Month: October 2018

GREENFIELD — PV Squared, a worker-owned cooperative helping Western Mass. and Southern Vermont go solar since 2002, was recently named Cooperative of the Year for Principle 7 – Leadership in Community at the 2018 U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) annual conference.

The award was given to PV Squared “for receiving national recognition in their field with company accreditation by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, an accreditation awarded to companies that meet a rigorous set of standards regarding installation, employee training and qualification, safe work practices, and customer accountability, as well as their work to provide solar power to communities in Puerto Rico through their work with Amicus Solar Cooperative.”

Each year, USFWC recognizes standout cooperatives and cooperators that are making a difference and leading the way toward workplace democracy. “It’s an honor to be recognized among so many influential cooperatives and cooperators,” said PV Squared General Manager Stacy Metzger. “We work hard at PV Squared to ensure we’re consistently providing quality solar across the board, and believe that the worker-owned cooperative business model is not only crucial to our success, but is essential in strengthening the local economy and empowering workers.”

Elms College to Host Retreats on Ignatian Spirituality in November

By BusinessWest Staff October 31, 2018

CHICOPEE — Elms College will host two retreats during November that will invite participants to explore Ignatian spirituality, in the tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The retreat series, titled “Responding to God from the Heart: Ignatian Spirituality & Prayer,” will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays, Nov. 7, 14, and 28, in the Faculty Dining Room in the Mary Dooley College Center.

Virginia Collins-English, a certified spiritual director, retreat director, writer, and psychotherapist, will guide participants in finding the nearness of God in daily life, the companionship of Jesus in scripture, and a heart-centered response to God’s desire in prayer.

Sponsored by the Religious Studies Department and the Institute for Theology and Pastoral Studies, these retreats are free and open to the public, and all are welcome to attend one or all of the retreats, but registration is required. To register, call (413) 265-2575 or e-mail [email protected].

Springfield College to Host 2018 Peter V. Karpovich Lecture on Nov. 14

By BusinessWest Staff October 31, 2018

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield College School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation will present the Peter V. Karpovich Lecture featuring Army reservist Bradley Nindl, professor in the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, on Wednesday, Nov. 14, starting at 6:30 p.m., in the Cleveland E. and Phyllis B. Dodge Room inside the Flynn Campus Union. The event is free and open to the public.

Nindl, who received his master’s degree in physiology of exercise from Springfield College in 1993, is the current director of the Neuromuscular Research Laboratory and Warrior Human Performance Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh. He will discuss how leveraging scientific and technological advances and evidence-based best practices in physical education and exercise science will yield a fit, ready, and injury-free military. Nindl has a strong focus on exploring science and strategies to help bolster military readiness and national security.

The readiness of the U.S. military is adversely impacted by an unacceptably high incidence rate of physical-training-related musculoskeletal injuries that represent a major threat to the health and fitness of soldiers and other service members and that degrade the nation’s ability to project military power.

Springfield College established the Karpovich Lecture in 1973 in memory of a former faculty member who was an internationally recognized exercise physiologist and one of the principal founders of the American College of Sports Medicine. Karpovich joined the Springfield College faculty in 1927, serving as a professor of Physiology. He was named director of Health Education at the college in 1947 and was appointed research professor of Physiology in 1955.

If you have a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to fully participate in this event, call (413) 748-3413 to discuss your accessibility needs. Springfield College is a smoke- and tobacco-free environment.

Healthcare Heroes 2018 Celebration

Cover Story Event Galleries Healthcare Heroes

The 2018 Healthcare Heroes

Mary Paquette

Patient/Resident/Client Care Provider:

Mary Paquette, director of Health Services/nurse practitioner, American International College

Celeste Surreira

Health/Wellness Administrator/ Administrator:

Celeste Surreira, assistant director of Nursing, the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke

Peter A. DePergola II

Emerging Leader:

Peter DePergola II, director of Clinical Ethics, Baystate Health

Dr. Matthew Sadof

Community Health:

Dr. Matthew Sadof, pediatrician, Baystate Children’s Hospital

Christian Lagier

Innovation in Health/ Wellness:

TechSpring

The Consortium and the Opioid Task Force

Collaboration in Health/ Wellness:

The Consortium and the Opioid Task Force

Dr. Robert Fazzi

Lifetime Achievement:

Robert Fazzi, founder, Fazzi Associates.

Scenes from the Healthcare Heroes 2018 Gala

[Show slideshow]

Passion is the word that defines these heroes. And it was on clear display Oct. 25 at the Starting Gate at GreatHorse in Hampden, site of the Healthcare Heroes Gala. This was the second such gala. The event was a huge success, not because of the venue (although that was a factor) or the views (although they certainly helped), but because of the accomplishments, the dedication, and, yes, the passion being relayed from the podium. There are seven winners in all, in categories chosen to reflect the broad scope of the health and wellness sector in Western Mass., and the incredible work being done within it. Go HERE to view the 2018 Healthcare Heroes Program Guide The Healthcare Heroes for 2018 are:

• Patient/Resident/Client Care Provider:

Mary Paquette, director of Health Services/nurse practitioner, American International College

• Health/Wellness Administrator/Administrator:

Celeste Surreira, assistant director of Nursing, the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke

• Emerging Leader:

Peter DePergola II, director of Clinical Ethics, Baystate Health

• Community Health:

Dr. Matthew Sadof, pediatrician, Baystate Children’s Hospital

• Innovation in Health/Wellness:

TechSpring

• Collaboration in Health/Wellness:

The Consortium and the Opioid Task Force

• Lifetime Achievement:

Robert Fazzi, founder, Fazzi Associates. American International College and Baystate Health/Health New England are presenting sponsors for Healthcare Heroes 2018. Additional sponsors are National Grid, partner sponsor, and Elms College MBA Program, Renew.Calm, Bay Path University, and Trinity Health Of New England/Mercy Medical Center as supporting sponsors.

Photography by Dani Fine Photography

Meet the Judges

There were more than 70 nominations across seven categories for the Healthcare Heroes Class of 2018. Scoring these nominations was a difficult task that fell to three individuals, including two members of the Class of 2017, with extensive backgrounds in health and wellness. They are:

Holly Chaffee

Dexter Johnson

Dr. Michael Willers:

Holly Chaffee, MSN, BSN, RN: Winner in the Healthcare Heroes Health/Wellness Administrator/Administration category in 2107, Chaffee is president and CEO of VNA Care, a subsidiary of Atrius Health. Formerly (and when she was named a Healthcare Hero) she was the president and CEO of Porchlight VNA/Homecare, based in Lee. Dexter Johnson: A long-time administrator with the Greater Springfield YMCA, Johnson was named president and CEO of that Y, one of the oldest in the country, in the fall of 2017. He started his career at the Tampa Metropolitan Area YMCA, and, after a stint at YMCA of the USA, he came to the Springfield Y earlier this decade as senior vice president and chief operating officer. Dr. Michael Willers: Winner in the Patient/Resident/Client-care Provider category in 2017, Willers is co-owner of the Children’s Heart Center of Western Mass. Formerly a pediatric cardiologist with Baystate Children’s Hospital, he founded the Children’s Heart Center of Western Mass. in 2012.

Elms College Establishes Fund to Expand Students’ Real-world Opportunities

CHICOPEE — Elms College, thanks to a generous donation from Richard Meelia, has established the Sisters Kathleen Keating and Maxyne Schneider Experiential Learning Fund to expand experiential learning opportunities for students.

This new fund will allow students to participate in unpaid internships and research experiences related to their majors or career interests; service-learning and mission-trip experiences, whether local, national, or international; and study-abroad trips.

“In addition to ensuring academic success, it is vitally important to provide students with experiences that promote career success and a life of giving to others,” said Joyce Hampton, dean for Student Success and Strategic Initiatives. “This program will allow our students to promote the greater good and also gain skills in their chosen fields, and that will serve them well both personally and professionally.”

The funding will be available to students for experiences beginning in spring 2019, when several students students will receive funding to support their participation in such activities. For eligibility criteria and to apply, students should click here.

Applications are due by Oct. 26 for mission/service trips, Nov. 9 for study abroad, and Nov. 26 for research and internships. Students who are selected to receive awards from this fund will be notified by a formal letter via e-mail by mid-December, and will need to officially accept the funding within a week of notification.

“We are pleased and honored that Richard Meelia has bestowed this gift upon Elms College and our students,” said President Harry Dumay. “Thanks to his vision and generosity, and those of people like him, Elms College is poised like never before to advance the vision of our founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph: to empower students to better their own lives and to make a difference in the lives of those around them.”

Three Chicopee Businesses Step Up to the Plate for Elementary Students

CHICOPEE — Students at Fairview Veterans Memorial Elementary School were not happy when they learned their field trip to the New England Aquarium in Boston was going to be cancelled due to lack of funding. In fact, many of them were crying.

That’s when Marty Topor, owner of Central Oil, decided to step in and see what he could do. Over the course of an afternoon, he reached out to Bob Pion Buick/GMC and E.J. O’Neill Insurance Agency to enlist them in a fundraising effort to put the field trip back on track. Within a few hours, the three businesses had pooled together enough money to pay for the two buses needed to transport the 100 students to Boston for a day at the aquarium on Thursday, Nov. 1.

“These kinds of trips are a memorable part of being a kid,” says Topor. “I’d hate to see these kids denied a great experience just because they were coming up a few bucks short. We were all very happy to chip in and make it happen.”

The students are happy as well. They’ve invited Topor and the other business owners to the school so they can thank them personally. The business owners and Mayor Richard Kos have also been invited to see the buses off the morning of the field trip. Darby O’Brien Advertising has volunteered to film the trip and create a video for the students to enjoy.

Ron Davis Takes on Chief Sales Officer Role at WAMF Consulting

SPRINGFIELD — Ron Davis, a sales professional, business specialist, and founder of WAMF Consulting, has transitioned from president and CEO of the company to chief sales officer. This new position will allow him to offer a comprehensive approach to banks, credit unions, and corporations to support their sales and business-development needs.

After 40 years of selling software and services to financial institutions and corporations in the Northeast, WAMF Consulting was born. WAMF is an acronym for ‘winners are my friends.’

Davis has been recognized nationally, achieved President’s Clubs, and been a top sales performer and district leader. He is trained in major sales methodologies, SPIN selling, power messaging, executive presentations, Dale Carnegie, and strategic selling. Early in his career as an account executive for the Savin Corp., he sold a national contract to United Technologies, the world’s largest corporation at that time.

Davis is certified in the Fair Credit Reporting Act and has a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in business, management, and economics. He has written marketing surveys which were implemented in corporate business plans and rolled out company-wide. He coined the phrase ‘lobby dynamics’ to help bank branch personnel sell more products and deepen the customer experience.

Berkshire Bank Wins Award for Employee Volunteer Work

BOSTON — Berkshire Bank was recently named a winner of PR Daily’s 2018 Corporate Social Responsibility Awards in the Employee Volunteer Program category. Berkshire Bank was chosen from a wide pool of entries to receive first prize in the category for the ingenuity and impact of its XTEAM volunteer program.

Berkshire’s nationally acclaimed employee volunteer program provides employees with paid time off to volunteer during regular business hours. Last year, 100% of Berkshire’s employees nationally donated 40,000 hours of service to benefit community organizations.

Berkshire also closes down its offices each June for its Xtraordinary Day of Service, providing all employees with an opportunity to go out in the community and volunteer as a team. In 2018, Berkshire employees completed 74 service projects that ultimately benefited more than 500,000 individuals.

“Out of many outstanding submissions, we found Berkshire Bank’s work truly set a new standard of excellence for all corporate-communications professionals. We congratulate them and look forward to seeing their future successes in this field,” said Justine Figueroa, senior Marketing coordinator at Ragan Communications.

As a winner in the program, Berkshire Bank joins an elite group of past winners, including Alex + Ani, International Paper, St. Joseph’s Health, Bayer Crop Science, Arrow Electronics, Alliance Data, Viacom, U.S. Bank, and Toronto Pearson Airport.

“We’re honored to receive this recognition, but more importantly, we are proud of all of the Berkshire Bank employees who share their time and expertise as part of our XTEAM,” said Gary Levante, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility at Berkshire Bank. “This honor is a testament to their hard work, dedication, and commitment to making our communities thrive.”

Legislation Poses Challenges for Businesses

Cover Story

Bargain or Burden?

With a series of employment-related ballot questions looming — on issues including paid leave, minimum wage, and the state sales tax — supporters of those measures sat down this past spring with advocates for the business community to forge what became known as the ‘grand bargain.’ The result doesn’t have employers cheering — in fact, they worry about the impact of the deal on their bottom line — but if the nature of compromise is that no one’s happy, then the process was a rousing success.

Carol Campbell, like so many other Massachusetts employers, was none too pleased when a barrage of ballot questions were set to go before voters on Election Day, one asking for increased paid leave, a second to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and a third to reduce the sales tax from 6.25% to 5%.

“My first thought was that it shouldn’t have come to this,” said Campbell, president of Chicopee Industrial Contractors. “The way issues like this are supposed to be dealt with is through our legislators.”

But once those questions were approved for the ballot — and polls suggested that voters were ready to usher in these broadened employee benefits — employers and the organizations that advocate for them decided to sit down and hammer out a different strategy. A compromise.

Carol Campbell says thorny issues of employee benefits should be legislated, not subject to the whims of the ballot box.

That deal, forged by proponents of the ballot questions and employer-advocacy organizations, was passed by both chambers in the State House and signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker in June. Known as the ‘grand bargain,’ the compromise legislation will create a permanent sales-tax holiday, increase the minimum wage over the next five years, and create a new paid family and medical leave program in Massachusetts — while the three ballot questions were removed from voters’ hands.

“I think we needed to sit down and talk,” Campbell said. “I was saying a couple of years ago, when this was bubbling, that we should begin by sitting down and talking. I do still have concerns because there are still a lot of unknowns. But I guess it’s better than letting something like family leave go to the ballot.”

Mark Adams, director of HR Solutions at the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast, has spent time with employers anxious about putting sweeping benefit changes in front of voters.

“This was something that had to be dealt with because it was going to pass in November,” he told BusinessWest. “I talked to companies frustrated with the prospect of the ballot, saying, ‘how could this happen?’ My answer is simple: when you’re dealing with a ballot question, whoever gets more votes is going to win — and more employees vote than employers. Being able to take time off and be paid while taking time off resonates with employees — even if, in some cases, they might be on the hook for some of those costs. It certainly plays well, which is why it was going to pass in November, and why it was worthwhile to try to compromise.”

Nancy Creed, president of the Springfield Regional Chamber, was the sole Western Mass. voice on the seven-person committee that hammered out the bargain.

“The business community, with the support of the legislative delegation, realized, when we took a look at the polls, that we were going to lose the ballot questions, and everyone felt that we should need to come to the table and compromise,” she noted. “The more we explain that to our members, the more they understand it. They don’t like it, but they recognize that we had no choice but to do it.”

The Nitty Gritty

The grand bargain raises the Commonwealth’s minimum wage from $11 to $15 per hour over the next five years, with the initial increase taking effect in January 2019. Coupled with that increase will be a raise to the minimum base wage rate for tipped workers, from $3.75 to $6.75, that will also phase in over a five-year period starting in January 2019. The deal also phases out the requirement that retail workers earn time-and-a-half for working on Sundays.

The legislation also creates a permanent two-day weekend sales tax holiday, an event that was launched in Massachusetts in 2004 and held most years since, but not in 2016 or 2017. Proponents of lower taxes agreed, as part of the deal, to scrap lowering the state’s sales tax from 6.25% to 5%.

The third major component the bill introduces is a new paid family and medical leave program, which will provide employees who contribute to the program the ability to take paid leave for up to 12 weeks a year to care for a family member or bond with a new child, 20 weeks a year to deal with a personal medical issue, and up to 26 weeks to deal with an emergency related to deployment of a family member for military service.

Weekly benefit amounts will be calculated as a percentage of the employee’s average weekly wage, with a maximum weekly benefit of $850. Self-employed workers may opt into the program. And all workers who use the benefit are guaranteed they can return to their previous job or an equivalent position in terms of pay, status, and benefits.

Workers on paid leave will earn 80% of their wages up to 50% of the state average weekly wage, then 50% of wages above that amount, up to an $850 cap. The law includes a payroll tax increase of 0.63% estimated to bring in $750 to $800 million each year, to help fund the leave benefit.

Nancy Creed says the expanded family-leave benefits will challenge companies not only in cost, but in workforce management.

“Paid family leave was a beast; it is so complex,” Creed said, adding that this was one area where she was glad Western Mass. had representation in the discussion. “There’s an east-west disparity, and they do not understand the issues of the west and the fact that we have five gateway cities. We have a much poorer population, and our businesses tend to be smaller. Most of them [in the east] represented larger corporations, and corporations that weren’t necessarily doing the right thing.”

The members she speaks with want to do the right thing, she added.

“But you really have to look at what is the impact going to be. And it’s not just cost; it’s also workforce management. For a company that has 50 employees, if they lose five people on leave, how do they manage that, if they’re running two shifts, three shifts?”

The cost component is also significant, she went on, especially for companies that decide to foot employees’ share of the benefit in order to retain their talent and recruit more workers in a very competitive market.

“What that means is they won’t be able to hire, they won’t be able to expand, and, if they have vacancies through attrition, they probably won’t fill them because they just can’t afford to,” Creed said. “So, at a time when we’re trying to put people to work, it will probably mean less jobs. And I’m not sure the proponents understood what those consequences were.”

Still, the negotiations resulted in a better deal for employers than the ballot question, which called for 16 weeks of family leave and 26 weeks of personal medical leave. The compromise also includes an opt-out provision for employers that offer benefits greater than or equal to what an employee would receive in the state program.

“I have a hard time with people telling me how to run my business,” Campbell said. “We have short-term and long-term disability; we understand the importance of keeping our employees healthy; we understand the need for family-work balance. But it’s not always possible to have that balance. For us as a small business, if we have two or three people out for 26 weeks, it’s not as simple as hiring someone to replace them, although that in itself brings another financial burden to the company.”

Policy Briefs

One aspect of the legislation that has not gotten enough attention, Adams said, is the anti-retaliation aspects of the leave law.

“A lot of the coverage up to this point has been on the time off being available. There hasn’t been a lot of discussion about the retaliation provisions. If an employer is subject to any adverse actions within six months time under paid family leave law, there’s an automatic presumption that retaliation has occurred, and that employer can overcome that only through clear and convincing evidence that it’s something else.”

That means employers need to tighten up policies on performance evaluation, he added. “If people aren’t meeting standards, there has to be documentation that’s clearly communicated. If you’re on paid family leave and I discover you did something wrong before your leave occurred, if I don’t have documentation lined up before taking action, you can claim retaliation. That’s something companies will have to self-assess — whether their policies now are strong enough.”

Mark Adams

“A lot of the coverage up to this point has been on the time off being available. There hasn’t been a lot of discussion about the retaliation provisions. If an employer is subject to any adverse actions within six months time under paid family leave law, there’s an automatic presumption that retaliation has occurred, and that employer can overcome that only through clear and convincing evidence that it’s something else.”

It’s just one example of unintended consequences that proponents of the original ballot questions might not have considered, Creed noted. Other elements of the grand bargain, however, were easier to hammer out.

“Minimum wage was a given, as a lot of businesses are already there or moving toward it. But we were able to negotiate that being phased in over longer period of time so smaller and medium-sized businesses have time to phase up to that point,” she told BusinessWest.

Interestingly, she added, while the minimum wage for tipped employees will be phased in over five years as well, the committee heard input from some servers and bartenders who were opposed to a dramatic change, “because they think one of the unintended consequences of that is that people now think you’re paying more, so I’m going to tip you less.”

Campbell said the minimum-wage increase won’t effect her company, which doesn’t hire anyone at that low pay level, but she argued that a sizable increase in the pay floor may harm the employment picture by shrinking the number of entry-level jobs for people with little experience. Minimum-wage jobs, she noted, are “the first step toward getting an education and getting proper training to have a career. It was never meant to be supportive of a family.”

As for other components of the bargain, dropping the sales-tax decrease was relatively straightforward, Creed said. “We already have no money to find education and transportation and all the things we need to fund, without bringing in even less sales tax. But at least we were able to get that permanent sales-tax holiday, which helps the retailers.”

The Retailers Assoc. of Massachusetts, which was pushing the sales-tax ballot question, was also heartened by a recent Supreme Court decision allowing states to collect taxes on online purchases.

According to John Regan, executive vice president, Government Affairs at AIM, who had a seat at the table for the grand-bargain talks, the negotiations were carried out against the backdrop of polls indicating overwhelming support for all three ballot questions; recent polls put support for the paid family and medical leave question at 82% and support for a $15 minimum wage at 78%.

“Experts believe that a campaign to defeat questions with those sorts of poll numbers could cost $10 million per initiative,” he added. “The ballot process is one-sided, winner-take-all. Coming to a legislative compromise avoids that by allowing a broader group of people to have input into key decisions to create policies that work for everyone.”

One impetus for bringing the Raise Up Coalition, which sponsored the ballot questions, to the table was the state Supreme Court blocking a fourth question, concerning the so-called ‘millionaire tax,’ a proposed 4% surcharge on incomes over $1 million.

“Once that came off the ballot and was deemed unconstitutional, that brought the other side to the table to realize that, ‘yeah, maybe we should compromise,’” Creed said. “Would we have liked to have seen it differently? Sure, but I think the whole definition of compromise is that no one’s happy, so we did our job. It’s much better than it could have been.”

Richard Lord, president and CEO of AIM, agreed. “While everyone gives something during a negotiation, we are satisfied and believe that our member employers are better off with a legislative compromise than with voter approval of the language of the ballot questions as drafted.”

No Winners

Adams told BusinessWest that different issues with the grand bargain will manifest themselves over time, with the 0.63% tax increase on wages being the most immediate concern, especially for larger companies. “That’s really going to put HR managers behind the eight-ball from a planning point of view.”

Still, Creed added, “a negotiation is messy, and no one really came out a winner. I think the proponents didn’t feel like they came out a winner because they had to compromise. In the end, it was much better than what the ballot questions would have provided.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

New Publication Becomes Part of Efforts to Expand the Manufacturing Workforce

By George O'Brien October 30, 2018

Features

Exciting STUFF

John Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College, proudly displays the cribbage board given to him by students at Pathfinder Regional Technical High School in Palmer

John Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College, says he doesn’t play the card game cribbage.

But that doesn’t mean the cribbage board given to him recently gathers dust sitting in a drawer or closet unused. In fact, it now occupies a prominent place on a desk already crowded with items that speak to his personal life and career in higher education.

That’s because the elaborate board was crafted by students at Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School in Palmer. It’s fashioned from metal — Cook isn’t sure exactly what the material is, although he suspects it’s aluminum — and it’s truly a one-off, complete with his name and title printed on it.

As noted, Cook’s never used the gift for its intended purpose, but he’s found an even higher calling for it.

“I take this around, and I tell people that, if they can create one of these at one of those labs like the one at Pathfinder, there’s a $50,000-a-year job waiting for you,” he said as he started to explain, making it clear that his cribbage board has become yet another strategic initiative in a multi-faceted effort to educate people about careers in manufacturing and inspire them to get on the path needed to acquire one.

Other steps include everything from taking young people on tours of area plants — and their parking lots (more on that later) — to working with the parents of those people to convince them that today’s manufacturing jobs are certainly not like those of a generation, or two, or three, ago.

“I take this around, and I tell people that, if they can create one of these at one of those labs like the one at Pathfinder, there’s a $50,000-a-year job waiting for you.”

And there’s good reason for all the time and hard work put toward this cause. It’s all spelled out in the latest Workforce Development and Technology Report prepared as part of the Precision Manufacturing Regional Alliance Project, or PMRAP for short.

Indeed, the numbers on pages 7 and 8 practically jump off the page. The chart titled ‘Workforce Indicators’ reveals that the 41 companies surveyed for this report project that, between new production hires and replacement of retiring employees, they’ll need 512 new workers this year. Extrapolate those figures out over the entire precision-manufacturing sector, and the need is 1,400 to 1,500, said Dave Cruise, president and CEO of the MassHire Hampden County Workforce Board, formerly the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County. Meanwhile, the number of people graduating annually from programs at the region’s vocational high schools and STCC is closer to 300, he said, noting quickly, and with great emphasis, that not all of those graduates, especially at the high-school level, will go right into the workforce.

Those numbers translate into a huge gap and a formidable challenge for this region and its precision-manufacturing industry, said Cruise, Cook, and others we spoke with, adding that additional capacity, and a lot of it, in the form of trained machinists, must somehow be created to keep these plants humming. But before finding the capacity (the expensive manufacturing programs) required to train would-be machinists, the region must create demand for those programs. Right now, there certainly isn’t enough, hence strategic initiatives involving everything from plant tours to Cook’s traveling cribbage board.

BusinessWest has now become an active player in this initiative with an aptly named special publication called Cool STUFF Made in Western Mass. It’s called that to not only confirm that there are a lot of intriguing products made in this region — from parts for the latest fighter jets to industry-leading hand dryers to specialty papers — but to grab the attention of area young people; Cool STUFF will be distributed at middle schools and high schools with tech programs, regional workforce development offices, state college career counseling offices, non-manufacturing employers, top manufacturing firms, BusinessWest subscribers, guidance counselors, community colleges, and employment offices.

Sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and MassDevelopment, Cool STUFF will include a number of profiles of area companies. These profiles will list the products made, the customers served, and the markets these companies supply. But the most important details are the job opportunities, the benefits paid, and the thoughts of those working for these companies.

As BusinessWest continues work on Cool STUFF, to be distributed later this fall (companies interested in purchasing profiles can still do so), it will use this edition of the magazine to set the table, if you will, by detailing the size and scope of the challenge facing this region when it comes to its manufacturing sector, and also highlighting many of the initiatives to address it.

