George O'Brien, Author at BusinessWest

Executive Editor, Reminder Publishing: Age 28

Payton North didn’t remember aspiring to being a reporter and editor when she was growing up. But her mother found proof that this was, indeed, a long-standing career goal.

“She found a paper I wrote when I was a sophomore in high school where I talked about how I wanted to be an editor,” said North, who recalls having some interest in broadcast journalism, but eventually desired to make an impact that “would not be limited to a minute or two of soundbites.”

To say North has made that dream come true would be an understatement. She is now executive editor for Reminder Publications, leading efforts to produce eight weekly newspapers, one daily, two monthly magazines, and several specialty publications. She now oversees 20 employees as well as more than a dozen freelance writers and photographers.

She still does some writing, which she enjoys, but acknowledged that much of her time is now devoted to planning, managing, setting a tone for these publications, and mentoring younger staff members.

She acknowledged these are certainly challenging times for print publications, which have lost both readers and advertisers to the internet, but she said the need for local news remains, and such content is perhaps more important than ever.

This is the message she hammers home to young reporters, who often wonder out loud just how important it is to cover that local planning board or school committee meeting. North will answer for them.

“Accountability in our communities is so important,” she explained. “If we don’t have reporters’ boots on the ground covering our select board meetings, our town council meetings, our school board meetings — the local government that is affecting people’s taxes and their children’s school — something very important is lost. Those are the stories that really hit people in their homes, and I’m glad people come to us for that because they can’t get it anywhere else.”

While busy managing publications — and people — North is also active in the community. She volunteers with Valley Eye Radio, a nonprofit that reads and records newspapers and broadcasts in senior centers and hospitals for those who are visually impaired, and also gives of her time at Whispering Horse Therapeutic Riding Center in East Longmeadow.

All of this material could go into a short item for the Reminder’s publications — one announcing that North is a deserving member of the Forty Under 40 class of 2024.

—George O’Brien

Jennifer McGrath

Director of Philanthropy and Community Engagement, MGM Springfield: Age 38

Jennifer McGrath is fond of saying there are … well, two sides to Jennifer McGrath.

The first is the professional side. For more than a dozen years, it played out at Six Flags New England, and for the past seven months, it’s been at another regional institution focused on fun — MGM Springfield.

The other side involves a commitment to health and wellness — her own, but especially helping others find it. This commitment involves everything from teaching Zumba and trampoline to her own fitness platform.

To say that she is passionate about both sides would be an understatement, and this passion certainly explains why she is a member of the Forty Under 40 class of 2024, and why — to quote Kristine Allard, vice president of Development & Communication at Square One, who nominated her — “Jennifer McGrath is a force in Western Mass.”

As we explain why, we’ll start with that professional side. At MGM, she handles everything from coordinating community events to supporting nonprofits, such as Square One and the Mayflower Marathon; from developing relationships with government officials and the business community to managing all philanthropic requests and coordinating charitable sponsorships.

“My biggest part of my role is impact,” she said. “How can we volunteer? How can we provide our monetary donations? How can we create impact for the city, its students, its residents, and the region as well?”

She took on similar responsibilities, and others, including the training of more than 30,000 employees, at Six Flags, and said of her career to date, “it’s all about fun, entertainment, and allowing people to escape and celebrate the fun times in life. It’s no secret my entire career’s been built around that.”

As for the other side, McGrath sums it up by saying she’s focused on “health for everybody and every body.”

She’s an instructor at Fitness First and an experienced Zumba and JumpSport instructor. “I’m all about body heath and body positivity,” she told BusinessWest. My mission is all about wellness, and that means mind, body, and spirit.

Elaborating, she said she battled eating disorders earlier in her life, and her struggles and eventual triumph led to a passion to helping others find health and wellness, especially through her fitness platform.

“Almost 300 people come together daily, and we promote body wellness,” she said. “We post body inclusion, we champion positivity, and we talk about ways we can remain healthy through mind, body, and spirit.”

—George O’Brien

Tiffany Cutting Madru

Founder, Analytics Labs: Age 39

Tiffany Cutting Madru says entrepreneurship runs in her family.

Her uncle was a veterinarian, her grandfather an architect, and her parents have long owned and operated C&D Electronics, and electronic component distribution and logistics company serving the defense, aerospace, and commercial markets. And she was working with her parents, in sales and development, when she conceived her own entrepreneurial venture.

As she tells the story, she and her family became part of then-Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’s efforts to roll out the welcome mat for players in the cannabis industry, which started to take root following a 2017 referendum vote.

“When some of these companies came into the area to look at where they were going to have their cultivation spaces and production spaces, we were utilized to show people around Holyoke and talk about the city and what it had to offer,” she explained, adding that, in the course of offering these tours, she asked the question, “what other parts of the supply chain are missing?”

The most commonly offered answer was ‘testing labs,’ she went on, adding that she and her husband, Ted, stepped forward to meet that need with Analytics Labs, which currently analyzes cannabis samples from more than 80 operators across the Commonwealth to ensure they meet the state’s safety standards.

The company, launched in 2019, has grown to 40 employees and is expanding into Connecticut as that state develops its own cannabis industry.

For Madru, who earned a bachelor’s degree and then an MBA in entrepreneurial thinking & innovative practices at Bay Path University, this has been a long journey and a deep learning experience in an industry that is growing, evolving, and finding its level.

“Massachusetts is maturing, and we’re starting to see more guidance from the state on the testing side,” she explained. “We do see the struggle of our clients that are coming and going, and we’re hoping that some of the market will become more consistent. There were a lot of licenses that came online for cultivation and manufacturing, and there’s been a bit of fallout; we’ll see who maintains and who survives this.”

A winner of the James McGill ’35 Carpe Diem Award at Bay Path, Madru has remained active with the university. She emceed its Women’s Leadership Conference in 2019, and that same year, she and Ted co-chaired the Bay Path University Gala. She has also been a member of the school’s Business Leadership Council, providing guidance and mentorship to the university and its students.

—George O’Brien

Kenny Lumpkin

Owner, Dewey’s Jazz Lounge and All American Bar, Grill & Patio: Age 28

Like most people, Kenny Lumpkin found the pandemic to be a time of reflection and figuring out what’s really important.

And while doing that, he concluded that being a consultant for Big Pharma just wasn’t working for him, and he needed something else. After some research — and soul searching — he determined this something else should be a return to his roots in Springfield accompanied by an entrepreneurial gambit, an effort to replicate the kind of jazz establishment he found, and came to love, while living in the Boston area — Wally’s Café Jazz Club.

And he did, with Dewey’s Jazz Lounge on Worthington Street, an establishment he opened in 2021, when there were still many COVID after-effects and other challenges to overcome.

Three years later, Dewey’s has become a downtown staple, attracting visitors from Springfield, across the 413, and beyond. And in 2023, Lumpkin doubled down on his dream, opening a second venue — All American Bar, Grill & Patio, a sports bar on Dwight Street. The two sites complement each other well and have attracted different audiences.

“My biggest worry about opening two restaurants a block from each other is that they would cannibalize each other,” he said. “But we haven’t seen that; we’ve been able to hit both sides of the market. We have an older, more mature crowd at Dewey’s that will come to see live music, and we get a younger crowd at All-American that will get down with a DJ.”

Lumpkin, who is also active in the community, with a turkey drive at Thanksgiving and a Christmas clothing and toy drive, said being an entrepreneur is essentially what he thought he would be, a roller-coaster ride replete with challenges and rewards.

“Every day is a learning experience, and every day is something new,” he told BusinessWest. “That’s what I love about it.”

His philosophy, about life and business and their myriad challenges, is best summed up with a tattoo he wears proudly, reading ‘Find the Sun.’

“It means to find the bright side of things,” he explained. “I try to remain optimistic and see what good is coming from all the hard work you put in. And it’s amazing when people pull you aside and say, ‘you’re an inspiration to this community,’ or offer a simple ‘thank you’ for bringing this concept to Springfield.”

He’s heard a lot of that since that COVID-inspired reflection of four years ago, which helps explain why he’s a member of the Forty Under 40.

—George O’Brien

Joe Lepper

Senior Community Responsibility Consultant, MassMutual: Age 35

As a freshman at Longmeadow High School, Joe Lepper was not feeling very good about how things were going in his life. There was some bullying and a distinct lack of direction.

And then … he found the school’s Key Club, a program of Kiwanis, a service organization with chapters around the world, designed for young people. And it changed his life. Dramatically.

“I found a community of people that just cared about others,” he explained. “It didn’t matter who you hung out with … if you were passionate and you cared about helping other people, you could be a great Key Club member; you could make a difference.”

The club certainly made a difference in his life, instilling a strong sense of community involvement and helping others that in many ways defines not only his life, but his current work as senior Community Responsibility consultant for MassMutual.

“Kiwanis is the reason I have the career that I have,” Lepper said, adding that, with the help of the Springfield Kiwanis Club, he was able to attend an international Key Club conference, at which he became riveted by a speech from the international president — and inspired to take that same title someday.

“I came home, and I changed my email signature from ‘club treasurer’ to ‘international president’ just to see what it would feel like, he said, adding that he later ran for New England district governor as a sophomore, got elected, then ran for international president as a junior — and, yes, got elected.

He missed 50 days of school his senior year because he was on the road giving speeches and running workshops, but said the learning experience was incredible.

Fast-forwarding, Lepper, a graduate of Western New England University, has kept Kiwanis in his life, joining the Springfield club when he was just 21 and eventually becoming its president. And the sense of community involvement instilled in him remains ever-present in his work at MassMutual, where he leads the community-responsibility strategy for the MassMutual Financial Advisors national sales force, work that includes oversight of community-impact, education, volunteer-engagement, and recognition programs.

In addition to that role, he has designed and led several programs, including the firm’s Community Service Awards recognition program and Community Responsibility Business Partner strategic consultative program.

An avid golfer, Lepper has a Scotty Cameron collection that he’s quite proud of. But he’s much more proud of his work at MassMutual, and of all that he has done with and for Kiwanis — and what Kiwanis has done for him.

—George O’Brien

Juan Latorre III

Principal Radio Frequency Engineer, Verizon: Age 38

Juan Lattore III Juan “Jay” Latorre is not an elected official. Yet.

But he certainly knows his way around City Hall — or city halls, in the plural. And town halls as well.

Indeed, as principal radio frequency engineer for Verizon, Latorre spends a great deal of his time before elected and appointed officials across New England to locate cell towers and antenna installations. He’s worked on more than 300 such assignments during his career, often developing unique solutions for site-specific permitting, working in collaboration with municipal, state, and federal officials to secure what everyone wants and needs in this age — reliable cellular service.

Despite that need, placing these towers isn’t easy. Doing so takes understanding, patience, and, most importantly, a willingness to work collaboratively with officials and other constituencies, he said.

“And that’s great, because this work has exposed me to so many different and interesting professions, like the law, construction, real-estate development, environmental policy — all of those things give me a broader perspective on how to make a community grow.

“I’m a boots-on-the-ground kind of person; I enjoy getting to better understand the pulse of our community by meeting with people,” he went on, adding that he made it a goal to put himself in rooms full of people he doesn’t know, something that has helped him become a better person and better community leader.

While helping to ensure that calls get through, Latorre is also a leader in the community. He’s run for City Council in Springfield twice, only to come up just short. He expects there will be more such bids in the future.

Meanwhile, he currently serves as vice president of the Sixteen Acres Civic Assoc. and has been active with the Boy Scouts. An Eagle Scout himself, he’s a troop leader in Springfield for disadvantaged youths in the Latino community and has been a board member of the Western Massachusetts Council of Boy Scouts of America for many years, and is currently on its executive committee.

Latorre is also involved with the Engineering department at UMass Amherst, helping to recruit students of color to that field. He was a member of the young professionals subcommittee of Springfield City Council when it was active, and during that time, he created Restaurant Week, which has become a fixture in the city.

Add all that up, and it’s easy to see why his schedule is full — and why he doesn’t need GPS to find any city hall.

—George O’Brien

Joesiah Gonzalez

Chief Philanthropy & Communications Officer, Home City Development: Age 26

Joesiah Gonzalez was just 23 when he first ran — successfully — for the Springfield School Committee in 2021. He was the youngest member at the time, and he still is, presenting a challenge of sorts.

“I think that sometimes, there’s a prejudice, or hesitance, toward folks who are young in any organization or institution, and that’s something I’ve had to overcome,” said Gonzalez, who has certainly done that, taking a leadership position (he’s now the vice chair) and pushing for meaningful change on many fronts, including a policy on critical-incident drills that focuses on the safety of the city’s students.

This work on the school board is just one example of how Gonzalez has long been committed to community — and also to the nonprofits that serve it. He’s currently the chief Philanthropy and Communications officer for Home City Development, a nonprofit real-estate developer with a special focus on mixed-income housing in Western Mass., but also a provider of resident-engagement programs ranging from after-school teen initiatives to early-childhood literacy programs.

He started working with nonprofits when he was just 20, joining the New North Citizens Council (NNCC) and overseeing the after-school youth programs at Gerena School and effectively expanding them to serve more young people. He would eventually secure more than $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Labor to establish a Youth Build program within the NNCC, and under his leadership, that program became a department, one that would grow to 30 employees and a $2 million budget.

In his current role, he handles fundraising and communications strategies for Home City, with a primary focus, on the philanthropy side, of raising funds to support resident-service programs that assist the more than 400 families housed in Home City’s multiple affordable-housing sites, work he finds very rewarding.

“Being at the table and also at the helm of certain initiatives, especially around resident engagement, allows me to drive impact in a way that’s meaningful, especially being from the city and living in the city,” Gonzalez said, adding that he gets involved at a truly grass-roots level. “There are a lot of folks doing a lot of social-impact programs, but if we don’t check the pulse on what’s happening in our community and our neighborhoods, there can sometimes be a disconnect between well-intended efforts and true impact.”

Because he has the pulse of his community, Gonzalez’s own well-intended efforts are certainly making an impact.

—George O’Brien

Chrismery Gonzalez

Head of the Office of Health and Racial Equity, City of Springfield: Age 33

Chrismery Gonzalez Chismery Gonzalez says she’s always been interested in promoting equity, especially in regard to leveling the playing field for traditionally marginalized people.

And in her current role as head of the Office of Health and Racial Equity in Springfield, she’s doing just that. It’s a wide-ranging job she assumed in late 2020, one that continues to evolve and add new responsibilities, while recording progress on some fronts.

“What’s most important to realize about this work is that it’s not just one individual that’s leading this work and making strides,” she said, adding that her work has involved many different realms, from vaccination efforts during COVID to youth substance abuse to overdose prevention.

Gonzalez started working in Springfield’s Department of Health and Human Services as an intern in 2018, eventually becoming head of its Office of Problem Gambling and Prevention, before stepping into her current role around the time Springfield — and many other cities — declared racism a public-health crisis in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The city was also coping with the pandemic, a time when many public-health and wellness inequities came into the spotlight and were in some ways magnified.

Since assuming that role, Gonzalez has a number of achievements to her credit, including:

• Creating a strategic plan to address systemic racism in the city, prioritizing departments, agencies, and organizations and including key strategies to achieve a healthier Springfield;

• Coordinating with local providers and community-based organizations to develop a cohesive network of health-equity and racial-justice programs and resources in the city;

• Conducting research on current and culturally appropriate, evidenced-based practices to advance health equity and racial justice; and

• Collaborating with the Office of Health Equity at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the chief Diversity, Equity & and Inclusion officer in Springfield to develop health-equity and racial-justice training initiatives for residents.

Gonzalez, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UMass Amherst and is working toward a doctorate in Public Health at SUNY Albany, said her current work is very rewarding, especially in the way she is able work collaboratively with others — in the 413 and across the state — to address deep-rooted problems and concerns.

Active in the community, she currently serves on the Duggan Academy advisory board, the Stop Access Coalition steering committee, the Massachusetts Public Health Assoc. board (chairing its racial equity and health committee), the Massachusetts Municipal DEI Coalition, the Gándara board of directors, and other groups.

—George O’Brien

Shannon Glenn

Academic Coordinator, Gateway to College at Holyoke Community College: Age 39

“Students trust Shannon. They lean in her doorway to say ‘good morning.’ They often disappear into her office, sometimes talking through some issues and sometimes just resting in a safe spot.

“Gateway students have left the traditional educational system for myriad issues, and each student needs to be seen and nurtured and valued individually. Shannon knows their triggers, their dreams, their classes, their vulnerabilities, their friends, and even their favorite snack.

“She is warm, welcoming, respectful, calm, and wise. You can feel her goodwill and compassion. She has created a culture where students feel seen and respected, where they can regain their confidence and hope and lean into their future.”

These observations, from Vivian Ostrowski, director of the Gateway to College program at Holyoke Community College (HCC), and offered in the form of a Forty Under 40 nomination, explain why Shannon Glenn is extremely good at her job — academic coordinator in the Gateway program.

In short, she has the needed qualities to help these students get where they want to go. And there’s something else: she can relate to everything they are going through.

“In high school, I was one of those students who people thought wouldn’t have graduated were it not for my mentor,” she said. “So I grew up and decided to be that for someone else.”

In her role at HCC, Glenn helps students who are at risk of dropping out, for any of many reasons, stay in school and then graduate, as evidenced by a success rate of nearly 80%. She said success comes, as Ostrowski also noted, from helping students regain both confidence and hope.

It’s an extremely rewarding job, she said.

“This is my life’s work. Taking the students that most think are not going to graduate from high school and having them be extremely successful in high school as well as college … it feels like giving the underdog an opportunity to thrive.”

Glenn has certainly thrived in her role. She came to it after working as an elementary-school teacher; leaving education to raise her son, Kasen, now 10; working in real estate; and then searching for something in higher education that would be rewarding and meet a real need.

She’s found that something at HCC, where she is also a founding member of the Black Leadership Council, an advisor to HCC Black Student Alliance, and a member of the college’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.

—George O’Brien

Nikai Fondon

Founder and Host, She Did That! Podcast: Age 28

They call it the Dream Maker Award.

It’s presented by Girls Inc. of the Valley to individuals who make a commitment to working with young women in the community to help make their dreams become reality.

And it’s just one of many awards and accolades that Nikai Fondon has earned over the past few years. Others include everything from first place in a pitch contest for a podcast that she conceived called “She Did That!” which highlights young professional women of color locally and across the country, to a BEST Award from the National Assoc. of Multi-ethnicity in Communications.

Because of these and many other accomplishments, she’ll soon have another award — a Forty Under 40 plaque. It’s been earned partly for her current work at Berkshire Bank, but mostly for a host of accomplishments and initiatives within and for the community, including, but certainly not limited to:

• Serving Girls Inc. as a board member, clerk, and, now, vice chair;

• Starting the first-ever DEI committee for the Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield;

• Creating the region’s first virtual co-working space for young professional women of color during the pandemic;

• Facilitating leadership workshops through the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, Maine Community Foundation, Bay Path University, UMass Amherst, and other entities starting at age 16;

• Teaching classes at Westfield State University and the YWCA of Greater Springfield;

• Speaking before more than a dozen youth groups across the region about entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal branding; and

• Facilitating the Springfield partnership between the Young Women’s Initiative and the Women’s Fund.

Until recently, Fondon, a graduate of UMass Amherst with a degree in business and marketing, was Financial Inclusion & Entrepreneurship community liaison at Berkshire Bank, where her work included building programs for financial literacy, workshops, and “opportunities to build trust in the community and provide educational opportunities within the community on financial matters.

“We want to make sure that the underbanked find a home at a bank in general, but, hopefully, our bank because of the work we do in the community,” she added, noting that Berkshire supports many nonprofit groups and initiatives across the region, and she has been involved with many of those efforts.

On the entrepreneurship side, she was also involved with a Berkshire Bank loan program called the Futures Fund, which has lower barriers to entry than typical loans and provides easier access to capital.

All this explains why Forty Under 40 isn’t the first award that she’s earned, and it almost certainly won’t be the last.

— George O’Brien

Sean Dolan

General Manager, MassMutual Center: Age 32

Sean Dolan had June 20 circled weeks before the other 39 honorees in the Forty Under 40 class of 2024.

That’s because he won’t just be among those going to the stage to receive their plaques. Dolan will be, well, hosting this annual event. Sort of.

As general manager of the MassMutual Center in downtown Springfield, he leads the team that puts on all events at the facility, including, for the first time in 2024, the Forty Under 40 Gala.

He told BusinessWest he’ll be talking that night off from work, which is OK, because he works quite a few nights, weekends, and a few holidays as well.

That’s all part of a position that comes with a broad job description that comes down to making the venue as successful as possible in the many ways success is measured, especially the yardstick Dolan calls ‘economic impact,’ which equated to $56.6 million in fiscal year 2023, and also nearly 600 jobs and more than $4.5 million in state and local tax revenues.

“The main goal every day is developing and implementing the overall strategic plan for the MassMutual Center,” said Dolan, who partners with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and MGM Springfield to develop a vision for the venue. “Our number-one goal every day and with everything we do is how we can drive that economic impact for the city and Western Mass.”

Managing large event venues runs in the Dolan family; his brother manages an arena in Bridgeport, Conn. Sean majored in sports and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina and cut his teeth with Spectra Venue Management, including as assistant general manager and director of Operations at the Mullins Center at UMass Amherst.

He arrived at the MassMutual Center in 2018, and over the ensuring years, he has helped bring several world-class acts to the venue, from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Bruno Mars; from Disney on Ice to Red Sox Winter Weekend. Recently, he played a lead role in bringing a men’s NCAA Division 1 hockey regional to Springfield.

Dolan balances work with family — his wife Kristie and son Jack — and also involvement in the community; he’s on the board of the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau and volunteers for the Springfield Boys & Girls Club, the Mayflower Marathon, Habitat for Humanity, and Friends of the Homeless.

There will be many events at the MassMutual Center in 2024, but for Dolan, the one on June 20 will be different. That’s when he’ll be among those taking center stage.

—George O’Brien

Lev BenEzra

Executive Director, Amherst Survival Center: Age 39

The levels of food insecurity in this region rose dramatically during the pandemic, Lev BenEzra notes, and they continue to rise, for several reasons — from inflation, and the enormous toll it takes on families’ budgets, to the curtailment of many COVID-inspired relief initiatives.

BenEzra’s determined and imaginative efforts to tackle this critical issue certainly help to explain why she is not only a Forty Under 40 honoree, but why she tied for the highest score among the class of 2024.

In short, she has provided the leadership and vision needed to not only see the Amherst Survival Center through the upheaval of the pandemic, when it had to meet soaring needs and find new and different ways to do things, but chart a course for the next several years through strategic planning and anticipation of future challenges.

In doing so, she is continuing a two-decade-long track record of working for nonprofits, dating back to when she served as an academic coordinator for Girls Inc. of the Valley and then a curriculum specialist for the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative in Springfield. Later, she spent more than a decade with Community Action Pioneer Valley in Greenfield, first as program manager of Youth Programs and then as director of Youth and Workforce Development, before coming to the Amherst Survival Center just months before the pandemic arrived, bringing challenge, but also opportunity, with it.

“There is something about a crisis that clarifies what it is that you’re supposed to be doing or what is truly important,” she said. “And I think that was very true, especially in the early days of leadership at the Survival Center; we provide a daily, essential service to people and, thus, did not have the option of closing or limiting access to our programs.”

During her tenure, BenEzra and her team have doubled the agency’s annual revenue; launched a successful grocery-delivery program; improved access for people from all cultures and backgrounds, while also increasing availability of food to meet different dietary needs and cultural styles of cooking; and spearheaded major HR improvements to better support the staff.

Active in the community, she is also a board member of the Community Health Center of Franklin County and has served Franklin County Pride, the Communities that Care Coalition, the Strategic Planning Initiative for Families & Youth, and the Regional Employment Board Youth Career Connections Council, among other nonprofits.

—George O’Brien

Shirley Arriaga

State Representative, 8th Hampden District: Age 34

Shirley Arriaga says her life and career have gone pretty much according to plan. Or the plan, to be more precise.

It was one she started conceiving when she was young, one that had her moving into public service and helping to write laws that would positively impact people, something she long aspired to do, and is now doing as state representative for the 8th Hampden District — her hometown of Chicopee.

To get there, though, she knew she needed an education, and she needed to develop skills, especially leadership, and this put her on a path to the military, specifically the U.S. Air Force, serving as a loadmaster in the 337th Airlift Squadron at Westover. She would take part in deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, eventually earning the rank of staff sergeant and becoming part of the Women in Aviation initiative.

Arriaga’s service helped her continue her education — an associate degree in liberal arts from Springfield Technical Community College; a bachelor’s degree in legal studies and a paralegal certificate from Elms College; a master of law degree from Western New England University; and an associate degree in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronomical engineering from the Community College of the Air Force.

After serving in the Air Force for a decade, she worked as veterans director for U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, assisting veterans with a wide range of issues, and it was this work that crystalized her desire to run for public office.

After an unsuccessful run for City Council, she set her sights much higher — filling the very large shoes of retiring, long-time state Rep. Joseph Wagner, in what everyone but her saw as a longshot bid.

“I personally knocked on 21,000 doors myself,” she said, often with her daughter, Winter, in tow. “I ended up getting some folks to volunteer, and they knocked on 5,000 more — so that’s 26,000 doors. It was a lot of hard work, sunup to sundown.”

That hard work was rewarded with victory in November 2022, followed by a year of hard learning.

“When they say it’s like drinking from a firehose, that’s exactly what it was like; there’s no manual, and you learn these things as you go,” she said, adding that she has settled in and is focused on priorities ranging from veterans to education; from small business to transportation. “It’s fast-paced, and you’re always learning, but it has been the experience of a lifetime.”

And the fulfillment of a plan she made a long time ago.

—George O’Brien

Greenfield Builds Momentum on Many Fronts

By George O'Brien April 12, 2024

planned redevelopment of the former Wilson’s department store

Cover Story Creative Economy

An architect’s rendering of the planned redevelopment of the former Wilson’s department store into a mix of retail and housing.

Virginia “Ginny” Desorgher is a retired emergency-room nurse, mother of three, and grandmother of nine.

She had no real desire to add ‘mayor of Greenfield’ to that personal profile, but Desorgher, a transplant from the eastern part of the state and, by this time last year, a veteran city councilor and chair of the Ways and Means Committee, decided that change was needed in this city of almost 18,000.

So she ran for mayor. And she won — handily. And now that she’s been in the job for three months, she can see many similarities between being an ER nurse and being the CEO of a city.

In both settings, there is a need for triage, she explained, noting that, in the ER and with this city, there is a steady stream of cases, or issues, to be dealt with, and they must be prioritized.

“You just have to take care of the thing that’s the most important at the time and try to keep everyone happy,” she said while trying to sum up both jobs.

There is also a need for communication.

Indeed, in the ER, Desorgher said she made a habit of visiting the waiting room and talking with the patients here, explaining why their wait was so long and asking them if they needed something to eat or drink or maybe some ice for their broken ankle. As mayor, she sees a similar need to communicate, whether it’s with other city officials, residents, neighbors of the Franklin County Fairgrounds, or business owners — a constituency she heard from at a recent gathering she described as a “listening session,” during which she received input on many subjects, but especially parking.

“You just have to take care of the thing that’s the most important at the time and try to keep everyone happy.”

“I thought I kind of knew how much people cared about parking,” she said. “Now I really know that parking is quite an issue.”

But while that subject remains mostly a sore spot for this community, there is momentum on many different fronts, and what Desorgher and others described as ‘game changers’ — or potential game changers — in various stages of development.

That list includes the much-anticipated adaptive reuse of the former Wilson’s department store into a mix of retail (in the form of an expanded Green Fields Market) and housing, both of which are expected to breathe new life into the downtown.

“The initial impact on foot traffic downtown from 61 new units will be extraordinary,” said Amy Cahillane, the city’s Community and Economic Development director, adding that the project is being designed to bring these new residents into the downtown area.

It also includes the prospects for the city becoming a stop on what’s being called the ‘northern tier’ of proposed east-west rail service — one that will in many ways mirror Route 2 — as well as the pending arrival of both a Starbucks and an Aldi’s grocery story near the rotary off I-91 exit 43 and a massive redesign of Main Street, now likely to start in 2027.

Together, these game changers — coupled with some new businesses downtown; efforts to inspire and support entrepreneurship, including a new pitch contest called Take the Floor; collective efforts to bring more visitors to Greenfield and the surrounding area, especially at its oldest continuously operating fairgrounds in the country; and a greater sense of collaboration among business and economic-development agencies — have created an upbeat tone in this community, with great enthusiasm for what comes next.

Ginny Desorgher says she wasn’t keen on adding ‘mayor’ to her personal profile, but became convinced it was time for a change in Greenfield.

“What I’m most excited about is that we now have all these people who are thinking collectively about how we can make the most of this momentum,” said Jessye Deane, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce and Regional Tourism Council.

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an indepth look at the many developing stories in Greenfield.

Tale of the Tape

And we start with a somewhat unusual gathering downtown on the Saturday before Easter.

Indeed, Desorgher, Cahillane, Deane, and others spent several hours in the central business district cleaning the bases of streetlights, an undertaking organized by the Greenfield Business Assoc. (GBA).

All three had somewhat different takes on what they were expecting from this exercise, but the consensus is that it was more difficult, and time-consuming, to remove the remnants from countless posters for events — and the tape used to affix them to the structures — than they thought.

But while the work was a grind, they all said it was important, worthwhile, and much more than symbolism. And it even inspired a thought to create one or more community bulletin boards so individuals and groups would have a place to promote their events other than light poles.

Deane said the cleanup was an example of a greater sense of collaboration within the community and its many civic and business organizations, from officials in City Hall to the chamber; from the GBA to the Franklin County Community Development Corp. (FCCDC).

“What I’m most excited about is that we now have all these people who are thinking collectively about how we can make the most of this momentum.”

“There’s new energy taking place on a partnership level, and it was nice to see Greenfield leaders like the mayor come down and take action,” said Deane, adding that the cleanup was just one example of this energy. Another was the aforementioned listening session, which she said was likely the first of its kind.

“The business owners and community leaders really appreciated having the opportunity to have that kind of forum with the mayor — an open forum where they could say, ‘here’s what’s going really well, here’s what we think needs work, and how are we all going to work together to bring Greenfield forward?’ That was great.”

The streetlight cleanup project and listening session represent just two of many forms of progress, with some steps larger and more significant than others, said those we spoke with, but all critical to that sense of momentum and building toward something better.

And there are many reasons for optimism, especially what most refer to simply as the ‘Wilson’s project.’

For decades, the store represented something unique — an old-fashioned department store in an age of malls and online shopping. When it closed just prior to the pandemic, it left a huge hole in the downtown — not just real estate to be filled, but the loss of an institution.

There’s no bringing back Wilson’s, but the current plan, a proposal put forward by the Community Builders and Green Fields Market, a popular co-op currently located farther down Main Street, will bring retail and housing, specifically roughly 60 mixed-income units, to Main Street.

