It’s Now a Family Business
Ben Bolotin was working in Boston, handling office leases and coping with the many forms of turmoil that came with the pandemic, when his father, Mitch, called and said he was busy, in a mostly good way, and could use some help.
So Ben headed west — “back home,” as he put it — to provide that help to Mitch, then a principal with Colebrook Realty Services in Springfield. The two worked together at Colebrook for a few years before Ben decided to start his own firm, which he would call Region.
Mitch stayed at Colebrook, where he had been a fixture for more than 30 years, but came to miss the way he and Ben worked together, so he eventually decided to leave and join him at Region.
That’s the condensed version of the story of how the two are building this emerging company together, assembling a diverse portfolio that includes a wide array of industrial, retail, and office properties; former churches; and, most recently, the Hampshire College campus, which recently went on the market in one of the region’s most closely watched stories.
The client list is intriguing and includes the owners of Tandem Bagel, who continue to add locations across the region, including the most recent addition in South Hadley, as well as ServiceNet, PeoplesBank, and myriad others.
“I had such a positive impression of my dad’s work. He was selling and leasing commercial real estate, but I also enjoyed the people he worked with, the people who were making things happen for Western Massachusetts.”
Region is an intriguing business story, one that has a number of starting points, if you will, beginning with a young Ben growing up watching his father, learning, gaining an appreciation for the business, and eventually deciding he wanted to join it.
“I had such a positive impression of my dad’s work,” he recalled, adding that he attended many meetings and many showings with his father. “He was selling and leasing commercial real estate, but I also enjoyed the people he worked with, the people who were making things happen for Western Massachusetts. He was great about introducing me to that world and introducing me to his clients, and I grew up respecting a lot of his clients.”
These include Jeb Balise, president of the Balise Auto Group — Mitch has worked with him for more than 25 years and has handled the sale of property he owned in Chicopee, among other projects — as well as Tom Dennis and Bill Stotler, developers who own several properties across the region.
These business leaders helped instill in Ben both an interest in real estate and an entrepreneurial spirit, and both come together in Region, which didn’t start out as a family business, but it is now, with the two generations, boasting 50 years of combined experience, working together and making each other better at what they do, as we’ll see.
And experience is just one of the key ingredients the two are bringing to the table with this venture. Others include expertise with certain types of properties, such as churches, which are coming onto the market in growing numbers, and technology.
“In this day and age, what commercial property owners and commercial tenants are expecting is really timely, high-quality service, paired up with a lot of experience and a very digitally native approach,” Ben explained, adding that this is what the Bolotins and a growing team are committed to delivering.
For this issue and its focus on commercial estate, we take an in-depth look at Region and how this father-and-son team developed a fondness for working together — and didn’t want to work apart.
Developing Story
Both Ben and Mitch stressed that operating a business together, as they are now, was never really the plan.
“The plan was no plan,” joked Ben, who noted that he was always interested in real estate and actually interned one semester at Colebrook while he was in college. And early on after graduating, he explored different paths within the industry, including work for a firm based in Boston that handled properties across the country.
“I was assisting in managing malls in California, retail properties in Georgia, downtown office buildings in the Loop in Chicago, and I was helping negotiate leases from an office tower in Boston,” he said. “I decided I was not close enough to the action.”
So, after a few other career stops, including one with a startup — a nod to his interest in business and entrepreneurship — he got much closer to the action, albeit at a challenging time and in a challenged place.
“I was doing downtown office leasing in the financial district of Boston in 2020, and very quickly it became businesses talking about ‘how much space can we give back?’” he recalled. “There was a long year of that.”
Things were a little different in Western Mass., he recalled, adding that this market doesn’t see the huge swings that larger metropolitan areas do.
“Western Mass. has a way of humming along and doing its thing,” he told BusinessWest. “Whether it’s people having access to their cars and not relying on public transit … there were certain aspects of the Western Mass. economy that I found to be very resilient, and my father was very busy and needed another set of hands.
“COVID actually brought us back together in a great way and allowed me to come home,” he went on, noting that the two worked together for a few years at Colebrook.
“What we found is that Ben and I worked really, really well together,” Mitch added. “We rounded each other off in a way that made me better at my job, and I loved working with him; we were on that path together.”
“I was assisting in managing malls in California, retail properties in Georgia, downtown office buildings in the Loop in Chicago, and I was helping negotiate leases from an office tower in Boston. I decided I was not close enough to the action.”
In late 2023, Ben launched what would be considered his own startup, Region. “I was really interested in investing in a business, and it became clear that, for me, it was the right thing to do,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Mitch was staying put at Colebrook — for a while, anyway.