Making Some Progress

Kristen Carlson is working on the front lines of the manufacturing sector’s workforce challenge — in a number of capacities, first as president of the local NTMA chapter, which has about 60 members, but also as owner and president of Peerless Precision in Westfield, a maker of parts for the aerospace and defense industries.

Kristin Carlson, owner of president of Peerless Precision, says area precision shops are very busy; the only thing holding them back is finding enough good help.

She told BusinessWest that business is booming for Peerless and most other precision manufacturers in this region, and it’s likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future — a fact lost on many not familiar with the high quality of work carried out at area shops and this region’s reputation across the country and around the world as a precision hub.

“In the precision-machining side of the manufacturing sector, companies are not leaving this area,” she explained while debunking one myth about this industry. “There is a skilled workforce here that other states simply cannot compete with. So while it might cost a company less to do business in Tennessee or South Carolina, for example, they’re not going to see the same skill that we need in order to produce the parts our customers need.

“Right now, every industry is booming — aerospace, defense, oil and gas, even the commercial sectors,” she went on. “A lot of us are seeing really large growth percentages over the past 12 months; the only thing that’s holding us back is having the workforce to fill the jobs that we have.”

Peerless has seen 30% growth over the past year, and added six new people over the first six months, she continued, adding that, several years ago, the pace would have been closer to one new person a year.

“I could double in size if I had the workers,” she told BusinessWest, adding that there are many in this sector who could likely say the same thing.

The challenge of inspiring more individuals to become interested in manufacturing is not exactly a recent phenomenon in this region; it’s been ongoing for some time. However, the problem has become more acute as shops continue to add work and also as the Baby Boom generation moves into retirement.

The problem becomes one of supply and demand. There is considerable demand, but simply not enough supply. In most matters involving this equation, supply usually catches up with demand, but this situation is different in many respects.

Indeed, there are many impediments to creating supply, starting with perceptions (or misperceptions, as the case may be) about this sector and lingering fears that jobs that might be there today won’t be there tomorrow. These sentiments are fueled by memories of those with the Boomer generation, who saw large employers such as the Springfield Armory, American Bosch, Uniroyal, Diamond Match, Digital Equipment Corp., Westinghouse, and others disappear from the landscape.

Dave Cruise says surveys of area precision manufacturers reveal a huge gap between expected need for workers and the region’s ability to supply them.

Meanwhile, another challenge is creating capacity. Manufacturing programs are expensive, said Rick Sullivan, president and CEO of the Economic Development Council (EDC) of Western Mass., adding that it’s also difficult to find faculty for such facilities because potential educators can make more money working in the field than they can in the classroom.

Regarding those perceptions, the obvious goal is to change the discussion, or the narrative, surrounding manufacturing, said Sullivan, by driving home the relative security of most jobs today and the fact that “these are not your grandfather’s manufacturing jobs.”

“Manufacturing today … is not, for the most part, standing at a machine doing some kind of manual labor,” he told BusinessWest. “The high-end precision manufacturers today are very technology-driven; there’s lot of computer science, lots of IT. It’s a clean environment, and the jobs in manufacturing, especially precision manufacturing, are very-good-paying jobs, and you can have a very good middle or upper-middle lifestyle, particularly in Western Massachusetts.”

Cook, whose school has several manufacturing programs and is the region’s clear leader in supplying workers for the industry, said that, despite the costs and challenges, additional capacity can and will be created — if (and this is a big if) demand for such programs grows and becomes steady.

That’s why Carlson and others say that manufacturers must sell this sector and its employment opportunities to not only the region’s young people, but also their parents.

“And their parents are often the harder sell,” said Carlson. “If I have a class of 20 kids come in and three or four or five of them show a real interest in manufacturing, I consider that a good day. But then, those kids go home, and selling it to their parents is the difficult part, because many of them still believe this is your grandfather’s machine shop — it’s a dark, dingy place, and only people who can’t go to college do that work, which is not the case.”

Meanwhile, young people are not the only targets. Indeed, other constituencies include those who are unemployed and underemployed, those looking for new careers, and the region’s large and still-growing African-American and Latino populations.

Across all those subgroups, women have become a focal point, in part because they — and, again, their parents — have not looked upon manufacturing as a viable career option when, in fact, it is just that.

“We know there are really well-paying jobs out there, but there’s a lot of work to be done to invite new individuals into this career path,” said Cook. “And I talk about two groups in particular — women and students of color — and there’s work to be done there. We have to engage families, and at much younger ages.”

Still Some Work to Do

It’s called the Twisters Café.

That’s the name given to a ’50s-style diner at Sanderson MacLeod in Palmer, a maker of twisted wire brushes for the cosmetic, healthcare, handgun, and other markets.

It was created a year or so ago, not long after the company also added an appropriately named ‘appreciation garden,’ an outdoor break area complete with picnic tables, chairs, umbrellas, and more.

The additions are part of ongoing efforts to make the workplace more, well, livable and attractive to employees and potential employees.

“They’re little things, but they make this a better environment,” said Mark Borsari, the company’s president. “People are here more than they’re at home, and we hope these steps make this a more enjoyable place to be.”

Those sentiments are yet another indication of how manufacturing has changed in recent years. And making people aware of not just perks like the Twisters Café, but also, and more importantly, the jobs and careers available in manufacturing today, is the broad, multi-faceted mission of a growing group of individuals, agencies, and companies.

This constituency includes the EDC, the various MassHire agencies, the vocational high schools and STCC, the NTMA, and individual manufacturers.

Shop owners will go into the schools themselves to talk about what they do and how, said Sullivan, and the shops will host tours of students, taking them onto the floor, and later into the parking lot.

“That’s a big part of these tours,” he said. “They show the students what they can do, what they can have, with the money they can earn from one of these jobs.”

And such initiatives are starting to generate results on some levels, said Sullivan, noting that many of the vocational schools now have waiting lists, especially for their manufacturing programs — something that didn’t exist a decade ago or even five years ago, when such schools were largely viewed as the best option for students not suited for a typical college-bound curriculum.

But those numbers on pages 7 and 8 of the PMRAP report show there is still a huge gap between demand and the current supply, and therefore there is still considerable work to be done, said Cruise, noting that the goal moving forward is to reach more people overall, more young people, and young people at an earlier age.

Cook agreed, and to get his point across, he brought out another item he’s collected — a fidget spinner made by a young student during a summer STEM program staged at the STCC campus.

“We have to do more of that,” he explained. “We have to do more work with younger students; we have to engage their families over the summer, and we have to let the young people get their hands on the equipment and build things like this. And we have to do things like this at scale — we have to start inviting far larger groups of students to our campus to see these programs.”

Cook does a lot of promotional work for the manufacturing sector — and STCC’s programs — himself, and his cribbage board is very often part of the presentation.

“I bring it to meetings every once in a while,” he explained. “It’s that teacher in me that still likes to use something physical for people to see, to touch, and to hold. They can realize that there’s still a very important place for this in our economy, and there’s nothing better than to put this into people’s hands and make them realize that that’s something significant about the ability to generate something like this.”

Cool STUFF will hopefully act like that cribbage board in that young people can see the products many area companies are making, and, in the snapshot profiles of these company’s employees, they can maybe see themselves in a few years.

“Manufacturing has a rich history in this region, but too many people think ‘history’ means ‘in the past,’” said BusinessWest Associate Publisher Kate Campiti. “There’s still history being written in this sector, and the future looks exceedingly bright. Cool STUFF will hopefully drive this point home and encourage young people to include manufacturing in their list of career options.”

Parts of the Whole

Carlson was talking about the salaries and benefits offered by her company — most workers are paid $1,000 a week or more — when she paused for a moment.

“When you add up wages, overtime, and everything else, there are a few guys here making more money than I do,” she said, adding that this is not an exaggeration, but it is a fact lost on many young people, their parents, and other constituencies.

Bringing such facts, and numbers, to life is an ongoing priority for the region, and Cool STUFF will become part of the answer moving forward, as will John Cook’s cribbage board, plant parking-lot tours, and much more.

The stakes are high, but so is the number of opportunities — for potential job holders, the companies that will employ them, and the region as a whole.

People need to be made aware of these opportunities, said all those we spoke with, and, more importantly, inspired to reach for them.

(For more information on Cool STUFF Made in Western Mass., on how to have your company profiled, for advertising opportunities, and to receive copies, call (413) 781-8600.)

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

Legalized Marijuana Poses Legal Uncertainties

Law

Hazy Picture

Just as the business and legal communities in Massachusetts were learning to deal with medical marijuana, voters kicked the door wide open in 2016 by legalizing the drug for recreational use, too. That created a tangle of issues to work out, from how to handle employees that use the drug outside work to launching a cannabis business in the face of federal law that calls the practice illegal. Some of those issues have been sorted out, but others still hang in the air, like so much smoke.

When it comes to the relationship between employers and medical marijuana, few names are as important as Cristina Barbuto.

She’s the woman who filed suit against her employer, Advantage Sales and Marketing, three years ago after being fired — after her first day on the job — for using marijuana outside of work. She was required to take a drug test, and told the employer before the test that she would fail, because she used marijuana at home to help manage her Crohn’s disease.

A supervisor said that wouldn’t be a problem, but Barbuto was dismissed from the job the next day when the drug test came back positive for marijuana. The reason? While medical marijuana was legal in Massachusetts at the time, it was still illegal under federal law.

Her complaint eventually made its way to the state Supreme Judicial Court, which affirmed her right to use medical marijuana outside work on the grounds that forbidding her — as long as she wasn’t impaired on the job — constituted disability discrimination.

“If somebody qualifies as a disabled person and they’re seeking an accommodation, the employer has an obligation to engage in a process with that person and provide a reasonable accommodation that allows them to do their job, unless they can show the accommodation would cause them an undue hardship,” said Pat Rapinchuk, a partner with Robinson Donovan in Springfield. She noted that a subsequent suit by a man denied access to a homeless shelter for his medical-marijuana use came down on the plaintiff’s side as well, on the same grounds as the Barbuto suit.

“But then comes the recreational piece,” she said. “And that’s completely different.”

Indeed, with recreational use of marijuana having been legal in Massachusetts for a much shorter time, case law has not established similar rights for such users, she noted.

“Right now, I would say the recreational marijuana user does not have the protections a medical user does,” Rapinchuk said. “You start with just the basic premise of no substances in the workplace — no alcohol, no drugs. That part’s easy. But what if I used it last week on my own time and my employer drug tests for whatever reason, and I test positive, and I don’t have a medical reason for it? Can the employer either decline to hire me or even terminate me? And I think the short answer right now is ‘yes.’”

In one case that has garnered some media attention, Bernadette Coughlin, a food service supervisor for Sodexo, was fired after being injured in a fall at work. The company required a drug test following an injury, and she tested positive for marijuana, which she admitted she used recreationally at home a few days before. She was fired, and is fighting the termination in court — but might have an uphill battle, Rapinchuk said, because she doesn’t have the disability claim that Barbuto did.

From left, Bulkley Richardson attorneys Scott Foster, Sarah Willey, Mary Jo Kennedy, Ryan Barry, and Kathy Bernardo take part in a recent cannabis panel.

“You’d have to find another route to challenge that,” she added, noting that one possibility is challenging the drug test itself as an invasion of privacy. “Some courts have found such a test to be invasive, and a violation of an employee’s privacy. If they found out otherwise, like through social media, that might pass muster.”

If all this sounds amorphous, it is, Rapinchuk said, and is a field of employment law that is definitely evolving. Drug tests can detect THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana, for days, even weeks after someone smokes or ingests it, and no tests exist to gauge whether the user is currently impaired. That leaves employers with plenty of hard questions about how they want to handle this new frontier.

Growing Concerns

But that’s not the only area of the law currently evolving in the face of legalized marijuana.

Perhaps the most significant wrinkle in marijuana law, Scott Foster says, is that it’s legal in the state but illegal federally. That drives many of the odd situations people find themselves in when they start a marijuana business, and it’s why Bulkley Richardson, where Foster works as a partner, recently launched a dedicated cannabis practice.

As one example, a marijuana business cannot use most banks.

“It’s considered to be money laundering on a federal level to run marijuana money through the banking system,” he explained. “You can’t use an ATM, you can’t use a credit card, and you can’t take the proceeds from the sale of marijuana and deposit it at a bank if they know it’s marijuana funds.”

There are two exceptions: Centurion Bank and Gardner Federal Credit Union. “We literally have marijuana clients driving $50,000 to $100,000 in cash to Boston in armored cars to deposit it at [Centurion],” Foster said, adding that the bank’s fees for the service are astronomical. “The bank is basically taking a business risk. I don’t know if it’s a good risk or bad risk, but no other big banks are taking the chance because the penalties would be devastating to them. Centurion is willing to take the chance.”

Meanwhile, people buying real estate as part of a new business typically finance 60% to 80% of the cost, he noted, but banks can’t lend for this purpose any more than they can take deposits.

“So what you end up with is a lot of very wealthy people playing in this space because you can’t finance it. You’ve got millions and millions of dollars being poured into these ventures that are growing, and nobody hears about it because it’s all private financing. That’s another area where it looks like a normal business until you ask, ‘where’s the money coming from?’”

Then there’s intellectual-property law. Most new businesses federally register their trademarks, but that’s not available for any branding involving marijuana products. “You can come up with this great brand name, this great logo, and you can’t protect it federally,” Foster said. “So now we’re going back to the state system, which does exist in Massachusetts. There is a way to protect trademarks at the state level that, until the marijuana business, nobody had done for 100 years.”

As he and Kathy Bernardo, another Bulkley partner on the cannabis team, spoke with BusinessWest, it became clear why the new practice group includes lawyers that specialize in myriad disciplines.

The disconnect between state and federal law shows up in taxation as well. Foster brought up a quirky section of the tax code that came about after the IRS went after a cocaine dealer in the Midwest for tax evasion, so the dealer filed a tax return that wrote off expenses like security and armored cars. The IRS balked, but a tax court sided with the man.

Pat Rapinchuk says some employers might avoid drug testing for marijuana as not to rule out some strong potential employees.

“Congress later added section 280E to the tax code, which essentially says if your business is in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of a federally controlled substance, you’re not allowed to take normal business deductions,” Foster explained, and then broke down an example of how that may affect a cannabis-related enterprise.

Say a business makes $100,000 and, after spending $40,000 on product, $20,000 on employees, and $10,000 on rent, claims a profit of $30,000. The owner then pays taxes on that figure; if he owes, say, 40%, he makes a profit of $18,000. But if he’s not allowed to write off expenses, suddenly he’s paying 40% on a much larger chunk of that $100,000 — and taking home much less in profit.

“The effective tax rate is two to three times the size of a normal business. And even though it’s against the law federally, you still have to pay taxes,” Foster noted. “It’s another trap for the unwary.”

Joint Enterprises

From a real-estate point a view, issues like zoning laws, special permitting laws, and host-agreement laws also come into play, Bernardo said.

“Municipalities have held the cards because they have to either accept a marijuana zoning district, or they have the ability to shelve it until we actually get the regulations out for recreational use, but that’s coming to an end, so now they have to decide whether or not they’re going to allow this in town or not.”

That depends largely on how the vote went in that particular community when the ballot question legalizing recreational pot in Massachusetts passed last November. In many Western Mass. communities where the vote was in favor, town officials have been busy putting together zoning bylaws for a marijuana district.

Kathy Bernardo

“Municipalities have held the cards because they have to either accept a marijuana zoning district, or they have the ability to shelve it until we actually get the regulations out for recreational use, but that’s coming to an end, so now they have to decide whether or not they’re going to allow this in town or not.”

“The people of town agreed that’s going to be there, and they’ve discussed how and where,” she explained. “A lot of towns put a moratorium on it — which was fine, they were allowed to do that, but they were only allowed to do it for a year, and now they have to come to a determination whether or not they’re actually going to have that zoning district in their municipality. But that is all steered by what the vote was in their town.”

If the town’s voters favored legalizing recreational marijuana, Foster added, it puts them in a different approval process locally than if voters were against it as a group.

“If they were against it, the city council or select board has no authority unless and until they do another ballot initiative, another referendum at the town level, to approve it,” he explained. “I don’t think anybody’s really looking, from a business point of view, to go into those towns. It’s just too much of a hurdle.”

Once permitting and zoning procedures are established, business owners have to work with the town on compliance issues, Bernardo said, “and there are a lot of intricacies that you don’t usually have with a lot of other businesses. With this, it’s completely different.”

Bulkley Richardson’s cannabis group has represented outfits ranging from farmers looking to cultivate the plant to people looking to profit on the retail end, she noted, and the cultivation aspect is one that has flown under the radar, yet is important to this region.

“A lot of the things you see in the news are about the pot shops,” Foster said. “What’s not getting picked up as much is the fact that, in order to sell something, you have to first grow it, and it’s a lot cheaper to grow things in Western Mass. than it is in Eastern Mass., in terms of the cost of the land.”

The next step is the extraction and production process, he went on, and that’s an entirely different type of business with its own nuances. “It’s not just selling the leaves, it’s extracting the THC and then putting it in something — oil, an edible, a cream, or something else. Then those products are sold. So you’ve got farming, you’ve got manufacturing, and you’ve got retail. And the farming and the manufacturing are actually happening more around here.”

Foster said his firm launched the cannabis practice because the attorneys were already working with clients in the area on these various enterprises.

“We tell people, ‘here are the ways that a marijuana business is 90% exactly like any other business, and here is the 10% where it’s just wacky different, and these are the things you have to think about.’ But it’s still real estate. It’s raising money. It’s hiring people. It’s all the regular laws which you otherwise have to comply with.”

What is certain, Bernardo added, is that marijuana is now a fast-growing (no pun intended) part of the Massachusetts landscape, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

“It’s here,” she said, “and we have to learn how to deal with it rationally, because people are getting into these businesses, and there are so many balls up in the air when they get a business running.”

Smoke Signals

But while those cannabis-related businesses continue to pop up, employers at … well, pretty much every other type of company must grapple with their employees’ use of the drug outside the workplace.

“There are no tests to determine if someone is impaired by marijuana. There’s no sanctioned way to measure the amount of THC in someone’s system,” Foster said, adding that one reason is that federal grants — here’s that separation of state and federal law again — are not available to research these tests.

“You have a whole system that works on the alcohol side that makes sense — the tests are developed, and the laws are passed that go to those tests,” he said. “None of that exists yet on the marijuana side. The research is happening, but it’s happening with private money, which means it’s subject to more influence and bias.”

Bernardo said a lot of companies that used to test for marijuana are deciding not to do so going forward, due to the uncertainty. “They’ve just eliminated it completely, unless you’re a driver or it’s a safety issue. They don’t even want to deal with it.”

That makes sense in a job market with historically low unemployment, Rapinchuk said, when aggressively testing for THC might make it tougher to compete for talent.

“Employers are trying to hire a good workforce, and they’re going to be ruling out an awful lot of potential employees if they’re going to take that position, so it is possible some employers will decide not to test for that,” she told BusinessWest.

No matter what their stance, she added, it’s probably wise for employers to review their drug-testing policy to make sure it’s clear and consistent, and doesn’t need to be modified in light of the change in the law.

Medical marijuana remains an easier field to navigate than recreational use, she stressed, citing as a recent example a young man who had a medical marijuana card and applied for a position at a local company.

“They told him, ‘we drug test everybody, not just health or safety positions,’ and he disclosed his use to the employer through the testing agency and brought his card. Sure enough, he tested positive, and there was questioning — how often he used it, who’s his doctor, what’s the prescription — but once all those questions were answered, they hired him. So they followed the advice of the Barbuto court in that case.”

Whether dealing with marijuana use by employees or actually launching a cannabis business, Foster said, this is definitely new territory for lawyers, thanks to that gaping disconnect between state and federal law.

“As a licensed group, one of our rules is that can’t help your clients commit a crime,” he said. While the Massachusetts Ethics Commission passed a ruling that allows lawyers in the Bay State to engage in such activity because it’s permitted on a state level, he added, “you still have to tell clients they’re engaging in something that is illegal at a federal level. The nuances are deep and subtle.”

“And can cause a lot of trouble,” Bernardo quickly added.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Holiday Party Venues Offer Unique Settings, Themed Events

Holiday Party Planner

’Tis the Season

The Bellagio ballroom at MGM Springfield is among the region’s newest option for parties and banquets.

Buoyed by a strong economy, these are good days for area venues that host year-end company parties — and any other type of event, really. But with so many options, it’s a competitive environment — one that has become even more so with the emergence of MGM Springfield on the scene. Yet, new players might also be boosting interest in party bookings in general, raising the fortunes of everyone who promises to bring fun and flexibility to the season’s many gatherings.

In the eight years since she opened her event-planning business, Tanya Costigan has seen plenty of changes in corporate party planning. In fact, launching her enterprise, Tanya Costigan Events, at the tail end of the Great Recession was a challenge in itself.

“There was definitely a downshift in the year-end parties, but I do feel like they are picking up a bit,” she told BusinessWest. “I think part of it has to do with some of the new venues that are here, like GreatHorse and MGM; these heavy hitters are playing a role in getting people excited. A friend of mine was looking elsewhere, and is now thinking about a client-appreciation event at MGM next month. So I think it’s triggering some excitement in the industry in general.”

Anthony Caratozzolo is certainly excited. As vice president of food and beverage at MGM Springfield, he’s been pleased with early bookings in the casino resort’s banquet space, which encompasses the Aria and Bellagio ballrooms and can host groups from 15 to 540 people.

“Each of the ballrooms comes fully themed out with holiday décor, and we have different menus to accommodate different groups,” he said. “If they want a more reception-style event, we can accommodate that. If they want a lunch or sit-down dinner, we can do a custom menu for that. We’re very versatile. All of our ballrooms can be broken into smaller rooms to accommodate smaller parties at the same time. Most places can’t accommodate different groups as well as we can.”

As an integrated resort, MGM arrived on the scene with the aim of raising the bar for entertainment and events of all kinds, including holiday parties, because attendees can move right from a party to the casino floor, the Commonwealth Bar and Lounge, a movie, bowling, ice skating, or shopping — not to mention staying overnight at the hotel.

Tanya Costigan said she enjoys helping clients hone their vision for a broad range of parties and other events.

“Clients can also book extracurricular activities,” he said. “If they want a suite at Topgolf or want to go bowling, they can book all that with the catering manager. They just have to figure out what they want to do with their night.”

Like other event organizers who have spoken with BusinessWest leading up to the holiday season in previous years, Caratozzolo has seen a healthy mix of party requests.

“Every group is different. Some of the companies have been around a long time and tend to enjoy a formal, sit-down dinner, while the younger generations may enjoy a reception style — and both of these are built into our catering package,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of inquiries, and we’ve had some bookings.”

At a time when businesses seem to be investing in holiday parties, MGM offers another high-profile option that, at the very least, has people talking about how they want to celebrate the season and thank their employees.

Planning for Fun

Costigan told BusinessWest that sometimes a venue brings her in to plan an event, while other times the client hires her, and she might help choose the location. Describing her job as “planning, design, and management,” she has a role to play from the initial idea through the big day, helping everything run smoothly.

“I do everything from birthday parties and weddings to holiday parties,” she noted, with recent events including Square One’s annual tea party at the Starting Gate at GreatHorse, and the Link to Libraries gala at the Log Cabin.

“I might be doing the design, the planning … there’s a wide scope of things I do,” she said, noting, as Caratozzolo did, that clients are calling for a range of styles when it comes to social gatherings.

“It does vary, but I find that a lot of the people are going for the stand-up, cocktail-hour feel, with passed apps and drinks. Sometimes they do a fun, themed signature drink. And sometimes the holiday parties are not necessarily Christmas-related — I had someone do a year-end party that had the feel of a street carnival, but it was inside the venue. It’s not always winter-themed.”

Anthony Caratozzolo says many venerable companies still prefer formal sit-down dinners, while younger clients tend to opt for reception-style events.

Reasons for holiday parties vary as well, Costigan added. “I find a lot of them are for client appreciation, but, for example, I did the Keller Williams holiday party, and it was all of their different branches coming together and having a fun party. So I think sometimes it’s a bonding thing for the employees.”

Bistro 63 in Amherst has become a popular event site for area colleges and businesses, Event Manager Alyssa Blumenthal said. Business tends to pick up starting in October, not only with the approaching holidays, but because it tends to be a hot season for convention business — and those events tend to spur further bookings. “The end of October is the busiest time of year to receive holiday party bookings. We also get a lot of reunions this time of the year — high school and college.”

Because it easily transforms from a banquet space to a nightclub — often during the same event — many business owners in the area recognize it as a place where they can complement their party with an evening of dancing as well.

“That’s been fantastic; we’ve really been working on training the staff to cross-sell services,” Blumenthal said.

Bistro 63 is also known for its elaborate — and creative — cocktail program. In addition to a rotating list of custom cocktails, the venue creates unique concoctions for specific events. For example, attendees of the International Conference on Soils, Sediments, Water and Energy at UMass Amherst, which books an event at Bistro 63 each year, recently enjoyed a ‘sediment sour,’ which was made to look like dirt garnished with rosemary.

“The soil convention group is all middle-aged men, 40s and 50s, who come up to the bar with a smirk on their face, asking, ‘what smart-aleck cocktail do you have for us this year?’ And I’ll get them to try these ridiculously frilly drinks,” Blumenthal said. “We try to have fun with our events because so many people do associate us with the nightclub.”

Caratozzolo agreed that fun should be at the heart of any party.

SEE: List of Banquet Facilities

“MGM is all about entertainment — that’s what we do, whether it’s an elaborate party or just a small get-together,” he said. “That’s what we’re good at, what we love to do; we work with clients to find out what they want. At the end of the day, they’re our guests, and every group is different.