The housing units, as noted earlier, are expected to bring foot traffic and more vibrancy to the downtown, said Cahillane, noting that this will be foot traffic that doesn’t leave at 5 o’clock and should comprise a good mix of age groups, thus providing a boost for the growing number of restaurants and venues like the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center.

“The Community Builders is being thoughtful in the way they’re designing this space to encourage folks not to just exit out a rear door, get in their cars, and leave,” she explained. “Instead, they’re going to make it so it’s very easy to get from the apartments onto Main Street; this encourages them to come out into the community.”

Greenfield at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1753
Population: 17,768
Area: 21.9 square miles
County: Franklin
Residential Tax Rate: $20.39
Commercial Tax Rate: $20.39
Median Household Income: $33,110
Median Family Income: $46,412
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Baystate Franklin Medical Center, Greenfield Community College, Sandri
* Latest information available

Meanwhile, several other properties downtown are in various stages of bringing upper floors online for housing, Cahillane explained, adding that this movement will help ease a housing crunch — which she considers the most pressing issue in the community — and generate still more foot traffic, which should help bring more businesses to the downtown.

There are already some recent additions in that area, including a computer-repair store on Federal Street, and, on Main Street, Sweet Phoenix, an antiques and crafts store, and Posada’s, a family-owned Mexican restaurant that the mayor said is “always packed.”

Meanwhile, the plans for Aldi’s and Starbucks, both in the early stages, are generating some excitement, the mayor added, noting that the latter, especially, will provide motorists on I-91 with yet another reason to get off in Greenfield and perhaps stay a while.

Getting Down to Business

These additions bolster an already large and diverse mix of businesses in the city, which still boasts some manufacturing — though certainly not as much as was present decades ago — as well as a healthy mix of tourism and hospitality-related ventures, service businesses, nonprofits (Greenfield serves as the hub for the larger Franklin County area), and several startups and next-stage businesses in various sectors, from IT to food production.

One of those long-standing businesses is Adams Donuts on Federal Street, now owned by Sabra Billings and her twin sister, Sidra Baranoski.

Originally opened in the ’50s, Adams Donuts is an institution, well-known — and in many cases revered — by several generations of area families. There have been several owners not named Adams, Billings said, adding that the one before her closed the establishment during COVID with the intention of reopening, but never did.

The two sisters stepped forward to keep a tradition alive — and work for themselves instead of someone else.

“It was kind of crazy; we’d never owned a business before, but here we were buying a shuttered business in the middle of a pandemic,” Billings said. “But it’s been really special to be part of the community, and what we call the ‘Adams community’; there are generations from the same families that are customers.”

Thus, they’re part of what could be called a groundswell of entrepreneurship in Greenfield and across Franklin County, one that John Waite, executive director of the FCCDC, has witnessed firsthand over the past 24 years he’s spent in that role.

He said there is a large, and growing, amount of entrepreneurial energy in Greenfield and across the county, largely out of necessity.

Indeed, since the larger businesses, most of them manufacturers, closed or left, the region and its largest city are more dependent on smaller businesses and the people who have the imagination, determination, and ideas with which to start them.

And the FCCDC is supporting these business owners in many different ways. The agency has several divisions, if you will, including direct business assistance — everything from technical assistance to grant funds to support ventures of various sizes — to a venture center that now boasts six tenants, to the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center, which boasts 66 active clients processing, canning, and jarring everything from salsa to applesauce to fudge sauce.

Overall, the FCCDC served more than 350 clients in FY 2023, loaned out nearly $3 million to 31 businesses, and carried out work that resulted in the creation of 70 jobs and the preservation of 114 jobs, said Waite, adding that one of its more impactful initiatives is its loan program.

The loans vary in size from a few thousand dollars to $300,000, and the agency can work with area banks if a venture needs more. They are offered to businesses across a wide spectrum, including hospitality, a sector where there is often need, Waite noted, citing the example of 10 Forward, a unique performing-arts venue and cocktail bar on Fiske Avenue in the downtown.

“A lot of musicians need a place to play, and they’ll sign them up, and they’ll do comedy once in a while,” he explained, adding that the venue is part of an evolving downtown, one that now has more things happening at night and more events and programs to attract the young people who provide needed energy.

Meanwhile, Take the Floor, a CDC initiative that involves the entire county, is another avenue of support. The Shark Tank-like pitch contest has attracted dreamers across the broad spectrum of business, and the top three performers at three different contests — the latest was in Orange — will compete for $10,000 in prizes in the finale at Hawks & Reed.

“Developing our entrepreneurial infrastructure is very important to this region,” Waite said. “We want to make sure people know where they can go for resources to help them succeed.”

Will Dávila Keeps His Focus on Making an Impact

By George O'Brien April 12, 2024

Where Are They Now?

Will Dávila says he’s always sought out career opportunities where he can make an impact.

Will Dávila says he’s learned from experience — and some not-so-pleasant experiences, to be more precise — that, when a job isn’t working for you, you don’t stay in it.

And in his case, ‘not working’ translates directly to “you don’t feel fulfilled, you don’t feel like you’re having an impact or making a difference, and it just doesn’t look like that’s going to be happening.”

Such was the case with his short tenure serving as campus executive director of the UMass Center at Springfield a decade or so ago. He envisioned the role as one where he could “bring education to this community and really promote higher education as an opportunity for kids like me, who grew up in Springfield, in the projects, and had limited opportunities.”

The reality was different as the facility struggled to ramp up enrollment.

“Instead, I spent almost all my time giving tours,” he told BusinessWest, noting that the facility, created on the mezzanine level at Tower Square, had just opened, and many business and civic leaders, as well as the press, wanted to see it. “I said, ‘I’m a social worker. I’ve been in human services my whole career. This is not a good use of my time.’”

Coincidentally, one of those who eventually came in for a tour was Jim Goodwin, president and CEO of the Center for Human Development (CHD), and during that visit, the two started talking, a discussion that eventually led to Dávila becoming vice president of Clinical Services for the agency.

He would spend a few years in that role before becoming a nonprofit consultant and executive advisor, then leading two nonprofits, and then returning to CHD last October to assume the role of vice president of Diversion, Shelter & Housing, a role where he believes he’s making a deep impact.

Overall, it’s a been a winding journey with a few of those jobs that weren’t working, but, overall, it’s been a rewarding career in the broad realm of health and human services, one that serves as an appropriate and poignant starting point for a new series we’re launching at BusinessWest called, appropriately enough, ‘Where Are They Now?’

“Part of the unfortunate reality is that they move through a continuum of services. So I consider myself privileged to have worked in many parts of that continuum.”

As the magazine prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary of serving the region, and as some of its recognition programs — which have brought hundreds of individuals and groups into the spotlight — approach two decades of existence, there is a need to update many of the stories we have told over those years.

We begin with Dávila, who started his career with nonprofits focused on health and human services more than 20 years ago, when he became Metro Boston regional manager for Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health. Then came his first stint at the agency now known as Helix Human Services, then known as the Children’s Study Home.

But it was a few years later, when he was serving as director of Outpatient Services at the Gándara Center in Springfield, when he was first recognized by BusinessWest, as a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2013.

Soon thereafter came that short stint at the UMass Center at Springfield, his first stint at CHD, work as a consultant, a return to what is now Helix as executive director and CEO (when that agency was being rebranded and also being recognized by BusinessWest as a Difference Maker), and then a very short stint — a cautionary tale, as he calls it — as CEO of the Villa of Hope in Greece, N.Y., another of those jobs that just wasn’t working, this time for different reasons.

“The board was not really forthcoming about the real condition of the organization,” Dávila said, adding that what he found did not match what he was told in interviews, regarding everything from the budget — the $20 million agency was trending toward a $4 million deficit for the fiscal year soon to come to a close — to the workforce, to the vacancies within its programs.

He is now back at the agency he calls home (this is actually his third stint there), in a role where he oversees a staff of roughly 240, an annual budget of $34 million, and a division with dozens of family and individual units, several emergency shelter hotels, and other housing options.

This latest assignment enables him to add another line, another area of focus — in this case housing — to his résumé and, far more importantly, make an impact and a difference in people’s lives.

“It’s an amazing department and an amazing service,” Dávila said. “It’s something different, but, surprisingly, it’s not all that different. A lot of the folks we’re dealing with are the same people we’re assisting in residential, in children’s services, foster-care and outpatient services, and substance-abuse services.

“Part of the unfortunate reality is that they move through a continuum of services,” he went on. “So I consider myself privileged to have worked in many parts of that continuum and actually lead some of them, so this is a nice addition to my portfolio, if you will.”

That’s where Dávila is now — and where he plans to be for some time, because this job definitely does work for him.

—George O’Brien

52 Sumner Becomes Provocative Addition to Local Arts Landscape

By George O'Brien April 11, 2024

Taking Center Stage

Angela Park and Dan McKellick stand in the balcony at 52 Sumner.

Angela Park was originally looking for a home for her business, one that specializes in after-school programs for young people.

And she essentially found one in a portion of Faith United Church on Sumner Avenue in Springfield, a 125-year-old landmark that had recently come on the market amid declining church membership.

As she and other partners moved forward with the acquisition, an obvious question arose — what to do with the nave, altar, and even the balcony of the structure?

The eventual answer to the question — and it took some time for it to be answered — has become one of the more intriguing cultural developments in Springfield for quite some time.

Indeed, Park and others have created a nonprofit called Springfield Performing Arts Ventures Inc. (SPAV) and, in the church sanctuary, a new venue for the arts called 52 Sumner — the structure’s street address.

“We are committed to breaking down barriers, ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, can access, participate in, and be inspired by the arts.”

After more than a year’s work to renovate the hall, remove its pews, and install a new sound and lighting system, the venue officially opened earlier this year. There are several events on the schedule, and the obvious goal is to add more, said Park, executive director of SPAV, and attorney Dan McKellick, a member of the agency’s board of directors.

But its broad mission goes much further than merely staging concerts and other forms of entertainment in a unique environment that many potential patrons can walk to.

“Our mission is to spark the artistic spirit within our urban community, providing a haven for creative expression, cultural enrichment, and personal growth through the arts,” said McKellick, quoting the agency’s mission statement but adding emphasis to those stated goals. “We are committed to breaking down barriers, ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, can access, participate in, and be inspired by the arts. Through education, performance, and outreach, we strive to foster a more vibrant, connected, and culturally enriched city, promoting unity and understanding among all our residents.”

Elaborating, McKellick said the agency, with this venue, is focused on bringing many different types of performing arts to Springfield and the region — not just specific acts, but cultural experiences, as we’ll see.

52 Sumner has already hosted several events and has many more on the calendar.

“This is a unique opportunity to bring all different sorts of arts,” he explained. “It’s not just limited to musical performances; we look forward to being able to host everything from acting clubs — there are many drama clubs around — to different types of music. I like to say that we’re providing an experience.”

As was the case late last month, when the Irish band the Screaming Orphans gave a performance at the venue, along with students from a local Irish step-dance school as an opening act.

And later this month, a Latin Fusion band called DAR & the Rebel Monks, based in Hartford, Conn., will be performing.

“They have a Grammy Award-winning artist in their band, and they have two members of their band who are backup band members for Jose Feliciano,” McKellick said, adding that this performance will follow a salsa instructor, and there will be Latino-themed finger foods.

“When you come out and buy a ticket, you’re not just seeing a band, having a couple of drinks, and going,” he said. “You’ll have the opportunity, in this case, to immerse yourself in the culture and connect a little more with that culture.”

“When you come out and buy a ticket, you’re not just seeing a band, having a couple of drinks, and going. You’ll have the opportunity, in this case, to immerse yourself in the culture and connect a little more with that culture.”

Meanwhile, these acts will provide working capital to the agency, said McKellick, adding that the proceeds will be used to bring community programming to the venue, such as performances for young people, art lessons, drama workshops, pottery lessons, and more.

This is part of the mission and a big part of what makes this venue and what’s happening there unique, said Park, adding that the agency is “trying to let out line slow,” as she put it, while putting together a slate of performances and drawing people from across the 413, and well beyond, to a very different kind of performance venue.

“There are a lot of people who want to get involved and have things here,” she said, adding that there is a high level of anticipation about what this venue can become in the years to come.

For this issue and its focus on the creative economy, we’ll look at how 52 Sumner came to be, how it plans to carry out its unique mission, and why it is a provocative addition to the cultural landscape in the region — for many different reasons.

Sound Decisions

It’s called the Edgar Allan Poe Speakeasy.

And it’s described thusly: “Over a century and a half after Edgar Allan Poe’s death, this cocktail experience brings the most beloved works of Poe to life off the page and onto the stage. Our immersive evening pairs four tales with a dash and history and heavy libations.”

Those presenting the program are among the many varied groups who have reached out to SPAV about performing at 52 Sumner, said Park, noting that the strong interest to date, which comes from several local bands, theater groups, and more, speaks to just how quickly this new venue has captured the imagination of the arts community. And held it.

An undated picture of Faith United Church.

Looking back, those with the original vision said this is what they had in mind — sort of. From the beginning, they thought they had something unique, something special. It took some time to see just how special.

Our story begins in 2019, when Faith United Church closed amid declining membership. The property became one of several houses of worship to come on the market in recent years for essentially that reason.

The church, designed by renowned architect William Van Alen, noted for his design of New York’s Chrysler Building, was on the market for a few years when it came to the attention of Park and her business partner, who were looking for another location for their after-school programs. They eventually acquired it for $525,000.

With those programs and a daycare facility as tenants, the overriding question, as noted earlier, involved what to do the sanctuary portion of the building. Soon, plans for a performance venue started to develop, and over the course of a year they came together, along with the nonprofit Springfield Performing Arts Ventures Inc. and its broad mission.

The needed renovations were fairly extensive, said McKellick, noting that the floors had to be refinished and the hall repainted, a large project requiring specific expertise because of the height of the hall. Acoustic panels were added as well as sound and lighting systems, he went on, noting that the work was completed late last year.

Meanwhile, the necessary permits were obtained. Working with the city, parking was secured at a long-closed Friendly’s (now owned by the city) across the street from the church, with additional parking on the street and in a small lot behind the church.

An open house to showcase the space, which doubled as a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, was staged on Dec. 7, with the first actual performance on Feb. 17, featuring two local groups, Moses Sole and the 413s. Those performances, which drew more than 400 people, served as an opportunity to test all the systems and make sure all was in in order, said McKellick, adding that those tests were passed.

Overall, the goal is to bring live performances to the area, but at an affordable price — $17 for the performance in March involving the Screaming Orphans and the Irish dancers, and $20 for DAR & the Rebel Monks — although there’s an early-bird price of $15.

“You can come in for $15, get a salsa lesson, dance a little bit, enjoy a band that has all these really talented artists, dance some more, enjoy some food … that’s a pretty good value,” he said, adding that, as a nonprofit with a mission of breaking down barriers to the arts, affordability is an important aspect of this venture.

Art and Soul

Equally important is the resolve to create community programming for various audiences, but especially young people, said Park and McKellick, noting that this is why the schedule includes an important fundraiser, set for May 28.

Organizers have received a commitment from Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, a Grammy-winning blues artist, to play at that event, who was secured through “a cold call, lots of follow-up, and lots of horse trading.”

“I noticed that he was passing through,” said McKellick, noting that Kingfish — Ingram’s stage name — was playing an event in Boston and then heading to Vermont for a string of performances.

He will headline the fundraiser, which will hopefully raise $100,000 and thus help defray the cost of several summer programs that SPAV is planning, which speaks to the group’s larger mission: to go well beyond being a performance venue and instead become a vehicle for introducing constituencies, and especially young people, to the arts and immersing people in them.

Indeed, as noted earlier, the stated goal is to use the proceeds from various performances, and fundraising efforts, to fund community programs, from pottery classes to drama workshops, McKellick said.

“If we can find the instructor and we can figure out how to do it, we want to create affordable access to the arts for the kids in our community, because it’s super expensive, just like everything else — a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs … everything has gone up in price, and it’s really hard.

“To try to pull them away from wherever they are and keep them inspired by the arts, whether it’s the music side, the performing-arts side, or the artistic side, the hands-on side … that’s what we want to do,” he added.

To that end, those at SPAV are working to book some “symphony-like concerts” for young people as well other types of performances, including one involving someone called ‘Father Goose.’

This would be Wayne Rhoden, a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and music producer, said McKellick, adding that SPAV is trying to book him for several shows, what he called “field-trip” performances.

Meanwhile, the space is available to rent for corporate outings, nonprofit fundraisers, various types of performing arts (including dramatic productions), and other events, and it has already staged several, said Park, adding that there are several revenue streams that will help the agency carry out its mission.

Overall, SPAV and 52 Sumner are writing the early chapters of an intriguing story that has brought new life to a Springfield landmark and the promise of not just art, but the ability for diverse audiences to enjoy it, take part in it, and, hopefully, become immersed in it.

In short, it’s a work in progress, and a work of art — or the arts, to be more precise.

AIM’s Leader Says the Commonwealth Is at an Inflection Point

By George O'Brien April 11, 2024

Features Special Coverage

The State of the Bay State

Brooke Thomson said her story is of the kind the Bay State and its leaders like to write.

Hailing from the Midwest, she graduated from Mount Holyoke College, went to law school in Boston, and then made the decision to start her career and raise a family here.

It wasn’t easy, she recalled, noting that she needed roommates when she got her first apartment, and housing in the Boston area, as well as countless other expenses, made those early years — and even the later ones — a stern challenge.

But she stayed and is now president and CEO of Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM), a position from which she reflects on, and often retells, her story while noting, with large doses of frustration and even dismay, that it is becoming a harder story to write today.

Indeed, some of the thousands who graduate from Bay State colleges and universities each year are opting not to start their careers here, said Thomson, who sat down recently with BusinessWest to discuss the state of the Bay State. And some who did start here are finding it too difficult to stay amid sky-high prices for everything from homes to daycare and tax burdens that are far less friendly than many other states, including several in the Northeast.

This exodus, if you will, is one of many forces, most of them interconnected in some ways, that are colliding at what is an inflection point for the state, said Thomson, a critical time in its history, when the dust has largely settled from COVID and its aftermath, and this state, like all others, must devise a business plan, if you will, for coping with a new set of realities.

“Businesses, municipal leaders, state leaders, and federal leaders must make sure we’re putting in place the economic incentives and the regulatory pathways so that we can continue to have a strong economy in Massachusetts.”

These forces include the momentous shift in how and where people work post-pandemic, a swing toward remote work and hybrid schedules that is impacting everything from commercial real estate to hospitality and service businesses in central business districts in cities from Boston to Springfield and everywhere in between. They also include demographics — everything from smaller high-school graduating classes to huge numbers of retiring Baby Boomers — a persisting workforce crisis impacting most all sectors of the economy, falling state tax revenues, transportation issues led by the famously unreliable MBTA, a housing crisis that is impacting most of the 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth, high energy costs and the growing need to address climate change, and, of course, the spiraling cost of living, punctuated by sky-high home prices, not just in Boston, but in an ever-wider radius around the city and many other parts of the state as well.

A poignant example of how many of these forces are intertwined came late last month, when Boston Mayor Michelle Wu proposed legislation to increase commercial property tax rates amid a decline in property values post-pandemic — and as many buildings suffer from remote-work-related issues — in an effort to protect residents from what she called “sudden and dramatic tax increases.”

The matter went to a subcommittee last week, where its fate is in question, especially in an election year, and amid warnings from real-estate trade groups and business leaders that the move would increase the burden on an already-struggling office market and could deter new investment.

Brooke Thomson says housing — and the need to build more of it — is among the many challenges confronting the Bay State at this critical time.

Wu’s proposal, and the reaction to it, are examples of how complicated these problems are — neither side is really in a position to absorb a higher tax burden — and how elected leaders, the business community, and even residents are going to have to work collaboratively in this time of stern challenges, Thomson noted, adding that the state’s businesses, despite some rumors to the contrary, cannot shoulder the burden itself.

“I think this is a critical time because there is so much uncertainty and because we are coming out of the COVID bubble,” said Thomson, who took the helm at AIM at the start of this year. “Businesses, municipal leaders, state leaders, and federal leaders must make sure we’re putting in place the economic incentives and the regulatory pathways so that we can continue to have a strong economy in Massachusetts.

“I think we’ve seen elsewhere in the country that, depending on what actions are taken, certain cities that used to be centers of business and growth are no longer there,” she went on. “Part of this was out of our control, part of it was this COVID bubble where everything was shut down and then people re-evaluated how they worked and where they worked, and businesses re-evaluated where they located and what their space looks like and where they draw talent from. But as we are moving out of that, we must collectively figure out the right sauce, the right recipe, sort of speak, for success.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Thomson about this recipe and the ingredients that might go into it.

Work in Progress

Thomson said she can usually tell what day it is — or isn’t — by the volume of traffic in and around Boston.

While it’s still difficult to get where one wants to go most of the time, Mondays and Fridays are at least somewhat better, she said, adding that, by and large, these are the days when many who can and do work a hybrid schedule are not in the office. And the impact of that many people working from their home offices or dining-room tables is felt not just on the roads, but in the office towers in that city, where valuations are falling, and the countless diners, restaurants, and service businesses that rely on foot traffic from people working in the city.

“Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday — that’s when people are coming in,” she said. “And that presents a whole host of challenges; it exacerbates transit, and if you have a workforce, like ours, that’s in this sandwich generation where they’re caring for children but also caring for parents, not only do we not have enough support there, but our systems are not set up where daycare facilities have a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday schedule.”

“There are a lot of things we have to move on quickly, meaning right now, to set ourselves up to be in a place of continued growth so that, 10 years from now, some of these trends that we’ve seen, like outmigration and tax-return dips, don’t continue. But it’s going to require some strong action right now.”

While Boston is the poster child for the challenges that have come post-pandemic, the same issues are being seen in communities across the state and in businesses of all sizes and in most every sector.

Indeed, she said AIM, which employs more than 25 people full-time, exemplifies the current colliding forces and trends. It has seen a few of its valued employees leave the agency and the Commonwealth for more affordable states, she said. Meanwhile, it is preparing to move into new quarters and reduce its overall footprint to reflect a need for less space amid more remote work.

“Like a lot of businesses in the wake of COVID, we re-evaluated what our footprint should look like and where we should be,” she said, adding that the agency is slated to move in June into space that is slightly smaller, but also features more “collaborative space,” as she called it, and more gathering and event space amid fewer private offices.

As for losing employees to other states, “we’ve lost two people in the past year who were under 30,” she said. “It’s not because they didn’t love Massachusetts; it’s not because they didn’t love AIM. One moved to Tennessee, and one moved to Texas because those states are more affordable, and they have the prospect of buying a home.”

Extrapolate these recent developments across the state and its business community, and it’s easy to see why this is a critical juncture for the Commonwealth, Thomson said.

She can cite some positives and possible reasons for optimism — everything from the tax cuts Gov. Maura Healey signed into law last fall to projections that falling state tax revenues may pick up in the last few months of the fiscal year; from persistently low unemployment rates to signs on Beacon Hill that leaders there understand what needs to be done.

“I remain cautiously optimistic because many municipal leaders, and our administration, are laser-focused on providing incentives to try to make it very clear to the business community that Massachusetts wants businesses to be here and wants businesses to grow,” she said. “And they recognize that, for there to be good jobs and good quality of life and affordable housing, we have to have a strong economy.

“I haven’t seen that messaging in recent years as strong as I’m hearing it now,” she went on. “The question is … will the actions that go along with that be put into place and be effective? From AIM’s perspective, that’s why we’re working alongside the administration and the Legislature to say, ‘now is the time to act.’”

Elaborating, and citing ways in which in the state and its leaders need to act, she listed the housing bond bill proposed by Healey, as well as the so-called ‘Mass Leads’ legislation, an economic-development bill that contains incentives for businesses.

“We have to look at this because, as we see the demographic shift, as we see folks retiring, we’re going to have a real problem if we’re not saying to those young folks, ‘this is where you want to stay and work and raise a family.’”

“There are a lot of things we have to move on quickly, meaning right now, to set ourselves up to be in a place of continued growth so that, 10 years from now, some of these trends that we’ve seen, like outmigration and tax-return dips, don’t continue,” she went on. “But it’s going to require some strong action right now.”

It’s About Time

Thomson kept repeating those words ‘right now’ for emphasis, and they apply to everything from housing to how the state will meet its energy needs in the future as it moves on from nuclear power and some fossil fuels to natural gas and clean-energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro, for which infrastructures must be built.

“If it’s not done quickly, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, I don’t think we’re going to be at a point where we have as much control over turning the ship around,” she told BusinessWest, adding, again, that the responsibility for turning the ship, and the costs involved, must be borne by all constituencies, and not simply the business community.

“We have to be thoughtful and intentional about how everyone has a role,” she went on. “What AIM has said consistently is that this cannot be a burden that is carried by the business community alone. We know that our businesses are really taxed right now; they’re at a point where many of them are just barely getting by, and they’re in a real competition for talent and resources.”

While she’s generally optimistic that the ship can, in fact, be turned, she is troubled by much of what she’s seeing, especially the exodus of talent to other states. She noted that 22- to 35-year-olds are leaving the state at a rate of 35%, a number significantly higher than it has been historically.

And they’re leaving primarily because of the high cost of living, she said, noting that, while it’s always been expensive to live in Greater Boston — she had to work two jobs to afford her first home — it is much harder to make ends meet now, as evidenced by those two AIM employees who packed the car and moved south and west.

“That’s what I worry about — that’s your talent, those are your creative minds,” Thomson said. “Those are the folks who are going to bring the innovation that has made our economy so great. And we’re not selling them on staying here in Massachusetts.”

And these young people are leaving just as the Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce, she went on, noting that the state now has what would be called an older workforce, with an average age around 40.

“We have to look at this because, as we see the demographic shift, as we see folks retiring, we’re going to have a real problem if we’re not saying to those young folks, ‘this is where you want to stay and work and raise a family,’” she noted. “I really do worry about it, and it’s worse in certain areas and worse in certain industries; the average age of a utility lineman is 57 years old. How are we going to make the energy investments, upgrades, and transitions we need if we don’t have the workforce that’s capable of doing it?”

There are ongoing initiatives to generate interest in such fields, Thomson went on, but the challenge is the full slate of issues that must be addressed simultaneously — and soon.

Which begs the question: where to start?

“The hard thing is, we’re going to have to do a lot of things at once,” she said. “We must take aggressive actions on housing because it’s going to take long, and the price of not acting now is that, once you start losing folks at a high rate, they’re not going to come back. And even if we can build more housing and find creative ways to make some affordable housing, Massachusetts is going to be more expensive than some states.”

It’s the same with the other issues on that long list as well, Thomson went on, adding that, when it comes to housing, new businesses, or other forms of change, communities will need to be willing to adjust — or suffer the consequences.

“Communities that say, ‘this is what my community looks now, change is hard, and we don’t want to adapt,’ those communities are going to lose out to those who are willing to be more adaptive,” she noted. “And then the question is … do we have enough consensus as a state, enough communities willing to step up and do it, that we’re successful?”

UMass Amherst to Lead Center of Excellence for Wind-energy Research, Education

By George O'Brien April 11, 2024

Environment and Engineering Wealth Management

Shore Thing

Sanjay Arwade says UMass Amherst has a long and proud history in the broad realm of wind energy.

It dates back nearly a half-century to professor William Heronemus, who established what is now the oldest wind-energy research and education center in the country.

“He started working on wind energy, and there’s been a string of faculty members over the years, mostly in mechanical engineering, but now some, like me, in civil engineering, who have been working on wind-energy problems,” said Arwade, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We’ve been working on wind energy, and we’ve developed collaborations across the region and around the country.”

This history, and these collaborations, certainly played a role in this tradition reaching a new and intriguing level with the recent announcement that UMass Amherst has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to establish and lead something called ARROW — the Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind, with an emphasis on those two R-words.

This will be a nearly $12 million national center of excellence, said Arwade, one that will accelerate reliable and equitable offshore wind-energy deployment across the country and produce a well-educated domestic offshore wind workforce.

“We’ve been working on wind energy, and we’ve developed collaborations across the region and around the country.”

Elaborating, Arwade said development of offshore wind has lagged behind its close cousin, the onshore variety, and for various reasons. ARROW has been created to essentially help close that gap.

“Onshore wind energy … that industry is a total success,” he noted. “We produce huge amounts of electricity from wind onshore, mostly up and down the Great Plains and the center of the country. That energy is, in many days, the cheapest electricity in the country.

“Offshore wind is at an earlier stage,” he went on. “There’s a lot of offshore wind in Northern Europe and a little bit here — basically three projects are operating in the United States: Block Island, Vineyard Wind, and one in Virginia. So we’re at an earlier stage, but the potential is huge.”

Harnessing that potential is at the heart of ARROW, which will involve a number of partners — more than 40, in fact — and set several different goals, said Arwade, noting that the center will be a university-led education, research, and outreach program for offshore wind that prioritizes energy equity and principles of workforce diversity, equity, inclusion, and access, with technical specialization in the reliability and resilience of offshore wind infrastructure, transmission, and supply chain.

The various partners include eight universities, three national laboratories, two state-level energy offices, and many industry and stakeholder groups in other areas of Massachusetts as well as Illinois, Maryland, Washington, South Carolina, and Puerto Rico.

Sanjay Arwade says offshore wind lags behind the onshore variety, but there is momentum and progress on several fronts.

This consortium includes Clemson University, Morgan State University, Johns Hopkins University, Northeastern University, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Argonne National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and Maryland Energy Administration. More than 20 other organizations, including developers, conservation organizations, offshore-wind manufacturers, a grid operator, community representatives, trade associations, and standards organizations, are also anticipated to serve as partners.

As for goals, there are three main ones, about which we’ll get into more detail later:

• Empowering the next generation of U.S.-based offshore wind professionals. Not only does this include training for offshore wind professionals, but it will also enhance the ability of U.S. institutions to deliver comprehensive offshore wind education and establish global leadership in offshore wind education. The center will advance the education of 1,000 students over the initial five-year life of the center;

• Innovating with impactful research for a reliable and resilient offshore-wind system built on rigorous treatment of uncertainty. Research will focus on infrastructure, atmospheric and ocean conditions, and marine and human ecology; and

• Engaging with communities to get input from the wide diversity of stakeholders who make up the offshore-wind ecosystem, including wind-energy companies, grid operators, manufacturers, nonprofits, insurance companies, and advanced technology developers, in order to arrive at inclusive and just deployment of offshore-wind solutions.

For this issue and its focus on energy, we talked with Arwade about ARROW and what it means for the university, the region, and ongoing efforts to tap the enormous potential of offshore wind.

Bridging the Gap

As he talked with BusinessWest late last month, Arwade was between phone calls from media representatives looking for his take on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after it was struck by a massive container ship.

The New York Times found him first, and after his comments to one of its reporters found their way into the Times and then the Boston Globe, other outlets, including the BBC, dialed his number. He told them, and BusinessWest, essentially the same thing — that collapse was imminent after a ship of that size struck a bridge built to the design codes of the 1970s.