“That was the plan — Ben was going to leave, and I was going to stay,” Mitch said. “But I missed working with him — we did a lot of good things together. I wanted to continue working with him.”
Mitch eventually transitioned to Region in mid-2024, and he and Ben have been building the company together since then, investing in technology and adding new team members, while also building the book of business in many ways.
Overall, while they say the 413 faces the same challenges as other parts of the country, the two are optimistic about this region and its prospects moving forward.
“People are having to be a lot more thoughtful about how they’re spending their money and how they’re choosing to invest,” Ben said. “But I think there’s a lot of drive and will to continue to invest in Western Massachusetts.”
Space Exploration
As noted earlier, Region has a diverse portfolio of clients and properties. The firm handles leasing for two Colebrook-managed properties — 1441 Main St. in downtown Springfield (co-owned by Jeb Balise) and the PeoplesBank building in Holyoke — and also does work for PeoplesBank, including the securing of office space in downtown Hartford and branches in Hartford and Avon, Conn., and the sale of a closed branch on Sumner Avenue in Springfield to Arrha Credit Union.
The company also handles 11 Interstate Dr. in West Springfield, where its own offices are located. Region has succeeded in retenanting the large office building, which was vacant only a few years ago, but is now more than 60% occupied, with a diverse array of tenants.
Region is now also handling some work for ServiceNet, the mental health and human services provider with facilities across the region.
“We’ve been working with them to source a number of different needs of theirs up and down I-91,” Mitch said, adding that the Region portfolio now includes a wide array of clients, some with ongoing needs and others with “one-off real estate deals,” as he described them.
And the portfolio of properties runs the gamut, from industrial properties in Springfield and Leicester to medical office space in West Springfield; from retail space in Belchertown, West Springfield, and Longmeadow to a former church in Littleton, as well as several parcels of land. Actually, the firm has developed a niche with former churches and has handled the sale of several of them.
“There are not of folks who have a lot of experience working with congregations, so we’ve gotten referred to many groups,” Ben said. “A lot of congregations are struggling post-COVID, and many of them are looking for guidance. It’s a very specific part of the marketplace, and there’s not a lot of folks that are finding ways to help those groups.
“They approach us oftentimes, asking for insight and advice on how to dispossess a property when they no longer have a congregation to support it,” he went on, adding that the company has sold churches in Acton, Lowell, and other communities well outside the region, evidence of how the company’s reputation in this realm is growing.
The Hampshire College sale represents another important opportunity for the company. Region, which has been doing some work for the college for a few years, is putting together an offering memorandum for the property, Mitch said, noting that the assignment represents an important assignment for Hampshire College and the town of Amherst.
“There hasn’t been a college sold in the Pioneer Valley,” he acknowledged. “That said, we have worked on larger and equally complex, multi-dimensional commercial and specialty properties. We combine deep local market knowledge with national reach, and we’re well-equipped to manage a transaction of this scope.
“We’ve also worked on behalf of Hampshire College for several years, so we know the property and the institution well,” Mitch went on. “We’re from here and have a strong vested interest in a successful outcome for Hampshire College and the community.”
“What we found is that Ben and I worked really, really well together. We rounded each other off in a way that made me better at my job, and I loved working with him; we were on that path together.”
Getting back to the business and the dynamic the two have created at Region, the two stressed, again, that there were never plans to work together — until they decided to do just that.
And Mitch believes Ben’s experiences with businesses of different sizes and in different markets helped create a positive family business environment, when tension generally rules in so many other cases of generations working together in the same space.
“Ben came to the party with his own work experiences and his own capabilities,” Mitch said, adding that he brought different perspectives to the company.
Ben agreed. “From those years working in Boston, I had a lot to bring to the Colebrook team right away and how we worked together,” he recalled. “There’re so many other experiences about how offices work and how Boston teams function. Immediately, I was able to add value from a different perspective.”
Added Mitch, “I tell people this: I think I’ve done a good job over the years, but Ben has made me a better broker with the things that we’ve have brought to the team in terms of client satisfaction, a technology base, systems, an efficiency base — from his business experience, he learned a lot of different things that have funneled and shaped our region in many ways.”
Bottom Line
As for returning to this market from Boston — something that rarely happens, and that area economic development leaders would certainly like to see more of — Ben said that, contrary to what might be popular opinion, there are opportunities for young people in the 413.
“A lot of my friends and young people have gotten sucked into the major cities,” he told BusinessWest. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity here for people my age because business owners are aging out.”
I
Modesto Montero-Forman
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