“We’ve had large conventions, we’ve had expositions, we just booked our first wedding about two weeks ago, and we have small association groups — maybe bridge clubs or chamber events,” he went on. “We have all the capabilities to really do anything, because we’re MGM. We can open a lot of doors.”

Reasons to Party

Likewise, Bistro 63 hosts parties of all types — holiday events, corporate dinners, cocktail parties, rehearsal dinners, reunions, and more — ranging from small gatherings to large events up to 240 people. A large room can be divided into smaller spaces, including a covered deck outside.

“Last year we had the highest number of rehearsal dinners booked, and we’re super excited to continue that trend,” Blumenthal said. Also on the rise are companies hosting recruitment and networking events for students at the Five Colleges.

“We’ve hosted Google, PwC, Newell Brands, and some other regional corporations, as well as a handful school-sponsored events this year,” she added. “More than half our staff are students — UMass, mostly — and we love hosting these events because it speaks to the strength of the academic programs in the area, and it has directly resulted in increased business for our establishment.”

But holiday parties, too, have been on the rise, with bookings increasing each year as the economy continues to chug along, she told BusinessWest.

“Many companies had annual gatherings and stopped doing it for budgetary reasons, and have since put it back in the budget,” she noted, adding that Bistro 63 markets its flexibility and quick turnaround times to plan events — and that has become a key element in its growth.

Alyssa Blumenthal says being flexible and nimble with turnaround times can lead to bookings that later become repeat customers.

“Those short-notice events have lots of times turned into annual events for us. Clients say, ‘maybe we do have the budget for a small dinner for our core team,’ then it goes really well, we provide service better than they expected, and they come back year after year.”

Costigan enjoys those success stories, too, like the recent Square One tea, which boasted a vintage golf theme.

“I love the design part. The planning and management are great, but the design is my favorite part,” she said, recalling the reaction of Kristine Allard, Square One’s chief development and communication officer, to Costigan’s initial designs for the event.

“When she saw my design board for what vintage golf means to me, she said, ‘oh my God, you climbed right into my head.’ It was amazing. I love that part — as well as installing the whole design, when they’re like, ‘this is great.’”

It’s a reaction any event planner or venue hopes for, when it comes to holiday parties or any other event — because it’s those reactions that keep businesses coming back, year after memorable year.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Goodwin House Helps Addicted Young Men Change Course

By George O'Brien October 30, 2018

Health Care

Recovery Mission

Michael, a three-time resident of Goodwin House, feels he has finally found the strength and resolve to stay on the path to recovery.

Chantal Silloway started using substances at age 12 and eventually battled her way to sobriety at 25; she’s been clean for 32 years. With her background, she knows full well that no two people take the same path to substance use, and likewise, no two take the same path to recovery. This is the mindset, and operating philosophy, she brings to her role as director of the Goodwin House in Chicopee, a place where young men try to piece their lives back together.

Michael (policy allows use of his first name only) remembers that not long after his family moved while he was in middle school, he started “looking up to the wrong people.”

This was a development that would have consequences he says he couldn’t have foreseen.

He told BusinessWest that his descent into substance abuse began when he started drinking with these individuals and smoking some weed, as he put it. Things would only escalate from there.

“I started doing percocets and slowly became addicted to those,” he recalled. “Then I couldn’t afford them anymore, so I was introduced to heroin, and soon developed a real problem … I wasn’t feeling good when I wasn’t using it, and when I was using it, I felt fine.

“I hated life. It was like … I wasn’t even enjoying the fact that I was super young and had so much to look forward to. I didn’t really care anymore, because all I needed was that drug.”

“Eventually, I turned over to the needle, and once I started shooting it, it became a whole different ballgame,” he went on. “It became my life — that became my top priority every day. I eventually spiraled out of control; I dropped out of high school, I started stealing from friends, family … anything I could do to get that fix.”

Michael was offering these flashbacks while sitting down with BusinessWest on the front porch of Goodwin House, a large home on Fairview Avenue in Chicopee. This unique facility, the only one of its kind in the Commonwealth, is a 90-day program providing substance-abuse treatment for males ages 13-17, operated by the Center for Human Development (CHD). Michael says he feels at home here, and he should; this is his third stint here and also his last.

He’ll be aging out of the program soon, but, more importantly, he feels he has, through the help of those at Goodwin House, found the strength and resolve to stay on the path to recovery, with his next stop hopefully being a so-called ‘sober house’ for individuals over 18.

“This is a great success story — we’re very excited for him,” said Chantal Silloway, program director at Goodwin House and someone who can, like many in positions like hers, speak from experience when it comes to substance abuse and recovery.

“I started using substances starting at age 12, and became clean at age 25; I’ve been sober for 32 years,” said Silloway, who has worked for CHD since 2004 in various capacities involving substance-abuse programs. “It’s long been my goal to lead a program like this one.”

With her background, Silloway knows that no two people take the same path to substance use, and, likewise, none take the same path to recovery. Thus, this 90-day residential recovery program focuses on the uniqueness of each young man that arrives at its door, with a view to self-empowerment and the future they choose.

Chantal Silloway says no two people take the same path to substance abuse, or to recovery.

Elaborating, she said that young men are referred to Goodwin House from a variety of sources, including detox facilities, hospitals, the Department of Children & Families, the Department of Youth Services, and parents and guardians themselves. But where they were referred from is not really important, she said. What is, however, is that they arrive with a willingness to help themselves.

Without that, recovery is simply not attainable, she went on, adding that Michael is a good example of this, as we’ll see, and also an example of why many residents make return visits to this facility.

At Goodwin House, a team of clinicians and recovery specialists use evidence-based programs to help residents find and maintain sobriety. Treatment programs include assessment and treatment planning, individual and group therapy, recovery school and/or educational tutoring, vocational and employment-search assistance, recovery meetings, and after-care services and resources.

Often, said Silloway, the path to recovery means getting family members deeply involved in the process, so there is a family-therapy program as well.

SEE: List of Behavioral Health Services

Success at this facility is measured in different ways, she went on, adding that while residents do “graduate” from this program and there is a ceremony to commemorate that, there are other milestones, such as ongoing care, accomplishing specific goals that residents have set, and simply becoming ‘stabilized,’ a significant goal in itself.

For this issue, BusinessWest paid a visit to Goodwin House and talked at length with Silloway and Michael. And it is through his eyes, and his thoughts, that we came to understand what happens at this unique facility and how it is helping others change the course of their lives.

Strong Dose of Reality

Flashing back again to those days when heroin was dominating his life, Michael said he needed five to 30 bags of the drug a day, meaning he needed $20 to $80 a day to fuel his habit. And, as he said, he would do anything he had to do to come up with that cash.

Addiction caused him no end of legal problems, and it strained relationships with family and friends to the tipping point and beyond, he went on. But the actual toll was much, much higher.

“I hated life,” he said. “It was like … I wasn’t even enjoying the fact that I was super young and had so much to look forward to. I didn’t really care anymore, because all I needed was that drug.”

Most all of the people who come to Goodwin House are there because they arrived at the same place that Michael did, said Silloway — a place where they probably hated life and didn’t really care anymore. And they needed a way out and a path to a better life.

Helping to provide all that was the motivation for Goodwin House, a facility named after Jim Goodwin, long-time director of CHD. It opened its doors in May 2017.

“Eventually, I turned over to the needle, and once I started shooting it, it became a whole different ballgame. It became my life — that became my top priority every day. I eventually spiraled out of control; I dropped out of high school, I started stealing from friends, family … anything I could do to get that fix.”

The program operated there was created from the ground up by Silloway, and modeled loosely on a similar facility for young girls ages 13-17 in the Worcester area called Highland Grace House.

Residents must have a substance-abuse disorder, and the substances range from marijuana to alcohol to opioids, said Silloway, adding that a resident’s journey there begins with a referral, usually after a stint in detox.

This is a treatment facility and a next step after detox, she told BusinessWest, adding that Goodwin House can accommodate up to 15 young men at a given time. There are a handful there now, and there could and should be more given the state of the opioid crisis in this state and this country, she went on, but there is still a powerful stigma attached to addiction, and this is, unfortunately, keeping many from seeking the help they need.

Residents — that’s the term used to describe those participating in the program — come from across the Commonwealth, noted Silloway. They arrive, as she noted earlier, under different circumstances and with unique backstories.

But the common denominator is that successful recovery must begin with admitting that one has a problem, and possessing a willingness to do something about it — ingredients that are very often missing from the equation.

“We focus on them wanting to be here as opposed to being mandated, and some can be mandated to come,” she explained. “When they get here, they need to have a willingness to work on themselves.”

At Home with the Concept

Indeed, Michael said his first visit to Goodwin House was triggered by his arrest on various charges (he didn’t want to get into any great detail) in November 2017, followed by a stint in detox.

“I was sent here,” he said, putting heavy emphasis on that word ‘sent.’ “I came here for all the wrong reasons; I wasn’t coming here for myself at first, I was coming for the courts.”

With the benefit of hindsight, he believes that first time in detox and his initial visit to Fairview Avenue ultimately saved his life. But he knows now that he when he first arrived, he just wasn’t ready to change — as in change his friends, the places he hung out at, or, most importantly, himself as a person.

This residential treatment program for males ages 13-17 is the only facility of its kind in the Commonwealth.

He started using again while he was at Goodwin House, got kicked out of the program, went back to detox, came back to Goodwin House, used again after only a few weeks, and was again kicked out of the program. He went to detox yet again and then to a halfway house in the Boston area, where he was discharged for using. The frustrating cycle continued with one more trip to detox and his third referral to Goodwin House. This time, though, things were different.

Silloway told BusinessWest that those addicted to substances like heroin, other drugs, and even alcohol are essentially in recovery for the rest of their lives. Recovery is a journey, and very often a long and difficult one, she went on, adding that is why it is not considered a failure to relapse and return to Goodwin House a few times, as Michael has.

“As someone’s leaving,” she said, “we say, ‘we hope we don’t see you back here, but if you need us, we’re here.’”

Michael still needed them, and they were there for him when he checked back in over the summer. Only this time, he arrived with a different attitude.

“When I went to detox for the fourth time, I decided I was sick of living that way and knew I needed to make some changes,” he recalled.

And over the course of the past 10 weeks or so, he has made some, and, with the help of the large support network at the Goodwin House, Michael is ready to do something he was never ready to do before — live without drugs.

“I feel like I wanted to make a change — I just didn’t know how,” he said. “But then, I started second-guessing whether I wanted to make that change. I got through that second-guessing, but I’m addict; I’ll always want to use. But now, it’s a matter of what will happen if I use. Am I going to die? Am I going to have more legal issues?

“Now, I’m happy,” he went on. “Before, I didn’t have any emotion — I just got through the day. Now, I can take in the memories that I have; every day, something can happen, and it can turn into a good memory or a bad memory.”

When asked about the long term, Michael said he doesn’t think in such terms. In fact, he doesn’t even take things one day at a time.

“I’m locked in on thought-by thought, minute-by minute,” he explained, “because that last thought can bring you right back to where I was.”

Positive Steps

On Oct. 18, Michael will turn 18. As noted, he will then officially age out of Goodwin House. He’s hoping that his next short-term address will be a sober house, which will be what he called “another stepping stone on the journey to living without drugs.”

He admits to being somewhat nervous, but not scared.

“The way I was brought up was to always want more out of life, to achieve something greater than you’ve already achieved,” he explained. “I want to keep putting one foot in front of the other every day, because I don’t want to take one step forward and two steps back. I did that for such a long time … I don’t want to start this all over again.”

Getting to this point has been a long struggle, but Michael has found the will to change and keep moving forward. The Goodwin House has played a huge role in that, and the goal moving forward is to write more success stories like this.

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

United Way of Pioneer Valley Forges Unique Partnership Agreement

By George O'Brien October 30, 2018

Features

Test Driving a New Model

Paul Mina says the United Way of Pioneer Valley has to go back to basics in many respects, but it also has to do a lot of outside-the-box thinking.

Steve Lowell says he took the phone call back in early August; he doesn’t recall the exact date.

Everything else, though, he remembers quite clearly.

That’s because on the other end of the line was Paul Mina, president and CEO of the United Way of Tri County, who asked for a moment of Lowell’s time — and used it to get a whole lot more than that.

Mina was calling Lowell, president and CEO of Monson Savings Bank, and chairman of the board of the United Way of Pioneer Valley (UWPV), with a proposition of sorts, a unique partnership that has many potential — and, in some cases, already real — benefits for both United Ways.

That partnership comes in the form of a management agreement (two and a half years in length) whereby UWTC, as it’s called, will essentially share a CEO (Mina) with UWPV and handle backroom operations — bookkeeping, marketing, and others — for this region’s United Way for a percentage of the funds raised during its annual campaign.

This partnership, forged after several years of unsettledness at the top for UWPV — it has seen two CEOs and two interim CEOs since early 2016 — brings what Lowell called some “much-needed stability,” while also enabling UWPV to maintain its autonomy at a time when many such agencies are entering into mergers.

But it also gains much more, including perhaps $200,000 in savings on administrative costs and, even more importantly, a CEO with 30 years of experience working within the United Way family, said Lowell, adding that Mina brings a wealth of experience, and energy, to his expanded role.

“We needed some stability in the organization, and we needed a forward-looking, positive strategy,” he explained. “And in talking with Paul, our board of directors became convinced that he could do all that; he’s hit the ground running and done more in the month he’s been on board than I would have thought possible.”

Mina’s comments on his expanded duties and his approach to them echo those sentiments.

Steve Lowell

“We needed some stability in the organization, and we needed a forward-looking, positive strategy. And in talking with Paul, our board of directors became convinced that he could do all that; he’s hit the ground running and done more in the month he’s been on board than I would have thought possible.”

“I’m not a United Way CEO who hangs around and goes to meetings,” he told BusinessWest. “I’m a get-your-hands-dirty, fundraising person; I’m the chief fundraiser here, and I’m the chief fundraiser at our other office in Framingham, and I lead by example in that regard.”

By that, he meant that he’s generally not in his office at 1441 Main St. and is instead on the road, visiting area companies and stressing to decision makers that, while the times, and charitable giving habits, have changed, the United Way is still relevant, and it still plays a pivotal role within the community it serves.

“The first thing I said to everyone here in Springfield when we met on the first day was, ‘take your job descriptions and throw them out the window,’” he went on. “That’s because we’re all fundraisers, and that includes people who never leave this office.”

Such energy — and such a focus on fundraising — will certainly be necessary because, as most know, this United Way is much smaller (in every way) than it was a decade or even five years ago, especially when it comes to annual donations.

Indeed, this was a $5 million United Way — that’s the parlance used — earlier this decade, and is now closer to a $2 million agency. The loss of financial-services giant MassMutual as a major contributor — that corporation now gives back to the community through its own foundation — has been a major factor in the decline of the UWPV, but there are other factors as well.

These include changes within the business community, especially the smaller number of locally based banks and other types of companies, as well as those noted changes in how many individuals and businesses give back. Many now donate directly to a specific cause or charity, often through vehicles like the hugely successful Valley Gives program.

In response to these trends, and to bring its numbers higher, UWPV has to go back to basics in some respects, some Mina, and remind companies why it’s so important to support the United Way.

But it must also think outside the box, which in this case means beyond the traditional payroll-deduction model of giving back, as is the case with a new initiative called ‘Feed a Family,’ which invites individuals and businesses to donate specifically to the many food banks supported by the United Way (more on that later).

For this issue, BusinessWest looks at the new partnership arrangement, the projected benefits, and how the UWPV looks to capitalize on them.

When a Plan Comes Together

Summing up his first several weeks on the job, Mina said he’s on what he described as a ‘thank-you tour.’

By that, he meant he’s reaching out to many individuals who have been strong supporters of UWPV over the years, letting them know their support is certainly appreciated. He’s doing so, he said, because, due to all the transition in leadership in recent years, such acknowledgements have been somewhat lacking.

“We didn’t thank people enough — we didn’t honor people enough,” he told BusinessWest, adding quickly, “you can never thank people enough.”

Mina said that’s one of many lessons he’s learned over a more than 40-year career working for and behalf of nonprofits. It began with a lengthy stint as director of the Lincoln Square Boys Club in Worcester and, later, the Worcester Boys and Girls Club’s Camp Hargrove as well. He joined the United Way organization in 1988 as senior campaign fundraiser for the United Way of Central Mass., and in 1994, he became president of the United Way of Assabet Valley in Marlboro.

Since 1996, he’s led the UWTC, an entity created through the merger of several smaller United Ways based in Marlboro, Framingham, Norwood, Westborough, and Clinton — the three counties (actually parts of them) being Middlesex, Norfolk, and Worcester.

And since 2006, he’s also been president and CEO of Mass211, a program (a phone number, really) that connects callers to information about critical health and human services available in their community.

With these stops on his résumé, Mina is well aware of the many challenges facing United Ways across the country and across the region, especially the smaller organizations. Most all of them are looking for creative answers to the twin challenges of increasing revenues and reducing expenses.

It was with this thought in mind that a proactive Mina — aware that UWPV had launched a search to find a successor to Jim Ayers, who left his position as president and CEO to seek another opportunity, and looking for a way to help two United Ways — picked up the phone and called Steve Lowell.

“I said, ‘it’s very important that the western part of the state has an anchor United Way,’” he recalled, adding that he invited Lowell to breakfast to “hear him out.”

He agreed (Mina, Lowell, and Denis Gagnon, vice chair of UWPV, got together the next day, in fact), and Lowell recalls soon liking what he was hearing.

“He said that he might have a solution for a solution for our organization that would allow it to keep its autonomy and the local oversight we want, but also gain some efficiencies,” Lowell recalled, adding that, with that opening, he was all ears.

Fast-forwarding a little, the two sides worked out a proposal and took it back to their respective full boards. Mina said his board had a number of questions, which were answered sufficiently to garner a 17-1 vote to enter into the agreement. The vote was unanimous at the UWPV, which, said Lowell, viewed the partnership as the best possible path for the agency moving forward.

“This really benefits both organizations,” he told BusinessWest, adding that, beyond the help on the expense side of the budget, UWPV gains from Mina’s vast experience working for the United Way and guiding agencies through the recent whitewater.

“He has more than 30 years of United Way experience; he’s been through some tough times and been successful at turning them into positive situations,” Lowell said. “When you put it all together, it was a great solution for us.”

Shared Enthusiasm

Gagnon agreed with that assessment.

He noted that Mina and UWTC have a strong track record of bringing United Ways together in a merger, creating efficiencies, and providing ways for these agencies to carry out their missions effectively given the many challenges they’re facing.

This arrangement is not a merger, he said, stressing that point repeatedly, but the goals are similar, and so are the basic strategies for achieving them.

“We needed a new leader and a few other key staff members,” he said, noting that, with Ayers’ departure, there were some others as well. “The United Way of Tri County can provide that all in one shot, rather than have separate recruiting efforts.”

The plan is for Mina to spend half his week in Springfield and other half in Framingham, leading the UWTC, although he knows there will some weeks where he’ll be in one region more than the other. And these will certainly not be 40-hour weeks.

But will this arrangement work as intended for both agencies?

Those we spoke with are, as noted, certainly optimistic, and also convinced that this partnership is better than the alternative — hiring a CEO specifically for UWPV and keeping the backroom operations in Springfield, especially at this critical time for the organization — the middle of an all-important annual campaign.

More to the point, both United Ways need it to work and are committed to making it work, said Mina, noting that all United Ways are facing a host of challenges, including those mentioned earlier with regard to how people give and why.

Which brings him back to those notions of stressing the basics, but also thinking outside the box.

“People give through their heart to their head to their wallet,” he explained. “And we have to do a good job of telling people what happens when they contribute to the United Way. It’s not a right that we have that people give to us, it’s a privilege, and we have to prove that what we’re doing is valuable and that it helps improve quality of life for the people who live and work here.

“And in order to do that, you have to be able to show ROI,” he went on, “and you can’t do that if you’re not out in the community seeing what’s important and doing what’s necessary to be done.”

As an example of this, he noted the Feed a Family drive, which specifically targets food pantries and other agencies that help feed those within the community.

“At the United Way of Pioneer Valley, we have focused for decades on funding safety-net services that assist this very vulnerable population. One such service area is our food-security initiative where food pantries and congregate meal programs feed hungry individuals and families in our region,” he said, noting that last year, United Way- funded programs provided more than 251,000 meals in the Pioneer Valley.

“While that’s an impressive number, the need unfortunately continues to increase rapidly, and donations lag far behind,” he went on, adding that the initiative will directly support the Gray House, Home City Development Inc., Open Pantry Community Services, the Salvation Army, and the Springfield Rescue Mission (all based in Springfield), as well as Neighbors Helping Neighbors in South Hadley, Our Community Food Pantry in Southwick, and Providence Ministries for the Needy in Holyoke.

Bottom Line

The Feed a Family drive is, as Mina noted, somewhat outside-the-box thinking for this United Way, but something definitely needed amid these changing and very challenging times.

The same can be said for the management agreement between the UWPV and UWTC. It is something different, but also something both boards deemed ultimately necessary — not just for this area’s United Way, but for both agencies.

Rather than an act of desperation, Mina called it “an act of intelligence,” and he credited both boards for having the imagination, and good sense, to make it happen.

Will it work? Time will tell, but so far the arrangement has generated what its architects hoped it would — stability and optimism.

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

Stockbridge Mixes Progress with Timelessness

Community Spotlight

Margaret Kerswill (left) and Laureen Vizza in front of their Main Street shop, Mutability in Motion.

Margaret Kerswill has a couple of good views of Stockbridge’s business community. One is as president of the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce. The other is from her storefront window on Main Street.

“I think there’s a real appeal that’s well-defined in our town’s tagline, which is ‘a quintessential New England town.’ It feels small; it feels intimate,” said Kerswill, co-owner with her wife, Laureen Vizza, of Mutability in Motion, a downtown store that sells crafts handmade by artisans from across the U.S., many of them local.

“There’s a connection between people in town,” she went on. ‘When you walk through town in the morning, just about everyone says ‘good morning’ to you. There’s a very nice atmosphere about Stockbridge.”

Still, outsiders often peg the community as a tourist destination — which is certainly is — and not much else, and are surprised to find a bustling local economy that doesn’t shut down during slow tourism seasons.

“I know being in my shop, a lot of the visitors who come, who have never been here, are often surprised to see businesses stay open year-round,” Kerswill said. “When they visit other tourist areas at the beginning and end of the season, a lot of those restaurants and shops close down. We’re a small town, so most of our foot traffic is in the summer season, but we’re still here year-round, serving local regulars.”

Still, Stockbridge relies heavily on tourism and visitorship for economic development. With a population of just under 2,000 — ranking it in the bottom sixth in the Commonwealth — the community doesn’t have a deep well of residents or businesses from which to draw tax revenue, but it does boast a widely noted series of destination attractions, from Tanglewood to the Norman Rockwell Museum; from the Berkshire Theatre Festival to Berkshire Botanical Garden.

Other attractions continue to emerge as well, including the oft-delayed Elm Court project by Travaasa Berkshire County, which will turn the historic Elm Court Estate into a resort featuring 112 hotel rooms, a 60-seat restaurant, and a 15,000-square-foot spa.

The property, which sits on the border of Stockbridge and Lenox on Old Stockbridge Road, was constructed in 1886 as a summer cottage for William Douglas Stone and Emily Vanderbilt, completed a series of renovations in 1919, and evolved into an inn in the ’40s and ’50s, hosting dinners, events, and overnight accommodations. It was eventually placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The project to renovate it began six years ago when Front Yard purchased the estate from the Berle family, who had run a boutique, wedding-oriented hotel there from 2002 to 2009. Eight neighbors appealed the 2015 approval of the resort by the Lenox Zoning Board of Appeals, but the Massachusetts Land Court eventually ruled in favor of the developer, Front Yard LLC. This past summer, Front Yard asked the Stockbridge Select Board for — and received — an extension of the permit which would have expired last month. Construction is expected to begin in the spring.

Meanwhile, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is developing a $33 million construction project at Tanglewood, a four-building complex that will house rehearsal and performance space for the Tanglewood Music Center as well as a new education venture known as the Tanglewood Learning Institute — the first weatherized, all-season structure at Tanglewood, which the BSO plans to make available for events beyond the summer months.

“We really are an amazing cultural center here, between the visual arts and handcrafted arts and crafts,” Kerswill said. “We’ve got music, dance, and theater with amazing summer-stock casts. On one hand, we have the feel of country living, but we have the convenience of Manhattan two hours away, Albany 45 minutes away, Boston two hours away, and all the culture in our immediate area. It’s remarkable. That’s why I’m here — the culture and the arts.”

Community Ties

As chamber president, Kerswill leads a member base that’s smaller than most chambers, but “strong and loyal,” as she called it.

“We do some chamber-related functions to connect,” she said, “and we also have tri-town chamber mixers with people from Lenox and Lee, where we get together and share experiences in an informal setting over cocktails for a couple hours.”

Margaret Kerswill
“We really are an amazing cultural center here, between the visual arts and handcrafted arts and crafts. We’ve got music, dance, and theater with amazing summer-stock casts.”

The chamber also presents an annual event to honor members and businesses, alternating between an individual one year and a company the next. On top of that, it puts on two major events. One is the three-day Main Street at Christmas festival — slated this year for Nov. 30 through Dec. 2 — which brings thousands of people into town with activities for families and children, concerts, caroling at the Red Lion Inn, and self-guided house tours. On Sunday, Main Street closes down for several hours, antique cars are brought in, and the strip transforms into a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

That follows a summer arts and crafts fair each August, a weekend-long event that always sells out its vendor capacity, she said. “There’s no entry fee for patrons, and people freely walk around and come and go as they please. That brings a lot of people to town, at a time when summer is winding down and there’s less traffic.”