“Offshore wind is at an earlier stage. There’s a lot of offshore wind in Northern Europe and a little bit here — basically three projects are operating in the United States: Block Island, Vineyard Wind, and one in Virginia. So we’re at an earlier stage, but the potential is huge.”

“It wasn’t a failure of the structural steel — it was a failure of ship navigation,” he explained. “You could not design that bridge to withstand that impact.”

Arwade worked for some time in Maryland — he was a professor at Johns Hopkins — and he suspects that might be one of the reasons the media sought him out. But he’s also passionate about bridges.

Indeed, the walls of his small office in Marston Hall are covered with photographs and prints of mostly better-known structures, especially the Brooklyn Bridge.

This passion for bridges and design and construction of these structures will now have to share time with ARROW, which he described as both a turning point in UMass Amherst’s long history of windpower research and his own career.

Explaining how it came about, he said the DOE issued a request for proposals for an offshore-wind energy center of excellence roughly a year ago.

“Through our collaborations, we had a team basically ready to go,” he explained. “And we had a concept, centered around reliability and resilience, basically ready to go.”

This team will be tasked with unlocking that enormous potential for offshore wind that Arwade mentioned earlier. He told BusinessWest that, depending on which technical analysis one is looking at, it’s conceivable that half or more of the eastern seaboard can be powered through offshore wind “depending on the scale of development we’re willing to pursue.”

He acknowledged that offshore wind is currently expensive power to produce, but he believes that cost can and will come down over time.

“The trajectory is good,” he said. “As with many engineered systems, the cost goes down over time as we become more expert at designing and constructing systems and as the components become commodity items; the cost is higher, but it’s becoming competitive, and the trajectory on cost is good. If the lessons learned from onshore wind apply to offshore wind, it will quickly, meaning within a decade or two, become highly competitive with other energy sources.”

Elaborating, he said that, while there are some hurdles to overcome, there is, in his view, a considerable amount of momentum regarding this brand of clean energy.

“There are numerous projects under construction, others nearing construction phase, and even the hiccups we’ve experienced related to inflation and economic issues … the industry seems to be overcoming those,” he told BusinessWest, acknowledging that there are concerns from “co-users” of the ocean, including fisheries and environmentalists, and, meanwhile, the cost of offshore wind remains high compared to the onshore variety and other sources of energy.

Wind in Their Sails

Arwade said his role will be to manage the various objectives of the ARROW initiative, and there are several of them, including education, research, and community outreach and engagement related to offshore wind.

Projecting out — ARROW still exists only on paper, but is expected to officially commence its work this summer — he expects an educational program to be up and running within a few years, with hundreds of students per year being trained for an industry that will need a workforce.

“These are students who will get bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, doctoral degrees, and professional certificates in offshore wind and can go into the field and lead the industry forward in the U.S.,” he said, adding that there are existing programs, but the DOE wanted a comprehensive offshore-wind energy education and research program, and until ARROW, one didn’t exist, except at UMass.

“This one will be bigger, more comprehensive, and bring expertise from all of our partner instititions to bear for our students,” he went on, adding that ARROW will exist in mostly a virtual state, but with initiatives on the Amherst campus, Boston, Maryland, Puerto Rico, and at the national labs in Colorado, Washington State, and Illinois.

Workforce is a key ingredient in the growth and development of the industry, he said, adding that companies looking to hire currently have few places to go find those students. But research will be another key area of focus, and it will cover many areas that are germane to the industry and answer important questions.

“These include how quickly can these structures be installed? What will the cost of construction be? How much energy can be extracted from the wind during operation of the turbines? And how can we ensure that the energy gets distributed to consumers in efficient and equitable ways?” he said.

When asked how those involved in ARROW will measure success, Arwade said there will be several barometers.

“We’re going to count students that we educate; we’re going to track where they go in the industry,” he said. “On our research arm, we’re going to be tracking the publications that our faculty and graduate students make and seeing that they’re being cited and being of use to industry. We’re going to keep track of students that do internships in industry. We’re going to do outreach that brings offshore-wind education and research to a variety of stakeholders, including high-school students, for example. And we’re going to have listened, carefully, to co-users of the coast and the ocean, communities that have been historically disadvantaged and have not seen the benefits of new infrastructure like this.”

Overall, ARROW will play a major role in bringing the offshore-wind industry forward, while also enabling this region, the Commonwealth, and especially its flagship state university to assume leadership positions in those efforts.

“Massachusetts has been a leader in offshore wind for a few decades now, both on the industry side and the government and regulatory side,” Arwade said. “Massachusetts has also led on the academic side, through our work and with our partners at UMass Dartmouth and UMass Lowell and Northeastern. But getting this recognition from the Department of Energy cements Massachusetts nationally as the federally recognized home of offshore-wind research and education in the academic sphere; it’s a huge win for the Commonwealth.

“And I would say the same for UMass Amherst,” he went on. “We’ve been doing wind energy for 50 years, and for us to be trusted by DOE with leadership of this center is a major feather in the cap of UMass Amherst and the UMass system as a whole.”

Palmer Aims to Expand on Rich Rail History

By George O'Brien March 29, 2024

Rachel Rosenbloom and her husband, Michael Bedrosian

Special Coverage Sports & Leisure

Rachel Rosenbloom and her husband, Michael Bedrosian, named their brewery Seven Railroads in a nod to Palmer’s rich rail history.

Palmer is known to many as the Town of Seven Railroads, a nod to a very rich history as a transit center.

Indeed, several passenger and freight rail lines ran though the community at one time, most notably the Boston & Albany, which ran east-west between the two cities, and the Central Vermont, which ran north-south from the Canadian border to New London, Conn., with those two railroads sharing Union Station, an elegant structure designed by noted architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Today, rail is still part of the town’s character, with five rail lines still running through the community, a renovated Union Station now serving as home to the popular Steaming Tender restaurant, and a new brewery — called, appropriately enough, Seven Railroads Brewing — opening its doors on Route 20 just a few weeks ago.

Passenger rail service in Palmer ceased back in the 1970s, when Amtrak closed Palmer’s station, leaving few who can recall first-hand that important aspect of the town’s history — and psyche.

But all that could be changing in the not-too-distant future.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has recommended Palmer as a stop on the proposed east-west passenger rail service, and is now in the process of studying and eventually selecting a site for a new rail station.

There is no timetable for when that service will start, but the DOT’s backing of Palmer as a stop is generating high levels of excitement and anticipation in the community, said Town Planner Heidi Mannarino, noting that she is already seeing more interest in the town and some of its available real estate from the development community. Overall, she and others are enthusiastic about what a rail stop will mean for the existing business community and ongoing efforts to grow it.

“I’ve already seen more people purchase land and start to eyeball Palmer,” she said, “because once you hear that news … it’s just so valuable to have that kind of public transportation available.

“Rail will be a great boost for economic development in downtown Palmer,” she went on. “It’s going to bring a lot of business in, and I think it’s going to bridge some econimic gaps between Springfield and Boston.”

Indeed, passenger rail service is expected to change the overall profile of this community, situated roughly halfway between Springfield and Worcester off exit 63 (formerly exit 8) of the Mass Pike. Palmer’s location has always been considered close to the state’s second- and third-largest cities, but, in the eyes of some economic-development leaders, not close enough.

Rail will bring the community closer to both — and also closer to Boston and all of Eastern Mass., said John Latour, Palmer’s director of Community Development, noting that the proposed service will enable people to live in Palmer and work in Boston and surrounding communities, adding that remote work has already brought some to the town as they seek to escape the sky-high prices for real estate, childcare, and everything else in Greater Boston. And rail service should bring more.

“Whether they’re working fully remote or going to the office a few days a week, it still makes sense for people to live in a community like Palmer and commute,” he said, adding that, while some already commute from Palmer to Greater Boston, rail service will be a better, safer alternative that will enable people to work while they commute.

East-west rail is easily the biggest developing story in Palmer, but there are others, said Mannarino, listing early-stage construction of a new strip mall near the Big Y off the turnpike exit, one that is expected to bring a Starbucks, Jersey Mike’s, and other major brands to the community; the new brewery (much more on that in a bit); and ongoing efforts to repurpose two closed schools, Thorndike School and Converse School, for housing — a need in this community as in most all cities and towns in the 413 and other parts of the state.

“There’s a deficiency of affordable housing in most communiies, and Palmer is no exception,” she said, adding that the need for senior housing is most acute, and one that could be eased by converting the two schools for that use.

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Palmer and how several initiatives, and especially east-west rail, are seemingly on track.

Coming to a Head

They call it ‘Old Exit 8.’

That’s the name that Rachel Rosenbloom and her husband, Michael Bedrosian, owners of Seven Railroads Brewery, gave to a New England IPA that has become one of their most popular offerings.

It comes complete with a tagline — “We don’t know what exit nunber we are anymore, and we don’t care to find out” — and Rosenbloom said the brew, and its tagline, speak to how this brewery operation, unlike most of the others in this region, is mostly about a town and its people. And they are among them, living just a few minutes from their taproom.

“It was designed to be a place where people, and especially those from Palmer, can come and hang out,” she said, adding that, in the few weeks it has been open, it has become just that.

For Rosenbloom, who by day is head brewer at Fort Hill Brewery in Easthampton (although not for much longer as she works toward making her venture a full-time endeavor), and Bedrosian, Seven Railroads is a dream now close to three years in the making.

It took that long to find a location (a building on Route 20 that was once home to a trucking operation and other businesses and actually has rail tracks running behind it), secure the necessary permits and licenses, build out the space, and open the doors.

“It was a long journey, but it was well worth it,” she said, not once but several times, noting that the brewery is off to a solid start, drawing a mix of locals, students from the nearby Five Colleges, and a number of other brewers who have come in to welcome the latest addition to the region’s growing portfolio of craft breweries.

In most respects, Roenbloom said, all that competition is good — for the region, for beer lovers, and even the various breweries, because it creates a critical mass that makes the region a craft-beer destination.

Meanwhile, Seven Railroads is on an island of sorts, she went on, adding that it is the only brewery in Palmer — in fact, the only one within 25 minutes of the center of the community — giving it some breathing room.

Thus far, things are going pretty much according to the business plan, said Rosenbloom, noting that Seven Railroads has become part of a growing restaurant and hospitality scene in Palmer, with many patrons stopping in before or after visiting one of several restaurants in town, including the Steaming Tender, Figlio’s, Tables, Day and Night Diner, and others. And she expects that rail service might bring more additions to that list and, overall, more people to Palmer.

Next Stop: Palmer

Indeed, while the rail stop is expected to encourage people to live in Palmer and perhaps work in Boston, it could also bring more people from Boston and other parts of the state to this community and those around it, said Lavoie, adding that, while the turnpike already brings visitors to exit 63, rail service will bring even more convenience.

Elaborating, he noted that students at UMass Amherst and the other Five Colleges could take the east-west rail service to Palmer and then take a bus or an Uber to those institutions.

“There will be more connectivity,” he said, adding that this quality will bring many benefits, especially a greater ability to commute from Palmer and surrounding towns to other parts of the state.

“You can take the Mass Pike, but it will be more conducive for more people to take the rail and not risk delays or inclement weather; it’s a safer mode of travel,” Lavoie told BusinessWest, adding that professionals can commute and work at the same time.

Meawhile, at a time when fewer young people are married to the notion of owning and maintaining a car, a community with a rail stop, and especially one with home prices several notches (at least for now) below those in Eastern Mass., moves toward the top of their places to live, work, or both.

“In essence, you’re pushing the bedroom community of the business hub of Massachusetts [Boston] further west, and anything that’s occuring in the Springfield area, you’re pushing that bedroom community further east,” he explained, adding that rail can only help amplify this trend.

Mannarino agreed, noting that one of the next steps in the process of making rail a reality in Palmer is finding a site for a new station. A committee of town officials and residents is being assembled to work with Andy Koziol, the recently named director of East-West Rail, and MassDOT on that assignment.

Several sites have been proposed, Mannarino said, listing the land near the Steaming Tender and DPW property off Water Street among the contenders. “The goal is to choose the one that’s most feasible and makes the most sense. Each of the sites has caveats.”

There is no timetable yet for east-west rail or Palmer’s stop on this highly anticipated transit initiative, and residents and town officials understand that it will likely be several years before the first trains stop in town. But the general consensus is that, after years of lobbying and pushing for this facility, it is now becoming real, and the question, increasingly, isn’t if, but when.

That means this town with a deep rail past is set to write an exciting new chapter in that history.

Clean Crop Technologies Is Changing the Greentech Landscape

By George O'Brien March 28, 2024

Cover Story

Planting the Seeds

Co-founder and CEO Dan White

Dan White calls it “turning back the clock on decomposition of food and seeds.”

That’s how he chose to describe the technology created by Clean Crop Technologies, a Holyoke-based company that has become one of the foundations of that city’s emerging cleantech and greentech sector and one of the more intriguing regional entrepreneurial success stories in recent years.

Elaborating, White said there have long been technologies that will prevent the decomposition that results from molds, fungi, toxins, and pathogens that attack seeds and crops. But until recently — in fact, until the technology developed by the team at Clean Crop — there was little if anything to reverse that decomposition, or turn back the clock, as he put it, once those foods were in the supply chain.

Getting more specific, he said that, when it comes to seeds, which have increasingly become the company’s focus, Clean Crop has been able to address a long-standing tradeoff when it comes to addressing decontamination.

“You can choose between killing the contaminant, and in so doing harm the germination of the seed, or you can make sure you have vigorous seeds, but not be able to kill everything,” he explained. “What we focus on at Clean Crop is developing our Clean Current technology to solve the tradeoff; we’re targeting applications where we can achieve the same or better decontamination as things like hot water and chemical treatments, but without harming germination in the process.”

In simple terms, the company is using a high-voltage cold-plasma technology to revolutionize food safety, and it’s doing it in downtown Holyoke in space that was once a paper mill, helping that city build what could be called a cluster of cleantech businesses, while further diversifying the region’s business community and perhaps laying the tracks for more businesses of this type.

“What we focus on at Clean Crop is developing our Clean Current technology to solve the tradeoff; we’re targeting applications where we can achieve the same or better decontamination as things like hot water and chemical treatments, but without harming germination in the process.”

This is an inspiring story, with chapters that have played out in Pennsylvania, where White developed an affection for agriculture and a desire to make it a career; in sub-Saharan Africa, where he would meet eventual partner Dan Cavanaugh and develop a passion for solving a problem that until then lacked a solution; in Iowa, where the partners would meet and then collaborate with Kevin Keener on new technology and a company to refine it and put it to practical use; in the Boston venture-capital market, where $3 million would be secured to bring the concept to the next stage; at UMass Amherst (and its Institute of Applied Life Sciences); and in a small office in Northampton, where the partners built a core technical team and proof of concept.

And now, in Holyoke, where the company, recently named among TIME magazine’s Top Greentech Companies of 2024, landed amid a search for clean energy (Holyoke boasts hydropower), needed space, and a landlord sympathetic to the needs and challenges of startup ventures (read: a shorter-term lease). There, Clean Crop is now deep into the process of scaling up, building its team, telling its story — there have many visitors to the site for tours as well appearances by the principals on several agriculture-related podcasts — and writing the next chapters.

Putting the problem of contamination into perspective, White said the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that roughly 30% of crops are lost in farmers’ fields every year to a wide range of toxins, pathogens, molds, and pests, with this loss quantified at $220 billion. And while the monetary loss, not to mention the huge loss of food to the supply chain, gets plenty of attention, what doesn’t is the fact that this crop loss is also a huge driver of greenhouse-gas emissions.

“These same contaminants, both on farm and in the supply chain, result in a lot of food being wasted,” he explained. “And as food waste decomposes, it generates methane, which is more than 50 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”

Thus, Clean Crop Technologies is addressing several problems at once, from increasing the amount of food eventually reaching the table to reducing those harmful greenhouse gases.

For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Clean Crop, a budding enterprise that provides both food for thought when it comes to technology and its ability to solve some of the world’s bigger problems and more food for the table.

A Growing Venture

White grew up in Gettysburg, Pa., a farming region heavily populated by apple orchards. In high school, he started working at a friend’s family orchard and “fell in love with agriculture.”

“I wound up working for them for a few years in high school and college, and ended up spending most of my career working overseas,” he said, adding that he lived in Beirut, Lebanon for some time trying to get a hydroponic industry up and running there.

But he spent most of his career in sub-Saharan Africa, helping U.S.-based companies that were developing promising technologies to enable farmers and supply-chain operators to build market share.

For example, he worked with a South Dakota-based company that developed a biostimulant that allowed farmers to grow the same amount of crops while using less fertilizer.

“As food waste decomposes, it generates methane, which is more than 50 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”

“They were interested in their applications for corn, bean, and other crop producers in Africa, and had no idea how to get it to market,” White explained. “So I helped them develop a go-to-market plan and figure out the regulatory pathways, and now they’re commercially active in six different countries on the continent and doing quite well.”

It was during that time that he met Cavanaugh, who was working as a commercial manager for Cargill in East Africa, handling all its trading in corn and oil seed commodities.

“He really learned the post-harvest side of the business,” said White, adding that it was a venture that Cavanaugh set up that eventually laid the groundwork, pun intended, for Clean Crop.

“He was tasked with establishing a peanut mill in Mozambique, which today basically just exports all its peanuts as farmer stock to South Africa, with very little value,” he explained. “The original thesis was that, if you have a mill that would be able to do that primary processing for the peanuts in Mozambique, you could then extract more value from the export market, exporting them as grade-A processed peanuts rather than the raw farm stock.

“That ended up failing because of a wide range of things, including pathogens and toxins that are common not just to peanuts but a lot of other food categories as well,” White went on. “Once they’re in the supply chain, there’s very few tools to solve them.”

Fast-forwarding a little, White and Cavanaugh essentially went about creating such technology.

“There’s a lot of ways to prevent contamination by these pathogens; there’s a lot of ways to mitigate or exclude food that’s been contaminated from the supply,” White explained. “But there were very few tools that we were aware of that could actually turn back the clock on contamination that was safe and that would keep that food in the supply chain.”

This reality led them down a rabbit hole as he and Cavanaugh looked at many different technologies in this space that held promise, including UV light, and eventually met Keener, then a professor at Iowa State University.

“Our long-term vision is that we want our machines to be operating in every seed-processing facility globally as the first line of defense in crop loss.”

“We read a lot of his papers and actually built a prototype of the technology we’re using today from schematics he had put in one of his publications,” White recalled. “And it worked, or seemed to work, and that was good enough for us to go out and meet him and visit his lab, and we started Clean Crop with him in early 2019.”

Early-stage work was focused primarily on the peanut industry, he said, adding that, when the technology was validated, a machine was taken to a peanut sheller in Georgia that was interested in piloting it. That pilot went well, he said, adding that the peanut company essentially said to come back when the machine was a thousand times bigger.

The partners agreed, but knew the pathway to commercialization involved several smaller levels of scaling before getting to that point. In the meantime, starting in the spring of 2021, they started exploring several other markets — everything from other high-value nuts to shelf-life extension for ground beef, seafood, and dairy products, and, eventually seeds.

Seed Money

Explaining the technology in somewhat simple terms, White said Clean Crop combines food-grade gases and electricity to create cold plasma, thus inactivating a broad spectrum of contaminants from seed surfaces in a dry, automated, and residue-free process.

Seeds travel through a hopper in a class-7 clean room and onto a proprietary conveyance mechanism where they then get exposed to the Clean Current ionized gases and are decontaminated before moving on for further processing. At present, the technology can process 25 pounds of seed per hour.

The seeds are shipped to Holyoke, where they are processed, bagged aseptically, and shipped back to customers, who are charged a flat fee per pound. These customers come in two categories — growers, especially those in the greenhouse, micro-green, and sprouts markets that are concerned about molds, but also food-safety risks; and also seed companies, specializing mostly in high-value vegetables such as leafy greens, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, radishes, and others.

“One of the most compelling reasons that we moved here, long-term, is the municipal hydro dam.”

The goals moving forward are to expand that customer base, scale up operations, grow market share, and eventually sell the machines to customers.

“Right now, we only have one machine operating, but we’re looking to significantly expand our capacity this year,” said White, adding that the company has a large backlog of work. “Our goal this year is to scale our operations to absorb as much of that demand as possible and get our machines out into the world to customer facilities.

“Our long-term vision is that we want our machines to be operating in every seed-processing facility globally as the first line of defense in crop loss,” he went on. “To get there … it’s a non-trivial challenge to develop not just the manufacturing side of a company, but the company success. To be able to support a remote set of machines is a challenge, one that we want to grow into once we figure out the supply chain.”

Elaborating, White said the company, which is still in what he calls phase 1 of its development, will bring a second machine online in the near future, greatly increasing its capacity for serving customers, and scaling from there, bringing several machines with much larger capacities online. The goal is to have machines in at least 50 seed processors around the world by 2030, giving Clean Crop perhaps 10% of the global market and $100 million in annual revenues.

Doing all that will take capital, he said, adding that the company is well-capitalized and is committed to staying, and growing, in Holyoke, with opportunities to expand in its current space and into other space nearby if the need arises, while taking advantage of the city’s abundant and comparatively inexpensive green energy.

“One of the most compelling reasons that we moved here, long-term, is the municipal hydro dam,” he explained. “We have some of the cheapest commercial electricity rates in the state, and as an electro-chemical solution, that’s one of the main variable costs we’re going to have as we scale, and we see that as an enormous asset.”

It’s an asset that could attract other companies in this emerging realm as well, he went on, citing the pending arrival of Sublime Systems, a producer of low-carbon cement, as another sign that Holyoke’s inexpensive power and other selling points are turning heads.

“We see this as a real opportunity, not just with us, but with a range of other companies coming out of the Greater Boston ecosystem that are really going to drive this next wave of industrial decarbonization,” White said. “There’s an opportunity for Holyoke to be a leading space for the next milestone of scale-up for those companies coming out of Greentown Labs and MIT. The city happens to have this tremendous advantage of having a carbon-free, economically competitive energy source as well as a lot of underutilized industrial space.”

Meanwhile, the company is working to ensure that it has sufficient talent to meet its future goals, partnering with Springfield Technical Community College on an initiative to create a pipeline of technicians for the years to come.

Bottom Line

Whether Holyoke does, indeed, attract other greentech companies, and whether Clean Crop reaches the lofty goals it has set for the coming years, remain to be seen.

But for now, the company is already making its mark when it comes to the global issue of seed health, and helping to put Holyoke on the map as a potential home for companies in this sector.

This is a company, and a story, that bears watching as the seeds it has already planted continue to bear many different kinds of fruit.

Golf Industry Continues to Build on Pandemic-fueled Momentum

By George O'Brien March 28, 2024

Course Correction

Melissa Aitken says the surge in the sport, and business, of golf enjoyed during COVID continues four years later.

Golfers, regardless of their skill level, know the importance of getting off to a good start.

Indeed, often — but not always, obviously — the first few holes, and even the first few shots, will set the tone for an entire round.

And when it comes to the business of golf, and a specific season, the same is generally true. Usually — but, again, not always — a good start can pave the way to a solid year.

And in recent years, with winters ending early, area courses, especially those with the desire and the means to open before the grass starts growing in earnest, have been able to get off to great starts.

“We’ve had some early springs, and this one is even earlier, and that has helped a lot of courses; for most, this is bonus time,” said Jesse Menachem, executive director and CEO of the Massachusetts Golf Assoc. (MGA). For decades, he noted, players in this area set their watches to Master’s weekend (mid-April) for when to get the clubs out of the cellar and start hitting balls; in recent years, they’ve had to recalibrate and start in mid-March.

But fast starts in the spring, and even the late winter, are not the only things going right for a golf industry that was in many ways on the ropes in the years leading up to the pandemic. Indeed, a surge that resulted from COVID, when there was little else that people could do for exercise and socialization — they couldn’t even play tennis — has had real staying power, said Menachem and others we spoke with, with the MGA’s leader noting a 1% increase in the total number of rounds played last year. That’s a modest hike, to be sure, but the needle is still moving in the right direction.

Bobby Downs, head professional at the Country Club of Wilbraham, said the upswing that started during COVID has continued and even accelerated in some respects, with membership as high as it has been in many years.

“We could take in a few more people, but we’re at a point, just under 400, where we’re very satisfied with the number we have here,” he said, noting this number would have been a pipe dream just five years ago.

“We’ve had some early springs, and this one is even earlier, and that has helped a lot of courses; for most, this is bonus time.”

Melissa Aitken, CEO of the Country Club of Pittsfield, a Donald Ross course that can trace its roots to 1897, cited similar momentum.

“Our club is doing tremendously well,” she said. “We’ve seen a surge in membership, and last year our membership count was the highest it has been since 2008. Post-COVID, we’ve seen an increase of 21% in our membership level. Every year, more and more people are inquiring despite the dues increases that have been necessary since COVID changed the world.”

Other factors benefiting the industry include everything from demographics — Baby Boomers are retiring in large numbers, and many are looking for things to do — to the younger generations embracing the game in some form (maybe not 18 holes every Saturday, but nine holes here and there and an hour of practice), to remote work schedules, which make it slightly easier to get out for a round than being in the office five days a week.

Tom Baron says the Topgolf simulators at MGM Springfield have benefited from the recent surge in interest in the sport.

And these factors are benefiting not only courses, but other components of this business as well, from retail stores to the growing number of facilities with golf simulators; from driving ranges to mini-golf courses.

Dave DiRico, the mostly retired owner of Dave DiRico’s Golf in West Springfield and a former club pro, can speak to all aspects of the business and the current trends. He told BusinessWest that his simulators are booked solid in the winter months (not so much when people can play for real), and that those who took up the game during COVID or returned to it are sticking with it — and buying new equipment while they’re at it.

He’s also seeing and hearing that tee times have been nearly impossible to get in these early days of spring (and more difficult to get in general) and that private courses are at capacity and, in some cases, even have waiting lists.

“I see the game in a very healthy place,” he said. “The golf courses are busy, and the membership in most places is full — or, if they’re not full, they’re nearly full. Young people are getting into the game, and they’re staying with it. The signs are all very positive.”

All this is a far cry from where things were in the years leading up the pandemic. What was a struggling business now has a good lie, as they say in this sport, and it is looking to take full advantage and do some scoring. For this issue and its focus on sports and leisure, we talked to representatives of many facets of the golf business about how the sport has rebounded and why they believe the good times will continue.

Out of the Rough

Tom Baron, senior manager of Food & Beverage at MGM Springfield, who oversees the Topgolf facility on the property, told BusinessWest that the simulators there can provide users with a seemingly endless stream of information to digest and analyze as they work to improve their games.

“They instantly give you the ball’s spin rate, the clubhead speed, whether the clubface was open or closed, the ball speed, the arc … it’s amazing,” he said.

Meanwhile, these simulators can enable users to play some of most renowned courses in the world, from Pebble Beach to Pinehurst No. 2 to the Old Course at St. Andrews, where they can even take a simulated walk over the famous Swilcan Bridge after hitting their drives on the 18th hole.

“I see the game in a very healthy place. The golf courses are busy, and the membership in most places is full — or, if they’re not full, they’re nearly full. Young people are getting into the game, and they’re staying with it. The signs are all very positive.”

Baron said Topgolf, which is open only on weekends, has become an increasingly popular attraction, and event space, at the casino complex, especially on Father’s Day, Master’s week (people play but also watch the tournament on the 12 TVs), and other times. It attracts players of all skill levels, from novices to those who bring their own clubs — and even their own golf shoes.

And, as noted, it enables them to work on their game while also playing courses they’ve only read about or seen on TV.

“The attention to detail on these simulators is amazing,” he said. “Like with the par 3s at Pebble Beach with the waves crashing around them — the technology makes you feel like you’re there.”

But the real surge in golf involves what’s happening at courses right here in the 413, and across the state and the country, for that matter — specifically the continuation of a rebirth that began not quite four years ago.

Indeed, while COVID was a dark time for businesses across all sectors — and it was for golf at the start as well, because courses were included in the wide state shutdown of businesses — it eventually became a blessing for the industry.

In the years leading up the pandemic, the game was suffering. Play was down across the board, at public courses and even at the most esteemed private courses, to the point where some were resorting to something they’d never done (or had to do) before — advertise on various media in the hopes of attracting more members. A few courses in the area actually closed, and others saw their existence threatened.

The mostly retired Dave DiRico, seen here with daughter Carrie Michael and son-in-law Drew Michael, who now manage Dave DiRico’s Golf, says all aspects of the business have flourished recently, including retail.

“We were in a year-to-year situation,” said Downs as he recalled the years prior to COVID. “We were running on such a shoestring that we weren’t sure, at some points, if we were going to stay in existence.

“From 2005 until 2018 and 2019, you saw a steady decline in the number of rounds being played throughout the country,” he went on. “There was not a lot of new people coming into the game, and not a lot of engagement; people who had played the game when they were younger weren’t engaged anymore.”

For many, especially those of the younger generations, the game was too slow, too costly, and too time-consuming. When the pandemic hit, it was still all those things, but it was suddenly far more attractive — because there was little else to do for fun.

So many took up the game while others who had left it returned, sparking a renaissance of sorts. And while courses suffered through seemingly unending rain in 2021, oppressive heat in 2022, and an irritating pattern of rain on weekends in 2023, the arrow has continued to point up in most respects at both public and private courses.

This has been the case despite some persistent challenges that range from the workforce issues now common to virtually every sector of the economy to the rising cost of everything from fertilizer to the chicken served at the 19th hole or the club’s restaurant.

Aitken said there are many factors contributing to the growing popularity of the game — and better times for clubs like hers, everything from young people getting involved to a broad focus on fitness to families moving from larger urban centers to more rural areas like the Berkshires.

“Our membership is driven by our dual residents who join us from May to October every year, as they come back to their summer homes in the Berkshires,” she explained. “We’re primarily 65 years and over, but with COVID, many young families moved out of the city and made their way home to the Berkshires, so it’s been great to see the increase in young families not only at the club but in Berkshire County.

“I think the fitness and health-conscious mindset also plays a big part in our daily lives now, so many people are joining the club to be outdoors, get exercise, and be with their friends,” she went on. “I strive to make our club a home-away-from-home environment, and I think it’s that feeling of family and familiarity that makes our club really special in our area.”

Round Numbers

As for young people, while golf is still too slow for some, many are discovering the game and sticking with it, said Aitken, adding that this bodes well for the game long-term because people can play the sport into their 70s and 80s.

“I’ve seen a large increase in the interest of the younger generation,” she told BusinessWest. “My son is a freshman in high school, and they had more than 20 students try out for the golf team last year, which is higher than our town of Dalton has ever had. I think the popularity of younger golfers like Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, and Rory McIlroy have increased the desire for young students to try out the game of golf as well. Shows like the Netflix series Full Swing certainly don’t hurt either.”

