “Firearms of Famous People: From Target Shooters to Presidents,” a temporary exhibit of extraordinary firearms and memorabilia owned by well-known politicians, presidents, and celebrities, is now on view at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. The exhibit, which was organized in cooperation with the Smith & Wesson Collectors Assoc., is on display through April 24, 2016 in a space adjacent to the Smith & Wesson Gallery of Historic Firearms. Admission prices are $18 for adults, $12 for seniors and college students, $9.50 for children 3-17, and free for children under 3 and museum members. The fee provides access to all four museums. General admission is free for Springfield residents with proof of address.

Gentle Yoga for Cancer Survivors

Starting Jan. 6: Baystate Franklin Medical Center’s (BFMC) Oncology Department will present three consecutive eight-week yoga classes called “Gentle Yoga for Cancer Survivors,” at the YMCA of Greenfield. The free classes will take place on Wednesdays from noon to 1:30 p.m., on Jan. 6 to Feb. 24, March 2 to April 20, and April 27 to June 15. The course facilitator is Pam Roberts, a certified Kripalu yoga teacher and a breast-cancer survivor for more than 20 years. Roberts is also a certified Yoga of the Heart for Cardiac and Cancer Patients instructor. The weekly gentle yoga classes, for individuals who have been living with a cancer diagnosis, consist of stretching, strengthening, and breathing and deep-relaxation exercises. One participant called the class “the best thing that has helped me after breast cancer.” Another said the class was “beneficial to my body, mind, and spirit.” Participants have found that the class helps with strengthening muscles and promoting relaxation. The yoga program is funded by BFMC’s annual Wheeling for Healing Bike Event, which supports oncology patients, programs, and services at Baystate Franklin. For more information or to register, contact Pam Roberts at (413) 625-2402 or [email protected].

Ruth’s House Blood Drive

Dec. 30: JGS Lifecare will host an American Red Cross blood drive from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Ruth’s House Assisted Living Residence, 780 Converse St., Longmeadow. The American Red Cross and JGS Lifecare invite eligible donors to help ensure that blood is available for patients in need. To make an appointment, call (800) 733-2767 or visit redcrossblood.org. Walk-ins are also welcome with positive ID. All donors will receive a Red Cross long-sleeve T-shirt.

Difference Makers

March 31: The eighth annual Difference Makers award program, staged by BusinessWest, will be held at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House. Details on the event will be published in upcoming issues of the magazine. Difference Makers is a program, launched in 2009, that recognizes groups and individuals that are, as the name suggests, making a difference in this region. The magazine’s editor and publishers have chosen this year’s class, which will be profiled in the Jan. 25 issue.

Make It a Resolution to Implement a Lifestyle Change

Sections Technology

An IT Diet for 2016

By TERRY GROGAN

Terry Grogan

How come New Year’s resolutions always seem to center around dieting and getting in shape?

You spend your holiday dinner enjoying all of the spoils of the season and then try to talk yourself into a ‘lifestyle change’ once the ball drops.

It’s a lot like that around the old IT department, too. We’re all being asked to do more with less, economize personnel resources, and limit capital expenses. To put it another way, senior management is telling us to lose some weight without investing in an entirely new wardrobe.

But how did we get so fat?

Remember that tome on business success called Good to Great by Jim Collins? It’s a book that I try to make my bible, though I don’t always live up to it as well as I should. (Yes, it’s my annual New Year’s resolution!) The book suggests that a central theme of all truly great businesses and individuals is the ability to create annual goals and objectives. But in order to do that, I think you also have to take a look back at what you might want to change.

When I walk into companies for the first time, usually as part of an IT gap assessment, and ask, “when was the last time you looked at the things you should stop doing?” I’m often faced with blank stares and puzzled looks.

Any IT organization that’s been around for a while has accumulated, shall we say, a little tire around the midsection. The telltale signs are the processes and procedures “we’ve been doing for years,” especially if the IT staff has also been with the company for a while.

These processes and procedures were put in place (no one quite remembers when) because someone wanted a new type of report, a filter to keep out that ‘virus of the day,’ or a custom workflow to make it easier to put a new server online. However, once that new process, procedure, or deliverable was in place, most IT departments rarely looked back, moving on to the next task or crisis at hand.

The old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” became a rule to live by, and as the years went by, the old processes and procedures were carried forward. As a result, companies generate the same reports, build servers the same way, and approve or disapprove access or technology for the same reasons, even if doing so requires a large amount of work, major upgrades, or more money to support.

No one goes back and examines these things until a high-threshold pain point or sentinel event occurs (e.g. the process is no longer supported by a major upgrade of a product, a merger causes re-evaluation of a technology, etc.). When this happens, we’re often surprised to find that what we may have been doing for the last few years is either no longer necessary, is very inefficient, or isn’t useful to anyone.