Stockbridge at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1739
Population: 1,947 (2010)
Area: 23.7 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: $9.76
Commercial Tax Rate: $9.76
Median Household Income: $48,571
Median Family Income: $59,556
Type of government: Town Administrator; Open Town Meeting
Largest Employers: Austen Riggs Center; Tanglewood; Red Lion Inn
* Latest information available

Not wanting to rest on its laurels when it comes to its status as a desirable town for tourists and residents alike, a visionary project committee was formed by Stockbridge officials several years ago to develop recommendations that could be implemented over the next 20 years. The committee issued a report in 2016 titled “Planning a Way Forward.”

That report noted that residents value the town’s cultural institutions and historic buildings; its open space, recreation sites, and walking trails; and its downtown (although many would like to see additional shops and services, as well as more parking). Meanwhile, they want to see smart housing growth that takes into account the community’s aging population, as well as additional transportation options and better accommodation of walkers and bicyclists.

As a result, the document envisioned a Stockbridge in 2036 that mixes the traditional strengths of tourism, culture, and creative economy with green- and technology-based businesses, food production from local farmers, and agri-tourism. The ideal community would also be less auto-reliant, expanding pedestrian networks, bicycle infrastructure, and regional bus and ride-sharing services.

The report also predicts a socially and economically diverse population that provides equally diverse housing options, from apartments and condominiums to smaller single-family homes, co-housing projects, and historic ‘Berkshire cottages.’ These include a mix of sustainable new construction and repurposed buildings, including the preservation of older homes, along with an increase of people living close to the town center, including mixed-use buildings with apartments over shops to support downtown businesses.

While the overall vision may be ambitious, it encompasses the sorts of goals a town of Stockbridge’s size can reasonably set when looking to move into its next era.

Blast from the Past

Kerswill, for one, is happy she and Vizza set up shop in Stockbridge — right next to the Red Lion Inn, in fact, which is in many ways the heart of the downtown business culture.

“It’s a great experience being in downtown in Stockbridge,” she told BusinessWest. “We don’t have any chain stores or restaurant franchises. We are all independently owned, and the chances are good, when you pop into one of our stores, that you’re going to be meeting the owner. It becomes a very personal experience because of that.”

As for the Red Lion itself, “it’s cozy and intimate,” she went on, “and they’ve modernized with things that people expect, like wi-fi, but you still get a real, old-fashioned experience, and I think people really crave that. I know I do.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

17 Ways To Get More Work Done

By Columnist October 30, 2018

Employment

(And Also Be at Least Reasonably Happy Doing It)

By John Graham

Most everyone has figured out that performance expectations keep going up. To put it bluntly, we face the challenge of doing more in less time. And it’s not about to change anytime soon.

In the past, those with lots of experience fared well. But not today. Experience can hold us back, like running against a strong wind. Experience is about what we’ve done in the past, and it has value in an ever-changing environment. On the other hand, expertise prepares us for what we must do next so we can face the future with confidence.

The question, then, is how to transition from experience to expertise, from looking backward for answers to looking forward with solutions. Here are 17 ways to do it.

1. Have the right mindset. Experience short-circuits the thinking process. We go from zero to 60 in a split second. We tear into tasks because we’ve been there before and know what to do. It takes an analytical mindset when entering uncharted territory.

2. Figure out what you need to know. More often than not, problems, misunderstandings, and confusion occur because we didn’t ask enough questions — or, more likely, any questions. We get off on the wrong foot by not knowing what we need to know.

3. Give yourself time. Some say they do their best work in a crisis or at the last minute. It’s also easy to deceive ourselves. Where does that leave us when we run out of time? The answer: in trouble and making excuses. And feeling overwhelmed.

4. Work on it and let it sit. The best solutions rarely, if ever, occur on the first attempt, whether it’s writing a report or working on a project. The human mind needs ‘noodling’ time to work in the background without pressure. Remember, everything can be improved.

5. Avoid confrontations. It isn’t easy, particularly since we seem to possess an urge to be right, a gyroscope of the mind. When coming into contact with an opposing view, the mind pushes back to regain its balance. It helps to view it as a signal to take a closer look before having a confrontation.

6. Never assume things will go smoothly. Why do we never get over being surprised when things go wrong? It’s as if someone is playing cruel jokes on us or deliberately throwing us curveballs to cause us grief. It’s best to be prepared by anticipating what might go wrong.

7. Second-guess yourself. To avoid getting blindsided, ask yourself ‘what if’ questions to foresee possible outcomes. Then, when asked about alternatives, you can say you considered various options and why you chose this one.

8. Learn something new. If you can do your job without thinking about it, you’re probably bored and underproductive. The human mind gets moving and stays active by coming up with new ideas, making improvements, and solving problems.

9. Go beyond what’s expected of you. It’s easy to put up a ‘I’ve reached my limit’ or a ‘I’m not paid to do that’ sign. Everyone feels that way at times. If we do, we can count on dismal days ahead.

10. Be present. It’s easy to be at work and not be present. The average employee spends just under eight hours a week on personal stuff, most of it on e-mail and social media. For those ages 18 to 34, add two hours a week, according to a staffing firm Office Team survey. That’s a day each week of not being present.

11. Ask questions. Have you started on a task and get into it only to discover you’re on the wrong track? Most of us have — too many times. It occurs when we’re too sure of ourselves or reluctant (or embarrassed) to ask questions. Asking the right questions is a sign that you’re thinking about what you’re doing.

12. Look for possibilities. Instead of just doing your work each day, take it to another level and interact with it so you get feedback from what you’re doing. Ask yourself: is it clear? Is it complete? Will the recipient understand it? Is it necessary? Will it make the right impression? What have I missed? Should I start over? Is it time for another set of eyes?

13.Take a chance. It’s invigorating to try something new. You may have been thinking about it for a long time, and it doesn’t really make any difference what it is. By taking your mind off all the annoying daily irritations, it can help invigorate your outlook and improve your productivity.

14. Have clear goals. Tedium sets in on any job. One day you realize that what was interesting and challenging is now tiring and unpleasant — perhaps even intolerable. If so, it’s ‘goal think’ time. Start by asking what you want to accomplish today, then add another goal for the coming month, and so on. When you know where you’re going, the tedium fades away.

15. Eliminate confusion. We may not be in a position to control the confusion around us, but we can avoid adding to it. We can make sure our messages are accurate and complete so there’s no misunderstanding, our address book and other files are current so we don’t need to bother others, we meet deadlines so we don’t leave others waiting, and so on.

16. Raise your standards. Others respond to us based on how they view us. How do they see you? Someone who get things done, who takes quality seriously, and who demands a lot from yourself? Make a conscious decision as to how you want to be perceived.

17. Take on a challenge. Nose around to see what you can find, drop a few hints, and even raise your hand. But be sure it’s something you want to sink your teeth into. If it is, you’ll have a great time doing it.

Follow this advice, and not only will you get your work done, but it will be more than you thought possible, and you’ll be happier at the same time. Better yet, your employer and your customers will be happier, too.
As it turns out, happiness doesn’t depend on what others do for us, but what we do for ourselves.

John Graham of GrahamComm is a marketing and sales strategy consultant and business writer. He is the creator of “Magnet Marketing,” and publishes a free monthly e-bulletin, “No Nonsense Marketing & Sales Ideas”; [email protected]

Trump’s NLRB Provides Employers More Guidance on Handbooks

By Columnist October 30, 2018

Law

A Clear Roadmap

By Kimberly A. Klimczuk

Kimberly A. Klimczuk

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is a federal law that protects employees’ right to engage in concerted activity. Although the NLRA is commonly thought of as protecting employees’ right to form a labor union, which it does, it also protects the right to engage in other concerted activities that may have nothing to do with unions. ‘Concerted activity’ is a broad term and refers to any action employees take together for their mutual aid and protection, such as when two employees go together to HR to complain about their supervisor, or when an individual employee speaks on behalf of himself and his coworkers to demand they all get a raise. The NLRA applies to all employers, whether unionized or not.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the NLRA. It has long held that employer policies or rules that interfere with the right to engage in concerted activity violate the NLRA. In 2004, however, the board, in its Lutheran Heritage decision, expanded the NLRA’s protections by ruling that work rules not intended or used to target concerted activity would nevertheless be unlawful if an employee could “reasonably construe” the rule to prohibit concerted activity.

Under the Obama administration, the board relied on the ‘reasonably construe’ standard to declare unlawful a number of commonplace rules. For example, the NLRB found that policies asking employees to refrain from negative comments about co-workers and managers and asking employees to represent the company in the community in a positive and professional manner were unlawful because employees could interpret the policies to restrict their rights to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment. At the same time, the board held similar rules to be lawful, such as a rule prohibiting “disloyal, disruptive, competitive, or damaging conduct.”

These decisions created confusion for employers. Without a clear standard as to when a rule would be considered legal, employers wondered whether common-sense rules that had long been part of company culture would be declared illegal by the NLRB.

NLRB members are appointed by the president, and, unsurprisingly, the members appointed by President Trump have been friendlier to employers. Late last year, the NLRB issued a decision (The Boeing Company, 365 NLRB No. 154) that established a new standard for evaluating the legality of employer rules. Under this new standard, the board will weigh the interests of the employer in maintaining work rules against the impact of those rules on employees’ right to engage in concerted activity.

In its decision, the board noted that, “over the past decade and one-half, the board has invalidated a large number of common-sense rules and requirements that most people would reasonably expect every employer to maintain.”

The board’s general counsel also issued a memorandum this past June that provides further guidance to employers on how handbook rules should be interpreted under the new standard. The general counsel instructed that the board’s regional directors and other officers should not be interpreting general work rules “as banning all activity that could conceivably be included.” He then went on to group common handbook policies into three categories:

1. Rules That Are Generally Lawful to Maintain

• Civility rules;

• Rules prohibiting photography or recording;

• Insubordination, non-cooperation, and refusal-to-cooperate rules;

• Disruptive-behavior rules;

• Rules protecting disclosure of confidential, proprietary, and customer information (as long as they don’t reference wage or employee information);

• Rules against defamation or misrepresentation;

• Rules prohibiting use of employer’s logos or intellectual property;

• Rules requiring authorization to speak on behalf of the company; and

• Rules banning disloyalty, nepotism, or self-enrichment.

2. Rules That Warrant Individual Scrutiny

These rules are not clearly lawful or unlawful. Instead, the lawfulness of these types of rules must be determined on a case-by-case basis:

• Broad conflict-of-interest rules;

• Confidentiality rules that encompass ‘employer business’ or employee information;

• Rules preventing disparagement of the employer;

• Rules prohibiting or regulating use of the employer’s name (as opposed to employer’s logo or trademark);

• Rules restricting employees from generally speaking to the media;

• Rules banning off-duty conduct that would harm the employer; and

• Rules prohibiting making false statements (as opposed to defamation).

3. Rules That Are Unlawful to Have

• Confidentiality rules regarding wages, benefits, or working conditions; and

• Rules that prohibit joining outside organizations or that require employees to refrain from voting on matters concerning the employer.

Bottom Line

The memo is good news for employers because it provides a clear roadmap to evaluate the legality of employer handbook rules and reverts to a more common-sense standard. It also declares several policies lawful that had been declared unlawful by the prior board.

Employers that shied away from enacting handbook policies like no camera recording or respect/civility rules, or changed handbook policies to ensure compliance with the Obama board’s crackdown, may want to revisit those decisions.

Kimberly Klimczuk is a partner with Springfield-based Skoler Abbott. An employment-law attorney, she specializes in labor relations and collective bargaining; employment litigation; employee handbooks, personnel policies, and practices; and other labor and employment matters; [email protected]; (413) 737-4753.

Commercial Real Estate

Commercial Real Estate

For Sale, for Lease

Click Here for a listing of available commercial properties

The Promise of Manufacturing Jobs

By Editorial October 30, 2018

Opinion

Editorial

It’s certainly nothing new.

Workforce issues have long been a stern challenge for this region’s manufacturers, and especially its precision machine shops. Companies have long struggled to not only gain the attention of young people and their parents, but also convince them that manufacturing has a solid future in this region and is something they should be part of.

Like we said, that’s nothing new, nor are many forms of response to this problem, everything from bringing students on tours of plants (and their parking lots so young people can see what their solid wages can buy) to improving salaries and benefits, to plant owners going to area schools and making students aware of what they make, how, and why they should consider becoming part of that team.

But this problem is reaching what might be called a critical stage. Indeed, a recent survey of about 40 area precision manufacturers revealed that, at the rate they’re growing — and the rate machinists currently on the floor are retiring — they will need to hire more than 500 over the next few years.

Extrapolate that number over the entire sector, and the need is roughly three times that number. Meanwhile, over that same period, the region’s technical and vocational high schools and Springfield Technical Community College will graduate only about 300 people from their manufacturing programs.

You can do the math.

This is a problem not without real consequences. Area machine shops are very busy at the moment, especially with aerospace, defense, medical devices, and other work, and projections are that things will stay hot for the foreseeable future. Many companies say they have the potential to grow, but what’s holding them back is finding enough talented people.

As the story explains, BusinessWest is now taking an active role in work to find a lasting solution to this problem with a new publication called Cool STUFF Made in Western Mass. That name itself is a nod to the specific target audience for this publication — young people, as in students in high school and even (make that especially) middle school.

Many of them don’t know about the many cool things made in this region — the list includes everything from golf balls to the paper for the Super Bowl program; from parts for attack helicopters and night-vision goggles to components for artificial limbs. And they also don’t know that the jobs making all these things are those proverbial good jobs with good wages and benefits, the kind of wages and benefits that can lead to a comfortable lifestyle, especially in an affordable region like Western Mass.

Cool STUFF is intended to help make them aware. It will include profiles of many area companies, complete with the thoughts of young people now working for them, individuals who were in high school only a few years ago themselves. It will also include many facts, figures, charts, and graphs designed to bring home the point that manufacturing is a solid option and a solid career.

Sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and MassDevelopment, Cool STUFF will be distributed at area high schools with tech programs, middle schools, workforce-development offices, area employers and other locations, and BusinessWest subscribers.

It is intended to inform, but also to inspire the next generation of manufacturing employees. With their help, a sector that has a long and proud past can also have a secure future.

Ballot Questions Are No Way to Govern

By Editorial October 30, 2018

Opinion

Editorial

They call it the ‘grand bargain,’ only, for anyone doing business in this state, it isn’t that at all.

It is, however, a grand compromise, which is something we may be seeing more of in this state given the way referendum questions — and the fear of them — are coming to rule how we do things in the state, literally and figuratively.

In recent years, ballot referendum questions have come to determine many things in this state — from whether we have nuclear power plants (we did, but not anymore), to whether recreational marijuana use is legal in this state (it now is, but the issue is so fraught with peril that the state keeps finding ways to delay what is now inevitable), to how farm animals are to be treated.

And this year, there’s a measure that would dictate how many patients nurses can take care of at any given time — we’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, the grand bargain. It came about because referendum questions were being prepared for the ballot that would, among other things, raise the minimum wage, increase paid leave, and reduce the sales tax.

Business leaders, fearful that in liberal Massachusetts all those questions would pass easily (and those fears are certainly well-grounded), took a decidedly proactive approach. They struck up a deal that would delay, slightly soften, or even scrap (the sales-tax reduction) those proposals in exchange for keeping them off the ballot.

A grand bargain? Hardly. The minimum-wage hikes, to be implemented over the next five years, and the increased family leave, while well-intentioned to be sure, will wreak havoc in a region like this, dominated as it is by small (as in very small) businesses and nonprofit operations. They’ll be hurt, but so will employees who will see their hours cut to keep their wages the same and ultimately see their buying power reduced as companies raise prices on a host of items to cover their increased labor costs.

But, again, this is better than the alternative — letting referendum questions bring more draconian changes, and much sooner.

As we said, referendum questions are becoming the way to govern in this state and many others, and, from a big-picture perspective, the picture is becoming more alarming.

On the surface, the referendum question is the most democratic form of government; let everyone (or at least everyone who votes) decide, rather than the men and women we send to City Hall and the State House.

But are the voters of this state the people who should be deciding such things as nuclear power, the legalization of marijuana, and, yes, nurse-staffing ratios, a matter that few people not in the business of running a hospital or tending to patients can fully understand?

It’s a good question, one that reflects the sentiments expressed by local business owner Carol Campbell in the story in thsi issue: “I have a hard time with people telling me how to run my business.”

But it’s a question that has already been effectively answered in the affirmative. The ballot question will remain a force in this state, and it will only gain more power over time.

Perhaps the grand bargain can serve as a model going forward for how to control the awesome power of the ballot question to alter the landscape and change lives in the process.

Let’s hope so.

Picture This

Picture This

A Pictorial Essay

Email ‘Picture This’ photos with a caption and contact information to [email protected]

Continuing the Fight

The 25th Rays of Hope Walk & Run Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer drew about 25,000 people to Forest Park in Springfield on Oct. 21 to raise money and awareness for the fight against breast cancer, as well as supporting survivors and remembering loved ones they’ve lost. The program, launched in 1994 by Lucy Giuggio Carvalho has raised almost $15 million over its history for research, treatment, equipment, breast-health programs, outreach, and education — all of it local — as well as providing grants to various community programs throughout Western Mass.

‘Pink Day’

LUSO Federal Credit Union in Ludlow and Wilbraham celebrated a “Pink Day” recently to raise awareness for breast cancer. The local, nonprofit community credit union is raising money to benefit Rays of Hope and the Pink W.A.Y. through calendar raffles for the months of November and December. Suggested donation is $10 (for one) or $15 (for two). To learn more, visit www.lusofederal.com.

Bowl-a-thon Donation

Joe Phillips, right, president of Phillips Insurance Agency Inc., presents a $5,000 check to John Freedman, president of Joseph Freedman Company, for the seventh annual Joseph Freedman Bowl-a-thon being held Nov. 7 at AMF lanes in Chicopee. The proceeds go to Camphill Village, a community for adults with developmental disabilities who live together and work together caring for each other.

Getting College Experience

Brian Candido, professor and program chair for Springfield Technical Community College’s Computer Information Technologies program, leads a class involving students from Springfield’s Commerce High School. The college welcomed more than 40 students from Commerce this fall as part of a program, created in collaboration with the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership, to enable high-school students to take college-level classes. Students attending STCC can choose between courses in mobile app programming, computer basics, and airbrushing techniques.

Court Dockets

Court Dockets

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.

HAMPSHIRE DISTRICT COURT

Frank Foodservice Solutions Inc. v. The Biz of Coffee, LLC
Allegation: Money owed for goods sold and delivered: $14,740.56
Filed: 9/26/18

HAMPSHIRE SUPERIOR COURT

Asha Khanna v. Local Burger, LLC and Travelers Casualty Insurance Co. of America
Allegation: Negligence causing personal injury: $311,209.46
Filed: 9/24/18

New England Mutual Insurance Co. as subrogee of Charlotte A. Sousa v. Fuel Services Inc. and Boston Environmental, LLC d/b/a The TankSure Program
Allegation: Negligent inspection, testing, and evaluation of an oil tank: $132,062.93
Filed: 10/1/18

WESTFIELD DISTRICT COURT

Donna Jones v. Northeast Health Group Inc. d/b/a Governor’s Center
Allegation: Failure to pay wages: $3,188.52
Filed: 9/7/18

Anthony Williams v. Villa Franca Donuts Inc.
Allegation: Negligence; slip and fall causing personal injury: $14,783.60
Filed: 9/27/18

Agenda

Agenda

‘Cold Cases and the Politics of Murder’

Nov. 1: The Center for Law & Justice at Elms College will host a lecture by Sarah Stein of the Center for the Resolution of Unresolved Crime from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Alumnae Library Theater. Stein, a forensic and behavioral analyst who works with law-enforcement agencies as a consultant and investigator on cold cases and death investigations, will give a talk titled “Cold Cases and the Politics of Murder.” She has been involved in the case of Joanne Ringer of Clarksburg, who had been missing for over a year before her remains were found in Hatfield earlier this year. She also was involved in the case of Molly Bish, who had been missing for three years before her remains were found in Hampden County in 2003. Stein began consulting on cold cases during her studies at the University of New Haven, under the direction of the Henry C. Lee Institute. Since that time, she has consulted independently for numerous law-enforcement agencies and families on cold-case homicides, missing-persons cases, and child-abduction homicides. Currently, she provides both training and case-consultation services to law enforcement.

‘Facilitating Difficult Conversations’

Nov. 2, 3: Holyoke Community College (HCC) is offering two one-day seminars aimed at teaching people how to better manage difficult conversations, both in their professional and personal lives. “Facilitating Difficult Conversations” will run on Friday, Nov. 2, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and again on Saturday, Nov. 3, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., in HCC’s Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development on the main HCC campus at 303 Homestead Ave. The seminars, led by Debbie Lynangale, director of the Mediation & Training Collaborative in Greenfield, are appropriate for managers, public officials, educators, parents, customer-service personnel, law-enforcement professionals, or anyone else who wants to learn techniques for setting up and preparing for difficult conversations, conveying tough messages, receiving challenging feedback, and harnessing the creative energy that conflict can bring. Participants will practice de-escalation techniques and ways to develop better listening skills to support problem solving. The cost of each one-day seminar is $125. For more information or to register, visit hcc.edu/bce or call HCC Community Services at (413) 552-2123.

Film Screening of ‘Living While Dying’

Nov. 3: Harmony House of Western Massachusetts, a home for the terminally ill, will sponsor a showing of the film Living While Dying at 10 a.m. at South Hadley’s Tower Theaters. A $10 donation is suggested to attend. After the film, a question-and-answer session and panel discussion will be held with the filmmaker, Cathy Zheutlin, and representatives from Harmony House. The 45-minute documentary film, currently on tour throughout the country, tells the stories of four friends with terminal illnesses who chose to live out their final days at home with creativity, humor, and courage. In a world that sees death as something to vanquish, this film presents an alternative. Though the subject is difficult, the film is surprisingly uplifting. Dispelling traditional fears and expectations about death, Living While Dying allows viewers to reimagine and set the stage for their own inevitable ending. It offers profound opportunities to uncover value, grace, and meaning in all stages of life. For more information or tickets, call Karen Buscemi, a member of the Harmony House boaerd of directors, at (413) 531-7640. Tickets are also available on the Harmony House website at www.harmonyhousewma.org or at the theater the day of the film showing.

Real-estate Licensing Course

Nov. 5 to Dec. 12: The Realtor Assoc. of Pioneer Valley will sponsor a 40-hour, 14-class sales licensing course to help individuals prepare for the Massachusetts real-estate salesperson license exam. Tuition is $379 and includes the book and materials. For more information and an application, call the Realtor Assoc. of Pioneer Valley at (413) 785-1328.

Chamber Corners: Upcoming Events

Chamber Corners

1BERKSHIRE
www.1berkshire.com
(413) 499-1600

•Nov. 14: Chamber Nite, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Berkshire Country Day School, 55 Interlaken Road, Stockbridge. Cost: free. Register at www.1berkshire.com.
• Nov. 17: Berkshire Young Professionals Holiday Festive Brunch and market, time to be determined. Businesses, send your young employees to this connecting event where they can enjoy brunch with other young professionals and then head over to Greylock WORKS for the second annual Fall FESTIVE, a handmade holiday market celebrating local food and design from the Berkshires and beyond. Cost: $5 for event entry, food and drink separate. Register at www.1berkshire.com.
• Nov. 20: Entrepreneurial Meetup, 8 a.m. Meet, greet, and make things happen at these free networking events. Meetups bring entrepreneurs together on the last Tuesday of the month for coffee or drinks. Location to be determined. Cost: free. Register at www.1berkshire.com.

GREATER CHICOPEE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.chicopeechamber.org
(413) 594-2101
• Nov. 15: Holiday Bazaar & Raffle, 5-8 p.m., hosted at Portuguese American Club, Exchange Street, Chicopee. Sponsored by Polish National Credit Union, PeoplesBank, Westfield Bank, Insurance Center of New England, and the Arbors Kids. Holiday Tree Raffle sponsored by Health New England. For more information on this event, visit chicopeechamber.org/events.
• Nov. 21: Salute Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., hosted by Summit View Banquet and Meeting House in Holyoke. Sponsored by United Personnel, Westfield Bank, Holyoke Medical Center, Polish National Credit Union, Gaudreau Group, Spherion Staffing Services, PeoplesBank, Veteran Services Office – City of Chicopee, Prosthetic & Orthotic Solutions, and First American Insurance Agency. Chief greeter: Stephanie Shaw of the Chicopee Veteran Services Office. The keynote speaker will be Jack Downing of Soldier On. Cost: $23 for members, $28 for non-members. Veterans will be admitted free of charge. Sign up online for this event at chicopeechamber.org/events.

GREATER EASTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.easthamptonchamber.org
(413) 527-9414
• Nov. 14: Hampshire County Business Bash, 5-7 p.m., hosted by the Lord Jeffery Inn, 30 Boltwood Ave., Amherst. This tri-chamber networking event is being presented by the Greater Easthampton, Greater Northampton, and Amherst Area chambers of commerce. Cost: $10 for members, $15 for non-members. Pre-registration is suggested. For more information and to register, visit www.easthamptonchamber.org or call the chamber at (413) 527-9414.
• Dec. 7: Snow Ball, 6-11 p.m., hosted by the Boylston Rooms, 122 Pleasant St., Easthampton. A buffet will be served curtesy of Meyers Catering, and DJ Lori Bolanger will provide music for dancing. This event, sponsored by bankESB, Cooley Dickinson Health Care, Finck & Perras, Richards Fuel & Heating Inc., Taylor Real Estate, and Freedom Credit Union, is an ideal opportunity for an office holiday party. Cost: $75 per person. Pre-registration is required. For more information and to register, visit www.easthamptonchamber.org or call the chamber at (413) 527-9414.