Downs agreed, but noted that clubs must be proactive and try to bring young people into the game through youth programs, membership options, and more.

“One of the first things I did when I took over here seven years ago was get in touch with the town’s Recreation Department and try to create a good relationship with them,” he recalled. “We grew our PGA Junior League program from where there were maybe 15 kids involved to where, two years ago, there were more than 60.”

While more younger people are certainly finding the game, the current surge is essentially across the board, said those we spoke with. And it is manifesting itself into what could be called good problems to have for clubs — full membership and full tee sheets, for example — that have forced them to turn some people away.

Indeed, DiRico recalled being in his store one weekday earlier this month, talking with customers who struggled, in vain, to find a tee time at the courses that were open for business.

They will certainly have better luck as more clubs open their pro shops in the days to come, he said, but the pandemic boost has shown to be resilient thus far, enduring inflation and all that bad weather mentioned earlier.

And, as noted, the surge has trickled down to not only courses, but the many other facets of the game, including retail.

DiRico noted that, as soon as Golf Digest publishes its annual Hot List of the newest equipment, from drivers to irons to putters, good players, but also those at all levels, will come in to see and try what they’ve read about. But this annual spike has been helped by new players, and returnees, who have stuck with the game since COVID and now want to upgrade what’s in their bag.

“Over the past two or three years, there’s more golfers than ever before,” he said. “More people took up the game — spouses who had never played before, kids who never played took up the game. Now, these people have become repeat customers; those people who bought used clubs are now buying new clubs.”

That’s just one of many signs that a game that was certainly in the rough just a few years ago has found its way onto the green and, more importantly, on the path to a very solid future.

Alex Balise Took a Different Road to the Family Business

By George O'Brien March 28, 2024

Special Coverage Women in Businesss

Driving Ambition

Alex Balise

Alex Balise always thought she would get involved in the family business.

She just thought that would happen when she was maybe 40, not in her mid-20s, as things turned out.

But since they did turn out that way (and we’ll go back and explain way later), she is now eight years into what has become an intriguing and wide-ranging career, one that has her engaged in everything from cars — the family business is Balise Motor Sales — to car washes; from two laundromats (one in Springfield and the other on the Cape) to whatever might come next for this 105-year-old enterprise.

Indeed, Balise, 36, representing the fourth generation of the family to assume leadership roles with the company, recently saw her role change, or, to be more precise, expand. While she’s still director of Marketing, she is now also director of Corporate Strategy, which means she will play a large role in helping to shape what might come next.

“I’ve been doing more … projects,” she said, being intentionally vague. “I’ve been very involved in the car washes, and that’s been a rapid expansion, and we’re also looking at some other business opportunities that we haven’t done before.”

While doing that, she is still leading the marketing efforts for the Balise company, which has dealerships in the 413, on the Cape, and in Rhode Island; car washes in Western Mass. and Connecticut; five collision centers; and that aforementioned laundromat in Springfield’s South End.

“We’re doing a lot to highlight our people in the ads recently, and that makes sense. After all, they’re the people who make Balise … Balise. Our teams are who make the difference, so why not have them be the face?”

This a wide-ranging assignment, one that keeps a staff of six (with some help from a few agencies) busy, and includes ad creation, media buying, social media, website content, and determining if, how, and to what degree the company will honor the myriad requests it receives for support from area nonprofits, a difficult assignment because, as she put it, “I can’t think of a single thing that came in that wasn’t a good cause; they’re all good.”

For many years, marketing at Balise was the purview, if you will, of her late uncle Mike, who succumbed to stomach cancer in 2015 and was named a BusinessWest Difference Maker posthumously in 2016. He was the face of the company, she acknowledged, adding that she has resisted any and all efforts to become the new ‘face,’ noting that “I don’t have the personality for it.”

Instead, she has led efforts to make the company’s employees the collective new face, with ads featuring them in many different roles.

“We’re doing a lot to highlight our people in the ads recently, and that makes sense,” she said. “After all, they’re the people who make Balise … Balise. Our teams are who make the difference, so why not have them be the face?”

Meanwhile, she is carrying on her uncle’s tradition of getting involved in the community, especially in the broad realm of education.

Alex Balise is carrying on her uncle Mike Balise’s tradition of buying coats for students at Springfield’s Homer Street School, now the Swan School.

Indeed, just as Mike did for several years, she reads in the classroom for Link to Libraries at the recently opened Swan School, a replacement for Homer Street School, which was sponsored by the Balise company for many years.

She also carries on another of Mike’s traditions — buying winter coats for students at the school — and takes it to another level with some serious shopping for deals, stretching the allotted dollars and using the savings to buy hats and other accessories.

“Costco will have these deals — ‘spend this much and get this much off,’” she explained. “So I’ll buy them in buckets so that we get the most of the discount, and then I’ll use what we saved with the discount to buy the extra things, like hats and gloves. There are definitely some things that Mike started that we’re happy to continue.”

And while doing all that, she’s also raising two young children, son Connor, 5, and daughter Emma, 3. It’s a complicated and delicate balancing act, one that she discussed, along with many other topics, in a wide-ranging interview with BusinessWest for this issue and its focus on women in business.

Drive Time

One of the better perks for those in the auto-sales business — even those in charge of marketing and, now, corporate strategy — is being able to drive a demo.

And for Balise, the car of choice — and there is a lot to choose from in an auto group that sells several different makes — is the Toyota Crown, a sporty hybrid sedan. Yes, a sedan. Even with two young children, she’ll leave the SUVs for others to drive.

“If we have the opportunity to have more focused donations that have a bigger impact on the organizations that we’re helping, that’s the direction we’ve decided to take.”

Although this sedan doesn’t look much like anything else on the road.

“I’ve never had more people ask me, ‘what is that you’re driving?’” she said. “Because it is a little different.”

Balise spends a considerable amount of time in whichever Crown she’s driving at the moment — she doesn’t keep them past 5,000 miles — splitting her days between the 413, Rhode Island, and the Cape. While driving, she’s usually listening to audiobooks (she likes both fiction and nonfiction and is currently ‘rereading’ the Harry Potter books) and thinking about all the many balls she’s keeping in the air at present.

All this wasn’t exactly where she pictured herself at this stage of her life and career, but there have been some, well, unexpected turns.

Like most who grew up around the car business, Balise spent summers and school breaks working in various jobs at dealerships. She recalls working in the parts department, calling customers to tell them their appointments were coming up, and even handling paperwork created by the federal government’s infamous Cash for Clunkers program designed to fuel auto sales in the wake of the Great Recession.

But she wasn’t thinking about making this a career.

Alex Balise meets some residents of the Zoo in Forest Park after the company wrapped a vehicle and donated it to the zoo for its educational programs.

Instead, while earning her undergraduate degree at Colgate University, she was thinking about teaching and then working in the broad realm of education policy.

But she graduated into a tough job market in 2009 and eventually moved to Boston with her husband, Trevor McEwen, who did manage to find work. She eventually secured some herself, working for a student health-insurance brokerage and consulting firm for three and a half years.

She learned a lot about business in that role, but decided she needed to further that education and earned an MBA, with a concentration in marketing, at Babson College. With that degree, she sought work in education consulting and hospital operations, but “couldn’t find anything I loved.”

Meanwhile, Balise Motor Sales was opening another car wash in West Springfield, and her father, Jeb, its CEO, asked her to run some pro formas and work on the project.

“That was really interesting — I didn’t know anything about car washes, so I learned a lot there,” she said, adding that she spent most of her time on the Cape, where the company opened its first such facility.

To make a long story shorter, that learning experience would be the start of her career with the company, she said, adding that she moved on to a different project, the opening of a Kia store in West Springfield in 2016 after the company was awarded that franchise.

And during that project, Balise’s vice president of Marketing retired, and Alex was asked by then-President Bill Peffer to take over that broad realm.

She did, but while doing so, she became a hybrid worker long before that phrase came to be, working at her home in Framingham two or three days a week and driving to West Springfield the others.

“My father didn’t love that idea — he felt that a manager should be in the office every day,” she recalled. “He said, ‘how can I manage these people if I wasn’t there every day?’ But I decided to do it and see if we could make it work. And we did.”

To a Higher Gear

Balise eventually moved back to this area in 2018, putting her further away from the company’s dealerships in Rhode Island and on the Cape, but in a better place overall to oversee marketing for a steadily growing portfolio of auto-related businesses.

And some not auto-related.

Balise said the laundries, operating under the name Love Your Laundry, were her father’s idea, and the Springfield facility, right behind the company’s Mazda dealership, was seen as a way to help the residents of Springfield’s South End.

“It’s not something that we’re planning to blow up and have 25 locations, like the car washes, but if there are opportunities … we’ll see where it goes,” she said, adding that she has plenty of other things on her plate, especially the duties that come with being director of Corporate Strategy.

Whatever the title on the business card might be, Balise said she will always be heavily involved in the community. In fact, opportunities to do so comprised one of the larger reasons why she joined and then stayed with the company.

“I felt I could make a bigger impact through the family business than I could on my own if I worked somewhere else,” she told BusinessWest, adding this impact comes in many different forms.

One of them is playing a lead role in reviewing requests for support from the area’s legion of nonprofits and deciding which directions the Balise company’s philanthropic efforts will take.

It’s a huge responsibility and one she takes quite seriously.

“Having to say no is the worst — it’s tough,” she said, adding quickly that it’s even harder to say no when Balise doesn’t have guidelines for its giving.

So the company — more specifically, her team — created some, addressing everything from areas of focus, such as youth, education, healthcare delivery, and civic and community development, to how to make the most impact.

“In talking about it and in looking at what we’ve supported historically and where we’ve been able to have the biggest impact, we thought we could say yes to $100 for several small donations and have small impacts for some, or … we could refine our guidelines and make sure that, where we’re donating, we have a bigger impact that’s going to have a lasting result in the community.

“So instead of sponsoring a golf tournament or a gala, we want to actually sponsor the new computers or building a new classroom or medical deliveries, as opposed to the 5Ks to raise money. They’re all important, and we need all of those to fundraise, but if we have the opportunity to have more focused donations that have a bigger impact on the organizations that we’re helping, that’s the direction we’ve decided to take.”

Meanwhile, as noted, she is out in the community herself. In addition to reading at Swan School, she’s a corporator at Square One (the company also sponsors a classroom there), and, in the Providence market, she helped wrap presents to be given to patients at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, an initiative that involved many from the company.

While doing all that, she also saves large amounts of time for family, part of the balancing act that is part and parcel of being a woman (and, especially, a manager) in business today.

“It’s a lot, and it’s hard,” Balise acknowledged. “I’m lucky that I have a great team at work, and I have family nearby that can help pick up some days.

“When you have two young kids and you work, there is no balance. Basically, when I’m not working, I’m focused on my kids and my family, and we try to fit in as much as we can and have dinner together.”

One Way Brewing Is Taking the High Road to Success

Features

Getting Revved Up

Zach Schwartz (left) and Jason Tsitso have One Way Brewing on the fast track to continued growth.

As with every brewery operation in Western Mass., there’s a story behind the name of this venture, one Jason Tsitso has told many times.

It harkens back to the days when he was a motocross racer, he said, adding that one of his good friends at the time worked for Ryder truck rentals. Tsitso said he and another friend would often help out at the Ryder facility, and one day he discovered his bike covered with the ‘one-way’ stickers that were affixed to the company’s vehicles.

“The next day, I was racing in a moto, and I was doing well, and the announcer said, ‘296 from One Way Racing,’” he went on, adding that, soon thereafter, he actually created a racing team with that name, complete with jerseys and other apparel with a ‘one-way’ logo.

And when he started home brewing with one of those friends from his racing days, they started tossing around ideas for a name and settled on something from the past. And it has stuck.

But there are other meanings behind this brand that Tsitso has established and grown with partner Zach Schwartz.

“There’s only one way to brew beer, and that’s fresh and local,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this way has helped give their brand a following, one that has enabled it to become one of the many emerging craft-beer labels in the 413 and a developing success story.

The two partners now have a taproom on Maple Street in Longmeadow, across from the plaza that was destroyed by fire just after they opened (more on that later), and a growing portfolio of craft beers, a few of them with racing-related names, such as Brraaap! (that’s the sound motorcycles make when their drivers hit the throttle), a New England IPA; and Kick Starter, another New England IPA, with which the partners got things started.

But there’s also the Betty, a Scottish export ale, One Rustic Cranberry Stout (no explanation needed for that one), One Hard Lime Seltzer (ditto), and others.

“Home brewers will come in and ask, ‘what’s your favorite? It’s very hard to be objective when all of these beers are your babies.”

The business plan is rather simple and direct, Schwartz said — to continue developing more of these beers and continue building on the solid foundation they’re created.

For Tsitso, vice president of Operations for a commercial construction company, and Schwartz, owner of Manchester, Conn.-based Fusion Cross Media, a printing company, this is still a part-time pursuit, or “passion,” as they call it, but one that is absorbing ever-larger amounts of the time not spent at their day jobs.

“This is more of our passion project,” said Tsitso, who also takes the title of head brewer. “Zack and I both like to build things, and this was our project when we started out. We wanted to see where we could take it and build it from grassroots; we expand as we have the bandwidth to do so.”

For this issue and its focus on breweries, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at One Way Brewing and how its fast start has it on track for a high-octane brand of success in this sector where there’s friendly competition — or, as Tsitso described it, a “community” where customers are shared.

Lager Than Life

As he and Tsitso talked one recent Saturday morning about One Way Brewing, the route traveled to date, and where the road might take them from here, Schwartz first went about describing what they’ve created on Maple Street, and how it is different from a bar.

One Way’s portfolio of craft beers continues to grow and now includes a wide spectrum of offerings.

“At a bar, you eat food, you have a drink, and maybe you watch TV,” he told BusinessWest. “Here at the brewery, Jason and I talk business with you. I don’t want to say that we’re entertaining, but we are engaged. And people are always asking questions — ‘how did you come up with that?’ and ‘what are your ingredients?’ or ‘what malts did you use?’

“Home brewers will come in and ask, ‘what’s your favorite?’” he went on. “It’s very hard to be objective when all of these beers are your babies.”

And that’s essentially how this venture started — two guys, Tsitso and Schwartz, talking about brewing, then doing it, and never stopping when it comes to asking questions, perfecting their craft, and creating more of these ‘babies.’

Elaborating, the two partners said they’ve known each other a long time and that their daughters hung out together. They both developed a thirst for craft beer — Tsitso has always had one, and Schwartz’s developed over time.

“I would say we got him into craft beer four ounces at a time,” Tsitso said of Schwartz, adding that they and other friends would do a lot of tasting over the years, activity that would eventually lead them down that stimulating but challenging path that would take them from tasters to brewers.

“We got tired of waiting in line,” Tsitso said with a laugh, adding that, rather than queuing up for other brewers’ offerings (although they still did some of that, too), they decided to brew their own.

They started attending brew fests, which back then drew both professional and home brewers, and found themselves often mistaken for the former.

“At our first brew fest, we had a logo, we had a brand, we looked like pro brewers,” Schwartz recalled. “We were at a beer fest in Vermont, and people kept asking, ‘where’s your brewery? We want to check out your brewery.’ And we said, ‘we brew out of our garage.’

“And at every brew fest after that, people would enjoy and ask the same thing — ‘where’s your brewery?’” he went on, noting that with those comments as inspiration — and as the pandemic forced brew fests to take a lengthy pause — they eventually went about creating one.

They began with cans and eventually opened their taproom after COVID restrictions were fully lifted in the spring of 2021.

As for beers, they started with … Kick Starter, a beer that would in many ways set the tone for this venture.

“It came about as West Coast IPAs were really popular and New Englands were just getting started,” Tsitso recalled. “Our whole concept with that beer was to create something that was really approachable for non-IPA drinkers, was well-balanced, and really got them into enjoying IPAs and broadening their beer drinking.”

Draught Choice

This same thought process has gone into subsequent additions to the portfolio, including Brraaap!, which was created to mark the two-year anniversary of the opening of the taproom; One Hard Lime Seltzer; One Rustic Cranberry Stout; and Spilled Milk Mango, a mango milkshake IPA and another popular seller.

While Tsitso is the head brewer and recipe developer, the two will work together on potential additions to the roster, looking at what might be missing from the lineup and what the next logical new label should be.

The same is essentially true of the broad business plan, said the partners, adding that the goal is sustainable growth and building on the solid base they’ve created.

“One thing we’ve always tried to do is not overextend ourselves and get to the point where we can’t manage it, either from the stress level or it just doesn’t become fun anymore,” Tsitso said. “As we get the bandwidth to expand, we expand.”

Possible avenues for expansion include a larger footprint in the plaza where they’re currently operating, and enhanced distribution, with most of it coming currently at the taproom, with beers on tap in only a few area restaurants.

Moving forward, the partners say they’re looking forward to operating with the nearby shopping plaza rebuilt. Former anchor Armata’s grocery store will not be part of the new mix, as it was destroyed by fire just a few months after they opened in the spring of 2021, but they could already see that it helped drive traffic to their business, and they long for the day when that busy intersection can turn back the clock and become a true destination.

“We’re excited that they’re rebuilding across the street, because that will really enhance traffic,” said Schwartz, adding that the taproom has a solid working relationship with a pizza shop next door and other businesses at that intersection.

Meanwhile, the partners are already drawing visitors from Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Springfield, Enfield, and well beyond, he went on, noting that craft-beer enthusiasts travel well and are willing to put some miles on the odometer to experience something new and different.

Still, the taproom’s bread and butter is a cadre of regulars who come, as Schwartz noted earlier, not simply to drink beer, but to talk beer and experience beer.

“In the beginning, we bartended Thursday and Friday nights; we alternated every week,” he went on. “And those regulars … we developed relationships with them, talked beer with them, and shared our passion and dream with them. A lot of them come here to drink beer and visit — it’s that kind of atmosphere here.”

All this has made One Way not just a business, although it is certainly that, but also a passion, one that has taken the high road to success and is certainly revved up about what might come next.

Deerfield’s Economy Goes Well Beyond Tourism

Chris Dunne says one of the town’s priorities is to create more housing.

‘Diverse.’

That’s the one word Jessye Deane kept coming back to as she talked about Deerfield and its business community.

And with good reason.

Indeed, while this community of just over 5,000 is home to Yankee Candle Village, Historic Deerfield, the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory, and other tourist attractions, its economy is quite broad, covering sectors ranging from agriculture to craft brewing (which doubles as a tourist attraction, as we’ll see); manufacturing to retail; restaurants to the arts.

They all come together in a picturesque community that is a true destination, said Deane, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, which also calls Deerfield home. And this diversity is certainly an asset, she added, especially as manufacturing declines in many other communities.

“This diversity is the real strength of the economy of Deerfield,” she told BusinessWest, noting that, while large employers like Yankee Candle are always important, the backbone of the community’s economy is small businesses.

And, as noted, they cover all sectors, from restaurants like Leo’s Table in the community’s small but vibrant downtown to Ames Electrical Consulting, a growing business, soon to move to Greenfield, that specializes in helping manufacturers and even municipalities with efforts to automate facilities and processes.

That list also includes manufacturers like Worthington Assembly, which has become noteworthy not only for the circuit boards it produces for a wide range of clients but for a decidedly different culture, one it describes as ‘humanizing manufacturing’.

The obvious goal moving forward is to continue adding more pieces to this diverse business puzzle, said Chris Dunne, Deerfield’s Planning & Economic Development coordinator, while also making the town even more livable and, well, simply providing more places to live.

Indeed, like most other communities in this region — although not all those in Franklin County, where population loss is a pressing issue — Deerfield needs more housing, said Dunne, adding that creating more is part of a larger effort to repurpose land and property in what he called the town campus.

“Approximately 45% of Deerfield residents are over age 55, so there is a definite need for senior housing.”

This is a collection of buildings, many of them currently or soon to be town-owned, including the current Town Hall, two churches, and a former elementary school, some of which could likely be converted to senior housing, said Denise Mason, chair of the town’s Planning Board, adding that there is real need in this category, and if it is met, other homes could become available to younger families.

“Approximately 45% of Deerfield residents are over age 55, so there is a definite need for senior housing,” Mason said. “And there is a housing issue across our region, and especially in Deerfield. We’re hoping that by building senior housing — and we’re looking to add approximately 32 units — that would free up some of the other homes, because we do have some older seniors who would like to downsize, but they have no place to move to.”

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns the lens on Deerfield, where an increasingly vibrant community and ever-changing destination comes into focus.

Developing Stories

They are referred to as the ‘1821 Building’ and the ‘1888 Building,’ respectively, because that’s when they opened their doors.

The former is a long-closed church, and the latter is the aforementioned former elementary school that, with the help of a $4 million federal earmark, is being eyed as a replacement for the current town offices, built in the ’50s and now outdated and energy-inefficient.

Wade Bassett says Yankee Candle is one of many intriguing draws that have helped transform Deerfield into a true destination.

Transformation of those two historic properties tops the list of municipal initiatives in Deerfield, Dunne and Mason said.

And if town offices can be moved to the renovated school, new uses, perhaps senior housing, could be found for the current Town Hall, which, as noted, is an aging, inefficient structure.

These properties and others sit on what is called the campus, a slice of land, most of it town-owned, between North Main Street and Conway Street that includes several structures, including Town Hall, the 1821 and 1888 buildings, the town’s senior center, a ballfield, and a second church, St. James Roman Catholic Church, and its rectory, which the town may acquire with an eye toward preservation and reuse, perhaps for more senior housing, said Mason, adding that a request for proposals will soon be issued for that property.

As noted, there is real need for this type of housing, said Mason, noting that, if it is created, homes will come on the market, opening the door for more families to move to the community.

Meanwhile, new senior housing on the campus and more young families would provide a boost for the nearby downtown, said Dunne, adding that, while that area is vibrant, there are some ‘infill projects,’ as he called them, to contend with, including a long-vacant Cumberland Farms (a new, much larger one was opened on Route 5).

Other initiatives include ongoing development of a municipal parking lot with EV chargers, one complete with a large amount of green space to counter all the paved surfaces downtown — and a Complete Streets project that include improvements to sidewalks and adding a tree belt to downtown streets.

While there’s a concerted effort to create more housing inventory for those who want to live in Deerfield, there’s already a deep portfolio of attractions for those who want to visit.

“Tree House is driving a lot of traffic to this area, with their beer and with their concerts.”

Yankee Candle has long been the mainstay, and it continues to evolve in this anchor role, said Wade Bassett, director of Sales and Operations at Yankee Candle Village.

But the tourist sector, like the overall economy, is diverse, boasting everything from butterflies to history lessons at Historic Deerfield to the latest draw — craft beer and accompanying events, especially at Tree House Brewery, now occupying the large campus that was once home to publisher Channing Bete.

That campus incudes a concert venue that brings thousands of people to Deerfield for shows, said Dunne, adding that the brewery is working with town officials to increase the limit for attendance so it can bring larger acts to that campus and thus increase the ripple effect.

This 19th-century building is among the properties in the town ‘campus’ being eyed for renovation.

And that effect is already considerable, said Jen Howard, owner of Leo’s Table, a breakfast and lunch restaurant on North Main Street, named after her grandfather, who owned and operated a similar establishment in Fitchburg after returning from military service.

Howard said she explains the name on a regular basis, adding that many guests will ask her male kitchen employee if he is Leo.

Those guests run the gamut, she said, noting that there is a solid core of locals, many of them senior citizens, but many diners are coming on their way to attractions like Yankee Candle, the butterfly conservatory, and, increasingly, Tree House.

“We even see some from the parking lot — people charging their vehicles will come in,” she told BusinessWest, adding that a much larger boost comes from the tourist attractions, which fuel many other hospitality-related businesses.

Staying Power

At Yankee Candle, they call it the “golden key.”

That’s the name of a long-standing program, a tradition, really, at the company, whereby one family, or an individual guest, is chosen to receive an actual, and quite large, golden key, which they are required to wear, and which entitles them to enjoy all the many experiences at the Village for free.

Deerfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1677
Population: 5,090
Area: 33.4 square miles
County: Franklin
Residential Tax Rate: $13.85
Commercial Tax Rate: $13.85
Median Household Income: $74,853
Median Family Income: $83,859
Type of Government: Open Town Meeting
Largest Employers: Yankee Candle Co., Pelican Products Inc.
* Latest information available

“They can enjoy Wax Works, they can fill a candy jar, they can get some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s — it gives a next-level experience to the guest,” said Bassett, adding quickly that the program was designed to engage not only guests, but employees at the Village as well. Indeed, each day a different team member is assigned the task of deciding who, if anyone, is worthy of the golden key, which is awarded for many good reasons, from a 100th birthday to a wedding anniversary to marking one’s final round of chemotherapy.

“Recently, we had two people get engaged in our Black Forest, and one of our employees came back and said, ‘we just had an engagement in our store — why don’t we give them the golden key?” Bassett went on, adding that the program is just one way the Village strives to heighten what is still in most respects a retail experience and take it to the next level.

That level has been raised continuously over the more than 30 years that the Village has been operating, he said, adding that the facility, which is in seemingly constant motion and changing with the holidays and seasons — Easter and April school vacation are next on the schedule, and programs are already being developed — is now part of a broad effort to make Deerfield and all of Franklin County a true destination.

Indeed, like others we spoke with, Bassett said Deerfield has become a regional tourism hub, with a variety of attractions that can broaden a visit from a few hours to an entire day — or even longer.

Tree House has been an important addition to the mix, he told BusinessWest, adding that it is part of a craft-beer trail, if you will, along with Berkshire Brewing nearby in the center of Deerfield. But Tree House has become a much bigger draw with its concerts and other types of events.

“Tree House is driving a lot of traffic to this area, with their beer and with their concerts,” Bassett said, adding that this traffic is finding its way to different stops in the area, including Yankee Candle.

Deane agreed, and said that the goal in Deerfield, and across Franklin County, is to simply “extend the stay.” Elaborating, she said the community has Yankee Candle to bring visitors in, but it also has Tree House, Berkshire Brewing, Historic Deerfield, and other attractions to keep them there for an extended stay — and bring them back again.

Hometown Financial Group Continues Course of Acquisition

Banking and Financial Services

Branching Out — Again

Matt Sosik says Hometown’s latest acquisition is part of an ongoing initiative to gain needed size and extend the institution’s footprint.

Matt Sosik referred to it as a “mutual admiration society.”

That’s how he chose to describe the respect that he developed for the manner in which Kevin Tierney had grown North Shore Bank into a force in that region of the Commonwealth and, likewise, how Tierney respected what Sosik had done with Easthampton-based Hometown Financial Group, using acquisition and organic growth to transform it into a $4.7 billion multi-bank holding company with a reach that extends across Western and Central Mass., the South Shore, and into Northeastern Conn.

This mutual admiration eventually became the catalyst for talks to bring the institutions together, said Sosik, chairman and CEO of Hometown Financial, adding that North Shore will become part of the Hometown family of banks through a merger of Abington Bank, acquired by Hometown in 2019, into North Shore.

The combined bank will have more than $3 billion in assets and 25 full-service retail locations across the Bay State’s North and South Shore regions and Southern New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Hometown will become, with more than $6 billion in assets, one of the largest mutual banks in the country, said Sosik, adding that the merger gives the group more of what banks need in this challenging day and age — size.

“Margins have been falling steadily, and the only way to beat that back and try to win that battle is drive down costs, at least on the average.”

Indeed, when asked what greater size — $6.4 billion in assets compared to $4.7 billion — provides, Sosik started by saying simply, “survival.”

“Margins have been falling steadily, and the only way to beat that back and try to win that battle is drive down costs, at least on the average,” he explained. “So scale is the way to achieve that; when you put more assets under one roof and achieve more efficiencies, you’re driving down per-asset costs, and that’s what this business model tries to attain.

“We want to use that $6.5 billion chassis that’s headquartered in Easthampton to run the back offices of all of our three subsidiary banks,” he went on, listing bankESB, bankHometown in Central Mass., and the soon-to-be-much-larger North Shore Bank. “We can liberate those banks to do what they do best, which is use the power of their local brand in their communities they’re serving and let the shared service model of the holding company do the grungy stuff to produce efficiencies.”

That business model he mentioned has been an aggressive course of acquisitions that makes sense on every level, but especially those involving new opportunities for achieving growth and diversity when it comes to markets and regional vibrancy.

For this issue and its focus on banking & financial services, we take an in-depth look at the latest of these acquisitions for Hometown Financial and what it means for the institution moving forward.

Another Transaction of Note

As he talked about Hometown’s latest expansion effort, Sosik broke it down into two parts, essentially.

The first is the merger of North Shore into Hometown Financial Group, and then the merger of two of its subsidiary banks, North Shore and Abington, under the North Shore banner — although the Abington name will live on.

Putting those two institutions together under one roof, if you will, gives Hometown a dynamic presence in the eastern part of the state, which, like Western Mass. — and all corners of the state, for that matter — is a highly competitive region charactized by a strong mix of local, regional, and national banks, Sosik said.

Elaborating, he noted that the joining of Abington and North Shore brings a number of benefits, everything from resolution of succession issues at Abington — long-time President and CEO Andrew Raczka is entering retirement — to needed size and scale for North Shore.

“For North Shore, this makes a lot of sense strategically because they’re going to expand their footprint around Boston, gain market share … all the important things,” Sosik told BusinessWest. “But they’re also sliding underneath this $6.5 million company. They’re going to get to run their bank, and yet they can have their cake and eat it too in the sense that they’ll have access to our shared services and gain the efficiences of a much larger company. The benefits are the same for us — ensuring long-term viability and relevance in a very slim-margin industry.”

Rewinding the tape, Sosik said the talks between him and Tierney began just over a year ago and accelerated over the past few months. The merger was announced early last month, and the transaction is anticipated to close in the second half of this year.

It is the latest of seven strategic mergers for Hometown Financial Group over the past nine years, an aggressive pattern of acquisition that has taken the institition well beyond the 413. Indeed, its reach now extends across most of the state into neighboring Connecticut and New Hampshire.

Recounting those acquisitions, Sosik said they started in June 2015, when Citizens National Bancorp and its subsidiary, Citizens National Bank, merged into bankESB, which was operating at the time under the name Easthampton Savings Bank. In April 2016, Hometown Community Bancorp and its subsidiary, Hometown Community Bank, joined Hometown Financial Group to become the second subsidiary of the holding company; Hometown Community Bank has since changed its name to bankHometown. And in January 2019, Pilgrim Bancorp and its subsidiary, Pilgrim Bank, joined Hometown Financial Group.

Later that year, Abington Bank merged into Pilgrim Bank, with the name of the combined bank changed to Abington Bank, and Millbury Savings Bank merged into bankHometown. In October 2022, Randolph Bancorp and its subsidiary, Envision Bank, merged into Abington Bank, and last month, North Shore Bancorp and its subsidiary, North Shore Bank, announced plans to merge with Abington Bank; at transaction closing, Abington Bank will operate as a division of North Shore Bank.