We shouldn’t need a sentinel event to move us to action, but since ’tis the season, let’s resolve to review old processes and procedures the same way we review (or should review) policies: vowing to do it every year. You probably won’t hit all of them, but pick a few every 12 months and examine them.

Ask your staff for their opinions. It’s amazing the answers you get when you ask everyone to “tell me the three things in your job you’d stop doing or do differently, if you were able to make the rules.”

Experience suggests that the first few times you undertake this exercise, you’ll actually find things that you and your staff are doing that are of no value at all. Stopping them frees up resources and/or makes forward progress easier (look at Microsoft’s abandonment of Active X in the new Edge browser).

But even after you hit the low-hanging fruit, continuing to create a ‘stop-doing’ list annually will help you look at those new tasks, processes, and projects that maybe aren’t as important as others. It will help create a focus on the things you really should be doing and create a literal lifestyle change when it comes to adopting processes in the future.

In short, you start thinking about new things with a critical eye, asking, “should we even begin this?”

So, as you begin making your list and checking it twice, consider simply taking stock of what you already have in place. Shedding those extra data-storage pounds or slimming down your infrastructure may be as easy as just asking a few questions.

Happy new year.

Terry Grogan is a 17-year veteran of the business and healthcare IT industries and is chief information officer of Holyoke-based VertitechIT, one of the fastest-growing business and healthcare IT networking and consulting firms in the country; [email protected]

New Reports: State Defense-contract Work Contributed $20B to Economy

The Commonwealth’s defense-contract work supported more than 88,000 workers and contributed more than $20 billion to the Massachusetts economy, while Massachusetts military installations directly or indirectly supported more than 57,000 jobs with a total economic contribution of more than $13 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to two new University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute reports. Massachusetts companies exemplifying the crucial and beneficial connections between the defense sector and small businesses include Holyoke’s Meridian Industrial Group, which does machining for portable MRI equipment; Southampton’s J&E Precision Tool, which produces components for Black Hawk helicopters, periscopes, and F-22s and F-35s; and CPI Radant Technologies Division in Stow, which develops components for military aircraft.

“The Commonwealth’s six bases and defense-related firms continue to have a major impact on the Massachusetts economy, both in terms of jobs and dollars,” said Gov. Baker. “Academia, business, and technology – three of the Commonwealth’s top sectors — play a role in our installations and defense contracts, helping this industry serve as an economic driver. We look forward to their continued growth and contribution to Massachusetts.”

The Massachusetts Military Asset and Security Strategy Task Force and MassDevelopment commissioned the reports. The first studied the impact of the Commonwealth’s six military installations – Barnes Air National Guard Base, the Fort Devens Reserve Forces Training Area, Hanscom Air Force Base, Joint Base Cape Cod, the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, and Westover Air Reserve Base — and the Massachusetts Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve. To view the full report, click here.

“Massachusetts is on the cutting edge in helping our military modernize,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “The work that goes on at military installations and by defense contractors across the Commonwealth is critical to our national security and to our state’s economy, and I am glad to partner with our local industry to make certain that Washington recognizes and supports the excellent work done here.”

The second report studied the defense industry’s contribution to the New England economy, finding that in fiscal year 2013, New England defense contracting generated nearly $49 billion and more than 218,000 jobs.

SPHS Names Leadership Team at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital

By BusinessWest Staff December 28, 2015

HOLYOKE — The Sisters of Providence Health System (SPHS) announced that three physicians have been named to expanded leadership roles for Mercy Behavioral Health Care and Providence Behavioral Health Hospital (PBHH) in Holyoke. The appointments are effective Jan. 1.

Maria Russo-Appel, MD, who has served as the chief medical officer of PBHH for the past year, has been appointed to the position of vice president of Mercy Behavioral Health Care. In this role, Russo-Appel will lead the psychiatric care and behavioral health service lines, including PBHH, for SPHS.

Also, Robert Roose, MD, MPH, who has been serving as chief medical officer of Addiction Services of SPHS for the past the two and a half years, will have expanded responsibilities in a dual role as CMO/vice president of Addiction and Recovery Services, Mercy Behavioral Health Care, and will assume both medical and administrative leadership responsibilities for all addiction treatment and recovery service lines. And Gaurav Chawla, MD, CPE, who has been serving as chief of Psychiatry, will assume the role of chief medical officer, Mercy Behavioral Health Care, and lead new SPHS initiatives in behavioral health such as integration of behavioral health in both primary care and integration into population health management.

As one of the largest providers of behavioral health services in western Massachusetts, Mercy Behavioral Health Care provides access to an entire continuum of high-quality inpatient and outpatient care for people of all ages, from children and adolescents to adults and seniors. Mercy Behavioral Health Care includes both the continuums of Addiction and Recovery Services, from Acute Treatment Services to Outpatient and Opioid Treatment Programs, and Behavioral Health, from inpatient psychiatric treatment to the programs within Brightside for Families and Children.

Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Grant Deadlines

By BusinessWest Staff December 28, 2015