GREATER NORTHAMPTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.explorenorthampton.com
(413) 584-1900
• Nov. 2, 6, 13, 27: “Maintaining a WorkPress Website,” 9:15-11:15 a.m. (Nov. 2, 6, 27); 10:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. (Nov. 13). Hosted by Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, 99 Pleasant St., Northampton. Presented by Pioneer Training. This class is intended for people who are currently maintaining or building a WordPress website. The class will meet for four sessions, and part a each session will be devoted to working on your own website, with assistance from the instructor. Participants are asked to bring their own laptops, as well as login credentials for their websites. Cost: $120 for members, $150 for non-members. Pre-registration is required, and space is limited. To register, visit goo.gl/forms/RBdkeCbXPwGIoH6G2.
• Nov. 8: “Advertising with Facebook for Beginners,” noon to 1 p.m., hosted by Coldwell Banker, 112 Main St., Northampton. Presented by Pam Sclafani, Marketing director of Coldwell Banker Realtors. If you’ve been thinking about online advertising but are reluctant to pull the trigger, Sclafani will show you how to grow your audience, reach the right people, and manage and measure the results within the largest social-media platform in the world. Cost: free.

• Nov. 14: November Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by the Lord Jeffery Inn, Amherst. Three-chamber event. Sponsored by Kuhn Riddle Architects. Cost: $10 for members.

•Dec. 5: December Arrive @ 5, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Thornes Marketplace, downtown Northampton. Sponsors: Christopher Heights of Northampton, Keiter Builders Inc., and the Lusteg Wealth Management Group – Merrill Lynch. Cost: $10 for members.

GREATER WESTFIELD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.westfieldbiz.org
(413) 568-1618
• Nov. 5: November Mayor’s Coffee Hour, 8-9 a.m. hosted by Andrea York Photography, 16 Union Ave., Suite 1A, Westfield. Please join us for our monthly Coffee Hour with Westfield Mayor Brian Sullivan. This event is free and open to the public. Sign up online at www.westfieldbiz.org/events, or call the chamber at (413) 568-1618 to register so we may give our host a head count.
• Nov. 14: November After 5 Connection, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Holiday Inn Express, 39 Southampton Road, Westfield. Refreshments will be served, and a 50/50 raffle will benefit the chamber scholarship fund. Bring your business cards and make connections. Cost: free for members, $10 for non-members (cash or credit paid at the door). Sign up online at www.westfieldbiz.org/events. For sponsorships or more information, call the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
• Nov. 28: November Annual Meeting & Awards Dinner, 5:30-8:30 p.m., hosted by Tekoa Country Club, 459 Russell Road, Westfield. Join us as we gather to celebrate our 2018 award winners, including Business of the Year: Armbrook Village; Nonprofit of the Year: the Westfield Athenaeum; and Lifetime Achievement Award: Ann Lentini of Domus Inc. Sponsored by Westfield Bank. Dinner tickets cost $45 for members, $60 for non-members. Sign up online at www.westfieldbiz.org/events. For sponsorships or more information, call the chamber at (413) 568-1618.
• Dec. 7: Holiday Breakfast, 7-9 a.m., hosted by East Mountain Country Club, 1458 East Mountain Road, Westfield. Platinum sponsor: Staples; silver sponsor: Easthampton Savings Bank; bronze sponsors: PeoplesBank and Westfield Center. Cost: $25 for members, $40 for non-members. Sign up online at www.westfieldbiz.org/events. For sponsorships or more information, call the chamber at (413) 568-1618.

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CHAMBER
www.springfieldregionalchamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Nov. 8: “Discover Your Power Voice,” 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., hosted by Springfield Country Club. Presenter Angela Lussier will show attendees how to discover the power of their voice through her interactive presentation. Cost: $35 for members, $45 for non-members. Registration will be available soon. Visit www.professionalwomenschamber.com for more information.

SPRINGFIELD REGIONAL CHAMBER
www.springfieldregionalchamber.com
(413) 787-1555
• Nov. 7: Rise and Shine Business Breakfast, 7:15-9 a.m., hosted by Springfield Sheraton, Monarch Place, Springfield.
• Nov. 7: Networking Night with West of the River Chamber, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Ronald McDonald House, 34 Chapin Terrace, Springfield. Free for members who bring an unwrapped toy or non-perishable item; $10 general admission.
• Nov. 8: Professional Women’s Chamber Headline Luncheon, “Discover Your Power Voice,” with Angela Lussier, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Hosted by Springfield Country Club, 1375 Elm St., West Springfield. Cost: $35 for members, $40 for non-members, $25 for students.
• Nov. 15: Government Reception, 5-7 p.m., hosted by the Carriage House, Storrowton Tavern, 1305 Memorial Ave., West Springfield. Cost: $60 for members in advance, $70 general admission in advance.

Reservations for all Springfield Regional Chamber events may be made online at www.springfieldregionalchamber.com, e-mailing [email protected], or calling (413) 755-1310.

WEST OF THE RIVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
www.ourwrc.com
(413) 426-3880
• Nov. 7: Night of Networking, 5-7 p.m., hosted by Ronald McDonald House, 34 Chapin Terrace, Springfield. This event, co-presented with the Springfield Regional Chamber, is a networking event bringing the two chambers together for a great cause. Bring an unwrapped toy or a non-perishable food item, and your entrance fee is free. Take a tour of this facility, learn about all they provide for communities in need, and network with fellow business people from all over Western Mass. For more information and to register, visit www.westoftheriverchamber.com.

YPS OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD
springfieldyps.com
• Nov. 14: Professional Breakfast Series: “Trumps Taxes and What It Means for You,” 7:30-9 a.m., hosted by MassLive, 1350 Main St., fourth floor, Springfield. Join us for breakfast as Amanda Garcia, CPA reviews what’s to come as part of President Trump’s tax plan for 2019. This breakfast is part of a series sponsored by the MBA Program at Elms College. Register at springfieldyps.com.
• Nov. 15: YPS November Third Thursday, 5-7 p.m., hosted by the Student Prince, Fort Street, Springfield. Networking event. Cost: free for members, $10 for non-members. Register at springfieldyps.com.

People on the Move

People on the Move

Amanda Levy

Hang Tran

Brand-development firm Six-Point Creative has made two recent additions to its staff, including Amanda Levy, client advocate, and Hang Tran, graphic designer. Levy brings to Six-Point a combination of product-management and account-service experience. She worked previously for Bindertek in Belchertown, where she was lead merchandiser, marketing analyst, and, most recently, manager of product development. She has also provided freelance design and marketing consultation to businesses and nonprofits throughout the region. Levy, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College, will work with Six-Point’s account service team, with responsibility for serving a number of consumer and business-to-business accounts. Tran is an award-winning designer with a degree in graphic design and interactive media from Fitchburg State University. She has provided creative direction, graphic design, image development, and production services for national and international brands while working for PUMA in Westford and for Brigade in Hadley. She will provide these services to Six-Point clients, including visual brand development for companies going through Solve for Y, a Six-Point brand-development process for innovative companies ready to scale.

•••••

Lisa White

Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. recently welcomed Lisa White, CPA as its newest tax manager. White comes to MBK with nearly 20 years of public accounting experience with a focus in taxation. She has worked for large and regional firms throughout the Eastern U.S. and carries significant technical knowledge and best practices from a variety of firms and industries. At MBK, she focuses primarily on federal and state income-tax compliance and planning within the construction and real-estate industries. As a tax manager, White will have the opportunity to coach and mentor staff as well as manage the delivery of services directly to many clients. White holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Middle Tennessee State University and is a member of the American Institute of Public Accountants and the Massachusetts Society of Public Accountants. She is a certified public accountant licensed to practice in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In 2011, she was named among the 40 Under 40: Members to Watch by the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs.

•••••

Richard Lord, who built Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) into one of the most far-reaching business associations in the commonwealth, will retire next year after leading the organization for almost 20 years. Lord, a North Adams native and Williams College graduate who took the top job at AIM in 1999, will remain as president and CEO while the AIM board of directors chooses a successor. Lord made the 103-year-old former manufacturing association the voice of all Massachusetts employers on generational economic issues such as the cost of health insurance, taxation, education, worker training, and energy. At the same time, he expanded the membership of AIM into developing areas of the state economy such as services, technology, biosciences, and robotics. His accomplishments range from representing the views of employers during the landmark 2006 Massachusetts Health Care Reform Law and subsequent 2012 Health Cost-Containment Law to expanding the AIM HR Solutions business to help employers both large and small manage complicated human-resources issues.

•••••

Rev. Beverly Herbert

The Rev. Beverly Herbert has joined Cancer Connection as executive director. A two-time cancer survivor, Herbert has worked as a municipal director of city planning and community and economic development, and has held interim executive director positions at a community-action agency and a community-development corporation. Most recently, she worked for Pathlight, Billings Forge Community Works in Hartford, Conn., and the city of Wilmington, N.C. She was honored by the Assoc. of Fundraising Professionals of Western Mass. in 2017 as a fundraising professional and as chapter president. Formerly a pastor of the A.M.E. Zion Church, Herbert discovered Cancer Connection when she attended a support group and used other services there. “Through Cancer Connection, I became part of a family — one full of love and life, in spite of the common cancer thread.”

•••••

Curran and Keegan Financial has added a new client service associate, Heather Cahill. She joins with a focus on helping clients and advisors during the financial-planning and investment process. Cahill joined Curran & Keegan after nearly two decades of executive-level roles at a multi-million-dollar international corporation located in the Pioneer Valley. Passionate about community, education, and environment, she serves as vice chair of the Hatfield District School Committee and is a founding member of the Hatfield Community Garden.

•••••

Carla Maurer

Epstein Financial Services recently announced the hiring of Carla Maurer as chief financial officer. Maurer brings nearly a decade of financial experience to the role and will be responsible for all accounting activities, including cash flow, budgeting, and financial planning. Previously, Maurer served as director of Administrative Services for Lincoln Tech, where she handled fiscal matters for the post-secondary vocational school. She helped facilitate the annual preparation of operating budgets, reviewed month-end profit and loss statements, and prepared monthly and quarterly forecasts for the corporate executive team. For nearly four years, Maurer held the position of financial and administrative director for Pioneer Continuing Care Providers, where she oversaw payroll, human resources, and day-to-day business activities. Prior to that, she worked as an accounting manager for Hampden County Physicians, where she held managerial responsibility for a multi-specialty group practice with more than 70 providers and 14 locations. Maurer has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in accounting and taxation from American International College.

•••••

Elms College promoted Brother Michael Duffy, conventual Franciscan friar, to the position of associate dean of the School of Nursing. In this role, he will have primary responsibility for the School of Nursing’s undergraduate programs, service learning programs, and international studies. Duffy most recently served as coordinator of the accelerated second degree in Nursing program, assistant professor of Nursing, and director of the Elms College caRe vaN, a free health clinic on wheels that serves homeless and underserved people of Chicopee while affording clinical experience to pre-licensure students. Duffy has extensive experience as an adult nurse practitioner and a nurse educator, teaching at Elms from 1988 through 1997, and again since 2011. He has practiced in healthcare in homeless settings in Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and Baltimore for years. In 2011, he returned from a six-year assignment in Jamaica, where he managed a rural clinic, to serve as the coordinator of the accelerated second degree program in Nursing. He earned his bachelor’s degree from American International College, his master’s degree from the University of Lowell, and his doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree from Regis College in Weston, where his caRe vaN vision came to fruition as his doctoral project. Today, the caRe vaN is staffed with pre-licensure students, RN-to-BS students, clinical faculty, and DNP students, and provides free healthcare to the homeless and underserved in Chicopee. Duffy returns to Jamaica each winter with second degree accelerated nursing students who gain population-health and community-nursing experience through patient care and clinical experiences.

•••••

Jeffrey Simpson

Jeffrey Simpson, CFA has been promoted to vice president of Commercial Lending and chief commercial officer for UMassFive College Federal Credit Union. The Commercial Services Department has a goal of supporting the local community and economy with competitive rates and terms on short- and long-term commercial business loans for working capital, equipment, commercial real estate, and special projects designed to bring greater efficiencies and cost savings to member businesses. The department has begun its lending process to fellow business professionals in the area. UMassFive is also crafting business checking, savings, and money-market options, as well as a business credit card.

•••••

Professor Ramesh Sitaraman of UMass Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences is one of a large team of scientists and engineers who have been honored by the Assoc. for Computing Machinery with its SIGCOMM Networking Systems Award for work that “has had a significant impact on the world of computer networking,” the association said. Sitaraman and colleagues are credited with building the Akamai content-delivery network (CDN), the world’s first major CDN and now one of the largest ever built, and for pioneering the concept of internet content delivery. The Akamai CDN currently consists of 240,000 servers in 130 countries and serves about one-quarter of all internet traffic. CDNs deliver a majority of internet traffic today, including much of the world’s e-commerce, news, media, entertainment, social networks, and online applications. Two decades after their creation, Sitaraman noted, CDNs have completely transformed the internet as we know it while simultaneously spawning a business sector valued at tens of billions of dollars. Sitaraman directs the CICS Laboratory for Internet-Scale Distributed Systems and is a member of its Theoretical Computer Science group. His research involves all aspects of internet-scale distributed systems, including algorithms, architectures, performance, and energy efficiency. He is currently focused on the next-generation internet. He received the 2014 College Outstanding Teacher Award.

•••••

American International College (AIC) inducted seven accomplished alumni into the biennial Co-Curricular Hall of Fame during a brunch in their honor on Oct. 13, as part of the college’s Homecoming Weekend festivities. Inductees for 2018 include distinguished alumni who cross generations from the Class of 1950 through 2009. Glendora Vesta Folsom Buell ’50 has enjoyed a historically successful career in television. Her show, A Chat with Glendora, has been syndicated on public-access cable television stations nationwide since it first aired in 1972, making it the world’s longest-running active public-access program. Emily Rivera-Nunez ’97, who received numerous awards for leadership as an undergraduate student, has gone on to enjoy a rewarding career in criminal justice and victim advocacy. Her husband, Luis Nunez ’98, is also an inductee. During his time at AIC, Nunez was an active member of the campus community, serving in student government, Model Congress, the wrestling team, and as a resident assistant. He is a senior development accountant and continues to volunteer his time and talent with youth wrestling and baseball. Kia Prescott Bandoh ’99, a biology major and recipient of Who’s Who Among Students in Colleges and Universities, went on to earn a master of physician assistant degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School. She is a physician assistant at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Gynecologic Oncology Program with the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers. Yolanda McCormick ’03 (MS ’05) graduated with a bachelor of science in sociology and criminal justice, and a master of science degree in criminal justice. She earned a second master of science degree in mental-health counseling and is a licensed mental-health clinician in North Carolina. Two longtime Springfield residents are also being recognized. Elizabeth Perez ’99 majored in criminal justice and political science while at AIC. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology at the college. Perez has been a social worker and supervisor with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families for 19 years. Keshawn Dodds ’01 (MEd ’09) is the executive director of the Boys & Girls Club Family Center in Springfield. Dodds recently received the 2018 Ubora Award from the Springfield Museums. He was a member of BusinessWest’s 40 Under 40 class of 2012, and received the Stone Soul Community Leader Award in 2015. In 2016, he became an Amazon best-selling author with his sci-fi novel Menzuo: The Calling of the Sun Prince.

Company Notebook

Company Notebook

Six Flags Delivers Thousands of Diapers to Square One
SPRINGFIELD — Six Flags New England recently held a diaper drive to support the children and families served by Square One. Thousands of diapers were donated by Six Flags patrons, and, in exchange, donors were given free admission to the theme park. More than 500 cases of diapers were picked up at the Six Flags offices by Square One staff on Oct. 11 and delivered to the Square One Family Center at 1095 Main St. in Springfield.

Johnson & Hill Staffing Earns Top National Honor
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Johnson & Hill Staffing received the top honor in the 2018 American Staffing Assoc. (ASA) Genius Grand Award program, which recognizes the best and most innovative communications and marketing campaigns among ASA staffing agency members across the U.S. Johnson & Hill Staffing was honored for its innovative new website, marketing video, and social-media endeavors. A panel of communications and marketing experts selected the honorees based on the overall quality of their campaigns’ messaging, design and visual appeal, originality of approach, and outcomes.

UMass Amherst Launches Biomedical Engineering Department
AMHERST — The College of Engineering at UMass Amherst has established a new department of Biomedical Engineering, which will offer bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. It is the fifth department within the college. Biomedical engineering (BME) integrates engineering science, biology, and medicine into a cross-disciplinary field focused on improving human health and solving problems in the delivery of healthcare. Its key principle is that, by looking at the human body through the lens of engineering, one can apply the concepts of design, optimization, and programming to complex biological systems in order to detect, repair, and treat disease and to create diagnostic and therapeutic tools. The new program will be the core of biomedical-engineering research and teaching at UMass Amherst working within the College of Engineering and with the Institute of Applied Life Sciences. The institute was established in 2014 with $150 million from the Massachusetts Life Science Center and the university.

Bay Path Students Create PSAs for Girls Inc. of Holyoke Event
LONGMEADOW — Bay Path University students joined Girls Inc. of Holyoke at the university’s Empsall Hall last week to launch public service announcements (PSAs) in honor of International Day of the Girl Child, a celebration designated by the United Nations on Oct. 11. The PSAs, created by students in the Communications program, reflected different perspectives on how to encourage and empower girls of all ages and backgrounds. The event featured a ‘COMMversation,’ where university students and local panelists, including Girls Inc. Executive Director Suzanne Parker, Women’s Fund of Western Mass CEO Donna Haghighat, Springfield School Committee member LaTonia Monroe Naylor, Open Pixel Studios co-founder and animator Kathryn Taccone, and author and Bay Path Professor Maria Luisa Arroyo, engaged in conversations about how to create a world where girls can feel safe as they explore their individual paths to success. Bay Path students of all disciplines used their storytelling skills to focus on what they feel are currently the biggest challenges, as well as opportunities for girls and women. A walk-through gallery of their PSAs was displayed, prompting discussion among guests, faculty, staff, and other students. Naomi Naylor, daughter of LaTonia Monroe Naylor, attended the event as a local student ambassador. She showcased and described a work of art she painted called “Colors of Acceptance.” Following the event, she donated this piece to Bay Path University through Fondon. Arroyo, who was Springfield’s inaugural poet laureate, signed her book at the event. The ongoing partnership between Girls Inc. and Bay Path University for International Day of the Girl Child was further highlighted in the afternoon as Fondon offered a presentation of her research for “The Intersection: Women of Color On the Move.”

Paragus IT Celebrates Two Years of Employee Ownership
HADLEY — In 2016, Paragus IT CEO Delcie Bean implemented an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), which distributed ownership of 40% of the company to its (at the time) 40-plus employees. On Oct. 19, Paragus and its employees, now numbering more than 50, toasted Employee Ownership Month and celebrated self-ownership with a party at the firm’s headquarters in Hadley. An ESOP is an employee-owner program that gives staff an owner interest in the company, making them shareholders in addition to being employees. High-profile ESOPs in the U.S. include Harpoon Brewery, Publix Markets, Chobani Yogurt, King Arthur Flour, and Lifetouch. “After two years, it’s clear that the ESOP decision was a smart one,” Bean said. “It has fueled growth and inspired deeper commitment by giving everyone a direct stake and a personal investment in the future of the company.”

Elms Nursing Graduates Achieve 100% Pass Rate on Licensure Exam
CHICOPEE — Elms College announced that class of 2018 graduates from its School of Nursing achieved a 100% pass rate on the NCLEX-RN (National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses). This means every one of the college’s 2018 bachelor’s-degree graduates passed the licensure exam. In 2017, the Massachusetts pass rate for the NCLEX-RN was 86%, and the national rate was 87%; Elms College 2017 graduates achieved a pass rate of 96%. To date, the national 2018 NCLEX-RN pass rate for U.S. undergraduate nurses is 92%, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Inc.

Pathlight Awarded $23,000 to Support Innovative Curriculum
SPRINGFIELD — Pathlight, a Valley leader in residential and community services for people with intellectual disabilities or autism, has been awarded $23,000 in funding from the Westfield Bank Future Fund and the Chicopee Savings Bank Charitable Foundation to support a sex-education and relationships program that gives people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism the skills to build and maintain healthy relationships throughout their lives. The program, called Whole Selves, is the result of 10 years of teaching the social skills of relationships to adolescents, teens, and adults with a variety of disabilities at Pathlight’s Whole Children program. Whole Selves is flexible and individualized, uses explicit instruction, and has proven to be successful in local high schools where it is taught. Pathlight is developing the program to be available online to middle and high schools nationally. One goal of the Whole Selves project is to prevent the staggering rate of sexual abuse among people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (ID/DD). According to a recent report by NPR, people with ID/DD are sexually assaulted at a rate seven times higher than those without disabilities. A robust and accessible education is one solution to preventing abuse and isolation, and Whole Selves is developed specifically for this population. Pathlight is piloting the program in several schools this fall, with an eye toward releasing it nationally in 2019.

Phillips Insurance Agency Supports Joseph Freedman Bowl-a-Thon
CHICOPEE — Joe Phillips, president of Phillips Insurance Agency Inc., recently delivered a $5,000 check to John Freedman, president of Joseph Freedman Co., for the seventh annual Joseph Freedman Bowl-a-Thon being held Wednesday, Nov. 7 at AMF Lanes in Chicopee. The proceeds go to Camphill Village, a community for adults with developmental disabilities who live together and work together, caring for each other. Phillips Insurance Agency was established in 1953 and is a full-service risk-management firm with a staff of 27 professionals. The agency handles the personal and commercial insurance needs for thousands of individuals and businesses in New England.

Bradley Recognized by Condé Nast Traveler Readers as Third-best Airport in U.S.
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. — The Connecticut Airport Authority (CAA) announced that Condé Nast Traveler released the results of its 31st annual Readers’ Choice Awards, with Bradley International Airport recognized as the third-best airport in the U.S. Travelers gave the airport high marks for “convenient on-site parking, plentiful charging stations and free wi-fi, decent restaurant options, and an overall relaxed atmosphere.” The CAA has initiated major terminal enhancements at Bradley over the last couple of years aimed at elevating the travel experience. Recent upgrades include the addition of Two Roads Tap Room, Escape Lounge, a Phillips Seafood restaurant, a duty-free shop, and a mother’s nursing room — and more improvements are underway. Additionally, the expansion of the airport’s route network continues to be a priority, with the airport most recently celebrating the launch of its latest non-stop service to St. Louis.

Chicopee Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Boosts HCC Culinary Arts Program
HOLYOKE — The Chicopee Savings Bank Charitable Foundation donated $50,000 to Holyoke Community College (HCC) for the benefit of students preparing for careers in the culinary-arts and hospitality industry. Bill Wagner, president of the foundation, presented a check for that amount to HCC President Christina Royal and officials from the nonprofit HCC Foundation during a brief ceremony on Oct. 2 at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute. The $50,000 donation will go toward programs, equipment, maintenance, instruction, and student services at the institute, which opened in January in downtown Holyoke. During the ceremony, a plaque recognizing the donation was unveiled outside the institute’s general purpose lab, which is the teaching kitchen used for HCC’s non-credit culinary and workforce-training programs.

Briefcase

Briefcase

Invesco, MassMutual Announce Strategic Partnership of Invesco, OppenheimerFunds

SPRINGFIELD — Invesco Ltd. and MassMutual announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, whereby Invesco will acquire MassMutual asset-management affiliate OppenheimerFunds Inc. In turn, MassMutual and OppenheimerFunds employee shareholders will receive a combination of common and preferred equity consideration, and MassMutual will become a significant shareholder in Invesco, with an approximate 15.5% stake. This strategic transaction will bring Invesco’s total assets under management to more than $1.2 trillion, making it the 13th-largest global investment manager and sixth- largest U.S. retail investment manager, further enhancing the company’s ability to meet client needs through its comprehensive range of high-conviction active, passive, and alternative capabilities. “The combination with OppenheimerFunds and the strategic partnership with MassMutual will meaningfully enhance our ability to meet client needs, accelerate growth, and strengthen our business over the long term,” said Martin Flanagan, president and CEO of Invesco. “This is a compelling, highly strategic and accretive transaction for Invesco that will help us achieve a number of objectives: enhance our leadership in the U.S. and global markets, deliver the outcomes clients seek, broaden our relevance among top clients, deliver strong financial results, and continue attracting the best talent in the industry.” “We have long held OppenheimerFunds’ people and strong investment performance track record in high regard,” Flanagan continued. “OppenheimerFunds’ culture and commitment to high-conviction investing complement our own, and the combination will create significant opportunities for the talented professionals of both companies.” MassMutual Chairman, President, and CEO Roger Crandall added that “MassMutual is excited for the next chapter in our successful asset-management strategy. Invesco is a highly regarded asset manager, and OppenheimerFunds has been an incredibly successful affiliate of MassMutual for the past 28 years. We look forward to participating in the future growth of the combined entity as a long-term partner and shareholder. This strategic combination positions us well to continue to benefit from a strong, diversified, global asset-management business, which will further strengthen our financial position and support our ability to invest in the long term, provide increased value to our policy owners and customers, and help us deliver on our purpose to help people secure their future and protect the ones they love.”