Moves of Interest

This latest merger transforms North Shore into a $3.1 billion powerhouse, one of the largest mutuals in that part of the state, with reach across Eastern Mass., where, again, there are many competitors, size is an all-important asset, and meaningful, organic growth is far more attainable than it is Western Mass., which is typically described as a slow- or no-growth area.

“It’s a very competitive market, but also a very vibrant market,” said Sosik. “When you look at our demographics in the Pioneer Valley, they’re not very impressive; we love that market, and it’s very stable, but it’s not high-growth.

“It’s different in the eastern part of the state,” he went on. “In spite of the depth of the competition, it’s still a great market to be in; there are opportunites for growth.”

From a bigger-picture perspective, this latest merger provides an opportunity to take the stability of Western Mass. and juxtapose it against the “higher highs and lower lows” that define the far more dynamic eastern part of the state, he continued, adding that this diversity of regions and markets is another solid asset for Hometown Financial Group.

It’s an asset most other banks in the region are seeking as well, he said, noting that several banks in Western Mass. are pushing into Connecticut and other regions, and some Connecticut-based banks are moving north.

It’s all a function of gaining access to higher-growth areas and, overall, much-needed size, said Sosik, as he returned once again to the topics of margins — and how they became even smaller in the wake of repeated interest-rate hikes last year — and scale and the importance of attaining it.

“Banks are not built to withstand that kind of pressure,” he said in reference to climbing deposit rates and an inability to increase yields on existing loan portfolios beyond a certain point. “So you’re seeing banks in various degrees of duress becase of that predicament.”

The pace of interest-rate increases has certainly slowed, and rates may even decline somewhat this year, but this will remain a challenging climate for banks of all sizes, he went on, adding that the only course of action is to achieve greater size.

“In a low-margin business of any kind, and banking is certainly right at the top of that list, you have got to grow, or you’re going backward,” he went on. “That’s the nature of the beast. How do you acomplish that growth? We’ve chosen one model, and there are other successful pathways.”

Thus far, this model has chosen to be successful at achieving its various goals — from territorial expansion and regional diversity to much-needed scale.

And Sosik expects this pattern to continue with the acquisition of North Shore Bank.

Worthington Assembly Focuses on ‘Humanizing Manufacturing’

Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Franklin County

Blueprinting a Unique Culture

Rafal Dybacki (left) and Neil Scanlon are focused on continued growth and something they call ‘humanizing manufacturing.’

It’s called “The Pick, Place, Podcast.”

It’s co-produced by Worthington Assembly Inc. (WAi) and a collaborator — and tenant within its space in Deerfield’s industrial park — called CircuitHub, and it’s billed as an electronics show where representatives from the companies, which specialize in circuit-board design and assembly (contract manufacturing), discuss the printed circuit board (PCB) assembly process, offer design tips, and talk to industry guests.

“It’s a unique show — no one else is doing anything quite like this,” WAi principal Neil Scanlon said. “And we have a lot of fun doing it.”

But while proud of their own podcast, Scanlon and Worthington co-owner Rafal Dybacki preferred to talk about a different podcast, called “Uncover the Human,” featuring consultants who talk with guests about … well, how to make the workplace more human.

This has been one of the overriding goals for the two partners since they acquired the company, originally based in Worthington (hence the name) and moved it to Deerfield, and, long story short, they were featured on an episode of “Uncover the Human” just over a year ago.

“It’s a couple of consultants out of Colorado, and they’re trying to find … one way to say it is to peel back the layers and find the good in work and try to make workplaces more human and be not what they are today,” Scanlon said.

“One of our employees is good friends with one of the employees at this consulting company, and they were on a trip together, and our employee was telling her about our culture and how we make decisions. And she kept asking her questions and saying, ‘this doesn’t make any sense,’ and ‘let me try to understand this more.’ She became so fascinated, she said she had to get us on their podcast.”

They told the host what they told BusinessWest — that they take a different approach to hiring and developing employees. It’s an approach hinted at broadly in the headline over the company’s posting on jobsinthevalley.com, which features the two words ‘humanizing manufacturing.’

The two explained what that means.

“We have a flat, decentralized organization,” Scanlon said. “We don’t have supervisors, and everyone works in teams, and the teams work together to deliver quality product to our customers.

“We’re focused on people who are interested in problem solving, learning, and growing,” he went on, adding that part of the team’s culture, as we’ll see, is involving all employees in the work to find people who will make good fits.

Elaborating, Dybacki explained that, after inititial interviews, job candidates will then take what he called a “self-guided tour” of the factory and its various departments, seeing what’s done and asking any questions they might have. By doing this — something that very few, if any, other manufacturers would allow — the applicant gets a sense of not only of the work, but the people he or she will be working alongside.

“We have a flat, decentralized organization. We don’t have supervisors, and everyone works in teams, and the teams work together to deliver quality product to our customers.”

If that candidate is still interested, they begin what Scanlon described as a “three-day working interview,” during which the individual is assigned to work with specific teams. And if they’re still interested, things get taken to the next level — a 30-day working interview.

Overall, this process was blueprinted — there’s that word again — to get the right people on the company’s teams, and a workforce where members are both focused and happy.

For this issue and its focus on Franklin County, BusinessWest talked at length with Scanlon and Dybacki about Worthington Assembly and what’s in their business plan moving forward, but also about humanizing manufacturing and the unique culture they’ve created.

Making It Here

The consultants behind the “Uncover the Human” podcast aren’t the only ones interested in talking with these two entrepreneurs lately.

Indeed, Yvonne Hao, secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Economic Development, got them on the phone late last month as part of a larger effort to assess the climate for small businesses in the Commonwealth, especially those in advanced manufacturing, and better understand their issues and concerns.

Scanlon and Dybacki said they talked about a number of things with her, from the millionaire’s tax and how they feel it penalizes S corporations, like Worthington Assembly, to the gross-receipts tax and how it also it also hamstrings small-business owners. They also talked about the company’s culture, said Dybacki, speculating that Hao may have heard the “Uncover the Human” episode.

Whether she did or not, the call is an indication of how the company and how it operates have gained traction and visibility as it continues to grow and evolve — and mark a half-century of working on the cutting edge of circuit-board contract manufacturing.

Indeed, it was back in 1974 when Tom Quinn, the company’s founder, set up shop in his bedroom and soon developed processes for assembling circuit boards, first for a Boston-based client called Cyborg Inc.

The company moved from Quinn’s bedroom to a small barn in Worthington, where it continued a pattern of steady growth. Quinn and his wife, Barbara, sold the operation to Scanlon and Dybacki in 2008 and, seeking larger quarters, more reliable power, and faster internet, moved it to the industrial park in Deerfield a year later.

There, they’ve continued and enhanced the company’s reputation as a contract manufacturer, amassing a deep portfolio of clients, most of them in New England, in sectors ranging from medical-device manufacturing to industrial controls; from HVAC to segments of the automobile industry.

“We essentially build to a blueprint, much like a machine shop builds to a blueprint,” Scanlon explained. “A customer will come to us with a blueprint, and we will build that product for them precisely as that blueprint states.”

WAi does a considerable amount of work with CircuitHub, a designer of circuit boards for customers around the globe, and ships directly to its clients, Dybacki said.

It is one of the few circuit board assemblers in Western Mass., and a relatively small player in a large and extremely competitive sector, where, in this case, the smaller size is a competitive advantage because it comes with flexibility and the ability to handle the smaller orders that the larger players would not even consider, Scanlon explained.

“We handle things at lower volumes, where it’s too much work to send it off the China because the volume isn’t there, and other competitors simply don’t want to get involved with a $4,000 or $5,000 order,” he said, adding that the company can handle orders of a few dozen of an item to several thousand.

True Grit

WAi has enjoyed steady growth over the past several years, growing its workforce to 35, said Dybacki, adding that the focus has always been on “finding the right person and getting them in the right seat, and making sure they stay here.”

And this is where we return to the company’s culture and that notion of humanizing manufacturing.

Finding the right people is crucial, Scanlon said, because of the custom nature of the work being done.

“We do so many unique assemblies,” he explained. “On a given day, with this team of 35 people, we might be shipping 10 different assemblies that have in some cases never been built by anyone else. In order to do that, you need really good people that have a thorough understanding of how this works.

“You can’t have memorizers, you can’t have button pushers … our people that work here do the same thing over and over again for an hour, and then they move on to something totally different,” he went on. “They need a unique skill set.”

To find the right people — and then keep them — the company has created a comprehensive hiring, training, and onboarding process, one that secures input not only from those doing the interviewing and hiring, but those who will be working alongside the candidate in question.

It begins with that headline over the job placement and accompanying job description — ‘humanizing manufacturing.’

“This catches their eye, and they read about it, and then a lot of times they’ll reach out to us,” Scanlon said. “The type of person you get doesn’t necessarily have the exact skills you’re looking for, but they have the right attitude and a willingness to learn.

Dybacki concurred, adding, “in a lot of cases, that’s more important than having the needed skills.”

That aforementioned process, including the three-day and 30-day working interviews, includes something called a ‘360 form,’ whereby team members are evaluated by colleagues using core values and successful habits. These are listed with accompanying phraseology, so employees know just what they’re looking for, and ‘scores,’ if you will, ranging from ‘excellent’ to ‘average’ to ‘poor.’

These core values and descriptions provide some real insight into the degree to which the company wants people who are good fits, and how everyone at WAi is involved in finding those fits.

Under the core value ‘humility,’ we find “puts the team first; works well with others; open to change; open to learning; check any arrogance at the door; listens to others. No, really listens.”

Under the core value ‘honesty’ (described as “to be candid, straightforward, and fair”) is written, “our ability to be candid with our teammates is essential for our success; we cannot continuously improve if we aren’t talking about opportunities for improvement.”

Other core values and successful habits include ‘have fun,’ ‘contribute,’ ‘work well with everyone,’ and even ‘grit’ — “we need to always stay focused and push through the hard tasks all day, every day without becoming bored or complacent, and take pride in the simple yet at times difficult tasks.”

“Our teammates here will let you know if you have grit, if you’re able to do this work or not,” Scanlon said. “They’ll know just by the sound of the screwdriver.”

Using tools like the 360 form and a rigorous interviewing and onboarding process — which includes listening to that episode of “Uncover the Human” — the company has managed to successfully hire and maintain a workforce when many in manufacturing, and other sectors as well, are struggling to do so.

And much of it comes down to getting everyone at the company involved in this process.

“People here can’t complain about who they’re working with because they helped choose them and they have the ability to put feedback into a person’s 360,” said Scanlon, adding that, overall, these processes have created an environment where everyone is happy with who they’re working with, and they work together to take the company to the next level.

This is a true blueprint for success and a reason why this company is getting some attention — not just for the circuit boards it produces, but for the culture it has created.

Louie Theros Transitions from the Courtroom to the Casino Floor

By George O'Brien March 14, 2024

Cover Story

Making His Case

Louie Theros

Louie Theros is a trial lawyer by trade. In fact, his wife has told him on numerous occasions that she has never seen him happier than when he’s in the courtroom trying a case.

He would agree with that assessment wholeheartedly.

“I loved the strategy of it and sitting down with my colleagues and working themes of cases,” he told BusinessWest. “How we were going to deal with the opposite side’s parries, changes in strategy, and how we had to learn and deal with the jury and get them to like us and our case. I loved everything about it.”

But while he’s energized by the various elements of a courtroom fight, he acknowledged that his current challenge is probably the biggest and most intriguing of his career.

Indeed, Theros has seen his most recent career aspiration come to fruition with his appointment as president and chief operating officer of MGM Springfield, succeeding Chris Kelley, who held that role for four challenge-laden years (he arrived not long before the pandemic descended on the region) before departing at the end of 2023.

Prior to his arrival in Springfield, Theros served MGM as vice president, legal counsel, and assistant secretary at MGM Grand Detroit, and then in those same roles for MGM’s Midwest Group, which also included a casino in Ohio. In those various positions, he said he learned all aspects of the casino business, and especially what he called the “human-resources side,” a natural byproduct of working in employment law for 25 years before joining the casino giant and then continuing that type of work.

“I’ve told people here during my first few weeks that I’m sort of a ‘culture person,’” he said. “I’ve been on the human-resources side my entire career, working with a variety of companies, spanning Fortune 10 corporations to single-person entities, and I’ve learned a lot about the human element. So one of my goals here is to drive culture among employees and between our hourlies and our managers.”

“When we designed this … we didn’t design a glass, Vegas-like place; this fits into the community. Corporate-wise, we really felt the vibe of Springfield, and we really paid a lot of attention to this fitting into the community.”

That’s one of many goals he brings with him to MGM Springfield, where he becomes the third president and COO of that facility. He acknowledged that his predecessors, Mike Mathis and then Kelley, had specific assignments.

Mathis’s was to open the facility — a four-year process that ended in August 2018 — and then put it on solid ground. Kelley was then charged with ramping up, he said, adding that this process was complicated by COVID and then dominated by the introduction of sports gambling.

Generalizing, Theros said his assignment is to build on the foundation that’s been laid and simply try to improve on every aspect of the operation, a long list that includes the gross gambling revenue (GGR) generated at the facility, the entertainment shows at various venues, and the broad impact MGM Springfield has on the surrounding South End area and the region in general.

There are already some items on his to-do list — reactivating the former church that was home to a Kringle Candle outlet but has been vacant for several years, energizing the hotel’s spa, and adding to the entertainment calendar, for example — but mostly, at this early stage, he’s still watching, learning, getting to know the region, and, overall, setting the bar higher for the casino complex.

As Louie Theros takes the helm at MGM, he senses growing momentum, both at the casino complex and in Springfield’s South End.
(Photo by Jose Figueroa)

“This should be the best that Springfield has to offer — we have the resources to have the best steakhouse, the best Italian restaurant, the best food court, the best experience for someone who’s looking for something exciting to do on any night of the week,” he said, adding that, in most respects, the casino is already there, and with the others, it’s his job to get it there.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Theros about everything from the path he took to Springfield to what he wants to do with this opportunity to oversee his own casino.

Odds Are…

Theros is certainly no stranger to Springfield and its casino. Indeed, he came here during the pandemic to help prepare the facility for its reopening and was also part of the large team that opened the facility five and half years ago.

“I spent two weeks here then,” he said, gaining during that brief stint an appreciation for the property, what it meant to Springfield and the region, and the role it would play in helping to transform that section of the city.

“I’ve always loved this building,” he said, adding that his affection reflects both what the property is and what it isn’t. “When we designed this … we didn’t design a glass, Vegas-like place; this fits into the community. Corporate-wise, we really felt the vibe of Springfield, and we really paid a lot of attention to this fitting into the community.”

Overall, his role is to continually improve that ‘fit,’ and to build on a general sense of momentum at both the casino and the area surrounding it, punctuated by everything from solid GGR numbers to the recent naming of a preferred developer — Chicago-based McCaffrey Interests Inc. — for three properties across Main Street from the casino that have long been vacant or mostly vacant and in most ways eyesores.

Theros, who officially took the helm on Jan. 2, navigated a winding and somewhat unusual path to casino management.

He graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1989, returned to Michigan, where he grew up, and soon thereafter began practicing civil-rights law on the defense side, handling human-resources and labor issues for clients of all sizes, including, eventually, MGM Resorts, which had opened a casino in Detroit in July 1999.

He handled work for the company for several years before joining MGM as one of its in-house lawyers in 2015, eventually becoming vice president, legal counsel, and assistant secretary, first for the Detroit casino and then for the Midwest Group.

Prior to joining MGM, though, he served on the board of the Detroit-based law firm he was with, Butzel Long, getting a taste, as he put it, of operating a large business.

“This was an $80 million to $90 million law firm at that time, and now, it’s much bigger,” he noted. “I really like operations, and I always have.”

Indeed, he said that, from the days he would bus tables for some of the Greek restaurant owners in town who counted his parents as their accountants, he’s always had a fascination for the operational side of companies and knowing and understanding every facet of a business.

“People have put their trust in me to lead this organization and lead this property into the future, and I really feel privileged to do this.”

And this fascination continued with MGM’s Detroit casino, he said, adding that he chose to stick his nose, as he put it, in places generally not frequented by in-house lawyers.

“I was very deliberate in educating myself about all aspects of a casino during my eight-plus years in Detroit,” he told BusinessWest. “I spent a lot of time socializing, whether it was having a cup of coffee with someone from table games or the slots department. And the food and beverage leader and VP of Hospitality were right next door to my office, so I spent a lot of time talking about that aspect of the business.”

And many others as well, he went on, adding that, as he acquired this broad base of knowledge, he arrived at a place where he believed himself ready to lead his own casino. He applied for such a role at MGM’s Ohio facility, and while he didn’t get the job, he said he certainly sharpened his teeth through the lengthy interview process and then “did some more learning.”

And when Kelley, with whom he worked at MGM’s Detroit casino, announced he was leaving his role in Springfield late last year, Theros applied again, and this time won the position. It’s a role, and a challenge, that he embraces.

One of Louis Theros’s challenges will be to build on MGM Springfield’s newest gaming option: sports betting.

“People have put their trust in me to lead this organization and lead this property into the future, and I really feel privileged to do this,” he said. “I would most likely have run my law firm if I had stayed there, if I had not come to MGM — I was one of the top two or three people running the firm when I was there — and I’ve always felt the desire to lead some organization, and when I got to MGM and learned the business and got more involved in it, a few years in, I said to myself, ‘I know I can do this.’ I’m honored that they picked me to do this.”

Betting on Himself

When asked to informally write his own job description for the president and COO of MGM Springfield, Theros said there are two sides to that equation — internal and external.

With the former, he said his job is to set a positive tone for the staff, something he believes comes naturally. “I’ve always been a ‘set a positive tone at the top’ person,” he said. “And I would never ask my employees to do something I would not do, and I expect my leaders to set that same tone.

“And I want people to feel, as I do, that this is an absolutely fantastic place to work — I love coming to work every day,” he went on. “So, my job is to come in, make sure our employees like coming here and treat everyone with respect, and make sure they have an opportunity, much like I’ve had, to move up in the company.”

On the external side of the equation, he said his job description involves creating an experience for the guest and prompting them to put MGM Springfield top of mind when it comes to gatherings and ways to celebrate occasions and milestones in their lives — or just or a random Saturday evening.

“When they’re thinking of a special event — an anniversary, a birthday party, whatever it is — we want them thinking, ‘we should go to MGM Springfield because it’s a wonderful place to go, we get great service, and we could get great food.’ My job is to deliver that.”

Theros said it’s also his job to get involved in the community, and to inspire others to get involved as well.

Overall, he’s encouraged by what he sees, both at his casino and in the community, citing everything from apparent progress on the properties across Main Street, including the Clocktower Building and the Colonial Block, and the rapid leasing of the apartments in the revitalized former Court Square Hotel (a project MGM has taken part in), which is a source of pride but also some frustration for Theros, who has been looking for a place a live.

“At 31 Elm, they have 74 units; they rented them all in 30 days,” he said. “I couldn’t find a place, even across the street. That’s fantastic; that shows me that the city and the surrounding area are really robust.”

Theros’s personal car didn’t arrive in Springfield until late last month, but he made use of the casino’s limo to visit various communities in the region — and even one of his competitors — while also walking to events ranging from a few Thunderbirds games to Red Sox Winter Weekend at the MassMutual Center.

“At 31 Elm, they have 74 units; they rented them all in 30 days. I couldn’t find a place, even across the street. That’s fantastic; that shows me that the city and the surrounding area is really robust.”

Returning to his casino property and the multi-faceted operation there, Theros said that, to date, he’s mostly been observing and making notes as he compiles a more comprehensive to-do list. He stressed that the operation is maturing and reaching, if not exceeding, many of the expectations the city and region had when the casino opened to considerable fanfare on that hot August day in 2018.

“Chris [Kelley] has gotten us to a nice place; the whole team has,” he told BusinessWest. “My goal, quite simply, is to build on that.”

Bottom Line

When asked what he’d rather be doing — trying a case or managing a casino — Theros paused briefly before answering.

“For pure adrenaline, trying a lawsuit, trying a case in front of a jury — that’s an adrenaline rush,” he said. “When someone high-fives you after you’ve cross-examined someone — I had one of my associates do that — that’s a big rush.

“For personal satisfaction, though, it’s running a casino,” he went on. “I have more direct impact on an outcome here than I do at a trial because the jury is the arbiter at the end of the day.”

Still, he’s hoping to create something approaching those cross-examination rushes at the casino on Main Street as he takes on what he called the “cherry on the top of his career,” and an opportunity to really make a case for MGM Springfield.

Ames Electrical Consulting Drives Efforts to Automate

By George O'Brien March 14, 2024

Special Coverage Technology

Current Events

Randy Ames says robotics will be the main focus of the next chapter in the intriguing Ames story.

As he talked with BusinessWest, Randy Ames gestured out the window of his tiny office to the traffic on Greenfield Street just a few dozen feet away.

He guessed that several thousand cars pass that spot every day, and further speculated that few, if any, of those travelers would have any idea at all what goes on inside the small, nondescript building that has been home to his business for the past 15 years.

That’s a pretty safe bet, actually. In fact, it’s easy to drive right by Ames Electrical Consulting without knowing it’s there. And soon, it won’t be there.

Indeed, as he talked, Ames noted that he was in the very early stages of packing up for a move to much larger quarters in Greenfield Industrial Park, just a few miles away. That move is a big part of an exciting next chapter in one of the more intriguing, and still evolving, business stories in Franklin County.

The first chapter saw Ames abandon a career, if it could be called that, as a chef — because he needed something more financially rewarding as he started a family — and enroll in an electrical engineering technology program at Springfield Technical Community College.

“Manufacturers can’t find people to work — and it’s not just manufacturers, it’s everyone.”

The next chapters would see him put that degree to work in jobs for several different companies in the region — from Elm Electrical in Westfield to Kellogg Brush in Easthampton — while also earning a degree in electrical engineering at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston on weekends (“three years of Saturdays,” as he called it), and also doing a little of what he described as “moonlighting.”

Specifically, he was developing and installing systems to help businesses automate various operations and processes.

Eventually, and with some real incentive after he was pink-slipped by a downsizing Kellogg Brush, his work with automation evolved from moonlighting into a risk-laden entrepreneurial venture, one that somehow managed to survive the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, when OEMs that made the equipment he installs all but shut down.

Today, Ames boasts clients in a wide range of sectors, from breweries to plastics; food and beverage to paper; recreation (think ski lifts) to municipal water and wastewater facilities. Indeed, the company designs electrical hardware and software control systems for companies that make everything from golf balls to Play-Doh to ketchup bottles.

“We’re the automation guys,” Ames said simply, adding that, over the years, the company has enjoyed steady growth while expanding and diversifying its portfolio of customers, which it provides with turnkey operations.

The next chapter for Ames, and a big reason behind its move to larger quarters, involves the growing, ever-changing world of robotics.

The company has become New England’s only authorized distributor and integrator of NACHI Robotics Systems, said Ames, adding that, as manufacturers and machine shops across the region and throughout the Northeast continue to struggle to attract and retain employees, more of these companies are increasingly looking to robots and cobots (‘collaborative robots’ that work together with people) as a solution.

Randy Ames, center, and a large delegation of local, state, and business leaders gathered at the company’s facility in Deerfield last summer for the NACHI Robot Roundup.

“Manufacturers can’t find people to work — and it’s not just manufacturers, it’s everyone,” said Ames, adding that his company is now primed and well-positioned to take full advantage of this technology and what it can do for companies.

It was this next chapter and what it might it might mean for the company and the region that drew business leaders and elected officials — more people than had come to his door in decades — to the office on Greenfield Street last summer for what was dubbed the NACHI Robot Roundup.

At that gathering, attendees got a good look into the future — of manufacturing, Ames Electrical, and, in many respects, the region.

For this issue and its focus on Franklin County, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Ames and what comes next for a company where success hasn’t come automatically, but through entrepreneurial energy and a willingness to keep current — figuratively, but also quite literally.

Watt’s Happening?

Ames joked early and often about the acronyms that dominate his business.

There are many of them — from PLCs (programmable logic controls), which are small devices, “the heart of automation,” as Ames called them, that can be programmed to turn things on and off; to HMIs (human-machine interfaces), the operators’ touchscreens; and even RAT (remote access technology), which provides a secure, cloud-based IT network that allows Ames to access remote locations and control machines with just a few clicks.

These acronyms come together in an industry, and a business, that has emerged, grown, and evolved over the past four decades, and continues to do so.

As noted earlier, Ames was a chef before enrolling at STCC and then working at Elm Electrical and then Kellogg Brush and eventually starting that moonlighting with automated systems.

He started in 1992 at Yankee Candle as it was opening its village in South Deerfield, specifically with developing, building, and programming ‘Santa’s toy machine,’ which made it appear that toys were going into a huge box in pieces and coming out as finished products.

“Part of it was to make it sort of this Willy Wonka/Rube Goldberg machine-looking mechanical contraption,” he recalled, adding that he worked with Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge on the project. “He said, ‘I want it to do this … I want this valve to make this thing spin, and all these lights to blink, the conveyer to run, to turn the snow on and off in the windows outside, etc.’ I’ll bet there were 25-foot-diameter gears on the wall with little motors that I had to make run.”

From there, Ames worked with several other moonlighting customers offering their own versions of ‘I want it to do this.’ Those experiences provided him with the confidence to go into business for himself in the spring of 1992 when he was laid off from Kellogg Brush as it was downsizing.

“I made four phone calls that day, and three people called me back,” he said, adding that one of them was Hillside Plastics in nearby Turners Falls, which would go on to be a steady customer.

He initially operated out of his house in Montague, working there during the day and then for OEM Kingsbury Corp. in New Hampshire at night, before focusing exclusively on his own work.

Over the past 30 years, the company has survived disruptive forces ranging from the Great Recession, when the phone stopped ringing and he started thinking about returning to work as a chef, to the pandemic, and thrived mostly by growing and diversifying its portfolio of customers while developing strong partnerships with both those clients and the makers of the equipment it installs.

Elaborating, Ames said the company takes a collaborative approach to what amounts to finding solutions for a client, whether it’s a manufacturer looking to automate a production process or a municipality operating its wastewater treatment plant.

He said the phone started ringing again in 2011, and with few exceptions, it hasn’t stopped ringing since, with customers finding Ames mostly through its vendors and all-important word-of-mouth from existing clients. Along the way, it has developed a niche — mostly smaller systems — and a reputation for being able to move quickly and nimbly, separating it from its much larger competitors.

Most of its customers are along the I-91 corridor in Western Mass., but it has also expanded into the North Shore, the Worcester area, and other parts of New England.

This expansion process may be accelerated by the partnership with NACHI Robotic Systems, Ames said, noting that a growing number of companies, including machine shops, are looking to robots as their workforce challenges mount.

“Manufacturers are tired of the revolving door,” he explained. “They bring someone in, they train them for a week, and then they’re gone. So, increasingly, they’re looking at robots.”

Indeed, he said he’s taking calls from potential customers ranging from bakeries to machine shops exploring the possibility of using robots to handle some of the work currently carried out by people.

Elaborating, Ames said he’s given two quotes to machine shops for robots that can handle what’s known as ‘machine tending,’ yielding yet another acronym (MT). And as he talked, he played a video of a NACHI robot picking and placing parts and putting them into a chuck on a computer numerical control system.

“This machine costs $92,000 — it comes with a cart and a robot,” he told BusinessWest. “If you can keep loading that, it will work all day and all night long; we just quoted one company where the ROI on one of these was three months.”

The company hasn’t installed any robotic systems yet, but Ames said the pace of phone calls inquiring about the equipment and what it can do has certainly picked up over the past several months. And he expects that call volume to only increase as workforce issues across all sectors continue.

Wired for Growth

Returning to the matter of that Willy Wonka/Rube Goldberg contraption he developed for Yankee Candle, Ames said that Michael Kittredge, who passed away in 2019, told him years ago that someone from the Smithsonian Institution called, saying they would be very interested in putting it on display once Yankee Candle was done with it.

Unfortunately, the toy machine had been taken down and dismantled by that time, Ames went on, adding that he never thought about his work winding up in the Smithsonian one day.

Instead, he’d gladly settle for satisfied customers and continued growth of the business he started from scratch and developed into something that has remained on the cutting edge of an emerging sector.

You certainly can’t see any of that driving past the company’s soon-to-be-former home on Greenfield Street, and that’s part of this engaging story — one with some intriguing chapters still to come.

Sublime Systems Advances Manufacturing Tradition in Holyoke

By George O'Brien March 1, 2024

Features

Concrete Example

It’s called the Justice40 Initiative, also known as Section 223 of Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”

It was issued by President Biden his first week in office back in 2021, and it directs 40% (hence the name) of the overall benefits of certain federal investments — including those in clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, and more — to flow to disadvantaged communities.

Holyoke still fits that description, and the fact that it does is one of many factors that has brought Sublime Systems, the Somerville-based startup that manufactures what it calls “low-carbon cement,” to the Paper City in an ambitious, $150 million venture that brings the city’s past, present, and future together.

Specifically, Sublime, guided by the Justice40 Initiative tools, its pending application for funding to the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, and other factors, including accessibility to abundant renewable energy (hydropower), eventually settled on a 14-acre sliver of land, an island in some respects, that lies between the city’s lower canal and the Connecticut River to scale up its operation.

There, the company expects to break ground in early 2025 on a plant that will produce 30,000 tons of cement that is much kinder to the planet than the products that have been produced to date. The application to OCED is for funds for accelerated construction of this facility, and the program in question is one of many covered by Justice40.

“Sublime ultimately selected Holyoke because of the dual opportunity to help local people in the near term while working toward swift and massive impact on global CO2 emissions,” said Erin Glabets, Sublime’s head of Communications, as she summed up the company’s mission — and decision to take its next critical step in Holyoke — in succinct fashion.

Launched from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the company was founded by Leah Ellis and Yet-Ming Chiang to essentially revolutionize cement production.

“Sublime ultimately selected Holyoke because of the dual opportunity to help local people in the near term while working toward swift and massive impact on global CO2 emissions.”

While doing that, it has become part of an exciting new era in manufacturing in the nation’s first planned industrial city, one focused on green manufacturing and green energy.

Indeed, while Sublime is an environmental story and part of what Gov. Maura Healey calls the ‘climate curtain’ taking shape in the Commonwealth, it is also an economic-development story and an example of the kind of company Holyoke is trying to attract with its strong blend of clean, lower-cost hydroelectric energy; large inventory of old mill space; and accessible location off several major highways.

“Sublime Systems’ low-carbon cement manufacturing project is not just a business development — it is a major stride towards the Holyoke we envision — innovative, prosperous, enterprising, and future-oriented,” Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia said. “By supporting this initiative, we are fostering a new paradigm where economic growth and the health of our planet are seen as interconnected and interdependent, not separate or mutually exclusive.”

Cleaner and Greener

As noted, this is a story with many elements, both figuratively and literally, the most obvious being a fundamental change in not only how cement is produced, but how such production impacts the environment.

“The founders wanted to de-carbonize cement,” Glabets said. “Cement is a huge emitter, a high-polluting industry just as a function of how it’s made, and it’s been made the same way for about 200 years — by taking limestone, a mineral that is half carbon dioxide by weight, and breaking that down into reactive ingredients.

“When you break it down, all that CO2 gets released into the air,” she went on. “And the way you break it down is with a very high heat process — a fossil-fuel kiln that needs to reach about 1,400 degrees Celsius. All that contributes to very high carbon emissions for the industry.”

Sublime takes a much cleaner and greener approach, using an electrochemical process that can turn abundantly available non-carbonate rocks and centuries of industrial waste that don’t release CO2 when they are decomposed into cement at ambient temperature — eliminating the need for fossil fuels entirely.

“We can use minerals that don’t have CO2 in them, so there’s no emission on that side,” she explained. “And we can do it at low heat and with a fully electrified process, so there’s no emissions there, either. So the cement has the same chemical makeup as the old stuff, as the more polluting, Portland cement, as it’s called, and it can be used in concrete the same way.”

The company has taken production to a pilot level — about 250 tons per year — in Somerville, Glabets said, adding that the next step is essentially scaling up. And that’s where Holyoke becomes a huge part of the story.

Elaborating, she said most cement plants currently operating in this company produce 1 million tons per year. Sublime wants to someday get to that level of production, but in the meantime, it will take the incremental, or intermediate, step of creating what could be called a demonstration facility.

As it commenced a search for where to build that facility, the company considered a number of factors. For starters, she said the company wanted to be close to sources of raw materials, and also close to its headquarters in Somerville. Meanwhile, it would require a large footprint on which to build, and sites of the size eventually found in Holyoke, about 14 acres, are becoming increasingly difficult to locate.

Other ingredients include accessibility, an ample supply of customers within a short distance of the demonstration facility, as well as a community that would welcome such a large-scale industrial manufacturing facility and had the zoning and permitting for it, she went on, adding that not all cities and towns are welcoming.

And then, there’s the company’s desire for clean energy to power that plant.

“Because what we do is meant to be as green as possible, powering our electrical process with renewables is really important,” she told BusinessWest. “So finding a place with a really green grid was at the top of our list.”

As was a desire to address some of the goals of the Justice40 Initiative, said Pat Beaudry, a Holyoke native now serving as the company’s Project Development manager.

He described his recent work as a “reality check” to determine if Sublime’s facility was something Holyoke residents really wanted and needed in their community. After months of meeting with various constituencies, including residents, officials, nonprofits, labor, and economic-development agencies, he said the answer to that question was a resounding ‘yes’ — for many reasons, he said, but especially a desire to write a new and exciting chapter in the city’s long and distinguished industrial history.

“Even though a lot of people in the city don’t have a direct history of working in the paper mills, they grew up hearing stories from their parents about what it looked like then and the opportunities that abounded downtown,” Beaudry told BusinessWest. “And I think people are ready to go back to the future with a cutting-edge industry.”

Rising Interest

There were a few other options to consider for locating the plant, Glabets said, but Holyoke’s assets, overlaid with the guidelines of Justice40 Initiative, steered the company to the Water Street site, which was home to a series of paper mills that were consolidated over time but had been dormant for several years and were eventually demolished.

Construction, as noted, is expected to begin in early 2025, with the plant coming online in 2026. The cement it produces will be an in-demand item, she noted, adding that end users, be they municipalities or private businesses, are increasingly looking to incorporate green building materials in their projects, thus reducing their overall carbon footprint and what are known as scope 3 emissions, indirect greenhouse-gas emissions that occur in an organization’s value chain.

“Many large companies are working to reduce those scope 3 emissions. And when building a new facility, whether it’s a large data warehouse or something to house any sort of operation, if they can build that facility in very a low-carbon way, that’s one way to accomplish that goal,” Glabets said.

She added that Sublime is already seeing solid interest from large infrastructure owners and end companies that fall into that category.

“Because today’s cement is so high-emitting — for every ton of cement made, a ton of CO2 gets released — this is a very effective lever for reducing those emissions.”

D1 Hockey Regional Comes with Risks, High Expectations for the Region

By George O'Brien February 29, 2024

Cover Story

Goal Oriented

Sean Dolan, general manager of the MassMutual Center

Jeff Smith acknowledged that, at this time of year, he’s certainly plugged into the NCAA Division 1 hockey rankings, standings, and something called … bracketology, a science of sorts whereby an analyst, starting several weeks in advance, projects which teams will wind up in the season-ending tournament and where they will play.

Most of his attention is focused on UMass Amherst — he’s the school’s deputy athletic director for External Operations — which has been a regular in the tournament the past several years and won the national championship in 2021. But he’s also looking at how the tournament brackets will shake out and what the competition might be.

This year, however, he’s watching things even more closely, because there is much more at stake than where the Minutemen might play and whom — although that’s still top of mind, obviously.

Indeed, it was Smith who went to his boss several years ago with the idea of the university, working in tandem with the MassMutual Center and American International College, co-hosting one of the tournament’s regional slate of games.

Long story short — we’ll go back and fill in some of the details later — the three parties submitted a bid in early 2020 to host a regional round in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and the NCAA awarded Springfield one for 2024 — specifically, three games to be played later this month that will determine which team will punch their ticket for the Frozen Four, to be played in St. Paul, Minn.

Which brings us back to bracketology.

Smith and other organizers of this regional are watching closely to see which teams might be coming to downtown Springfield. UMass Amherst is very likely to be one of them — the team was ranked in the top 10 as of this writing and stood a good chance of winning either one of the 10 at-large bids or the automatic bid that comes with the Hockey East crown (it was in fourth place as the regular season was winding down). And if UMass is in the tournament field, he said, it will play in Springfield because it’s a host and the MassMutual Center is not its home rink.

Jeff Smith

“I think Western Mass. has become this 413 hockey hotbed right now.”

As for the others, quality hockey is assured, but another team or even two from the Northeast would be ideal, said Sean Dolan, general manager of the MassMutual Center, who described this venture as a financial risk for its partners, but one that those involved consider well worth taking.

“There’s financial risk here — there’s a guarantee that goes to the NCAA, and your finances need to be covered,” he said, adding quickly that several thousand tickets have already been sold, well in advance of Selection Sunday, and almost 1,000 hotel rooms have been blocked off for the NCAA, the teams, their fans, their bands, television crews, referees, and more.

The decision to bid for the D1 hockey regional is part of a broader effort to bring more sporting events of this nature to the MassMutual Center, a facility owned by the state and managed by MGM Springfield.

Indeed, bids have been submitted for D2 basketball (men’s and women’s), D2 and D3 wrestling, D2 and D3 volleyball, and additional D1 hockey regionals, he said, adding that, while word is awaited on those bids, it’s very likely that this spring’s regional will the first of many collegiate sporting events coming to the facility.

Jessica Chapin, director of Athletics at AIC, another partner in this venture who’s also watching bracketology closely, agreed. She noted that AIC, which has played in the tournament in recent years, is experiencing an injury-plagued season and is unlikely to be in the field of 16. And if it did win the Atlantic Hockey conference title, it could not play in Springfield because the MassMutual Center is the Yellowjackets’ home rink.

But AIC is sharing in the risk of hosting this regional, she said, adding that, like all those involved, she’s crossing her fingers on the draw and expecting a strong showing and more collegiate sporting events in the future.

“We’re super excited to hopefully have a team from down the Mass Pike,” she said. “Hopefully, that will be the top seed in our building, and that will help drive attendance to this event and make it great for not only AIC, but Springfield and the greater community.”

Mary Kay Wydra, president of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, concurred, noting that the event should provide a real boost for the region’s tourism and hospitality sector, especially coming at an otherwise slow time of year she described as “our traditional mud season.”

“We’ve run the preliminary, and I’m stressing preliminary, economic-impact calculation, and, based on the current information available, the result is a little over $1 million for our local economy,” she said. “Of course, that number could vary up or down slightly depending on which teams participate, how far their fans will travel, how big their fan base is, and even the weather that weekend.”

“You have a community that’s really invested in hockey, and we will bring some the nation’s best talent to Springfield.”

Those comments certainly explain the interest in bracketology and the risks involved with this venture, which, overall, is seen as an opportunity to spotlight the emergence of hockey in this region and provide a boost to both its prominent arena and the entire hospitality sector.

New Gains

For those not familiar with the Division 1 hockey tournament, it’s very much like the better-known basketball event known as March Madness, only on a much smaller scale.

Indeed, while there are more than 330 Division 1 basketball teams spread across 33 conferences, each with its own automatic bid to the tournament, D1 hockey features roughly 60 teams in just six conferences, with teams mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.

Sixteen teams make the tournament, and deciding where they play can be a complicated process. Indeed, the selection committee likes to keep teams relatively close to home, for many obvious reasons, but there are competing forces, including the dominance of Hockey East, which could have three number-one seeds, requiring at least one of them to travel. Also, the committee tries to avoid teams from the same conference playing in the first round. And, yes, UMass being a host, guaranteeing it a spot in Springfield, complicates things even further.

There’s still three weeks for the brackets to be worked out, and local organizers will certainly be watching. But they’re expecting the event to sell and anticipating that the risk they’re taking will pay off — for Springfield, the region, the MassMutual Center, area businesses, and more.

The Frozen Four games are now played annually in cities and rinks with NHL teams, said Smith, adding that the regionals are usually played in smaller arenas, typically those that are home to American Hockey League teams — like the MassMutual Center, home to the Thunderbirds, a franchise that has seen success on and off the ice under the direction of President Nate Costa.

That success, coupled with the emergence of UMass Amherst and AIC as true hockey powers, is one of several motivating factors for bidding on the D1 hockey regional, said Smith and Dolan, who knew each other from when Dolan worked at the Mullins Center on the UMass campus, adding that a hockey regional is one way to build off that momentum.

Mary Kay Wydra

“The NCAA has blocked 940 rooms in our area, which is significant for a late March weekend that coincides with the Easter holiday.”

“I think Western Mass. has become this 413 hockey hotbed right now,” said Smith, citing the success of AIC, UMass Amherst, and the T-Birds. “That’s kind of cool, and hosting a regional is a way to promote that and celebrate it.”

Dolan agreed, noting that bidding for the D1 hockey regional is part of a larger effort to bring more sporting events to the region and, overall, fill more dates at the MassMutual Center.

For many years, Springfield hosted a D2 basketball regional, he recalled, and even a D1 basketball regional in the ’70s when that tournament was much smaller. But there has been little in recent years beyond the the Hall of Fame Classic games each fall.

Dolan said Las Vegas has landed a number of collegiate and professional sporting events in recent years (it just hosted the Super Bowl, for example), and those at MGM Springfield and the MassMutual Center conferred with their partners in Vegas about how to bring similar events to Springfield.

At the same time, talks between those at the facility and UMass, and then AIC, about hosting D1 hockey picked up in intensity. The bid was submitted just prior to COVID in 2020, and word was received that Springfield had been awarded one of the regionals for 2024 that October.

And, as noted earlier, it was just the first of many bids to be submitted, said Dolan, adding that sporting events of this nature are advantageous for many reasons. They bring people to Western Mass. from outside the region, thus giving it some exposure while also filling hotel rooms and restaurants. They also bring energy to the downtown for several days at a time.

“Our goal is to have Springfield host an NCAA championship every year,” he told BusinessWest, “so that this becomes something that we all, as community members, can anticipate. The sport will change by the year, but we want to have something each year.”

Icing on the Cake

When asked what to expect over those three days in late March, those we spoke with said there will certainly be some quality hockey on tap.

After that … well, much depends on how this bracket comes together.

One recent bit of bracketology, from Feb. 21, had UMass Amherst, Boston University, Denver, and Cornell coming to the MassMutual Center; that’s three teams from the Northeast and one from 2,000 miles away.

But other factors will play into this equation as well, everything from the weather to the fact that this will be Easter weekend (in making their bid, the local partners specifically bid for games to be played on Thursday and Saturday, rather than Friday and Sunday, to avoid playing on Easter).

Advance ticket sales, as noted, have been solid, Dolan said, adding that the brackets will not be announced until the Sunday before the games start. Most tickets will be sold after Selection Sunday, he explained, but organizers will push for advanced sales, emphasizing the quality of the hockey and the fact that Springfield hasn’t seen anything quite like this before.

“The NCAA has blocked 940 rooms in our area, which is significant for a late March weekend that coincides with the Easter holiday,” Wydra said. “So this figure is a very good indicator of the likely impact on our accommodations sector. It’s a little tougher to predict the overall room demand without knowing which teams will make it into the regional tournament. Some fanbases are very engaged and will follow their teams more enthusiastically than others, and of course distance is a factor, but we’re certainly expecting the room demand to be high.”

Having the Minutemen, which have been averaging more than 5,000 fans per game this year and have drawn as many as 8,000 to some tilts, including one against Michigan, will be huge, but other teams are expected to travel well.

When asked how they will measure success, those involved said there will be several yardsticks, including everything from ticket sales to how well those attending the games support downtown businesses.

And the results may ultimately play into how well the three partners fare as they vie for other regionals — bids have been submitted for 2026, 2027, and 2028.

“We’re planning on having a lot of success with this,” Smith said. “And it would be great to have it where every few years we have this in our backyard.”

Chapin, a member of the BusinessWest 40 Under Forty class of 2023, agreed.

“You have a community that’s really invested in hockey, and we will bring some the nation’s best talent to Springfield,” she said. “So I expect near-sellout crowds for the event.”

Added Wydra, “we’re sure the NCAA will be looking at how Springfield measures up to the other regional tournament locations,” which include Providence, R.I., Maryland Heights, Mo., and Sioux Falls, S.D.

“Here, our attention will be focused on the hotel-occupancy data, ticket sales for the games, attendance at area attractions, and dining volume at local restaurants. We expect to see a busy downtown in late March, with foot traffic on the street, and our enthusiasm for this event is high.”

Now, they’re just waiting for the puck to drop.

Holyoke Wants to Move ‘Way Beyond Potential’

By George O'Brien February 29, 2024

Mayor Joshua Garcia, left, and Aaron Vega

Community Spotlight

Mayor Joshua Garcia, left, and Aaron Vega can list intriguing signs of progress on many fronts in Holyoke, especially in efforts to attract ‘clean tech’ ventures.

As he talked about Holyoke and its many marketable assets, Mayor Joshua Garcia listed everything from its location — on I-91 and right off a turnpike exit — to its still-large inventory of old mill space and a few available building lots, to its “green, clean, and comparatively cheap” hydroelectric energy.

And all of these assets, and especially that clean, cheap energy, came into play as the city courted and successfully landed Sublime Systems, a startup currently based in Somerville that has developed a fossil-fuel-free, low-carbon cement, and will produce it at a long-dormant parcel off Water Street, perhaps by the end of 2026, employing more than 70 people.

Sublime is exemplary not only of how to maximize the city’s assets, but also of the type of business the city is trying to attract — those in ‘clean’ or ‘green’ technology and manufacturing.

“Sublime is an example of where we want to go,” said Aaron Vega, director of the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development. “We want to stress our roots in manufacturing and innovation, and now that encompasses clean energy and green tech.”

The pending arrival of Sublime Systems is just one of the many intriguing story lines involving Holyoke. Others include the announcement last month that the city, working with local entrepreneur Cesar Ruiz, is trying to advance plans for an Olympic-style sports complex (one with a projected $40 million to $60 million price tag); new housing proposals in various stages of development; a steady stream of new entrepreneurial ventures fueled by EforAll/EparaTodos; ongoing efforts to revitalize the historic Victory Theatre; and many converging stories involving the city’s cannabis cluster.

One of them concerns contraction of that sector, planned businesses simply not getting off the ground, and the resulting impact on commercial real estate in the city and especially a number of those aforementioned former mill buildings.

“Housing is a focus for us, and it’s tied to economic development. We can bring a fair amount of support to developers who want to do housing projects in the city, but it is a long game, and it’s expensive.”

As many as a dozen of them were acquired with the intention of housing a dispensary or growing facility, but the slowing of the initial ‘green wave’ has left these new owners — all of whom bought high, when the market was red hot, and some of whom have already invested in their structures — looking for buyers and other uses.

And, in many cases, they’re dialing Vega’s number and looking for help, or at least some guidance.

“A lot of people think my office is like a broker … but we’re not moving private property in that way,” he said with a laugh, adding his team will certainly help make connections that might lead to a deal. “We’ll refer people and say, ‘this property is empty, but you have to deal with the owner.’

“They overpaid for these buildings, so it will be interesting to see how they’re going to unload them,” he went on. “Will they put them on the market at a reduced rate, or will they try to earn their money back with a profit?”

Housing is certainly an option, but an expensive and often-difficult one, he continued, adding that, while there is certainly a need for more housing in Holyoke, as there is in most communities in the 413 and across the state, conversion of old mills for that purpose requires capital, patience, and some luck, all in large quantities.

Joshua Garcia

“We’ve been pulling back that curtain to the point where the buzz now is that there’s a lot going on in Holyoke; the reality is, there’s always been a lot going on in Holyoke.”

“Housing is a focus for us, and it’s tied to economic development,” Vega said. “We can bring a fair amount of support to developers who want to do housing projects in the city, but it is a long game, and it’s expensive.”

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest looks at these various storylines and, overall, a city making great strides on several fronts.

Curtain Calls

Garcia calls it “pulling back the curtain.”

That’s how he described his office’s ongoing efforts to tell Holyoke’s story and let people know about the many positive developments happening there.

“We’ve been pulling back that curtain to the point where the buzz now is that there’s a lot going on in Holyoke; the reality is, there’s always been a lot going on in Holyoke. It’s just that people have been in their own bubble, believing whatever perception they want to believe about the city,” he said, adding that he’s trying to enlighten people through various vehicles, including a newsletter of sorts that he writes himself and emails to more than 150 people.

It’s called “From the Mayor’s Desk,” and the latest installment includes updates on a wide range of topics, from the proposed sports complex to planned informational meetings to be staged by MassDOT, in collaboration with city officials, on proposed corridor improvements on High and Maple streets; from the scheduling of shuttle service from MGM Springfield to Holyoke City Hall for the upcoming St. Patrick’s Parade and Road Race to some recent news items, including Garcia’s strong comments following state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeff Riley’s refusal to end the receivership of Holyoke’s public school system.

“The decision should have been a resounding ‘yes,’ with a commitment to confer in a reasonable timeframe to transition,” the mayor wrote in a response to the commissioner’s announcement early last month. “Instead, a different message was sent with no plan, no benchmarks, no firm commitment, but just, ‘we are not saying no, but let’s talk more.’”

The lack of progress on the receivership issue aside, the newsletter is generally replete with large doses of positive news, said Garcia, adding quickly that he is aggressively pushing for more in the months and years to come.

Jordan Hart

“Our future is tourism, and we need to create opportunities for that to take place.”

Indeed, Garcia, a lifelong resident, was frank when he said he’s tired of hearing about Holyoke’s potential, adding that this word is generally saved for young people, rebuilding sports teams, and startup companies. Holyoke recently celebrated its 150th birthday, and is “way beyond potential,” said the mayor, adding that the city’s “commercial renaissance,” as he called it, is in full swing.

As examples, he cited both Clean Crop Technologies and Sublime Systems, the latter of which was mentioned by Gov. Maura Healey at her State of the State address as an example of how the Commonwealth is building what she calls a “climate corridor.”

Holyoke would certainly like to play a large role in the growth and development of that corridor, said Vega and Garcia, adding that the city plans to take full advantage of those assets listed earlier and attract more companies that fit that profile and join what is the start of what could be called a cluster, with examples like Clean Crop, which uses electricity to revolutionize food production and safety, and also Revo Zero, a Virginia-based hydrogen-energy supplier, which has chosen Holyoke as the site of its Northeast hub. The company works with airports, municipalities, college campuses, and other entities to convert their fleets to hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Momentum Swings

John Dowd, president of Holyoke-based Dowd Insurance, which recently celebrated its 125th anniversary, said the emergence of these companies is part of the sweeping, ongoing change that has defined the city since he grew up there.

He remembers shopping for back-to-school clothes with his parents in the many department stores that dotted High Street back in the ’70s. They are now gone, and for several reasons, including the building of the Holyoke Mall, as are most of the paper and textile manufacturers that gave the city its identity.

The work to create a new identity has been ongoing for roughly a half-century, he told BusinessWest, and will continue for the foreseable future.

“Slowly but surely, positive things have been developing downtown,” he said, adding that Holyoke is a city where the past and present come together nicely. “And when you catch those canals on a beautiful, crisp winter morning with the steam rising off them, it’s a beautiful picture, and you can almost see what Holyoke was like in the very beginning, when my relatives arrived.”

Change has been a constant for that half-century or more, Dowd and others said, adding that more change is imminent — and necessary.

Indeed, with the cannabis industry stuck in neutral, if not moving backward, there are now several old mill buildings that could become home to such ventures, said Vega and Garcia, noting that the fate of properties purchased for cannabis-related uses is an intriguing, somewhat unique challenging now facing the community.

Vega estimates there are six to 12 properties in this category, including the former Hampden Papers building on Water Street, purchased by GTI but never outfitted by cannabis use, as well as other properties on Appleton Street, Canal Street, Commercial Street, and others. And that list will soon include the massive, block-long mill on Canal Street currently occupied by Trulieve, which is pulling out of Massachusetts.

Jordan Hart, executive director of the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, said the cannabis industry has obviously provided a boost for the city and its commercial real-estate sector, but it has certainly plateaued, leaving opportinties for businesses in other sectors, including clean tech, to create further momentum.

Like the mayor, Ruiz, and others, Hart sees the proposed sports complex as another potential economic engine for the city, bringing people, and dollars, from outside the region and, in the process, perhaps fueling the start, or continued growth, of other businesses in the tourism and hospitality sector.

“The broad goal is to get more people to come and support Holyoke businesses, and I think the sports complex will definitely do that,” she said. “People staying for a weekend are going to need things to do, so this is really big time for Holyoke to realize that this is our future. Our future is tourism, and we need to create opportunities for that to take place.”

Developing Stories

While the sports complex, attracting businesses to be part of the climate corridor, and coping with the dramatic changes coming to the cannabis industry are the lead stories in Holyoke today, there are certainly others, including the ongoing issue of housing and creating more inventory, which is more of a regional story than a Holyoke story.

There are some new units coming online, said Garcia, noting that Winn Development began construction of 88 units in a former alpaca wool mill on Appleton Street. Meanwhile, the new owners of the massive Open Square complex have initiated discussions on creating 80 units of new, market-rate housing in one of the mills in that complex.

The Winn Development project is an example of progress on this front, but also of the many challenges facing those who want to convert properties in the city for that use, Vega said.

“Winn Development is a company that’s obviously well-versed in how to manage these projects,” he said. “They had 11 different pots of money, including historic tax credits, put together in an 88-unit development, and it took almost 10 years.”

While such projects are difficult and certainly don’t happen overnight, the city will need more housing if it is to attract more companies like Clean Crop and Sublime Systems, said the mayor, noting that these and other businesses have expressed concern that, without more inventory, it might become difficult to attract young professionals to the city.

“When we first met with Clean Crop, their first question was, ‘what is your housing plan?’” Vega said. “It wasn’t about business incentives, it was ‘what’s your housing plan, because we’re bringing in people that want to live in this area.’”

Garcia concurred, noting that, like other communities in the region, Holyoke needs a mix of market-rate and affordable housing to meet both its current and future needs. And, overall, the city has the space and the motivation for more housing; what it needs are developers with the patience and skill sets needed to make such projects happen.

Hart agreed, noting that new housing is not only crucial to attracting and retaining businesses, it is a core element in the revitalization of any city, and especially its downtown area.

“We have an overabundance of downtown storefronts that have vacant residential units above them,” she said. “There’s no reason why we can’t be creating downtown living to support the new downtown economic development that’s happening. And that housing will create a safer downtown because you’re going to need more light, and you’re going to need more amenities to help accommodate the people moving into downtown.”

Another ongoing story in Holyoke is entrepreneurship and a steady stream of new businesses getting their start in the city or one of the surrounding communities, said Tessa Murphy Romboletti, executive director of EforAll/EparaTodos in the city. She said the agency is currently working with its 21st and 22nd cohorts of aspiring entrepreneurs, with graduation coming this spring.

The previous cohorts have graduated more than 200 businesses across many different sectors, from restaurants to retail, she said, noting that several of them have become part of the fabric of the city’s business community. She listed Paper City Fabrics, now located in a storefront on High Street, and Raw Beauty Brand as a couple of the many examples of how the agency has helped individuals move from concept to business reality.

There are now several dozen such businesses, she said, adding that EforAll provides many services and support, but mostly helps businesses make the many connections they need to get off the ground or to that proverbial next level.

Holyoke at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1786
Population: 38,328
Area: 22.8 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $18.95
Commercial Tax Rate: $40.26
Median Household Income: $37,954
Median Family Income: $46,940
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Holyoke Medical Center, Holyoke Community College, ISO New England Inc., PeoplesBank, Universal Plastics, Marox Corp.
* Latest information available

“We do our part to help them figure out how to navigate the issues they face and know who to connect with in each municipality, whether it’s Holyoke, Chicopee, or wherever, and enable them to make those relationships,” she told BusinessWest.

Meanwhile, another growth area is tourism and hospitality, said Garcia, noting that the planned sports complex, announced at a well-attended press conference at the Volleyball Hall of Fame, is part of that mix.

Another part is the growing list of festivals and other annual events, including Fiestas Patronales de Holyoke, which, in its second year, drew thousands of visitors to the city and established itself as an emerging tradition.

Already well-established are the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade, which last year celebrated its 70th anniversary, and accompanying road race, both of which are family events and economic engines for the Holyoke economy.

Hayley Dunn, president of this year’s parade and road race, noted that this year’s parade is actually on March 17, which adds another element of intrigue and also means that it comes earlier than most years, which raises more concern about the weather, which is often a big part of the story.

The bigger parts are the ways families and communities come together to mark the occasions — the road race has its own huge following — and how they provide a huge boost for area businesses. Indeed, a Donahue Institute study conducted several years ago found that parade weekend injects $20 million into the local economy. And there are dozens of events across several communities in the weeks leading up to the parade that also fuel the hospitality sector.

“The parade may go down the streets of Holyoke, but it’s truly a regional event,” Dunn said. “Other cities that are part of our parade — Springfield, Chicopee, Westfield, and others — have their own events as well. Meanwhile, the road race is a huge block party. Both events really support our local businesses.”

Bottom Line

Getting back to his newsletter, “From the Mayor’s Desk,” Garcia said it’s just one of the many ways in which he’s trying to inform people about all the good things happening in his city.

Others include extensive use of social media, as in extensive. And, from all accounts, effective.

“Someone approached me one time and said, ‘whoever is handling your public relations and communications is doing a great job.’ I said, ‘you’re looking at him.’”

Beyond his work on Facebook and Instagram, Garcia, working with other city officials, is doing what he can to generate more of these positive developments — on fronts ranging from clean tech to tourism to housing.

And while it’s still early in the new year, it appears he’ll have quite a bit more to write about in 2024.

Taking the Ball … and Running with It

Cesar Ruiz says the planned facility could make Holyoke the “sports capital of New England.”

Features Special Coverage

Holyoke Conceptualizes Olympic-style Sports Complex

Cesar Ruiz says the planned facility could make Holyoke the “sports capital of New England.”

Cesar Ruiz admits that the first time he and Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia discussed the notion of bringing a sports complex to the Paper City, one that could potentially become the new home to the Volleyball Hall of Fame, the talk “pretty much went in one ear and out the other.”

That was roughly two years ago, and Ruiz said his lack of enthusiasm had less to do with the concept, which he has long championed, and far more to do with the many other things he had going on his life, especially the East Longmeadow-based home-care and healthcare staffing agency called Golden Years, the venture he started with a few partners and has led to rapid and dramatic growth, so much that he was named BusinessWest’s Top Entrepreneur for 2020.

“The feasibility study indicates that we can draw from multiple areas and bring people to Holyoke. We’re not approaching this as a regular sports facility, but a venue that can draw regionally and from several different states.”

With that company on firmer ground and, increasingly, being managed by his children, Ruiz was more responsive when the subject of a sports complex came up again at the beginning of 2023.

“Timing is important,” he told BusinessWest. “When I was asked to take a look at it again and see what it might look like … I had a completely different reaction to it.”

In fact, you could say that he took the ball and ran with it, undertaking feasibility studies; engaging Florida-based Sports Facilities Co. (SFC), which has built what Ruiz has in mind for Holyoke in several municipalities around the globe, for an initial concept; and then putting together a team, called the USA International Sports Complex Group, to advance this initiative.

Conceptual renderings of the sports complex planned for Holyoke, one that will include everything from athletic fields and indoor courts to a hotel and a new home for the Volleyball Hall of Fame.

The concept has progressed to the point where Ruiz, Garcia, other city officials, representatives of the Volleyball Hall of Fame, and other officers with USA International Sports Complex Group felt ready to announce the plans to the public.

Which they did, at a well-attended press conference at the Volleyball Hall of Fame on Feb. 6.

They announced plans for what they called “an Olympic-style sports complex,” one featuring a main indoor athletic facility that would boast everything from basketball and volleyball courts to an arcade area, laser tag, ‘boutique bowling,’ batting cages, pickleball, and more, as well as outdoor athletic facilities to include a synthetic turf field and baseball and softball fields.

These facilities come with a total price tag estimated at between $50 million and $90 million, said Ruiz, adding that, while this will be a privately funded facility, MassDevelopment and other state agencies have been approached about potential involvement.

Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia says talk of a sports complex has been ongoing in Holyoke for many years.

In an interview prior to that news conference, Ruiz told BusinessWest that he wants to make Holyoke the sports capital of New England, and this project will become the vehicle for doing so and, in the process, bring in an estimated $41 million in new economic activity to the city.

‘We want to put Holyoke on the map, starting with volleyball — this will be the new home of the Volleyball Hall of Fame,” he said. “But it will be much more than that; this facility will have several sites and include many different sports venues for people of all ages — young and old — and will also include a hotel.

“It’s a very ambitious initiative,” he went on, adding that it will be built in phases, with the first of them hopefully to be completed by the end of 2026. “The feasibility study indicates that we can draw from multiple areas and bring people to Holyoke. We’re not approaching this as a regular sports facility, but a venue that can draw regionally and from several different states.”

Garcia agreed, adding that that talk of a sports complex has been ongoing in Holyoke for many years, and it became a priority of his administration to turn the talk into action. Doing that will require leadership and partnerships on several levels, he told BusinessWest, noting that Ruiz and his administration are providing the former, while the latter will involve several stakeholders, many of them still to be determined.

“I’m excited about what this sports complex could mean for the trajectory of our city,” the mayor said. “This would be a huge part of the resurgence of Holyoke.”