Report Evaluates Potential of New Water Technologies to Boost Jobs, Environment

AMHERST — The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) has released a comprehensive study that evaluates the potential of developing a network of water-testing demonstration centers in the Commonwealth, including one at UMass Amherst. The centers would pilot new water technologies to position Massachusetts as a global leader in the water-innovation and energy-efficiency sector, providing significant business and employment opportunities. The report was released at the Innovations and Opportunities in Water Technologies Conference held at the Life Sciences Laboratories at UMass Amherst. The conference was sponsored by MassCEC and the Economic Development Council (EDC) of Western Massachusetts. Speakers included Martin Suuberg, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection; Stephen Pike, CEO of MassCEC; Rick Sullivan, president and CEO of the Western Mass. EDC; and Kumble Subbaswamy, chancellor of UMass Amherst. The report calls for creating a network of three demonstration centers around the state. They would be located at the Wastewater Pilot Plant at UMass Amherst, the Massachusetts Alternative Septic System Test Center in Barnstable, and a pilot plant located at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s Deer Island Treatment Plant in Boston Harbor. Establishing this network of water-technology demonstration centers could create jobs, lower energy costs, and optimize municipal operations in addition to supporting water-technology research, the study says. A successfully established test-bed network could serve existing Massachusetts-based water-technology companies, help attract new companies to the Commonwealth, advance new solutions to both local and global water challenges, and provide a strong foundation for innovation. The Amherst site is ideal for this work, Sullivan said. “UMass Amherst is already a leader in this sector. The campus is positioned to undertake further research and development that will support industry growth and help grow a talented workforce for related industries.” Authorization for an investment in water technologies was approved as part of the state’s 2014 environmental bond bill. Release of state capital funds for such an investment must be evaluated and approved by the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker.

Incorporations

Incorporations

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

AGAWAM

Wilson-Thompson American Legion Auxiliary Unit 185 Inc., 484 Springfield St., Agawam, MA 01001. Elizabeth A. Melchiori, 67 Virginia St., Springfield, MA 01108. American Legion Auxiliary is the world’s largest women’s patriotic service organization. American Legion Auxiliary (ALA) members and volunteers step up to advance our mission of service to veterans, military and their families.

HADLEY

Vistula River Distilling Company, 146 Russell St., Hadley, MA 01035. Paul Kozub, same. Own stock interests/membership interests.

Yellow Ribbon Trucking Inc., 265 Bay Road, Hadley, MA 01035. Christopher J. Omasta, same. Ownership, operation, and leasing of trucking vehicles and related services.

HOLYOKE

The Wick Inc., 240 Lower Westfield Road, Holyoke, MA 01040. Michael J. Lenihan, same. To operate a pub/tavern and to serve food.

GREENFIELD

ZDX Transport Inc., 16 Spring Terrace, Greenfield, MA 01301. Nicolai Parpalov, same. Trucking.

LONGMEADOW

XI Solutions Inc., 1657 Longmeadow St., Longmeadow, MA 01106. Uzma A. Razzaq, same. IT consulting.

NORTHAMPTON

UJ Sushi Inc., 136 North King St. (Rt.5), Northampton, MA 01060. Youjie Chen, 84-33 56th Ave 2nd Fl., Elmhurst, NY 11373. Sushi bar inside the supermarket.

SPRINGFIELD

Thompson Real Estate Group Inc., 6 Driftwood Road, Springfield, MA 01128. Tracy Thompson Viola, same. Buying and selling real estate properties.

Vineyard Shores Construction Inc., 42 Blodgett St., Springfield, MA 01108. Jeremy Christopher, same. Construction.

World Football Federation US Inc., 187 King St., Springfield, MA 01109. Eric M. Brown, same. Promote football teams and leagues.

WESTFIELD

Toy4u Corp., 50 Mechanic St. 2 Fl., Westfield, MA 01085. Alex Chepurin, same. Transportation and boat repairs.

Doing Business as Certificates

DBA Certificates

The following business certificates and trade names were issued or renewed during the month of October 2018.

AMHERST

Amherst Vivi, LLC
48 North Pleasant St.
Nick Gu

Ideal Cleaning
224 Belchertown Road
Diamantino Moneno

New Bridge Organizing Solutions
65 Stagecoach Road
Simone Thibodeau

Turner Simmons Co.
20 Bridge St.
Canari Turner Simmons

BELCHERTOWN

Simply Fit
442 State St.
Jocelyn Magner

Swift River Crafts
51 Main St.
Jacqueline Dupre

Wolf and Raven Designs
29 Terry Lane
Caitlin Andrew

CHICOPEE

JV Consultants Group
307 Hampden St.
Jorge Santos

Kappy’s Keepers
126 Mountainview St.
Erik Kaplan

Massasoit/Tackband
118 Dulong Circle
Irving Angell III

Stefanos Street Café
93 Frink St.
Melissa Stefanowich, Scott Stefanowich

Wink Lash Boutique
51 Cabot St.
Luis Marrero

DEERFIELD

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
29 Elm St.
CD Practice Associates Inc.

Off the Cuff Brewing Co., LLC
12 Railroad St.
Gary Bogoff

Pease Handyman Services
4 Stillwater Road
Todd Pease

Sund Builders
27 Eastern Ave.
Matthew Sund

USASA Massachusetts Snowboard and Freeski Competition Series
15 Wells St.
John Friends

Volvo Cars Pioneer Valley
253 Greenfield Road
Carla Cosenzi Zayac

EASTHAMPTON

Aztec Appraisal Services
23 Beechwood Ave.
Kelley Hopkins

Groom
122 Pleasant St.
Anthony Covalli

Small Beer Press
150 Pleasant St., #306
Gavin Grant

Whobody
116 Pleasant St., Suite 220
Lea Donnan

HADLEY

BKJ Landscaping and Construction
233 River Dr.
John Yusko Jr.

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
234 Russell St.
CD Practice Associates Inc.

J & J Brothers Taco & Mini Market
41 Russell St.
Eliana Taveras

Kushi Farm
196 River Dr.
Matt Kushi

Mi Tierra
48 Russell St.
Dora Saravia

River Valley Dental
63 East St.
Babak Gojgini

Riverbend Animal Hospital
43 Russell St.
Ann McEwen

Susanne Moser Research & Consulting
4 Kozera Ave.
Susanne Moser

HOLYOKE

Day Brook Village Senior Living
298 Jarvis Ave.
Holyoke Retirement Community Inc.

Dough Life
50 Holyoke St., #A202
Muhammed Erenler

Go Fast Marketing
31 Arlington St.
Randy Westbrook, Rafael Correa

Holly’s Nail
2257B Northampton St.
Loan Tran

JB’s Restaurant
200 Whiting Farms Road
James Lavelle

Riverside Auto & Cycle
85 North Bridge St.
Michael Richardson

LUDLOW

COP Transportation Co.
270 West St.
Frank Arduino

Jim and Eddie’s Dry Cleaning
190 East St.
James Chenier

NORTHAMPTON

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
22 Atwood Dr.
CD Practice Associates Inc.

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
1 Denniston Place
CD Practice Associates Inc.

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
30 Locust St.
CD Practice Associates Inc.

Cooley Dickinson Medical Group
40 Main St.
CD Practice Associates Inc.

H2gOgirl
2 Belanger Place, Apt. D
Elizabeth Grunewald

Healing Touch Acupuncture Clinic
25 Main St., Suite 339C
Reuven Goldstein

Mineral Hills Winery
592 Sylvester Road
Susan Godard

My Hats
81 Conz St., #213
Debra Horton

Risetex Inc.
30 North Maple St.
Andrew Huszar

Ryan Imported Car Repair Inc.
3 Brewster Court
Joseph Ryan

Skyline Design
209 Locust St.
Douglas Ferrante

SOUTHWICK

Helping Hands Elder Care
268 Feeding Hills Road
James Bouley

Innovative Aerospace, LLC
8 Woodland Ridge
Lynne Stapleton

John Labelle Plumbing & Heating
17 Kimberly Dr.
John Labelle

TG Home Improvement
86 Bungalow St.
Terrance Gorenc

SPRINGFIELD

Careful Cleaning
653 Carew St.
Gwendolyn Guidy

Caribbean Food Mart
11 Dorset St.
Faith Hart

CJ Dreams
170 Central St.
Carmen Hernandez

Collectibles Items
515 Tiffany St.
Thuy Tran

Conversation Connection
2475 Main St.
Conversation Connection

Hilton Garden Inn Springfield
800 Hall of Fame Ave.
Paul Picknelly

Hooked
524 Armory St.
Yesenia Vega

Jessie’s
70 Massasoit St.
Efrain Vazquez Jr.

King Maker Consulting Services
126 Stevenson Ave.
Saibo Ndlovu

L & R Remodeling
2994 Main St.
Luis Rivera

Michael J. Childs Masonry
307 Commonwealth Ave.
Michael Childs

Morning Star Energy
104 Marengo Park
Jody Hart

Miss Eternal Beauty
24 Bancroft St.
Michelle Nicole

Mundo Cellular Inc.
514 Main St.
Alfredo Garib

S & M Cleaners
61 Yale St.
Jashia Bolden

Second Chance Animal Shelter
67 Mulberry St.
Second Chance Animal Shelter

Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel
One Monarch Place
Paul Picknelly

Sparkle Girls by Cassandra
54 Lyndale St.
Catalina Melendez

Squeaky Clean Auto Detailing
1213 Worcester St.
Shawn Warren

Veganish Foodies
685 Bay St.
Lamont Stuckey

Wonderland
240 Chestnut St.
Paul Ramesh

XMD Xtreme Auto Detailing
7 Central St.
Joel Carrero

ZMK Motors
111 Farnham Ave.
Marcus Kashmanian

WESTFIELD

Another Way Tutoring
1029 North Road, Suite 24
Ashling Belair

Chris A. Wood-Allen Massage Therapist
48 Dana St.
Chris Wood-Allen

Have Comedy Will Travel
36 Moseley Ave. B
Steven Henderson

The Healing Room
49 Sackett Road
Andrea Lopez

Menard Construction & Design
46 Stuart Place
Dennis Menard

St. Mary’s Parish School PTO
35 Bartlett St.
Christina Lovelace

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Costco Wholesale Corp.
119 Daggett Dr.
Costco Wholesale Corp.

Iglesias Cristianas Rey de Mi Vida Inc.
214 Elm St.
Francisco Brown

Nailtique Spa
1817 Riverdale St.
Nghia Viet Nhuyen

T & T Remodeling
69 Lathrop St.
Scott Skorupski

Wrap Your Ride
62 Main St.
Kumal Mirzay

Yogurt City
935 Riverdale St.
Kui Lin

WILBRAHAM

Alpha Oil Co. Inc.
2440 Boston Road, Suite 5
James Diotalevi, Patricia Diotalevi

Balise Ford of Wilbraham
1979 Boston Road
Steven Mitus

Mama Life Oils and Wellness
6 Old Farm Road
Jessica Petit

Man Around the House
74 Oakland St.
Thomas Duquette

The Scented Garden Gift Shop
2341 Boston Road, Unit 10
Michele Axtmann

SSD Tactical Training Inc.
2400 Boston Road, Unit 1A
Crystal Williams, David Williams

Sunrise and Dire Design
11 Bruuer Ave.
Danielle Desmarais

Bankruptcies

Bankruptcies

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

Addtech
Grimes, David Brian
93 Washington St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Aguiar, Jose A.
7 Danforth Farm Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Aldo Palazzi Painting
Palazzi, Aldo L.
64 Barry St.
Feeding Hills, MA 01030
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/18/18

Areiza, Amparo
2118 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Booker, Carol A.
PO Box 453
Turners Falls, MA 01376-0453
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/25/18

Brueno, Daniel W.
Brueno, Lois M.
111 Fenway Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/29/18

Buor, Alexander K.
67 Wollaston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 10/01/18

Cartagena, Juan J.
120 Front St., Apt. 3R
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/21/18

Charnok, Susan K.
139 Francis Ave., Apt. A
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Clapper, Mathew
Clapper, Amanda
375 Lenox St
Athol, MA 01331
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Coleman, Brian
9 Temple, Apt. 606
Springfield, MA 01105
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Connor, Kelly I.
76 Royal Lane
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/18

Costa, Gaery A.
15 Ellington St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Crawford, Jason R.
201 Montgomery St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Crosier, Pamela J.
330 East Main St.
North Adams, MA 01247
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Cruz, Joe L.
23 Brookside Circle
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/18

Davis, Janette
a/k/a Parker, Janette
2071 Riverdale St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/18

Desrosiers, Heidi Hill
4 Ely Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Farry, Seth
Farry, Michele M.
181 Beebe Road
Monson, MA 01057
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Forward Change Experience
Santiago, Antonia Ivette
270 Sibley Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Gauthier, Brian C.
Gauthier, Kristen V.
a/k/a Votzakis Gauthier, Kristen A.
43 Highland Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/30/18

George, Richard C.
P.O. Box 540
Sturbridge, MA 01566
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/01/18

Gryszkiewicz, James
53 Woodmont St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/25/18

Haberski, Michael H.
39 Scenic Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Hair Cellar
Gauthier, Lynn F.
Cramer, Maria Louise
37 Bretton Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Higgs, Sharman D.
a/k/a Cunningham, Sharman
35 Ralph St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/16/18

Joseph, Elizabeth
11 Yale St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/01/18

Juno, Andrea
73 Barrett St., Apt. 2
Northampton, MA 01060
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/20/18

Kim, Sunny K.
108 Jerilis Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/28/18

Korman, Andrzej
a/k/a Korman, Andy
58 Charpentier Blvd.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Korman, Danuta
a/k/a Korman, Donna
58 Charpentier Boulevard
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Lenkeit, Elisabeth M.
a/k/a Steinhoff, Elisabeth
155 Nonotuck St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Love, Gabriel
a/k/a Farley-Love, Gabriel
292 Housatonic St.
Lenox, MA 01240
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Lugo, Damaris
a/k/a Lugo – Medina, Damaris
P.O. Box 174
Springfield, MA 01101
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Madlin, Joseph E.
362 West Housatonic St., Apt. 3C
Pittsfield, MA 01201
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Martin, Thomas E.
Martin, Ann Marie
145 Prospect St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

McCarthy, Jeffrey R.
200 Lambert Terrace, Unit 39
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Morehouse, William R.
Morehouse, Shari L.
1791 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/25/18

Pelletier, Richard Michael
Pelletier, Robin M.
342 Southwick Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/28/18

Preston, Janine A.
54 Chandler Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/18/18

Pueschel, Mark A.
Pueschel, Judy R.
15 Gates St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Rousseau, Alan
115 Granger St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/17/18

Skinner, Rhonda V.
240 Franklin St., 1st Fl.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Swaitlowski, Thomas J.
Swaitlowski, Tasha L.
PO Box 142
Gilbertville, MA 01031
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 10/01/18

Taylor, Sandra G.
735 Memorial Dr., Lot 61
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/18

Thomas, Myron N.
44 Sunset Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/18/18

Topor, Sandra L.
35 Smith St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/21/18

Torres, Felix
408 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Tricoche, Marcia P.
145 Dartmouth Terrace
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Trompke, Matthew R
27 Cold Hill Dr.
Granby, MA 01033
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/27/18

Turgeon, Sarah F.
85 Brookhaven Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Veilleux, Tyler LD
74 Theroux Dr., Unit F4
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Wirtes, Rosemary A.
Crossway Towers
130 High St., Apt C00
Lee, MA 01238
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Woodbury, Mark S.
118 Clairmont Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Filing Date: 09/24/18

Woofenden, Michael Ross
Woofenden, Beth Catherine
232 Sugar Hill Road
Chesterfield, MA 01012
Chapter: 7
Filing Date: 09/19/18

Real Estate Transactions

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

ASHFIELD

240 Beldingville Road
Ashfield, MA 01330
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Ryland L. Bouchard
Seller: Peter Gabriel
Date: 10/05/18

BERNARDSTON

99 Merrifield Road
Bernardston, MA 01337
Amount: $123,000
Buyer: Adam Martin
Seller: MTGLQ Investors LP
Date: 10/03/18

BUCKLAND

11 East Buckland Road
Buckland, MA 01338
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Ronald E. Basil
Seller: Ruth S. Pierce
Date: 09/24/18

CHARLEMONT

145 Main St.
Charlemont, MA 01339
Amount: $177,000
Buyer: Ashley R. Drake
Seller: Jeffrey J. Hochhalter
Date: 10/01/18

COLRAIN

12 Herzig Lane
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: David A. Chandler
Seller: Stephen Chandler
Date: 09/27/18

165 West Leyden Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $246,500
Buyer: Kylee M. Bourassa
Seller: Steven W. Curtiss
Date: 09/25/18

CONWAY

67 Eldridge Road
Conway, MA 01341
Amount: $365,000
Buyer: Gregory T. Rose
Seller: Eldridge, R. Frederick, (Estate)
Date: 09/27/18

95 South Part Road
Conway, MA 01341
Amount: $220,500
Buyer: Barry D. Elson
Seller: Barry D. Elson
Date: 09/27/18

92 West Parsons Dr.
Conway, MA 01341
Amount: $372,000
Buyer: Blayleys RET
Seller: Elizabeth Toffey
Date: 10/03/18

DEERFIELD

34 King Philip Ave.
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $396,500
Buyer: John A. Tuttle
Seller: Kevin A. Wissmann
Date: 09/28/18

13 Ward Ave.
Deerfield, MA 01373
Amount: $332,400
Buyer: William T. Breed
Seller: Andrei Agapov
Date: 10/02/18

ERVING

7 High St.
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $159,600
Buyer: Cody J. Pease
Seller: Robert W. Crosby
Date: 09/28/18

40 North St.
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $174,350
Buyer: Roger L. Jacobsen
Seller: Cody J. Pease
Date: 09/28/18

111 Old State Road
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Joel Disciullo
Seller: Cheryl R. Howard
Date: 10/04/18

GREENFIELD

111 Davis St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Emma Ayres
Seller: Crystal L. Keldun
Date: 09/28/18

427 Davis St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Gerald E. Kenney
Seller: Paul F. Sirum
Date: 10/01/18

343 Federal St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $342,500
Buyer: ZL Realty LLC
Seller: AMR TR
Date: 10/01/18

4 Greenway Lane
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $193,000
Buyer: Priscilla L. Phelps
Seller: Christopher D. Goddard
Date: 09/28/18

33 Grinnell St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $337,000
Buyer: Maxwell Barnett
Seller: Siri M. Goldberg
Date: 09/27/18

34-36 Grove St.
Greenfield, MA 01376
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Ellen L. Brown
Seller: Louis W. Peck
Date: 10/01/18

43 Harrison Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $183,000
Buyer: Parker J. Hickey
Seller: Paul T. Plante
Date: 09/27/18

14-16 Hayes Ave.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $128,000
Buyer: Daryl R. Springman
Seller: Theresa Jenoure
Date: 09/28/18

12 Laurel St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: Louise Roy
Seller: Dubino, Vera N., (Estate)
Date: 09/28/18

67 Log Plain Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $197,000
Buyer: Jeffrey J. Diefendorf
Seller: Diana M. Schindler
Date: 09/28/18

225 Plain Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $317,900
Buyer: Susan M. White
Seller: Peregrin J. Schwarzer
Date: 09/25/18

28 Russell St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $477,445
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Sandra G. Lavelle
Date: 09/25/18

55 Scout Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $427,000
Buyer: Dennis L. Booska
Seller: David R. Facey
Date: 09/24/18

12 Vernon St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $172,800
Buyer: Keith W. Decato
Seller: Adam Gleason
Date: 09/26/18

3 Woodbine St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $191,000
Buyer: Jessica Robey
Seller: Angela Recchia
Date: 10/01/18

HEATH

118 Flagg Hill Road
Heath, MA 01346
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Charles W. Nartowicz
Seller: Burnt Hill Holdings LLC
Date: 09/28/18

3 Flagg Hill Road
Heath, MA 01346
Amount: $164,091
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Jeanne F. Charles
Date: 09/28/18

LEVERETT

48 Richardson Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Adam M. Brady
Seller: Donimic J. Ippolito
Date: 09/28/18

63 Teawaddle Hill Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Andrew Vlock
Seller: Emerald City Rentals LLC
Date: 10/05/18

MONTAGUE

274 Greenfield Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $184,000
Buyer: Brandon Stacy
Seller: Susan Lowery
Date: 09/27/18

40 Hatchery Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $173,000
Buyer: Reverse Mortgage Solutions
Seller: Myron A. Warner
Date: 09/24/18

26 Montague St.
Montague, MA 01376
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Douglas Honeycutt
Seller: Dennis Booska
Date: 09/24/18

37 Swamp Road
Montague, MA 01351
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Kristi M. Williams
Seller: Theresa A. Patnode
Date: 09/28/18

12 Vladish Ave.
Montague, MA 01376
Amount: $204,000
Buyer: Melanie S. Thorpe
Seller: Cheryl A. Clark
Date: 10/05/18

NEW SALEM

185 Moosehorn Road
New Salem, MA 01355
Amount: $128,000
Buyer: Raymond P. Bergmann
Seller: Camp Sims Inc.
Date: 09/26/18

NORTHFIELD

118 Alexander Hill Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $345,000
Buyer: Theresa A. Patnode
Seller: Christopher M. Blair
Date: 09/28/18

Hinsdale Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $1,050,000
Buyer: Nourse Realty LLC
Seller: William J. Randall TR
Date: 09/28/18

61 Main St.
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: John J. Castorino
Seller: Steven J. Kelley
Date: 10/01/18

229 Maple St.
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $439,000
Buyer: Charles H. Hand
Seller: William F. Louisgnau
Date: 10/02/18

376 South Mountain Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $462,586
Buyer: Aleda Jonquil
Seller: John M. Singer
Date: 10/03/18

ORANGE

15 Dexter St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $154,000
Buyer: Amelia R. Dynice
Seller: Jesse Gadarowski
Date: 09/25/18

26 Hayden St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $148,500
Buyer: Carla J. Wheeler
Seller: Patrick E. O’Neil
Date: 10/01/18

13 Howe St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $154,000
Buyer: Charles W. Floyd
Seller: Jonathan Sonjai
Date: 09/28/18

142 West Orange Road
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: Warren C. Willard
Seller: Harris, Stanley C., (Estate)
Date: 09/25/18

ROWE

62 Pond Road
Rowe, MA 01367
Amount: $351,500
Buyer: William Travis
Seller: Michael J. Phillips
Date: 10/05/18

68 Zoar Road
Rowe, MA 01367
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Thomas Plante
Seller: Thomas Chiofalo
Date: 09/26/18

SHELBURNE

417 Little Mohawk Road
Shelburne, MA 01370
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Little Mohawk Properties
Seller: Jean V. Gadomski
Date: 09/28/18

40 Wilson Graves Road
Shelburne, MA 01370
Amount: $355,000
Buyer: Siri Goldberg
Seller: Diane L. Fernald
Date: 09/28/18

SHUTESBURY

16 Gass Lite Lane
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Amount: $525,000
Buyer: 2 Peach Retreat LLC
Seller: Elizabeth P. Perkins IRT
Date: 10/01/18

SUNDERLAND

73 North Silver Lane
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $319,900
Buyer: David Goodwin
Seller: John A. Tuttle
Date: 09/28/18

156 Russell St.
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $356,500
Buyer: Bethany J. Jones
Seller: Huff, Victoria C., (Estate)
Date: 09/25/18

WHATELY

27 Eastwood Lane
Whately, MA 01373
Amount: $512,000
Buyer: Kevin A. Wissmann
Seller: William F. Lemon
Date: 09/28/18

HAMPDEN COUNTY

AGAWAM

15 Alfred St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $178,000
Buyer: Sinead Gill
Seller: Wade R. Giorgini
Date: 10/05/18

66 Broz Terrace
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: Max E. Baskin
Seller: Arthur D. Premont
Date: 10/05/18

27 Campbell Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $140,100
Buyer: Michael Lapointe
Seller: Robin Derose
Date: 09/28/18

43 Carr Ave.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $209,500
Buyer: Mark A. Couchon
Seller: Ronald E. Soden
Date: 09/26/18

226 Colemore St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $222,000
Buyer: Judith A. Spellacy
Seller: Julie D. Peiffer
Date: 10/05/18

243 Cooper St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Diane P. Minicucci
Seller: Jeffrey R. Peterson
Date: 09/26/18

32 Emerson Road
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: William T. Reid
Seller: Maxine Cirillo
Date: 10/05/18

66 Highland St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $216,000
Buyer: Rosa M. Torres
Seller: Jessica C. Nieves
Date: 09/26/18

22 Independence Road
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Wade R. Giorgini
Seller: Santaniello, Peter, (Estate)
Date: 10/05/18

106 Mill St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $259,500
Buyer: Zachery I. Jediny
Seller: William T. Reid
Date: 10/01/18

1068 North St. Ext.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Vladimir Buynovskiy
Seller: Kostiantyn Kuterhin
Date: 09/24/18

145 Raymond Circle
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: Anthony M. Santaniello
Seller: Stella M. Symanski
Date: 09/27/18

16 Red Oaks Circle
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Nathan T. Lee
Seller: Pacewicz, Paul P., (Estate)
Date: 10/05/18

17 Simpson Circle
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Kevin P. Chevalier
Seller: Robert J. Lefebvre
Date: 09/27/18

208 School St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $159,500
Buyer: Joseph W. Mikalson
Seller: US Bank
Date: 10/01/18

150 Southwick St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Rebecca J. Connolly
Seller: Aaron M. Jones
Date: 10/04/18

703 South Westfield St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Nicholas Depalma
Seller: Ralph Depalma
Date: 10/03/18

538-540 Springfield St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $228,000
Buyer: Nicholas Maratea
Seller: Morgan Group LLC
Date: 10/05/18

541-547 Springfield St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $439,000
Buyer: ATR Realty LLC
Seller: Mercer Island Realty Inc.
Date: 10/04/18

58 Sunset Terrace
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $194,000
Buyer: Elizabeth Jarvis
Seller: Paul M. Lovell
Date: 10/05/18

53 Tom St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $218,000
Buyer: Mario R. Moretti
Seller: Lisa A. Mackechnie
Date: 09/27/18

31 Valentine Terrace
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Paige M. Preston
Seller: Phillip J. Preston
Date: 09/24/18

BLANDFORD

30 Gore Road
Blandford, MA 01008
Amount: $202,500
Buyer: Kenneth Dagenais
Seller: Divina Urena
Date: 09/28/18

BRIMFIELD

42 Champeaux Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $467,841
Buyer: Bank Of America
Seller: Douglas Kirkpatrick
Date: 10/05/18

146 Washington Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $177,500
Buyer: Nicholas J. Buccelli
Seller: Richard P. Coache
Date: 09/25/18

CHESTER

181 Goss Hill Road
Chester, MA 01050
Amount: $775,000
Buyer: Goss Road Estates LLC
Seller: Scott H. Tillinghast
Date: 10/03/18

78 Maynard Hill Road
Chester, MA 01011
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Adam M. Starr
Seller: 78 Maynard Hill Road LLC
Date: 10/01/18

14 Olin Ave.
Chester, MA 01011
Amount: $164,564
Buyer: Deutsche Bank
Seller: Karalyn Engwer
Date: 09/24/18

CHICOPEE

14 Ashmont St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Ibrahim M. Mustafa
Seller: Michelle Gorecki
Date: 09/28/18

30 Brooks Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $297,000
Buyer: Bruce Davis & W. Barnett TR
Seller: Jose L. Cabrera
Date: 10/05/18

66 Cinnamon Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $252,400
Buyer: Branden M. Labrie
Seller: Walter J. Orszak
Date: 10/05/18

29 Cochran St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Colleen M. Bates
Seller: Elizabette F. Botelho
Date: 09/26/18

7 Connecticut Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $262,000
Buyer: Kathleen J. Perla
Seller: 2 Sons Realty LLC
Date: 09/26/18

44 Devlin Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $277,000
Buyer: Jose L. Cabrera
Seller: Elsa G. Bartolo
Date: 10/05/18

94 Dixie Terrace
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Heather Sullivan
Seller: Evan D. Cromwell
Date: 10/05/18

118 Dulong Circle
Chicopee, MA 01022
Amount: $871,500
Buyer: 118 Dulong Circle Realty
Seller: Marsha A. Rickless
Date: 09/28/18

56 Edgewood Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $142,900
Buyer: Theodore A. Enos
Seller: Barbara A. Campagna
Date: 09/27/18

675 Fuller Road
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $620,000
Buyer: Mike Laser Enterprises
Seller: Seabra Brothers
Date: 10/04/18

402 Irene St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $197,900
Buyer: Jacqueline A. Welch
Seller: Laura E. Lanier
Date: 09/24/18

90 Langevin St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Aleathia Lavalley
Seller: Paul T. Strange
Date: 09/28/18

100 Lombard St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $149,000
Buyer: Stephen A. Foster
Seller: Sandra A. Parsons
Date: 10/04/18

50 Lorraine St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Edward S. Jakobowski
Seller: Waseem Ahmad
Date: 09/26/18

134 Lukasik St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Anthony Bourget
Seller: James J. Fournier
Date: 10/03/18

99 Mayflower Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Juliette Son
Seller: Loretta R. St.Marie
Date: 09/28/18

657 Meadow St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: 657 Meadow Street LLC
Seller: Jeffrey J. Campbell Inc.
Date: 09/27/18

73 Mellen St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Alykarl LLC
Seller: Claire M. Stefanik
Date: 09/28/18

591 Memorial Dr.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $29,500,000
Buyer: Chicopee Marketplace Owners
Seller: Brixmor GA Chicopee Marketplace
Date: 09/24/18

365 New Ludlow Road
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $214,000
Buyer: Justin F. Guilmette
Seller: Dianne M. Young
Date: 10/05/18

184 Newbury St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Reza Walker
Seller: Walter Tylek
Date: 09/27/18

120 Oldfield Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $184,000
Buyer: Brandyn Pelissier
Seller: Daniel R. Gagnon
Date: 09/28/18

30 Rivers Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $282,000
Buyer: Emily M. Rodriguez
Seller: Pavel Gavel
Date: 10/05/18

150 State St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $178,000
Buyer: Carlos Millayes
Seller: Liliana Armata
Date: 10/01/18

15 Trafton St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $179,000
Buyer: Sally Delgado
Seller: Walber Borrego
Date: 10/04/18

255 Wheatland Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Jennifer M. Peterson
Seller: Wurszt, Catherine W., (Estate)
Date: 09/26/18

24 Willwood St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $167,000
Buyer: Graciela Rivera
Seller: US Bank
Date: 09/24/18

EAST LONGMEADOW

28 Day Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $235,500
Buyer: Passenti IRT
Seller: Alice M. Morin
Date: 10/01/18

41 Dearborn St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Shouqi Liang
Seller: Michael Carabetta
Date: 10/05/18

21 Fairfield St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Stonewall Enterprises LLC
Seller: Stanley Kowalski
Date: 09/26/18

27 Gerrard Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $216,000
Buyer: Anthony E. Zucco
Seller: Robin A. Glidden
Date: 09/25/18

52 Holy Cross Circle
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $172,467
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Florence L. Evans
Date: 10/01/18

214 Maple St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Diane F. Dray
Seller: M. Adele Boyd
Date: 09/27/18

166 Millbrook Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Irene Delviscio
Seller: White, Chris J., (Estate)
Date: 09/27/18

311 North Main St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Natani Duggar
Seller: Lisa M. Bottego
Date: 09/25/18

15 Oxford Lane
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $440,000
Buyer: Aaron M. Jones
Seller: Donna L. Dwarska
Date: 10/04/18

118 Parker St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $144,200
Buyer: Jessica M. Valadares
Seller: Dauten, Diane T., (Estate)
Date: 09/28/18

84 Porter Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $236,000
Buyer: Justin R. McCarthy
Seller: Debora L. Wilson
Date: 10/05/18

29 Rural Lane
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $247,000
Buyer: Peter G. Hadley
Seller: 88 Casino Terrace LLC
Date: 09/24/18

16 Shaker Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: 38 Center Square RT
Seller: Sport Haus Real Estate
Date: 10/01/18

GRANVILLE

181 Barnard Road
Granville, MA 01034
Amount: $290,000
Buyer: Dale Tuczinski
Seller: David Heffernan
Date: 09/28/18

153 Crest Lane
Granville, MA 01034
Amount: $415,000
Buyer: Robert P. Hoynoski
Seller: Thomas A. Puccio
Date: 09/28/18

HAMPDEN

145 Somers Road
Hampden, MA 01036
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Jerry A. Gonzalez
Seller: Daniel R. Boutin
Date: 10/03/18

HOLLAND

9 Amber Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Heather M. Carson
Seller: Gary P. Babineau
Date: 09/24/18

HOLYOKE

47 Downing Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Lyndon C. Ondrick
Seller: Brynn A. Gillis
Date: 09/28/18

42 Evergreen Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Christine Torda
Seller: Robinson FT
Date: 09/28/18

6 Hendel Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Karissa L. Korman
Seller: David J. Beauregard
Date: 09/28/18

9 Liberty St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $307,500
Buyer: Douglas R. Hegeman
Seller: Karen M. Fortin
Date: 10/04/18

91 Lincoln St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Elizabeth Stassinos
Seller: Eileen M. Rybski
Date: 10/04/18

402 Maple St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $132,000
Buyer: Maurice A. Lee
Seller: Dario Pena
Date: 10/01/18

42-44 North East St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $159,900
Buyer: Margarita Ortiz
Seller: Jesus R. Rodriguez
Date: 09/25/18

8 Old Ferry Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Selda Lane
Seller: Alice B. Kaminski
Date: 09/26/18

107 Pearl St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $180,900
Buyer: Christopher Larivee
Seller: Pappadellis, V. C., (Estate)
Date: 09/28/18

660 South Bridge St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $610,000
Buyer: Holyoke Bridge Realty LLC
Seller: HR Holyoke LLC
Date: 09/27/18

60 Westfield Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Elaina K. Paquette
Seller: Susan M. Paquette
Date: 10/01/18

LONGMEADOW

646 Converse St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Rulour Torio
Seller: Holly Jerdi
Date: 10/05/18

49 Hanover Lane
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: 88 Casino Terrace LLC
Seller: Lun C. Yuen
Date: 10/04/18

89 Lincoln Park
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: Sukhjinder Singh
Seller: Donald A. Overson
Date: 09/26/18

702 Longmeadow St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $885,000
Buyer: PAG FT
Seller: John M. Wallace
Date: 09/28/18

1401 Longmeadow St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $365,500
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Todd F. Johnson
Date: 10/01/18

116 Normandy Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $740,000
Buyer: Leslie D. Gist
Seller: Carol Forman-Berger
Date: 10/05/18

8 Osceola Lane
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $293,000
Buyer: Benjamin Brown
Seller: Shakeel Ahmed
Date: 09/28/18

128 South Park Ave.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Joseph W. Tremblay
Seller: William Folkins
Date: 09/25/18

39 Vanguard Lane
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Tonya Sylvester
Seller: RHL Properties LLC
Date: 10/02/18

217 Williams St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Neda Dulaimy
Seller: Sadow, Gladys, (Estate)
Date: 09/28/18

LUDLOW

20 Harlan St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $227,000
Buyer: Darcie B. Lassalle
Seller: Maria F. Pereira
Date: 10/05/18

234 Gillette Ave.
Ludlow, MA 01118
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Laura Failla-Manship
Seller: Edward M. Reilly
Date: 09/24/18

51 Goddu St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $207,000
Buyer: Natalie Mateo
Seller: Ruby Realty LLC
Date: 09/28/18

86 Green St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Amy L. Postlethwait
Seller: Susan F. McMahon
Date: 09/28/18

15 Homestead Lane
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $244,000
Buyer: Kathryn M. Krzeminski
Seller: Daniel J. Gurski
Date: 09/24/18

16 Homestretch Dr.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Pedro M. Olmos
Seller: Tina M. Benware
Date: 09/25/18

N/A
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $193,000
Buyer: Ryan J. Ingram
Seller: Jason J. Pacheco
Date: 09/26/18

57 West Ave.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Jonathan K. Dziok
Seller: Miazga, Taddeus W., (Estate)
Date: 10/05/18

MONSON

12 Lakeside Dr.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $228,200
Buyer: Steven Hicks
Seller: Kelly Mount
Date: 10/03/18

35 Thayer Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $412,500
Buyer: Kathryn T. Peterson
Seller: Susan M. Terwilliger
Date: 09/28/18

PALMER

20 Arnold St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $141,500
Buyer: Nancy J. Flynn
Seller: NRZ REO 6 Corp.
Date: 10/05/18

252 Breckenridge St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $277,000
Buyer: Dustin Hull
Seller: Nicholas J. Roth
Date: 09/27/18

40 Converse St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $183,500
Buyer: Donald Webber
Seller: Rosemarie Thomas
Date: 09/28/18

11 Old Thompson St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $191,000
Buyer: Jose L. Sanchez
Seller: Michelle E. Webber
Date: 09/28/18

3030 Pleasant St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $224,900
Buyer: Joshua Stevens
Seller: Boston Home Investment LLC
Date: 10/01/18

136 State St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $222,500
Buyer: Shawn A. Crochetiere
Seller: Barry J. Webb
Date: 10/04/18

1033 Wilson St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $169,000
Buyer: Katherine E. Hulse
Seller: Paul Hugli
Date: 09/28/18

RUSSELL

299 Blandford Road
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Vladislav Tumasyan
Seller: Thomas N. O’Brien
Date: 10/01/18

265 Dickinson Hill Road
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: William E. Tuttle
Seller: Grigoriy Burkovskiy
Date: 10/01/18

175 General Knox Road
Russell, MA 01071
Amount: $237,000
Buyer: Leon P. Morin
Seller: Katherine A. Farrell
Date: 09/25/18

SOUTHWICK

72 Berkshire Ave.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Jenna N. Casale
Seller: Darrell Cass
Date: 10/02/18

1 Crystal Dr.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $152,000
Buyer: Peregrin J. Schwarzer
Seller: Cindy L. Jakuboski
Date: 09/26/18

25 Fred Jackson Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $163,500
Buyer: Steven M. Podmore
Seller: Gifford I. Benjamin
Date: 09/26/18

14 George Loomis Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Jason Doura
Seller: Gregory A. Kingsley
Date: 09/27/18

204 Hillside Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $407,000
Buyer: David W. Gunn
Seller: David J. Virella
Date: 10/01/18

26 Iroquois Dr.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $241,000
Buyer: Richard S. Zito
Seller: Jeffrey J. Duquette
Date: 09/28/18

16 Jered Lane
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: Gregory A. Kingsley
Seller: William A. Gervais
Date: 09/27/18

51 Lakemont St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Frank Grillo
Seller: Peter Molin
Date: 09/26/18

33 Lauren Lane
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $582,500
Buyer: Brian D. Hughes
Seller: Shawn W. Howard
Date: 10/01/18

33 Liberty Lane
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $408,000
Buyer: Marie A. Griffiths
Seller: John F. Dialessi
Date: 10/05/18

128 North Lake Ave.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $154,500
Buyer: Donna J. Miranda-Berneche
Seller: Melissa Goyette
Date: 09/28/18

22 North Longyard Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $310,964
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: John M. Martin
Date: 10/02/18

9 North Pond Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $850,000
Buyer: Mark A. Plasse
Seller: David A. Greco
Date: 09/28/18

12 Pearl Brook Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $430,000
Buyer: Kevin D. Rolfe
Seller: Patrick R. Clarke
Date: 09/28/18

23 South Loomis St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $267,000
Buyer: Lori P. Clarke
Seller: Kevin D. Rolfe
Date: 09/28/18

282 South Loomis St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Patrick R. Clarke
Seller: Vanessa Filiault
Date: 09/28/18

192 Vining Hill Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Denise Crosier
Seller: Michael Werman
Date: 10/05/18

SPRINGFIELD

303 Abbott St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $182,500
Buyer: Brendan T. Shea
Seller: Mary VanLeeuwen
Date: 09/28/18

70 Alderman St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $148,000
Buyer: Thuy D. To
Seller: Jia Ke
Date: 09/28/18

100 Aldrew Terrace
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Andrew M. Pikula
Seller: John L. Viens
Date: 09/28/18

53-55 Allendale St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $183,592
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Venante Joseph
Date: 10/03/18

89 Appleton St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $123,000
Buyer: Roseline Nonyelim-Omeh
Seller: Wells Fargo Bank
Date: 10/05/18

148 Arcadia Blvd.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $355,000
Buyer: Arnold Bishop-Wright
Seller: Matthew S. Mnich
Date: 10/05/18

153-155 Arnold Ave.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $205,900
Buyer: Fatima Marques
Seller: Adam M. Tarquini
Date: 09/26/18

33 Ashley St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $119,900
uyer: Carlos M. Alicea
Seller: Pasquale A. Romeo
Date: 10/05/18

164 Balboa Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $128,706
Buyer: FNMA
Seller: Joyce Ogirri
Date: 09/26/18

77 Bellwood Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: RHL Properties LLC
Seller: Denise R. Murray
Date: 09/24/18

165 Belvidere St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Ariana Perez
Seller: US Bank
Date: 09/28/18

49 Bessemer St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $132,500
Buyer: Melissa A. St.Andre
Seller: Joseph A. Ciollaro
Date: 10/04/18

21 Bloomfield St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $168,000
Buyer: Spectra S1 LLC
Seller: Eric Couch
Date: 10/02/18

1492 Boston Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $2,164,800
Buyer: Restoration Worship Center
Seller: 1492 Boston Road LLC
Date: 09/25/18

167 Bowles St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Rania Dominguez
Seller: Springfield HO Association
Date: 09/28/18

51 Bremen St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Leonard A. Scarnici
Seller: Susan L. Adler
Date: 09/26/18

47 Brunswick St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $116,910
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Zaid A. Watt
Date: 09/25/18

1030 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: James Jordan
Seller: Aditya K. Gulati
Date: 10/05/18

124 Cherokee Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $172,000
Buyer: Willie Brown
Seller: Brahman Holdings LLC
Date: 09/26/18

68 Cheyenne Road
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $194,900
Buyer: Jason Bacis
Seller: Gene W. Mackie
Date: 10/02/18

36 Chipmunk Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $171,000
Buyer: Juanita R. Demos
Seller: Amanda Sevinc
Date: 09/28/18

70 Connecticut Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $132,000
Buyer: Thomas J. Gruszkos
Seller: Carl R. Ekenbarger
Date: 09/28/18

128 Derryfield Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Scott T. Pirog
Seller: Ryan T. Haley
Date: 09/26/18

66 Duggan Circle
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Candida L. Dominquez
Seller: Joseph Basile
Date: 10/03/18

1460-1462 Dwight St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Chad Lynch
Seller: MEI Management LLC
Date: 10/03/18

70-72 East Alvord St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $196,000
Buyer: Alpha Homes LLC
Seller: Shawn Santanello
Date: 09/28/18

15 East Drumlin Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Ashley Birkett
Seller: Kideng Bouasay
Date: 09/28/18

184-190 Essex St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $601,500
Buyer: Saremi LLP
Seller: Albino D. Goncalves
Date: 10/01/18

211-213 Euclid Ave.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Angel A. Ortiz
Seller: Hiram Hernandez
Date: 09/28/18

106 Fieldston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Flor Fuentes
Seller: Attaford LLC
Date: 09/28/18

452 Franklin St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Hall Street LLC
Seller: Oleg Pashchenko
Date: 09/28/18

61 Gourley Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $262,500
Buyer: D. Jeremy Demar
Seller: Franck A. Grah
Date: 09/24/18

65 Grand St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Kevin F. Mendonca
Seller: JLC Realty Group LLC
Date: 09/24/18

79 Harkness Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $176,900
Buyer: Valerie Cotto
Seller: Margaret E. Tkaczyk
Date: 09/28/18

67 Harmon Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $179,000
Buyer: Michael P. Whitehead
Seller: Steven M. Opalenik
Date: 10/03/18

160 Hartwick St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $177,000
Buyer: Victor F. Vides
Seller: Sean F. Black
Date: 09/24/18

8 Harvard St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $146,000
Buyer: Noel Carty
Seller: RBT Enterprise LLC
Date: 09/28/18

34 Holy Cross St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $124,000
Buyer: Daleris R. Torrales
Seller: Isabel Hernandez
Date: 10/03/18

43 Humbert St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $172,750
Buyer: David Y. Rodriguez
Seller: Onota Rental LLC
Date: 09/27/18

25-27 Jefferson Ave.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $175,900
Buyer: Thalia Mwanilelo
Seller: Amat Victoria Curam LLC
Date: 10/01/18

44 Jordan St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $282,000
Buyer: Shay Daniels
Seller: Jose C. Cabrera
Date: 10/03/18

25 King St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Patrick T. Tacho
Seller: Mercedes Cortorreal
Date: 09/27/18

63 King St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $152,800
Buyer: Keitlen J. Rodriguez
Seller: JJS Capital Investment
Date: 09/25/18

50 Kipling St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $202,000
Buyer: Michael Soden
Seller: Paul Andruszkiewicz
Date: 09/28/18

140-142 Leyfred Terrace
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: Michel P. Liriano
Seller: Daisy Sanchez
Date: 10/05/18

192 Leyfred Terrace
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Chad Lynch
Seller: Ni Management LLC
Date: 10/03/18

774-776 Liberty St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $120,050
Buyer: JJS Capital Investment
Seller: Kenneth L. Fitzgibbon
Date: 09/28/18

418 Longhill St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $454,500
Buyer: Nicholas Dyber
Seller: Mark A. Ballard
Date: 10/01/18

112 Maebeth St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $207,000
Buyer: Alibra Wilson
Seller: James D. Dipinto
Date: 09/28/18

267 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Shariece Davis
Seller: RAEV LLC
Date: 09/28/18

46 Melba St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $216,600
Buyer: Ashley A. Lacroix
Seller: Katherine L. Richard
Date: 10/01/18

25 Meredith St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $151,000
Buyer: Ashley Hendricks
Seller: Lisa Santaniello
Date: 10/05/18

85-87 Mooreland St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Eufemio Gonzalez-Ortega
Seller: Lachenauer LLC
Date: 09/25/18

155 Naismith St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Emmanuel Y. Tete-Donkor
Seller: Alex Owusu
Date: 09/28/18

41 Nantasket St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: John H. Futter
Seller: Mabel A. Chrusciel
Date: 09/28/18

90 Norman St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Alain Jesulus
Seller: Hedge Hog Industries Corp.
Date: 09/27/18

219 Nottingham St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $137,500
Buyer: Ruben Lagares
Seller: Laura C. Netherwood
Date: 09/27/18

95 Palo Alto Road
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Andrea P. Richards
Seller: Gisele Girard
Date: 09/28/18

80 Pasco Road
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $186,000
Buyer: Cristal Sanchez
Seller: Michael Pope
Date: 10/04/18

115 Pasco Road
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $127,920
Buyer: OCWEN Loan Servicing LLC
Seller: Daniel J. Walker
Date: 09/27/18

71 Phoenix Terrace
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Lorenzo Vasquez
Seller: Monika Rodriguez
Date: 10/01/18

25 Pineview Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $165,000
Buyer: Penelope A. Dibble
Seller: Peter H. Zimmerman
Date: 09/24/18

1599 Plumtree Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $219,000
Buyer: Ryan T. Haley
Seller: Tyler M. Christensen
Date: 09/26/18

60 Powell Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $147,000
Buyer: Holly A. Daniels
Seller: FNMA
Date: 09/27/18

139 Powell Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $172,000
Buyer: Ivonne D. Berrios
Seller: Angelo Deguglielmo
Date: 10/05/18

232 Prentice St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $148,500
Buyer: Jenna Lanzillo
Seller: Maureen E. LittleJohn
Date: 09/24/18

284 Prentice St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Nancy A. Provost
Seller: Anne M. Demeo
Date: 09/28/18

151 Quincy St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Chad Lynch
Seller: MNL Management LLC
Date: 10/03/18

96 Redfern Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Beyonka T. Ligon
Seller: Anthony Bourget
Date: 09/27/18

141 Regal St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $183,900
Buyer: Kayla M. Morrisino
Seller: Blueline Management LLC
Date: 09/28/18

386 Roosevelt Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Alaina M. Digiorgio
Seller: Brenda E. Gross
Date: 09/27/18

701 Roosevelt Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Diane H. Scott
Seller: Kaufman, James S., (Estate)
Date: 10/01/18

202 Rosewell St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Janette Soto
Seller: Rachel A. Reale
Date: 09/27/18

167 Russell St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $157,000
Buyer: Seyllidaliz Ramos
Seller: Brital 1987 LLC
Date: 10/01/18

43 Sargon St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $156,000
Buyer: Yahia Chaoui
Seller: Robert D. Gaspari
Date: 09/28/18

131-133 Sherman St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $149,350
Buyer: Fransheska Mora
Seller: Karen L. Rucks
Date: 09/28/18

90-92 Slater Ave.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $160,000
Buyer: David Colon
Seller: Mary T. Popko
Date: 10/04/18

61 Somerset St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $126,500
Buyer: Edgardo Molina
Seller: Helen C. Gouzounis
Date: 10/05/18

35-37 Talcott Ave.
Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Lekeisha L. Walker
Seller: Julius J. Walker
Date: 09/24/18

253 Trafton Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $186,000
Buyer: Anthony Berrocales
Seller: Robert M. Zeller
Date: 10/03/18

591 Union St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $145,000
Buyer: Leonel Mendoza
Seller: Ashraf Hussein
Date: 09/28/18

174 Westford Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $174,000
Buyer: Ismael Luna
Seller: Michael A. Tarrant
Date: 10/05/18

256 White St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $124,900
Buyer: Pontiac LLC
Seller: US Bank
Date: 09/25/18

190 Whittum Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $134,900
Buyer: Kiera Kristoffy
Seller: Bridgid S. Kelly
Date: 09/27/18

40 Wilbraham Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Joy M. Hernandez
Seller: William O. Torres
Date: 09/28/18

416-418 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Xavier Rodriguez
Seller: Angel L. Valdes
Date: 09/25/18

845 Wilbraham Road
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $166,000
Buyer: Zulma I. Andino
Seller: Nicole M. Immeziano
Date: 09/27/18

140 Winton St.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: Tracy J. Brudvig
Seller: Timber Development LLC
Date: 09/26/18

108 Wollaston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Gladys Hatidani
Seller: Curtis E. Gibson
Date: 10/02/18

184-186 Woodlawn St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Jose M. Melendez-Ramirez
Seller: Douglas M. Taylor
Date: 09/28/18

76-80 Woodside Terrace
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $140,654
Buyer: Alex Carthon
Seller: Gabriel C. Miron
Date: 10/04/18

TOLLAND

94 Lands End Dr.
Tolland, MA 01034
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Lunn RT
Seller: Kathleen Barratt
Date: 10/04/18

14 West Otter Dr.
Tolland, MA 01034
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Tracy Ariel
Seller: Richard W. Pitkin
Date: 10/05/18

WALES

14 Reed Hill Road
Wales, MA 01081
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Celine Champagne
Seller: Timothy R. Morin
Date: 09/28/18

18 Tiderman Road
Wales, MA 01081
Amount: $288,000
Buyer: Philip Proulx
Seller: American International Relocation
Date: 10/05/18

74 Union Road
Wales, MA 01081
Amount: $116,500
Buyer: Arthur Ferrara
Seller: MTGLQ Investors LP
Date: 09/28/18

WESTFIELD

21 Ashley St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Donna M. Crawford
Date: 10/04/18

39 Bates Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Terry L. Murphy
Seller: Sandra I. Welch
Date: 10/03/18

30 Chestnut St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Laurits T. Andersen
Date: 10/05/18

10 Daniel Ridge
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $382,000
Buyer: Mark C. Rivard
Seller: Jeff C. Hockenberry
Date: 09/26/18

12 East Bartlett St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $172,000
Buyer: Nikki A. Horner
Seller: Todd Freeman
Date: 09/28/18

19 Forest Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Edward Arkoette
Date: 10/05/18

90 Franklin St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $219,900
Buyer: Karar Z. Ali
Seller: Jenna N. Casale
Date: 09/28/18

18 Hillary Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $410,000
Buyer: Daniel J. Pais
Seller: Andrea J. Moller
Date: 09/28/18