Court of Opinion

In that interview with BusinessWest, Garcia said Holyoke likes to “punch above its weight class.”

That’s a boxing term, obviously, now used in many different contexts, to describe underdogs taking on heavy favorites, for example, or, in this case, a smaller community trying to take on initiatives perhaps more suited to larger municipalities.

Renovation of the historic Victory Theatre, an ongoing, 30-year initiative in this city, might fall into that category. And this sports complex certainly would as well, said Garcia, adding that it’s an ambitious undertaking, but a poignant next step for a community that has, indeed, been surging in recent years, and on many levels.

These include entrepreneurship — especially within the minority population, with dozens of new businesses opening in recent years, many of them in a rebounding downtown — but also housing; education; new clean-energy businesses, such as Clean Crop Technology, which uses electricity to “revolutionize food safety”; and especially a burgeoning cannabis cluster, which has made effective use of the city’s huge inventory of old mill space for dispensaries and growing facilities alike.

The next frontier, if one chooses to call it that, could — and should — be sports, said the mayor, adding that the city has a strong tradition in this realm, which crosses many sports and several decades and includes everything from volleyball to Golden Gloves boxing to the Holyoke Blue Sox baseball team.

“Holyoke is a sports city; it always has been — we have very robust youth programs, baseball, basketball, football, and more, and the pipeline goes into our high schools,” Garcia said. “And that extends to recreational softball — we have people from across this region and into Connecticut that come to Holyoke to play in two softball leagues.

“One of the things we struggle with in Holyoke is adequate space for people to play, recreationally, but also tournaments; we don’t have the kind of capacity to host large-scale tournaments,” he went on, adding that the sports complex now on the drawing board would address this need and, while doing so, bring people to the city, providing a boost to existing businesses and perhaps fueling new ones.

“Couple this need for such a facility with the fact that Holyoke is the birthplace of volleyball and home to the Volleyball Hall of Fame, and we thought that this has to happen here — it has to happen in Holyoke,” he said.

As noted, the project must clear several hurdles, starting with the securing of what is expected to be several different sites, finalization of a design, and, especially, putting the funding in place.

The outdoor component of the complex promises to feature several fields and courts.

Garcia said one of the next steps in the process is to assemble a funding strategy, one that will involve bringing more investors, like Ruiz, to the table, and also likely involve public support, from MassDevelopment and other state agencies.

But several significant steps have already been taken, especially the hiring of SFC, which has a deep portfolio of sports-complex projects, including the Rhythm & Rally Sports & Events complex in Macon, Ga., touted as the world’s largest pickleball facility; Allison Sports Town, an indoor/outdoor venue in Springfield, Mo. that spans 82 acres; Emerald Acres Sports Connection in Mattoon, Ill., which features an indoor field house, outdoor fields, and a walkable retail development space; the Fort Bend Epicenter in Rosenberg, Texas, a 230,000-square-foot, multi-purpose area that houses six basketball courts and 12 volleyball courts, with a capacity of 10,000 seats; and many others.

Ruiz called SFC the “best in the industry,” and noted that one of the next steps in the process of adding a Holyoke facility to that portfolio is visiting several projects of similar size and scope and understanding all that it took to make them reality.

“They handle the feasibility part of this, from design and development to operations,” he said of SFC, adding that the company can obviously help guide the initiative from start to finish.

Fields of Dreams

The sports complex, its importance to Holyoke and the region, and its potential as an economic driver are neatly summed up in a letter to a committee reviewing submissions to a request for proposals for a parcel on Whiting Farms Road owned by Holyoke Gas & Electric.

“This is not a dream, but a vision already being put in place by our partnership with the SFC team,” it reads. “We will build a sports facility that the city of Holyoke will be proud of … together with SFC, we will develop one of the top sports and event destinations in Massachusetts.”

Those behind those words believe this team has the drive, the confidence, and, eventually, the means to get the project over the finish line, or the goal line — whichever sports term one chooses — and make this vision reality.

Location, Access, ‘Differentiators’ Help Holyoke Mall Thrive Amid Challenges

Commercial Real Estate Special Coverage

Weathering the Storms

Lynn Gray, general manager of the Holyoke Mall.

As she talked with BusinessWest, Lynn Gray and her staff were gearing up for February school vacation.

It’s always a busy time at the Holyoke Mall, which Gray serves as general manager, as young people and families look for things to do. But these days, it’s even more so as ever-larger amounts of the mall’s 1.6 million square feet of space become dedicated to entertainment-related ventures rather than pure retail — although there’s still plenty of that as well.

Indeed, over the past several years, former retail spaces have given way to tenants like All In Adventures (billed as the ‘ultimate escape destination’), Altitude Trampoline Park, Round1 Bowling & Arcade; Planet Fitness; and Billy Beez, a massive play area that is home to twisting slides, sports courts, tunnels, trampolines, and more.

This is a national trend, said Gray, noting that, as major retailers — ranging from Sears and JCPenney to Christmas Tree Shops and Best Buy — close stores, their former spaces have found new lives in non-retail-related uses. And malls have become even busier during Christmas break, February vacation, and other times when the weather is less conducive to outdoor fun.

“People are looking for something to do that week indoors,” she said. “During February break, it will be pretty busy, especially if the weather is inclement. Then in April, it will be a little softer just because things are warming up a little, but it’s still a busy week for us; we staff up for it, and retailers and other tenants have a lot of specials.”

This trend is just one of the storylines at the mall, perhaps the largest commercial real-estate property in the region, and one that has become a topic of conversation and speculation in the wake of a changing retail landscape, one that has seen many national chains downsize or even disappear from the landscape (Sears and Toys R Us, for example), ever-larger amounts of shopping conducted online, and some malls, including two locally (Eastfield and Enfield), being repurposed into mixed-use facilities or moving quickly in that direction.

“While we were shut down during the pandemic, we were still concurrently trying to roll with the changes that were about to come over the next couple of years. Some brands went away, and some remained relevant.”

Gray, who first worked at the mall when she was 15 selling gift certificates and has fashioned a career managing such facilities, said the facility has certainly been impacted by these trends, but, while some other malls are suffering, Holyoke continues to thrive, and for several reasons.

She lists everything from its incredible location — at the intersection (literally) of the Mass Pike and I-91 (off which it has its own exit) to its still-healthy mix of retailers, restaurants, and entertainment-based businesses, to some of that downsizing among many retail giants. Indeed, Holyoke now boasts the only locations for Best Buy, Apple Store, and Macy’s for at least 30 miles in any direction, and in some cases, it’s a much larger area.

The Holyoke Mall encompasses 1.6 million square feet of space and is in an almost constant state of change.
(Photo by Glenn Labay, Aerial Camera Services)

And with those stores and that location … people want to get to Holyoke, and they can get there, rather easily, she said, adding that these ‘differentiators,’ as she called them, not only attract visitors, but new tenants as well.

“We’ve certainly seen the benefits of that market consolidation,” she said, adding that this and other factors contributed to what was a very solid holiday season at the mall. While the final numbers are not in yet, most mall tenants came out of December happy with their results, she noted

And those same retailers are saying that, while overall visitation is down slightly — data shows the mall is drawing 99% of the total visitors it drew in 2021 and 98% of the number in 2022, 9 million overall — those who do find their way there are generally spending more, on average.

“We’re easily accessible off of 90 and 91, and we’re in a position to tap a much larger market than some of the regional properties that were or still are in the market.”

Meanwhile, the ongoing change and evolution experienced by every mall continues at Holyoke, said Gray, adding that there have been several intriguing additions in recent months and renovations planned at several outlets.

For this issue, we talked with Gray about all that and much more as the mall braces first for February school vacation, and then continued response to that changing scene in retail.

Setting Sale

As she walked and talked with BusinessWest, Gray stopped at Monsoon Bistro, one of the newer additions to the mall, taking the spot formerly occupied by Ruby Tuesday near the Macy’s entrance.

It’s one of many new restaurants that have opened in the mall over the past year, several of them growing local businesses, she said, adding that these are some examples of how malls, and especially the one in Holyoke, are in a state of nearly constant change. These changes reflect national trends, changes to the economy, and ebb and flow within the world of retail.

Garage, a casual clothing brand for young women, is one of many recent additions at the Holyoke Mall.

Overall, 25 new brands have called the mall home since the pandemic arrived in 2020, she said, adding that COVID certainly contributed to the changing of the landscape.

“While we were shut down during the pandemic, we were still concurrently trying to roll with the changes that were about to come over the next couple of years,” she explained. “Some brands went away, and some remained relevant.”

Elaborating, Gray noted that 24,000 square feet of mall space got converted into new openings over the past year alone, with 12 new businesses setting up shop.

“It was a good mix of retail, which is still our bread and butter,” she said, listing new arrivals such as Garage (which touts itself as a “casual clothing brand for young women who are fun and effortlessly sexy); Snipes, a global streetwear retailer now boasting more than 450 locations; a few new jewelers, including Mandati, King’s, and the Inspiration Co.; a Verizon store; and others.

“Those types of facilities are bringing a more eclectic mix of shoppers — all ages, all groups.”

Meanwhile, as noted, the new arrivals extend to the restaurant side of the ledger and even the food court, with the addition of El Burrito, a growing local venture that took over space formerly occupied by Wendy’s; and Terra Nossa Brazilian Grill, which replaced a former McDonald’s.

In most respects, 2023 was a better-than-average year for signing new leases with smaller, sometimes local retailers, an annual assignment for malls, while also backfilling some of the much larger spaces left by the departure of major retailers, in this case ranging from Sears to Toys R Us to A.C. Moore.

Often, such backfilling takes years, Gray said, noting, for example, that the Sears at the Holyoke Mall has been closed for nearly a decade, and its space has not yet been fully repurposed. Sports Zone, a specialty operator featuring sports memorabilia, is occupying the first level of that large footprint, and in years past, Spirit Halloween has taken some of that space on a seasonal basis, but the second level remains vacant.

But many spaces have been successfully filled, she went on, adding that this was the case with the departure of Christmas Tree Shops (which went to Holyoke Crossing and then eventually closed that location), with that space now occupied by Bob’s Stores, and the former Sports Authority space, now occupied by Dick’s Warehouse Sale.

Still, increasingly, these spaces are going to more entertainment-related uses, said Gray, noting the arrival over the past several years of several such ventures that have taken rather large footprints at the mall.

For example, Planet Fitness and Altitude have each claimed 20,000 square feet in space formerly occupied by Babies R Us, she said, noting that both arrived just prior to the pandemic. Round1, which arrived around that same time, is also a large tenant, with 20 bowling lanes and a number of arcade games, as is Billy Beez.

What’s in Store

And these new ventures are thriving in these spaces, she said, adding that the mall’s location makes them easy to get to, and together, they make the mall a more attractive destination for families, who can package a visit to one or a few of those facilities, and then a stop for lunch, into a day at the mall during February vacation or any other time when being indoors in preferable.

El Burrito, a growing local venture that took over space formerly occupied by Wendy’s, is one of several new restaurant options at the mall.

The Planet Fitness facility is in a different category, she went on, but it is also doing very well in this mall’s location. “It’s easily accessible … people go there before work and after work. Their membership is very comparable to their off-mall locations, and you can walk by there on a Tuesday afternoon and see lots of people there.”

Overall, the mall is in a better place than it has been in terms of square footage currently occupied, she said, adding that policies set by mall owner Pyramid Corp. did not permit more detail on that subject. And, by and large, it is in a good place when it comes to taking on the many challenges facing malls today, for those reasons mentioned earlier.

“We’re easily accessible off of 90 and 91, and we’re in a position to tap a much larger market than some of the regional properties that were or still are in the market,” she said. “And then having differentiators, like the only Macy’s, the only Apple, the only Best Buy in the market, that really sets us apart for retailers, restaurants, and entertainment venues looking for a new home. Having those traffic draws is very attractive to potential new tenants.”

Looking ahead as far as she can, Gray said the mall is positioned as well as any mall can be to absorb the many changes to the retail landscape.

Indeed, data shows that those who come to the mall — and she said it is still a good mix of young and old — are actually coming more often, because of all that now exists under that collection of roofs.

“People are coming more frequently because of the entertainment offerings and lifestyle offerings,” she told BusinessWest. “Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a Planet Fitness at your local shopping mall. Now that there is that option, people are visiting the property more.

“Those types of facilities are bringing a more eclectic mix of shoppers — all ages, all groups,” she went on. “And then, you have places like Altitude and Round1 and Billy Beez, where your families, your teens, they’re coming out for birthday parties, tournaments, or the different types of events they have going on. They’re coming, and they’re staying for a while.”

When asked about what the landscape will look like in five or 10 years, Gray said change will remain a constant — in retail and in entertainment — with up-and-coming chains in the former, and new experiences, such as next-level escape rooms, in the latter.

The goal at the Holyoke Mall is to be at the forefront of all of that, she said, adding that the facility has been there for the first 45 years of its existence, and she intends to keep it there.

Author Keeps Memories Alive of Lost Quabbin Towns

Elena Palladino wants everyone who visits the Quabbin — or ever drinks its water — to contemplate the loss and sacrifice involved in its creation.

Features Special Coverage

Gone but Not Forgotten

Elena Palladino in the house that inspired her book, Lost Towns of the Swift River Valley.

Elena Palladino recalls that, when she and her husband first walked through their stately white home in Ware, they noted that some of the pieces didn’t really seem to fit.

Indeed, the home is Colonial Revival in style, but many of its fixtures, including the pocket doors with ornate brass pulls, were Victorian. Their presence — which made the home even more attractive, and intriguing, in their minds and helped compel them to buy it — presented somewhat of a mystery.

One that was solved when one of their new neighbors referred to the property as the ‘Quabbin house.’

Palladino would eventually learn that this home was built by Marion Andrews Smith, who had lived in Enfield, one of the four towns flooded and essentially wiped off the map to build the Quabbin Reservoir; Dana, Greenwich, and Prescott were the others.

“It’s a very beautiful place. But I do think it’s important to remember that’s it’s a beauty that comes from the loss of those towns and the loss of community.”

Smith, as Palladino would also learn, was the last surviving member of a prominent mill-owning family that actually had a section of Enfield, known as Smith’s Village, named after them. Smith certainly didn’t want to leave Enfield, a town that she and other family members were very involved with, and she was one of the last residents to depart. She wanted to move the large Victorian home in which she lived to another location, but it wasn’t logistically feasible to do so. So she took what she could with her and made those pieces — everything from doors to molding; floorboards to wainscotting — part of the home she built in Ware.

But Smith’s story did far more than solve a mystery surrounding Palladino’s new home.

It inspired her to want to dig deeper into the lives of those who, like Smith, were told to pack up and leave and then watch as their community was obliterated to bring much-needed water to the fast-growing city of Boston and its suburbs. It inspired her to want to know more about what those final years, months, weeks, days, and even hours were like.

So, Palladino, secretary to the board of trustees at Smith College, started the research that would eventually lead to her first book: Lost Towns of the Swift River Valley: Drowned by the Quabbin.

It tells the stories of three individuals who were forced to leave their lifelong homes to make way for Boston’s reservoir — Smith; Willard ‘Doc’ Segur, the valley’s beloved country doctor and town leader; and Henry Howe, Enfield’s postmaster and general-store proprietor.

The book came out in late 2022, and over the ensuing year, Palladino has crisscrossed the state on a book tour of sorts that took her to libraries and historical societies. She talked about her book and the research that went into it, but also about her home and the connection it provides to Smith, and an intriguing bill now in committee that seeks regional equity and recompense for the Swift River Valley and its people (more on that later).

Through the book and the talks, she said she believes she’s created a greater understanding of all that was lost to build the Quabbin. Most understand fully what was gained, she added, but her stories help convey the price that came with this 20th-century engineering marvel.

Elena Palladino says learning the story of her Ware home inspired her to dig deeper into the lives of those displaced by the Quabbin.

It is this profound loss that she now feels each time she visits the Quabbin, which is only 10 minutes from her home.

“It’s a very beautiful place,” she said. “But I do think it’s important to remember that’s it’s a beauty that comes from the loss of those towns and the loss of community.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Palladino about her home and her book, but mostly about the Quabbin towns and why, 86 years after Swift River Valley residents gathered for a farewell ball to mark the demise of their communities — “A Last Good Time for All” was how it was billed — it’s important that their stories never be forgotten.

Flood of Memories

Palladino has never met Marion Andrews Smith — she was born decades after Smith died.

But she feels a very powerful connection to the woman. Living in the home she built and spent her final years in is a big part of it, obviously, but there’s much more.

“It started as a personal project, and the initial research was mostly on our house. As I learned more about Marion … it seemed like every bit of research led to more.”

Indeed, as she came to know more about Smith through her research and then through meetings with Marian Tryon Waydaka, whose parents were Smith’s groundskeeper and chauffeur — and named their daughter after their employer — she came to fully understand both Smith’s taste in home furnishings and her incredibly strong will in the face of not only losing her home to a public-works project, but so much more.

She learned, for example, that Smith had family members who died in 1928, 1929, and 1932 and were buried in the valley, knowing full well they would have to be eventually moved elsewhere as the reservoir became reality.

“It could have been denial or defiance; it may also have been that she hadn’t decided where else she would like to move,” Palladino said. “But I thought that was a very interesting decision.”

She also learned that Smith was one of the very last residents to leave in the summer of 1938 and never did sell her property to the state; her land and home were taken by eminent domain, although she did eventually settle with the state.

Palladino grew up in Sturbridge, just east of the Quabbin, and her father and brother loved to fish the reservoir. So, like most who grew up in the 413, she knew the basics about how that resource was created and how four towns disappeared in the process.

It wasn’t until she and her husband bought the house on Highland Street after she took the job at Smith College — and they learned more about the home and the woman who built it — that her subtle interest in the Quabbin towns and the people who lived there became a fascination, and the subject of a book.

“The book started as research — I’ve always loved history and old homes — but then, because I was able to find out so much about Marion and her story was even more fascinating because it was integrated with the Quabbin towns, it became a much bigger project than I ever thought it would be.

“It started as a personal project, and the initial research was mostly on our house,” she went on. “As I learned more about Marion … it seemed like every bit of research led to more. Because she was from such an important family, there was lots to find about her; she was very involved, as were her family members, in various town organizations.”

Palladino took full advantage of the many resources available to those who wish to know more about the Quabbin towns and those who lived there, including a large collection at the UMass Amherst Library; the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem; the Visitors Center at Quabbin Park in Belchertown; various scrapbooks; several books on the subject, including Donald Howe’s Quabbin, the Lost Valley; and meeting minutes from various organizations, including the Quabbin Club, a women’s club in the valley that existed from the late 1800s until the towns were disincorporated.

The Plot Thickens

Palladino’s book focuses on three of the last residents to leave the valley, and through those stories she conveys those final days through their eyes.

“There are many great books about the Quabbin, but this one is a little more personal in nature,” she said. “I was most intrigued by what it like for Marion, and any of the people who lived there, to have to leave; it’s a more personal side of the story.

“It was a long process,” she went on. “The Ware and Swift River Acts were passed in 1926 and 1927, and even before that, for about 30 years, the idea of an enormous reservoir was out there — it was discussed. From 1895 on, people knew this might come to pass and that a reservoir might be built here. When it finally became real, it was devastating for the people who lived there, but it also didn’t feel quite real because there was such a long period of time during which the towns were destroyed, and the dam and the dike were built — it was about 10 years.”

She said some left quickly after their homes were purchased by the state, while others who sold leased them back and stayed in the valley while deciding where to go next. And then, there were some who stayed until the very end.

“I think that must have been a difficult choice to make,” Palladino told BusinessWest. “By 1938, it was a scene of destruction; by then, many homes had been demolished and burned, all of the trees in the valley had been cut down, all of the brush below the water line had been cut and burned, and the buildings that were still standing in 1938 were quite dilapidated because they weren’t being cared for.

“Their town would have been unrecognizable,” she went on, adding that, despite all this, some did stay to the bitter end.

Palladino has tried to convey the hardships and emotions experienced by all those who lived through the demise of the Quabbin towns during talks about her book, more than 40 of them, over the past year or so.

“It was wonderful to speak locally, to people who know a lot about the Quabbin and live near the Quabbin, but it was also good to speak in Eastern Massachusetts towns where the story is less well-known,” she said. “There are plenty of people who know that their water comes from the Quabbin, but far fewer who really know how the Quabbin came to be.”

Elena Palladino wants everyone who visits the Quabbin — or ever drinks its water — to contemplate the loss and sacrifice involved in its creation.

Through her talks, she has also made people aware of legislation, now in joint committee, that would, among other things, establish a Quabbin host-community fund through a 5-cent levy on every 1,000 gallons of water drawn from the reservoir.

“It’s pretty modest — it would only raise about $3.5 million a year,” she said. “But those funds could be used by the towns around the Quabbin for infrastructure and other capital improvements.”

The Loss Column

Palladino wasn’t at the farewell ball in 1938, obviously. But in some ways, she feels like she was.

Through her research, she has come to understand, as perhaps few can, what it was like to be at Enfield Town Hall when the clock struck midnight, and this wasn’t actually a town anymore.

It was part of a valley that would, over the next several years, be flooded with more than 400 billion gallons of water.

That ball, and the many extreme forms of loss experienced by those who were there — and all those who lived in the Quabbin towns — is what she thinks about when she visits the reservoir.

And she implores all those who visit or even drink the water to do the same.

The Staff of Rock 102

They’ve Made the Mayflower Marathon a Community Tradition

The Staff of Rock 102

Mike Baxendale, the on-air personality known to all simply as Bax, says it started as a radio promotion. But it quickly became a community event.

And now, it’s a huge community event, involving individuals, families, businesses, institutions, area schools and colleges, and more.

He was referring, of course, to the Mayflower Marathon, staged each year in the days just before Thanksgiving to benefit Open Pantry. For 30 years now, the event, organized by and staged by the staff at Rock 102, has collected food and monetary donations to help those in need.

It started with one Mayflower trailer — hence the name — and each year, with a few rare exceptions, such as the height of the Great Recession in 2009 and the height of COVID in 2020, it has grown bigger and collected more to combat food insecurity.

And in 2023, the marathon, in its relatively new home at MGM Springfield, shattered all previous records, collecting more than $234,000 in food and monetary donations and filling nearly six trucks.

That number, and the level of support needed to reach it, speak to both the growing amount of need in the region amid higher inflation and growing financial issues facing many in the 413 and the manner in which the staff at Rock 102 have collaborated with others in recent years to take the marathon to new levels, with a comedy night at MGM Springfield and a Mayflower Marathon Night on the Springfield Thunderbirds schedule.

“They’re incredible; they truly have such huge hearts to make sure our neighbors get fed. The Open Pantry would never be able to serve that many people without the Mayflower Marathon.”

“Ultimately, the goal is to raise more and more and more to help those in need,” said David Oldread, vice president and general manager of the Springfield Rocks Radio Group and Northampton Radio Group, which includes Rock 102. He noted that the marathon involves difference makers on many levels, including those who donate everything from the trucks to the portable toilets to the tents; those corporate supporters, many of which have been part of this since the beginning; and the volunteers who help collect the donations and load the trucks.

But it is the staff at Rock 102 that is being honored the Difference Makers award this year, and deservedly so. The station conceived the idea back in 1993, and it has been the driving force in continuing the program and orchestrating its strong growth pattern.

The Mayflower Marathon, now staged at MGM Springfield, fills several trucks with donations of food for Open Pantry in Springfield.

And it’s a company-wide initiative, a true team effort, said Oldread, noting that it is “all hands on deck,” especially in the weeks and days leading up to the event, with each staff member making important contributions to the effort, with work starting months before the marathon begins.

Bax and Steve Nagle, morning show hosts, entertain the audience — and inspire it — for 52 hours during the marathon; Erin Buehler, promotions director at Rock 102, plans, organizes, sets up, and executes the event; Alex Byrne, program director, coordinates the entire broadcast; Joshua Smith, engineer, sets up the technical side of the broadcast and keeps the show on the air; Dan Williams and Pat Kelly, on-air hosts, produce the broadcast at the station in East Longmeadow; the sales staff members rally their clients to get donations and volunteer their time at the event … and on it goes.

Overall, the marathon has become a powerful collaboration between Rock 102 staff members and the community to come together for a great cause, said Buehler, adding that this collaboration grows stronger each year.

Nicole Lussier, executive director of Open Pantry, agreed. She’s been with the Springfield-based agency for nearly 30 years, and thus has been involved with the marathon since the beginning. She’s watched it grow and become an increasingly larger force in the agency’s ability to carry out its mission. And she noted that the staff at Rock 102 brings passion to its work of making the marathon happen each year.

“To be able to tell Nicole Lussier what we had just done — and she had been there every minute of the event — to be able to tell her that we had raised at least $217,000, with more on the way … to see her reaction, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I got choked up on the air.”

“They’re incredible; they truly have such huge hearts to make sure our neighbors get fed,” Lussier said. “The Open Pantry would never be able to serve that many people without the Mayflower Marathon; there’s no way we would be able to distribute that much food.”

Such sentiments help explain why the team at Rock 102 is being honored not for putting on the marathon, necessarily, but for rallying a region, a community, around a cause — and, in the process of doing so, becoming a true Difference Maker.

Making Waves

He called it the “chicken wing.”

This was the very effective submission hold developed by former pro wrestler Bob Backlund, who administered it to Bax during one of the marathons a few years ago.

“It’s very painful,” he said with a look that conveyed as much, adding that Backlund is one of many colorful guests who have made appearances during the marathon over the years, and his application of the chicken wing is one of the more intriguing ways that the airtime has been filled.

Others in the guest category include mayors, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (a regular each year), comedians, New England Patriots wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster (who stopped by last year), and many others. As for memorable moments, there have been plenty of those as well, as the marathon has persevered through all kinds of weather, power outages, equipment glitches … you name it.

Rock 102 morning show hosts Bax (right) and Nagle talk with Springfield Thunderbirds President Nate Costa (a Difference Maker himself in 2023) at last year’s Mayflower Marathon.

But what is remembered far more are other moments in time — the ones that reflect the generosity, caring, and spirit of collaboration that have come to define the marathon and explain why it was conceived all those years ago.

Moments like the announcement of how much was raised last November.

“At the end of the broadcast, we give an unofficial total, with this year [2023] far exceeding anyone’s expectations — I don’t think anyone expected anything close to this,” Bax recalled. “To be able to tell Nicole Lussier what we had just done — and she had been there every minute of the event — to be able to tell her that we had raised at least $217,000, with more on the way … to see her reaction, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I got choked up on the air, and so did Steve. When you realize where this is going and how many people it helps…”

He didn’t finish that sentence, but didn’t really have to. And this sentiment speaks to how and why the marathon was launched three decades ago.

The idea, said all those we spoke with, was to raise some money for Open Pantry, which today operates several different programs, including am emergency food pantry, holiday meals, the Loaves & Fishes Kitchen, a teen-parent program, and many others.

It’s unlikely that anyone at the time could have imagined that it would grow, evolve, and become, as Bax noted, a community event, said Byrne, adding that the marathon has continually broken through new barriers — be it with trucks filled or the total dollar amount raised — that were previously thought impossible.

And every employee at the station, roughly 25 at last count, is involved on some level in making it happen, said Oldread, noting there are many moving parts with this production.

“There’s an awful lot that goes into this,” he said, “from making sure you have power and internet access to getting trucks and RVs and security, and feeding volunteers, and signage and traffic plans. You have to start around Labor Day in order to get things where they need to be in the days before Thanksgiving.”

“We’ve developed our own little tradition with this game, and we want to continue it and expand it. It’s a testament to the work they’re doing at Rock 102 — they’re driving a huge amount of food to the Open Pantry, which lasts almost an entire year.”

The staff, and the marathon, has persevered through recessions, a pandemic, rough weather, and, most recently, the need to find a new home when the Basketball Hall of Fame informed those at the station in 2022 that it could no longer host the marathon in its parking lot.

In many ways, that search for a home crystalized just how much the community had embraced the marathon and wanted to help it live on, said Oldread, noting that, as the station’s on-air personalities went public with the need to find a new home, there was an outpouring of support and commitments to help take the program to a new, much higher level.

Food for Thought

Indeed, Beth Ward, director of Public Affairs for MGM Springfield, said the station received several offers to host the marathon, so many that there was almost a competition for the right to become its new home.

MGM Springfield prevailed, she said, and it has been a privilege to stage the marathon, an event that has become part of the philanthropic culture at the resort casino.

“When we got the call, it was like Christmas morning; we were so excited that we were chosen,” she recalled. “There are so many of us here at MGM that live in Western Mass. and are familiar with this event and have taken part in it and donated to it. Immediately, there were so many people who were thrilled and excited to be there and support it.”

She said MGM Springfield set a record when it comes to volunteer hours donated by employees, and a big reason is the Mayflower Marathon, with many of the casino’s workers on site early (as in 5 a.m. in some cases) to help collect donations and load them into trucks.

“Our employees want to be part of this; they want to help make it successful,” she said, effectively summing up the sentiments of many others we spoke with.

That includes Nate Costa, president of the Springfield Thunderbirds, a Difference Maker himself last year. He told BusinessWest that the team has long had a solid relationship with Rock 102, knowing that its listenership boasts many hockey fans. That relationship was taken to a new level when the event lost its home and then found one with another of the T-Birds’ partners, MGM Springfield.

The team soon dedicated the Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving to the cause, branding it Rock 102 Mayflower Marathon Night. That Wednesday is traditionally a time for family gatherings and “bar gatherings,” as Costa called them, but the pull of the marathon and Open Pantry has brought more than 5,000 fans to the arena the past two years for “one last push” for donations.

“We’ve developed our own little tradition with this game, and we want to continue it and expand it,” he said. “It’s a testament to the work they’re doing at Rock 102 — they’re driving a huge amount of food to the Open Pantry, which lasts almost an entire year.”

Costa, Ward, Lussier, and others credit the staff at Rock 102 — the on-air personalities especially, but everyone that gets involved (and that is everyone) — with bringing a region together behind a cause as few other events in this region have.

“Over the course of the past 30 years, it’s become a full-blown community event, where it almost has nothing to do with Rock 102 or any of us,” Bax said. “It has everything to do with different segments of the community getting involved in something special — collecting food.”

Well … it has something to do with the team at Rock 102. Indeed, they have made this happen, not just when it comes to logistics, but from the standpoint of shaping an event that not only serves a community, but creates a stronger community, Oldread said.

And that’s why the team can collectively share the title of Difference Maker.

Scott Keiter

CEO, Keiter

He’s Building on a Tradition of Giving Back to the Community

Scott Keiter

Scott Keiter has made the construction company that bears his name one of the fastest-growing ventures in this sector regionally.

And to position his company to achieve that kind of growth, Keiter (pronounced ‘Kiter’) knew early on that he would have to focus most of his time and energy on business, making connections, developing talent, putting the right team in place, and fashioning a blueprint (yes, that’s an industry term) for success.