58 Holland Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Kurt A. Taylor
Seller: Charles E. Singleton
Date: 10/05/18

355 Holyoke Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: City Of Westfield
Seller: Kerri D. Tymeson
Date: 09/28/18

102 Lindbergh Blvd.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $146,109
Buyer: Kon Properties Inc.
Seller: MTGLQ Investors LP
Date: 09/24/18

44 Llewellyn Dr.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $351,800
Buyer: Laurel Martin
Seller: Edward F. Wienckowski
Date: 09/28/18

42 Mill St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: Matthew J. Campbell
Seller: Marilyn E. Hunt
Date: 09/28/18

191 Montgomery Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: David A. Trapp
Seller: Richard L. Aiken
Date: 09/27/18

7 Plymouth Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Michael G. Ramsay
Seller: E. Anne Reilley
Date: 09/24/18

405 Prospect St. Ext.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Kerri D. Tymeson
Seller: Roger A. Paye
Date: 09/28/18

205 Russell Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Jose R. Roman
Seller: Matthew M. Thompson
Date: 09/24/18

225 Sackett Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $212,000
Buyer: Stuart H. Luhrmann
Seller: Rebecca L. Blackburn
Date: 09/27/18

323 Southwick Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $207,000
Buyer: Alexandra M. Govine
Seller: Nicholas Bernier
Date: 09/27/18

16 Wilson Ave.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $188,000
Buyer: Gregory J. Glenn
Seller: Donald E. Wielgus
Date: 09/26/18

28 Woodbridge Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $248,000
Buyer: Elizabeth M. Deamarais
Seller: Kathryn E. Megraw
Date: 10/05/18

57 Woodsong Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $358,000
Buyer: John J. Cusick
Seller: Chester M. Ogorzalek
Date: 09/28/18

WILBRAHAM

16 Bellows Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Stephanie Eagles-Fox
Seller: Ann M. Duncan
Date: 09/27/18

1 Carla Lane
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $415,000
Buyer: Zdzislaw Brewinski
Seller: Karen Edgar
Date: 09/28/18

8 Greenwood Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $351,000
Buyer: Paul T. Strange
Seller: Sandra L. Moody
Date: 09/28/18

17 Mountainview St.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Johan Torres
Seller: Campagnari Construction
Date: 09/28/18

6 Ridgewood Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Trisha L. Powers
Seller: 6 Ridgewood Road NT
Date: 09/26/18

22 Victoria Lane
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $434,950
Buyer: Stewart Lee-Bromberg
Seller: Bassam E. Karam
Date: 10/02/18

2 West Colonial Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $285,000
Buyer: Joseph S. Malmborg
Seller: Robert J. Driscoll
Date: 10/04/18

WEST SPRINGFIELD

47 Armstrong St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Nguyet T. Huynh
Seller: Long H. Ly
Date: 09/28/18

30 Druids Ln
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Ryan P. McLane
Seller: Eagle Home Buyers LLC
Date: 10/02/18

74 Ely Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $183,250
Buyer: Sean T. Powers
Seller: Campagnari Construction
Date: 10/04/18

254 Ely Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Philip J. Roberts
Seller: Mark I. Normand
Date: 09/27/18

45 Frederick St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $337,445
Buyer: Michael J. Fortier
Seller: Sodi Inc.
Date: 09/26/18

9 High St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Ibragim F. Kuchiyev
Seller: Coraxe RT
Date: 09/27/18

44 Homer St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Tara L. Blodgett
Seller: Michael R. Girard
Date: 09/28/18

77 Jensen Circle
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $195,000
Buyer: Susan L. Lucia
Seller: Tara Blodgett
Date: 09/28/18

822 Main St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $427,500
Buyer: Hedge Hog Industries Corp.
Seller: 822 Main Street LLC
Date: 10/05/18

69 Morton St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $180,000
Buyer: Jeffrey A. King
Seller: S. Ryan Kelleher
Date: 09/27/18

87 Norman St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $565,000
Buyer: Jibber Holdings LLC
Seller: Louise R. Noel
Date: 10/05/18

80 Orchardview St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $196,500
Buyer: Emmanuel Kadima
Seller: MAA Property LLC
Date: 10/01/18

320 Park St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: 320 Park Street LLC
Seller: 652 Chicopee Street LLC
Date: 10/05/18

110 Sawmill Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $291,000
Buyer: Colby Gallagher
Seller: Krishna Kharel
Date: 09/25/18

107 Virginia Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Mohan Gurung
Seller: Anthony M. Valenti
Date: 09/28/18

1885 Westfield St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Charles A. Collins
Date: 09/28/18

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY

AMHERST

244 Amity St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $460,000
Buyer: Matthew Mone
Seller: Jules Chametzky
Date: 09/27/18

43-45 Canton Ave.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: Gaston Delos-Reyes
Seller: Julius G. Fabos
Date: 10/05/18

976 East Pleasant St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $490,000
Buyer: Noah I. Tuleja
Seller: Dickinson Meadow LLC
Date: 09/26/18

217 North East St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Joseph H. Wagner
Seller: Ruth Riley
Date: 09/25/18

340 Potwine Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Timothy J. Oyler
Seller: Peter M. Levy
Date: 10/05/18

228 Shays St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $655,000
Buyer: Donald J. Hafner
Seller: Anderson FT
Date: 10/01/18

21 Valley View Dr.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $259,250
Buyer: US Bank
Seller: Sarah A. Dreher
Date: 10/03/18

72 West Pomeroy Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Eric A. Pinsoneault
Seller: John J. Goodwin RET
Date: 09/28/18

BELCHERTOWN

282 Bay Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $299,000
Buyer: Pax ET Bonum NT
Seller: FMJ Realty LLC
Date: 10/02/18

50 Center St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Ann M. White
Seller: Robert I. Calkins
Date: 10/05/18

485 Chauncey Walker St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Matthew C. Zampi
Seller: Melinda C. Cavanaugh
Date: 09/28/18

19 Depot St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Gregory A. Santos
Seller: Nuray Ozcelik
Date: 09/28/18

884 Federal St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Agnes C. Ting
Seller: American Advisors Group
Date: 09/28/18

18 Helen Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $370,000
Buyer: Jerrid Lamontagne
Seller: James R. Pepoon
Date: 09/28/18

8 Hemlock Hollow
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $290,000
Buyer: Anthony J. Auclair
Seller: John R. Karam
Date: 09/26/18

21 Magnolia Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $439,300
Buyer: Diane Bellisario
Seller: J. N. Duquette & Son Construction
Date: 09/26/18

156 North Liberty St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $290,000
Buyer: Kelly J. Cavanaugh
Seller: Emily J. Sullivan
Date: 09/28/18

84 South Main St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Dina K. Brunetti
Seller: Gregory J. Glenn
Date: 09/26/18

CHESTERFIELD

15 Bissell Road
Chesterfield, MA 01096
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Matthew Biron
Seller: VEE Builders LLC
Date: 09/28/18

EASTHAMPTON

17 Garfield Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $306,000
Buyer: Jean Zimmerman
Seller: Adam Parker
Date: 09/28/18

23 Garfield Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $313,000
Buyer: Simone Chezar
Seller: Stephen W. Oparowski
Date: 09/27/18

4 Gross Lane
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $242,500
Buyer: Erich L. Janes
Seller: Nathan S. Whitlock
Date: 10/01/18

39 Highland Ave.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $148,098
Buyer: Wells Fargo Bank
Seller: Joseph B. Sokoloski
Date: 09/28/18

280 Main St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $345,000
Buyer: Matthew Parent
Seller: Michael A. Lucey
Date: 10/05/18

410 Main St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: 410 Main Street Realty
Seller: Sandra Hayden RET
Date: 10/01/18

2 Wellington Circle
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: South Lake TR
Seller: Valerie J. Hackenberg
Date: 10/01/18

GOSHEN

16 Lake Dr.
Goshen, MA 01096
Amount: $123,000
Buyer: Gwen Shea
Seller: Cheryl A. Woods
Date: 10/01/18

GRANBY

107 Batchelor St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $189,900
Buyer: Deborah Barthelette
Seller: Thmas E. McMahon
Date: 09/28/18

117 Batchelor St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Dawn M. Basile
Seller: Kim Otis
Date: 09/28/18

315 Chicopee St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $219,000
Buyer: Nicholas Bustamante
Seller: Michael A. Pandora
Date: 09/28/18

277 East State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Harold F. Bussey
Date: 09/25/18

HADLEY

44 Mount Warner Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $132,000
Buyer: Jacqueline M. Allard
Seller: Edward J. Gralinski
Date: 09/28/18

328 Russell St.
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Gl&Sl LLC
Seller: Montgomery Co. Inc.
Date: 09/27/18

2 Woodlawn Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $317,500
Buyer: Shumway Properties LLC
Seller: Mary L. Walsh RET
Date: 09/25/18

HATFIELD

Great Ponsettt St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $135,000
Buyer: Szawlowski Realty Inc.
Seller: George T. Hojnoski
Date: 09/27/18

49 Main St.
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $382,657
Buyer: Jonathan W. Bardwell
Seller: Jonathan W. Bardwell
Date: 10/05/18

255 Straits Road
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $229,000
Buyer: Anthony Henderson
Seller: Kara Gorey
Date: 09/24/18

77 West St.
Hatfield, MA 01088
Amount: $925,000
Buyer: KR 77 B. West Street LLC
Seller: Hatfield 77 West LLC
Date: 10/02/18

HUNTINGTON

181 Goss Hill Road
Huntington, MA 01050
Amount: $775,000
Buyer: Goss Road Estates LLC
Seller: Scott H. Tillinghast
Date: 10/02/18

MIDDLEFIELD

95 Chipman Road
Middlefield, MA 01011
Amount: $345,000
Buyer: Patrick J. Laughlin
Seller: Robert P. Hoynoski
Date: 09/28/18

NORTHAMPTON

136 Chestnut St.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $530,000
Buyer: Brian Baldi
Seller: Monte S. Becker
Date: 09/24/18

179 Elm St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $357,000
Buyer: 179 Elm Street LLC
Seller: Chase, Ellen I., (Estate)
Date: 10/04/18

91 Front St.
Northampton, MA 01053
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Jesse J. Ladner
Seller: Jean D. Miller
Date: 09/26/18

21 Longview Dr.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Erin E. Gorry
Seller: JJS Capital Investment
Date: 09/27/18

79 Maynard Road
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $323,000
Buyer: Rekha Bains TR
Seller: Chandler Klose
Date: 09/27/18

36 Murphy Terrace
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $331,820
Buyer: Joyce S. Samet
Seller: Ann W. Bissett
Date: 09/28/18

257 South St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Daniel Madsen
Seller: Ginetta E. Candelario
Date: 10/01/18

PELHAM

29 Harkness Road
Pelham, MA 01002
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Susan G. Daniels
Seller: Noah A. Tuleja
Date: 09/26/18

SOUTH HADLEY

89 Charon Terrace
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $257,000
Buyer: Donald F. Hastings
Seller: Daniel R. Haska
Date: 09/28/18

44 Chestnut Hill Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $368,400
Buyer: Aimee R. Racicot
Seller: Roger W. Barstow
Date: 09/28/18

4 Dickinson Farm Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Ann E. Boyden
Seller: John E. Keough
Date: 10/05/18

6 Enterprise St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Alison G. Fenton
Seller: Matthew C. Conte
Date: 10/05/18

29 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Stacey Kronenberg
Seller: Erasmo D. David
Date: 09/28/18

103 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $189,000
Buyer: William D. Wonsey
Seller: James H. Girard
Date: 09/28/18

175 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $234,300
Buyer: Bridget K. Horton
Seller: Joan A. O’Connor
Date: 10/01/18

30 Lexington Ave.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Matthew L. Carleton
Seller: Jeffrey A. Cyr
Date: 09/24/18

75 San Souci Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $509,000
Buyer: Melissa D. Barstow
Seller: Richard N. Levrault
Date: 09/28/18

6 Yale St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $202,500
Buyer: Thomas J. Gajewski
Seller: Christopher F. Geraghty
Date: 09/26/18

SOUTHAMPTON

12 Bluemer Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $187,500
Buyer: Daniel T. Bennett
Seller: Jesse A. Morrisey
Date: 10/01/18

20 Camp Jahn Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $140,000
Buyer: Justin L. Baker
Seller: Diane L. Rondeau
Date: 10/05/18

79 Crooked Ledge Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $480,000
Buyer: Michael Kent
Seller: George A. Bishop
Date: 09/27/18

32 Fomer Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Matthew Murphy
Seller: Phillips RT
Date: 10/05/18

26 Hillside Meadows Dr.
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Dylan Mailloux
Seller: Julainne J. Guyette
Date: 09/28/18

51 Pomeroy Meadow Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $345,500
Buyer: Jessica M. Neiswender
Seller: Henry A. Barton TR
Date: 09/25/18

189 Pomeroy Meadow Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Allison M. Warren
Seller: Joyce M. Patrick
Date: 10/01/18

WARE

204 Osborne Road
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: William L. Gunn
Seller: Eric D. Wilson
Date: 09/27/18

116 Pleasant St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Town Of Ware
Seller: Susan J. Montefusco
Date: 10/05/18

64 Pleasant St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $147,500
Buyer: Robert C. Darling
Seller: Chad Drigo
Date: 10/01/18

WILLIAMSBURG

106 Ashfield Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Ernest M. Zuraw
Seller: Marika N. Gerhart
Date: 09/24/18

147 Goshen Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $219,900
Buyer: Roger A. Provost
Seller: Mark J. Larareo
Date: 09/28/18

6 Hyde Hill Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Talia Cossin
Seller: Keith H. Snow
Date: 10/02/18

7 Hyde Hill
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $316,500
Buyer: Maya J. Lorentzen
Seller: Joan Kaye
Date: 09/28/18

197 Main St.
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $640,000
Buyer: Equinox Partners LLC
Seller: Brook Club Inc.
Date: 10/01/18

3 North Kellogg Road
Williamsburg, MA 01039
Amount: $255,000
Buyer: Timothy G. Oneil
Seller: Marjorie A. Warriner FT
Date: 10/05/18

WESTHAMPTON

27 Lyman Road
Westhampton, MA 01027
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Christopher D. Goddard
Seller: Bernard L. Cloutier
Date: 09/28/18

12 Pine Island Lake
Westhampton, MA 01027
Amount: $451,750
Buyer: Brenda Salyer
Seller: Johnson Pine Is Lake TR
Date: 10/04/18

WORTHINGTON

79 River Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $525,000
Buyer: Bethany F. Corbett
Seller: Eileen K. Paulauskas
Date: 09/28/18

Building Permits

Building Permits

The following building permits were issued during the month of October 2018.

CHICOPEE

C and C Mass Ventures, LLC
33 Haynes Circle
$147,500 — Remodel women’s bathrooms and break room

Cabotville Common Ltd.
640 Chicopee St.
$35,000 — Roofing

Chapin School Veterans
40 Meadow St.
$7,000 — Deliver standalone gazebo to site

Yousuf Hazrat Ji
49 Dwight St.
$1,800 — Remodeling

David Roy
490 Meadow St.
$12,000 — Roofing

DEERFIELD

Budlia, LLC
14 Conway St.
$10,000 — Roofing

Deerfield Academy
13 Academy Lane
$87,290 — Remove and replace insulation

Deerfield Academy
8 Memorial Dr.
$7,000 — Scoreboard

Deerfield Academy
7 Wells St.
$31,476 — Install 28 solar panels

Town of Deerfield
8 Conway St.
Roofing

GREENFIELD

Vladimir Agapov
72 Montague City Road
$10,000 — Roofing

Jack Curtiss, Robert Carey, John Gates, Daniel Graves
173 Main St.
$8,640 — Install new rubber roof on front entry area

Historic Factories, LLC
2 Mead St.
$6,500 — Modify and upgrade existing bathroom to accessible requirements

Sebastian J. Ruggieri Estate
177 Shelburne Road
$6,000 — Construct dividing wall in existing room

LONGMEADOW

GPT Longmeadow, LLC
704 Bliss Road
$4,000 — Two new signs for Francesca’s

Longmeadow Mall, LP
793 Williams St.
$5,000 — Build out for increased tenant space

Longmeadow Mall, LP
827 Williams St.
$15,000 — New wall to separate office space

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
335 Longmeadow St.
$2,000 — Build shed

NORTHAMPTON

Aster Associates
80 Barrett St.
$84,593 — Roofing

The Brush Works, LLC
221 Pine St.
$10,650 — Renovate bathroom and tenant space on first floor

Smith College
28 Kensington Ave.
$48,000 — Roofing

Strong Ave., LLC
8 Strong Ave.
$21,000 — Install lamppost and wheelchair ramp

Trident Realty Corp.
109 Main St.
$61,000 — Install window, interior partitions, plumbing, and electric

SPRINGFIELD

BSC Realty Inc.
395 Dwight St.
$10,000 — Erect open deck in existing lightwell

White Eagle Realty, LLC
129 White St.
$127,100 — Install roof-mounted solar panels, reinforced roof rafters

Better Homes Inc.
275 Chestnut St.
$7,200,000 — Renovate third through sixth floors and alter a portion of second floor to residential units

WEST SPRINGFIELD

Capital Realty Inc.
125 Capital Dr.
$47,250 — Install interior stairway to access second floor

Essential Power Operating Services, LLC
15 Agawam Ave.
$37,700 — Roofing

Residence Inn by Marriott
64 Border Way
$860,000 — Upgrades to public area, minor food-prep improvements, public-area restroom, corridor, electrical, and HVAC modifications, fitness-center expansion and pool refinishing, guestroom modifications, exterior terrace upgrade

Tiffany Raines Joins bankESB as AVP, Holyoke Branch Officer

HOLYOKE — Matthew Sosik, president and CEO of bankESB, announced that Tiffany Raines has been hired as assistant vice president and branch officer of the new Holyoke branch located at 170 Sargeant St.

Raines brings more than 18 years of experience in banking, most recently serving as assistant vice president and banking center manager of PeoplesBank’s West Springfield banking center. In addition to 10 years as a branch manager and spending time managing the West Springfield, Amherst, and East Longmeadow offices, she also spent six years supervising the High Street and Hampden Street offices in Holyoke.

“We are very excited to welcome Tiffany to our team and back into the Holyoke community,” Sosik said. “Her experience and strong ties to Holyoke will be such a positive factor in establishing bankESB’s presence in the community.”

Raines has a strong commitment to serving surrounding communities. She is a past board member of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Rotary Clubs of Amherst, Holyoke, and East Longmeadow. Raines is a graduate of Leadership Holyoke, which is an 11-week community leadership course designed to train and motivate people to volunteer in order to make a positive difference in their community.

Along with Raines, Tenaya Read has been selected as assistant branch manager. Read joined the bank in 2004 and, over the last 14 years, has held the positions of teller, customer service representative, and, most recently, senior teller at the main office in Easthampton (36 Main St.). In addition to Read, Nadean Eaddy has been selected as senior teller. Eaddy joined the bank this past May with 15 years of banking experience, 11 of which were in a supervisor role. She has been promoted from her current role as teller in the South Hadley branch.

The Holyoke branch will have its grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, Nov. 5. To celebrate the opening, bankESB will raffle off a 2018 Hyundai Accent. In order to win, employees will be giving out 1,000 $1 bills (first come, first served) to anyone who visits the branch. On Saturday, Nov. 10, the winner will be drawn. Second- and third-place prizes are valued at $500.

Elms College Trustees Name Sr. Kathleen Keating President Emerita

CHICOPEE — The board of trustees of Elms College voted recently to grant the title of president emerita to Sr. Kathleen Keating in recognition of the lasting impact she has had on the college.

Keating, a native of Springfield, was installed as the college’s seventh president in 1994. During her tenure, from 1994 to 2001, Elms College underwent extensive changes. In 1997, the college voted to admit male students to all programs of the college, which helped stabilize a declining enrollment. In addition, the college added four new undergraduate majors and one new master’s degree program. She more than doubled the school’s endowment from $2.3 million to $5.8 million and oversaw various campus-improvement projects, including the building of the Maguire Center. She also oversaw the establishment of the Irish and Polish Cultural Centers on the Elms campus.

A 1952 graduate of Elms College, Keating received a master’s degree from Villanova University and a doctoral degree from Fordham University. She joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1953.

She worked as a teacher at St. Joseph High School in North Adams and was assistant professor of History at Elms College from 1966 to 1975. She also served as chair of the college’s Division of Social Sciences. From 1975 to 1978, she was president of the National Assembly of Women Religious in Chicago, and she served as president of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield from 1979 to 1987. From 1989 to 1993, she ministered in Nicaragua as an associate member of the Maryknoll Sisters, working as a pastoral minister and a professor of English at the Jesuit University of Central America in the city of Managua. She received the Elms Distinguished Alumni Award in 1983 and a number other national and regional awards over the years.

“Sr. Kathleen’s contributions to Elms College are not relegated in the past — her wisdom is very much sought after in the present, as I have turned to her counsel on more than one occasion for decisions that require a firm grasp of the college’s history and the guidance of one who has traveled the road before,” said Elms College President Harry Dumay. “We are thankful for Sr. Kathleen’s vision, determination, and the strong example she has set of tireless service.”

Good Stock Farm Offers Epic Meal to Benefit Improv Theater

HATFIELD — What do cider-brined pork chops and improv comedy have in common? On Sunday, Nov. 11, Good Stock Farm will hold one of its celebrated four-course wine lover’s meals as a benefit for Happier Valley Comedy, an improv comedy theater and nonprofit organization based in Hadley.

Good Stock Farm offers unique culinary experiences that are one part hosted dinner party and one part expert cooking class. James Beard Award-winning Chef Sanford (Sandy) D’Amato has been cooking and teaching for more than 40 years all over the world, most recently with his partner and wife, Angie D’Amato. Three years ago, the couple discovered another passion: learning and performing improvisational comedy. “Improv has opened our eyes to a whole new way of life and community,” Angie said. “Our only regret is not finding it sooner.”

The D’Amatos are part of a large and growing community of adult students committed to learning the in-the-moment artform of improvisation. In response to this growth, Happier Valley Comedy opened the doors on its new 60-seat performance venue and classroom at the end of the summer. The theater buildout was entirely paid for by fundraising efforts, including a successful Valley Gives Day, when the local community and a far-flung network of supporters — from Seattle to London — raised close to $27,000. Happier Valley Comedy is continuing to raise funds as it reaches for the next goals in the theater, which include installing theatrical lighting, additional acoustic enhancements, and making the stage ADA-compliant to accommodate performers of all physical abilities.

The evening on Nov. 11 will begin with French champagne and hors d’oeuvres in the Good Stock teaching kitchen, then move to the family table for a four-course seasonal dinner with wine pairings. This is where the D’Amatos go deep in their cellar to share some of their favorite wines they have collected and laid down over the years. Various regions like Rhone Valley, Burgundy, Northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal may be represented to complement the evening’s menu. The meal is followed by after-dinner drinks and a casual improvised performance featuring Happier Valley Comedy’s founder, Pam Victor, and Artistic Director Scott Braidman.

There are only 14 spots available at the table. The full menu and tickets are now available at www.happiervalley.com.

Lawyer on the Line Event Slated for Nov. 19

SPRINGFIELD — The Hampden County Bar Assoc., in conjunction with WGGB Channel 40, will present a Lawyer on the Line event on Monday, Nov. 19 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Volunteers will provide legal advice on a variety of topics from callers during the evening news broadcast. Individuals needing advice should call (413) 846-0240 to speak to a volunteer.

American Rabbit Breeders Assoc. Convention Has Something for Every Bunny

By BusinessWest Staff October 26, 2018

WEST SPRINGFIELD — Employees of hospitality businesses across Western Mass. will have a little extra hop in their step on Oct. 26-31. Starting today, the American Rabbit Breeders Assoc. (ARBA) will hold its 95th annual convention at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield.

Representatives of the Pennsylvania-based organization expect to have more than 16,000 rabbits and cavy (animals similar to rabbits, such as guinea pigs) on display.

“This is a major convention event that will have a tremendous impact on our region,” said Mary Kay Wydra, president of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau (GSCVB). “The organizers are expecting 1,500 attendees with registrants from many European nations, and some from as far away as China.”

GSCVB officials are estimating that the six-day event will have an economic impact of nearly $3 million. The Springfield Sheraton Monarch Place Hotel will serve as the headquarters property, and 14 additional local hotels have reserved room blocks for convention-goers.

Attractions all over the region hope to see a boost at the turnstile. ARBA organizers touted the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the Dr. Seuss Museum, Six Flags New England, MGM Springfield, Yankee Candle Village, and many more options for attendees to enjoy their downtime.

“We honestly couldn’t have been more impressed with Western Mass.,” said Randy Gebelein, ARBA’s general chairperson. “From a top-shelf convention facility to outstanding hotels to so many one-of-a-kind attractions, this region met all our needs perfectly. We’re looking forward to an excellent event.”

PeoplesBank Welcomes Suzanne Rosenberg, Michael Gay

By BusinessWest Staff October 26, 2018

HOLYOKE — PeoplesBank recently appointed Suzanne Rosenberg as assistant vice president and manager for its West Springfield banking center, and Michael Gay as manager for its Amherst banking center.

In her new position, Rosenberg aims to cultivate a customer-focused, engaging, one-stop resolution environment focused on identifying and providing solutions for all customers’ financial needs. She has 15 years of financial-services and banking experience. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Stonehill College in Easton. She formerly served as a volunteer for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and the Mashpee Boys & Girls Club.

In his new position, Gay aims to provide a positive banking experience to both consumer and small-business customers. He has eight years of financial-services and banking experience. He attended Holyoke Community College and Franklin-Covey organizational training. He formerly served as a volunteer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Therapeutic Equestrian Center of Holyoke.

Holyoke Community College Opens $4.55 Million Center for Life Sciences

By BusinessWest Staff October 26, 2018