“As we built the business, the most precious resource was time,” he said. “Anyone who creates a business knows what it takes — it’s every waking hour, so there’s not much time left behind. And then you introduce a child or two, and there’s even less time.”

But he also knew that, once he had the foundation of his business down and was building on top of it, he would eventually shift some of that time and energy toward the community and start to get involved on a number of levels.

And he has followed that blueprint as well, devoting time and talent to everything from an advisory role at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School’s carpentry program to becoming a trustee at Look Park, to involvement with the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce (GNCC) on many levels, including something called the ‘Keiter Card.’

“He said, ‘I’d like to do something, because we have, fortunately, gained business throughout this horrible period. So I’d like to do something to support the community.’”

This is an initiative to match the value of gift cards sold by the chamber and accepted in more than 100 businesses — one that has put thousands of dollars back into the Greater Northampton economy in late summer, during back-to-school sales and tax-free-weekend time.

In the beginning, it was called the ‘Double Your Money Northampton Gift Card Promotion,’ but eventually it took the name of the company and the philanthropist behind it, making this both an economic driver and an effective branding initiative.

The program, started in 2021 and expanded each year, allows consumers to purchase a $25 Northampton gift card and receive $50 in actual spending power, said Vince Jackson, executive director of the Greater Northampton Chamber, adding that it has provided a real boost for that region’s many small businesses and become somewhat of phenomenon in Paradise City.

The Keiter Card has been described as a ‘win-win-win,’ benefiting the Keiter company, the local economy, and small businesses that accept the cards.

Indeed, as he talked about the card, Jackson referenced everything from how quickly they sold out each of their first three years, to how mothers would bring in their children collectively (it’s one Keiter Card per customer) so they could spend part of their allowance on a card, and then talk about where they would go and what they would spend it on.

But while heaping praise on the card and its impact, Jackson saved some for the company and the person behind it, especially as he recalled the circumstances of how it came about.

Flashing back to late summer 2021, when the economy was really starting to open up again after the pandemic, Jackson recalled a conversation he had with Keiter.

“He said, ‘I’d like to do something, because we have, fortunately, gained business throughout this horrible period. So I’d like to do something to support the community,’” Jackson recalled. “So he came up with the idea of donating $10,000 to the chamber, and for everyone who bought a $25 gift card, he would match that amount, up to $10,000.”

For year two, Keiter doubled the amount to $20,000, and in year three, he increased it to $25,000, with the chamber donating another $5,000 to make it a $30,000 matching program. For year four … Keiter leaked to BusinessWest that he will again be donating $25,000 to build on the momentum that’s been generated.

Meanwhile, Keiter, working in tandem with his wife, Jill, continue to expand their involvement in the Greater Northampton area while at the same taking their business to the proverbial next level.

Success in both realms helps explain why Keiter will soon have his name on something else: a Difference Makers plaque.

What’s in a Name?

Returning to the subject of the Keiter Card, Jackson said it’s an example not only of Scott Keiter’s genrosity and commitment to the community and its small businesses, but also of how he’s developed into a successful business person, refining several talents, including, in this case, branding and marketing.

Indeed, to purchase a Keiter Card, one first has to say that name, said Jackson, adding that, when needed, those at the chamber will help the buyer along.

“Sometimes they need help with the pronounciation — some will say ‘Keeter,’” he explained, adding that, with each transaction and each card, the Keiter business gets some additional exposure.

Scott Keiter with, from left, Evan Latour, Zak Martinez, and Sean Houlihan, Smith Vocational Agricultural High School graduates now working for the company.

And it has already been making a name for itself in the region as a growing company, now with 85 employees, focused on both residential and commercial construction. With the former, the company tackles new construction, but mostly renovations. And with the latter, it has developed a deep portolio of clients, including many higher-education institutions, including Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Elms College, and Western New England University. It also counts many businesses and municipalities on its client list.

The business recently spun off Hatfield Construction, which focuses on earth work and site work, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Keiter, and last month, it announced that it had appointed Jim Young, a business consultant and former president of Paragus Strategic IT, as president of Keiter, leaving its founder more time to focus on the proverbial big picture instead of day-to-day operations.

“We’re excited to open a new chapter for the company and focus on growth and development and building on the successes that we’ve already had,” said Keiter, who will assume the title of CEO. “Jim will help me leverage my time so I can remain focused on looking forward, being in the role of a visionary, and guiding the direction of this organization.”

The business plan calls for continued, sustainable growth and further expansion into Hampden and Berkshire counties, he went on, adding that the company has established itself in those markets and wants to build on that presence.

As noted earlier, for the first several years he was in business, Keiter had a singular focus, to get that venture on solid footing and put an aggressive growth plan in place.

As the company’s name, reputation, and portfolio of clients and projects grew, he began to shift some of his time to the community, although the main focus has still been his business.

Concrete Examples

Keiter has chosen to get involved in realms where he can lend expertise, and also where he can make a difference.

That includes Smith Vocational, where he has served as an advisor to the carpentry department while also bringing a number of its students into the company through its co-op program, with several of them eventually being hired by the firm.

“We try to get them out to do everything that we do,” he explained. “We try our best to get them out on our projects, where they can work side-by-side with our staff. In fact, we’ve hired a number of them; they’re some of our best employees.”

Keiter’s involvement also extends to Look Park, which he described as a “treasure,” one of the city’s best assets.

But it’s with the Keiter Card that he is making a greater name for himself in the community, literally and figuratively.

And he said it came about through twin desires — to help small businesses in the community and build his brand.

“I had an epiphany one day,” he recalled. “We were comtemplating how to allocate some marketing money, and I wanted to find a way to create a win-win, or what Vince [Jackson] calls a ‘win-win-win.’

“What this card does is give Keiter some good exposure, but it’s also supporting our community, and it’s also supporting the local economy and retailers,” he said, adding that the idea was to build on the chamber’s existing gift-card program, which was “keeping the money local.”

Douglas Gilbert, vice president of Commercial Lending at Florence Bank, another of those who nominated Keiter for the Difference Makers award, put the initiative in perspective, noting that “Scott’s generous support of the Northampton gift-card program has been vital to the program’s success and provides purchasers with a significant financial incentive to support participating area merchants.”

Jackson agreed, adding that the program’s impact has grown each year.

“In 2023, the GNCC experienced year-over year growth of 10% in Northampton gift-card sales, 13% growth in gift-card units, and 22% growth in redemptions — all driven primarily by the excitement and impact of the Keiter Card promotion,” he said, noting that the cards have sold out in a matter of days each year. “That growth in redemptions in significant and signals immediate spending, giving an exceptional boost to small businesses during a traditionally slow sales period.”

Summing up Kieter’s involvement in the community, as well as his success in business, Jackson started by saying the chamber no longer refers to those who join its ranks as members. Instead, it calls them ‘investors.’

And some businesses have earned the designation ‘prestige investors,’ he went on, adding that these are the ones creating jobs, getting involved — in the chamber and in the community — and making an impact.

Keiter — both the company and its owner — have certainly earned that designation, said Jackson, adding that his involvement in the region prompted the chamber’s leadership to present him with a Community Service Award in 2023.

“They’re doing all the right things, practicing good citizenship and promoting economic development along the way,” he noted. “They’re sharing the wealth and rewards that they’ve been blessed to have, and that’s admirable.”

Playing His Card

Jackson told BusinessWest that Keiter cycled off the chamber’s board of directors recently, and that it’s a tradition to give departing board menbers a gift, usually something of the ‘gag’ variety.

In this case, those at the chamber wrapped up a Keiter Card and presented it to him, imploring him to spend it wisely and spread the wealth around.

While that card was a gift to him, the Keiter Card program has been a gift to the community —both its residents and its businesses. It is a gift that has become, as Jackson said, a true win-win-win.

Dr. Fred and Mary Kay Kadushin

Co-founders, Feed the Kids

They Decided to Do Something … and Not Just Write a Check

Dr. Fred and Mary Kay Kadushin

It all started with a story on National Public Radio in 2017, one with some alarming statistics about how many children in this country go to bed hungry — some 6 million of them, according to estimates at that time.

Dr. Fred and Mary Kay Kadushin were in different places when the NPR story aired, but they both had their radios on. And they were both surprised and alarmed by what they heard — enough to want to try to do something about it.

“Both of us were just so blown away by what we heard,” said Mary Kay, a retired graphic artist. “When you think about childhood nutrition, and the lack thereof … you think of other countries, but it’s right here in the United States; it’s right under your nose.”

Fred, a semi-retired neuropsychologist who specializes in toxic disorders, agreed. “We decided we needed to do something, and that we needed to do more than just a write a check.”

They talked at length about possible courses of action and eventually settled on creating a new nonprofit venture that would be called Feed the Kids, a name that says it all. And they would eventually settle on a golf tournament (something they had some experience with from their years helping to fundraise for the Boy Scouts) and accompanying online auction as the way to carry out a simple yet vitally important mission — to help existing local programs that have undertaken initiatives to combat childhood food insecurity.

Specifically, they now support Square One, the Springfield-based early-education and family-support provider that offers breakfast, lunch, and snacks to its preschoolers; Pioneer Valley Power Packs, an all-volunteer program that provides school-aged children with non-perishable food each weekend in Easthampton and Northampton; the HPS (Holyoke Public Schools) Weekend Backpack program; and No Kid Hungry, a national organization that battles food insecurity.

“Both of us were just so blown away by what we heard. When you think about childhood nutrition, and the lack thereof … you think of other countries, but it’s right here in the United States; it’s right under your nose.”

Since the first players teed it up in 2018, the program has raised more than $350,000 to fight childhood food insecurity, and along the way it has garnered the support of several area businesses, including PeoplesBank, Westfield Bank, the accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, the law firm Shatz Schwartz and Fentin, Freedom Credit Union, Monson Savings Bank, Elm Electric, and many others.

We talked with the Kadushins about their work, but we also talked with those at the agencies they support. They describe a couple that is modest, caring, generous, and committed to doing what they can to help others in this region. In other words, Difference Makers.

Dr. Fred Kadushin gets to know some of the young students at Square One in Springfield, one of the nonprofits supported by Feed the Kids.

“Fred and Mary Kay are selfless in their efforts,” said Mary Bianca, a board member with Pioneer Valley Power Packs, who nominated the Kadushins for the Difference Makers award. “They work tirelessly, and their help and dedication have, and continue to make, a huge difference in the lives of thousands of children in our community.”

Kris Allard, vice president of Development and Communication at Square One, who also nominated them, agreed.

“If there’s a poster recipient for the Difference Makers award, it would be Fred and Mary Kay,” she told BusinessWest. “They are the kindest, most generous family … and there’s a pureness to what they do. They’re just individuals doing this work; there’s no expectation for recognition. They’re just good people.”

Impact Statements

As she talked about the Kadushins, Allard started not with Feed the Kids and what it does for Square One, but with a different initiative at the agency — one that collects winter coats for children in need.

“They would donate beautiful coats to the program, and I would always get a note from them that said, ‘make sure they check the pockets,’” she said. “There was always a toy zipped into the pocket — a little Matchbox car or any other kind of small toy that would fit in there — and Fred would always say, ‘have the kids check the pockets; there’s a little something extra there.’”

Doing something extra has been the MO for the Kadushins, she went on, adding that, during COVID, when coat drop-offs were not possible, the couple still wanted to donate. Allard, who lives in Wilbraham, arranged to go to the Kadushins’ home on Lake Paradise in Monson and pick up some coats, and while there, Fred initiated a conversation about what else Square One did.

“If there’s a poster recipient for the Difference Makers award, it would be Fred and Mary Kay. They are the kindest, most generous family … and there’s a pureness to what they do. They’re just individuals doing this work; there’s no expectation for recognition. They’re just good people.”

Upon being told the agency provided breakfast and lunch for children, but that this was ‘deficit operation,’ because funds from the state didn’t fully cover the costs, Fred told her about the golf tournament that he and Mary Kay had started a few years earlier.

So began a partnership that embodies the mission of both agencies, and one that certainly helps explain why the Kadushins are being honored as Difference Makers.

For a more in-depth explanation, we need to go back to that report on NPR.

The Kadushins, as noted, came away determined to help, and not by writing a check. They did considerable research on how best to address the larger problem and started a golf tournament to support No Kid Hungry. Soon, though, they wanted to expand their reach and directly support local organizations with programs to feed children.

There are many of them because the need is great, said Mary Kay, adding that they eventually created partnerships with Square One, Pioneer Valley Power Packs (PVPP), and the HPS Weekend Backpack program, which provides 250 to 500 Holyoke children with a backpack of nutritious food to tide them over until they return to school on Monday.

But some of these programs, and especially No Kid Hungry, provide more than food, said Fred, adding that education is also critically important.

“They have programs that educate parents about making smart food choices because sometimes, kids are just getting the wrong foods,” he explained. “It’s not just that they’re not getting enough; they’re getting the wrong kinds.”

And the need is only growing within the region, said both the Kadushins and those operating the nonprofits they support.

The Feed the Kids golf tournament has drawn the support of dozens of local businesses and become a summer tradition in Western Mass.

Indeed, Bianca said Pioneer Valley Power Packs saw a 65% increase in need in 2023, a surge she attributes to inflation, rising rents, an overall softening of the economy that saw more people out of work, and an end to some COVID-related relief programs.

There is a waiting list for students to receive the power packs, which consist of two breakfasts, two lunches, and some snacks, she said, adding that, thanks to the donation from the Feed the Kids tournament and auction, the agency was able to take some young people off that waiting list.

“They’re our largest supporter,” she said. “If not for them, we wouldn’t have a program.”

Investment Plan

The golf tournament created to support PVPP and other organizations fighting childhood food insecurity, staged annually at Springfield Country Club, has become a labor of love for the Kadushins and a small army of volunteers that lend support and handle assignments from securing items for the auction to working at the course on tournament day.

Planning for next year’s tournament begins almost immediately after the current year’s edition ends, said Fred, adding that the goal is to keep overhead as low as possible (in this case, almost zero) to funnel as much of the money raised to nonprofits as possible.

The event has grown over the years, at least in terms of the auction and the number of supporting corporate sponsors. (As veteran golf-tournament organizers, they understand the importance of limiting the number of golfers on the course, thus helping to ensure that a good time is had and foursomes come back the next year.)

And its importance has grown as well, said the Kadushins, agreeing with Bianca that, regrettably, the need has only increased in the years since that NPR report.

They view their efforts as an investment in young people and an investment in the future of this region, and the country.

“The payoffs are so high,” Fred said. “Proper nutrition affects physical, cognitive, and emotional development. If you think about it, nutrition affects everything. If you improve concentration, you can improve school performance, and when kids eat properly, they’re more likely to graduate, and the downstream implications of that are huge in terms of improving lives and ensuring that people become productive members of society.

“You decrease things like obesity and improve immunity,” he went on. “So downstream, you’re improving kids’ health, so there will be less drag on the healthcare system.”

Mary Kay agreed. “Our passion is with kids because it’s hard to imagine a child going to bed hungry, and that’s generally through no fault of their own,” she said. “Our heart goes out to that.”

While they’re proud of what they do, the Kadushins, as might be expected given the testimonials above, say the real work being done to combat food insecurity among young people is at the nonprofits addressing the problem and by those on the front lines, many of them volunteers.

“These volunteers are amazing; they pack the food, they get it distributed, and they identify who needs the food,” Mary Kay said, adding that she, Fred, and other members of the golf-tournament team will be joining those in Holyoke to stuff backpacks later this month. “It’s pretty amazing, these people who actually do this work.”

Equally amazing is the devotion that Fred and Mary Kay bring to the efforts to help these agencies and volunteers carry out their missions.

Their work is done mostly behind the scenes, organizing the golf outing, signing up sponsors, and attending to the smallest of details. Their stated goal is to press on, grow their venture, hopefully add a title sponsor, and, ultimately, help local agencies help more people in need.

What else would you expect from a couple that puts small surprises in the pockets of winter coats earmarked for children in need? What else would you expect from a couple that didn’t just listen to a news story on childhood hunger, but committed themselves to doing something about those alarming statistics?

What else would you expect from two genuine Difference Makers?

Linda Dunlavy

Executive Director, Franklin Regional Council of Governments

In Small Towns, She Makes a Big Difference

Linda Dunlavy

When asked what she likes about her work — and she must like it because she’s been doing it for more than 30 years now — Linda Dunlavy paused for a moment before giving an answer that was as succinct as it was powerful.

“If you’re patient … you can create positive change,” she said, putting additional emphasis on that word patient. And for good reason. When you’re dealing in complex issues such as transportation, broadband access, a housing shortage, climate change, and poulation loss, the solutions don’t come quickly or easily, she said.

To get her point across, Dunlavy, executive director of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG, or simply the COG, as it’s called), recalled the countless meetings she would attend with Tim Brennan, the former director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission who passed away in 2020 (and a Difference Makers honoree himself in 2011), as they led efforts to bring north-south rail service back to Greenfield and other communities in Western Mass.

It was a long, hard fight, she recalled, shaking her head as the reflected on the heavy amounts of early skeptism, miles put on the odometer traveling to and from more meetings than she could possibly count, and endless discussions with policymakers and power brokers in an effort to turn back the clock on rail service.

“There were people saying, ‘you’ll never get this,’ and ‘you can never justify this,’” she recalled, flashing back almost a quarter-century and the start of her work on this issue.

“Tim and I would drive to Boston all the time, and I would drive to Springfield all the time; I was meeting with MassDOT, meeting with legislators, meeting with Amtrak, meeting with the Federal Highway Administration, meeting again with MasssDOT, meeting again with legislators. And it was a lot of ‘let’s try this’ … and we’d hit a dead end and then back up, and then we’d say, ‘let’s try this option’ and hit a dead end. That was a lot of the strategic work I did with Tim: ‘what can we try next? What’s the next obstacle that needs to be overcome to prove that this is a good idea?’”

Overall, it took 15 years to get north-south passenger rail returned, Dunlavy noted, adding that passenger volumes post-COVID, high enough to convince the state to take the service from trial status to permanent in nature, validate all that hard work.

This is just one example of how her patience, and a number of other qualities, have yielded that positive change she spoke of. Others include her work to bring reliable broadband to rural communities, a project to realign Route 2 around the Erving Industries paper mill, and even the building the COG is now housed in — the John Olver Transit Center in Greenfield.

“Linda has a preternatural ability to see what needs to be done and, with transparency underpinned by a willingness to accept risk and accountability for choices, forge ahead.”

Dunlavy’s tenacity and ability to get things done were summed up effectively by Jay Dipucchio, president of Turners Falls-based Nutri-Systems Corp. and also a member of the COG advisory board, who nominated her for the Difference Makers award.

“Linda has a preternatural ability to see what needs to be done and, with transparency underpinned by a willingness to accept risk and accountability for choices, forge ahead,” he wrote. “It helps as well that the energies applied and chances taken are informed by hard-earned experience and a great depth of knowledge.

communities in Franklin County, including Greenfield, seen here.

During her lengthy career with the FRCOG, Linda Dunlavy has brought services to, and been a tireless advocate for, communities in Franklin County, including Greenfield, seen here.

“She is an incomprably vigorous advocate and collaboration builder for Greater Franklin County and the Pioneer Valley,” he went on. “By cultivating collaboration and fostering innovative public-sector responses to regional service issues, her leadership of the FRCOG has created arguably one of the most unique and recognized public-service organizations in the Commonwealth, truly making a difference for the people who live here.”

In keeping with that assessment of her talents and value to the region, Dunlavy said she is focused not on what she’s been able to accomplish for the people of Franklin County — and all the state’s 170 rural communities, for that matter — but on the work still to be done.

And there is plenty of it, in realms ranging from housing to climate issues and readiness for disasters like the mirobursts and heavy rains of last July, to what has become the most crucial issue facing this region: population loss.

Dunlavy is addressing these issues and others with the requisite patience, but also large amounts of tenacity and that ability to get things done — attributes that speak to her impact as a Difference Maker.

Staying on Track

As she wrapped up her conversation with BusinessWest, Dunlavy gestured out one of the windows of her corner office to the incoming Amtrak train, the Vermonter, stopping at the depot just a few hundred feet away. She took the opportunity to count the number of people getting off and on, something she does often, and for obvious reasons.

“She is an incomprably vigorous advocate and collaboration builder for Greater Franklin County and the Pioneer Valley.”

While only a few were getting on this particular train, heading north on a Tuesday afternoon, the numbers for the trains heading south — to Northampton, Springfield, Hartford, then New York and eventually Washington — have been solid, as has overall volume for the service, she said, adding that the numbers help validate all those meetings and all that time spent convincing officials to bring the trains back to the region.

And while the return of train service may be the crowning achievement of Dunlavy’s career, there have been many others, as noted earlier.

Bringing rail service back to Greenfield and other Western Mass. communities is one of many long-term projects in Linda Dunlavy’s record of service to the region.

Beyond the larger projects, there is the day-to-day work of advocating for, and providing services to, the towns of Franklin County, but also all the rural communities of the Bay State — those with fewer than 500 people per square mile.

That’s every community in Franklin County other than Greenfield, she said, adding that these towns are small — or, in the cases of Monroe and Rowe, with populations of 120 and 394, respectively, very small.

Serving these communities is the mission of the COG, created in the wake of the abolition of county government in 1997. Today, it operates 12 programs and boasts more than 50 staff members and an annual budget of more than $5 million, funded in part by assessments to the 26 municipalities in Franklin County, but mostly through state and federal grants.

Dunlavy started with the county commission in 1993 and transitioned to the COG when it was created in 1998, and took at the helm of the organization in 1999.

Summing up its mission, she said it is similar in many ways to the Springfield-based Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. It serves the communities of Franklin County, the most rural county in the state, providing planning services as well as regionalized municipal services to those communities, as well as some outside the county. Those services include building, wiring, and inspection services, as well as the purchasing of municipal products and services for 59 towns, items such as guardrail, asphalt, salt, sand, and fuel.

“Our focus is Franklin County, but we go outside Franklin County with projects and partnerships to serve the county better,” she explained. “So we work with cooperatively with the Pioneer Planning Commission on many projects, such as rail.

“Our towns are very rural, and that’s why we provide so many municipal services,” she went on. “A small town like Buckland would have a hard time finding a qualified accountant, a qualified health agent, a qualified business inspector. So, by combining those services together, we can hire professional staff and provide those services to our rural communities.”

The State of Things

Beyond providing these services, the COG, like Dunlavy herself, serves as an advocate for the region, on issues ranging from rail to broadband to housing.

The week she spoke with BusinessWest, she was also in Boston testifiying at an 11-hour hearing on the housing bond bill and advocating for housing solutions that recognize the difficulties and contraints of developing housing in rural areas.

She was testifying in her role as part of the Massachusetts Assoc. of Regional Planning Agencies, but also as chair of the Rural Policy Advisory Commission, she said, adding that, in both capacities, she advocated for recognition that housing development in rural areas comes at a smaller scale than in Hampden County or Eastern Mass., for example, meaning there are fewer economies of scale and far fewer developers interested in building in such areas. Also, most of these rural communities have limited water and sewer infrasructure, so the cost to develop housing is much higher.

With a better understanding of these issues, she said, legislators can craft a bond bill that creates greater equity when it comes to a housing shortage that impacts virtually every community in the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, she and others at the COG are also working to make the region more prepared for disruptions like COVID and climate-related disasters such as the torrential rains and accompanying flooding last summer, which ruined crops and damaged infrastructure.

“We need to focus on what we can learn from the devastation of the July storms, on how we make our region more resilient, and how we can get our communities to work together to set climate-resiliency priorities and choose projects togther,” she said. “If you look at all of that as emergency response … that’s a big part of what we’re doing right now.”

But the biggest challenge, though, is population loss, and it’s an issue that now commands a large amount of Dunlavy’s time and energy.

“It’s a huge issue for us; we always have it in the back of our minds in all of the work that we do — what can we do to stem population loss and attract young families to our region. Because an aging and declining population is not great for our economy.”

Elaborating, she said population growth has been stagnant since 2000, but there are projections, contained in a report prepared by the UMass Donahue Institute, for a precipitious decline, perhaps 20%, in the years to come.

That model does not take into account a resolution to the broadband issue in many Franklin County communties, she went on, nor does it factor in the rising popularity in remote work and the boost it has provided for many rural areas. So, while the projections are stark, there is reason for optimism.

“There are a lot of factors we can use to make sure those population projections don’t come true,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s a big focus of our work.”

Progress Report

As she offered a quick tour of the transit center, Dunlavy recalled the time a gentleman visited not long after it opened.

“He said, ‘I’d like something like this; how long did this take?’” she recalled, adding that the answer — more than 20 years — startled him somewhat.

That’s about the average for most of the major projects she has undertaken, she went on, stressing, again, that none of her landmark projects — be it broadband, rail, or the Route 2 realignment — came quickly or easily. Such projects require patience, and a whole lot more.

Dunlavy has those attributes, just as her friend, colleague, and mentor Tim Brennan did. And now she shares something else in common with him.

She’s a Difference Maker.

Matt Bannister

Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Responsibility, PeoplesBank

He Goes Well Beyond the Job of ‘Playing Santa Claus’

Matt Bannister

Matt Bannister likes to say that he has “one of the best jobs at the bank,” although some might consider it the worst.

His title is senior vice president of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility, a position that comes with many responsibilities, including a rather large role in determining and then implementing PeoplesBank’s philanthropic strategy, duties he described this way: “I get to play Santa Claus.”

Indeed, he’s part of the team that essentially determined how the bank apportioned $2.3 million in giving in 2022 and another $1.6 million in 2023, with donations averaging roughly $3,000 presented to more than 500 nonprofits and causes meeting some of the region’s most critical needs, such as food insecurity, housing, economic development, and literacy.

More on all this later, because this work is not why Bannister has been named a Difference Maker for 2024. OK, it’s a small part of the reason why.

The much bigger reason is the manner in which he has gone well beyond playing Santa Claus and well beyond helping decide to whom the bank will write checks — rather, he’s become closely involved with helping to meet some of those needs listed above.

Since joining the bank in 2015, he has served as a board member for agencies including Link to Libraries, EforAll Pioneer Valley, the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce, the Springfield 9/11 Memorial fundraising committee, the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, Hilltown Community Health Center; the American Red Cross, and Revitalize Community Development Corp. (CDC), where he is current co-chair.

“You can say that he manages the pocketbook and he helps us disperse funds in the right ways, but when you see that expense report and you see that mileage — that’s not giving out money as much as it is participating and being part of the community.”

Involvement with the health-related agencies on that list continues a pattern to focus his time, energy, and talent on matters related to health and well-being (and he puts Revitalize CDC squarely in that category, as we’ll see).

Before coming to PeoplesBank, Bannister was executive vice president of Corporate Communications and Brand Content for the American Heart Assoc./American Stroke Assoc., and before that, he was vice president and group account director at Arnold Worldwide, working on integrated marketing campaigns with a focus on anti-tobacco efforts for clients including the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the FDA, and the American Legacy Foundation.

PeoplesBank President Tom Senecal, who nominated Bannister as a Difference Maker, says he can quantify and qualify how much of an impact his colleague has made. For both, he turns to statistics the company keeps on just how many hours each employee devotes to volunteer work — with Bannister logging at least twice as many on bank-sponsored activities, in his estimate — and especially the expense reports Bannister turns in.

“I see the expense reports; they’re three pages long with his volunteer mileage — three pages per month,” he said, adding a verbal exclamation mark. “You can say that he manages the pocketbook and he helps us disperse funds in the right ways, but when you see that expense report and you see that mileage — that’s not giving out money as much as it is participating and being part of the community.

Matt Bannister, seen here at the PeoplesBank booth at Junior Achievement’s Teen Reality Fair last year in Chicopee, has become actively involved in the community.

“He goes well above and beyond what we ask him to do to represent PeoplesBank,” Senecal went on, adding that this involvement, this commitment to backing up the checks the bank writes with his work on boards and mowing lawns for Revitalize CDC, explains why he’s been chosen as a Difference Maker for 2024.

By All Accounts

Bannister loves to tell the story about his participation in career day at his then-9-year-old daughter’s elementary school. It conveys a little about what he was doing at the time — this was when he was with Arnold Worldwide working on ad programs to help curb smoking among young people — and a lot about why he has been chosen as a Difference Maker.

“Kids at that age don’t really have a strong sense for what their father does for a living,” he said, recalling that his daughter introduced him by saying simply, ‘this is my dad … he saves lives for a living.’

“I thought that was really cool,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this description of what he did certainly helped inspire some of his next career steps. “I said, ‘I want more of that,’ and it helped me go from doing the anti-tobacco work at the agency to the American Heart Association.”

“Our philosophy is to give a little to a lot of groups, and not a lot to a few groups. That’s because almost every nonprofit is worthwhile and doing good work.”

Tracing his work history, Bannister said he worked for the ad agency Hill Holiday in Boston and later with Arnold Worldwide, working on accounts ranging from Volkswagen to Puma to Ocean Spray. In the late ‘90s, he was promoted and told he’d be working on the Department of Public Health account.

“I initially said, ‘that doesn’t sound like a promotion,’” he went on, adding that this was at the time when a 25-cent tax was put on every pack of cigarettes sold, with the money going toward smoking-cessation programs and preventing youth uptake.

“Every ad agency had a beer, a car, a fast-food chain … now, a brand-new category was created — a $100 million category because of all the revenue that was being created,” he went on. “And it was untilled, fertile soil.”

In his role, Matt Bannister is often the face of PeoplesBank, such as at this occasion marking the bank’s donation — $250,000 over five years — to the building of a new facility for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Overall, it was more rewarding work than selling cars or cranberry juice, he said, adding that he changed course, career-wise, and joined the American Heart Assoc., serving eventually as executive vice president of Communications at its national headquarters in Dallas.

“At the ad agency, you’re selling pizza, sneakers, and sugar water — you’re selling a product,” he explained. “In public health, you’re selling behavior change; you’re selling ‘eat right, don’t smoke, exercise more.’ It’s not something you buy, it’s behaviors, and it’s marketing that’s a lot more challenging and rewarding.”

Desiring a return to the Northeast — he was born in Dedham and attended UMass Amherst — Bannister accepted the role of senior vice president of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at PeoplesBank, a position with a broad job description that includes corporate responsibility but now also includes marketing, media relations, and social-media management.

And when it comes to charitable giving, he said the bank’s goal is to “say yes as often as you can,” he noted.

“Our philosophy is to give a little to a lot of groups, and not a lot to a few groups,” he explained. “That’s because almost every nonprofit is worthwhile and doing good work.”

Elaborating, he said that, while he supports a wide array of nonprofits and causes, within the giving strategy is an emphasis on certain areas, such as economic development, literacy, food insecurity, and public health, which translates into larger donations to some groups, such as the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Girls Inc. of the Valley, and Revitalize CDC.

An Involved Process

These have, in fact, become Bannister’s personal points of emphasis as he chooses the organizations and causes to get personally involved with — and there are many invitations to weigh.

As noted earlier, this involvement is the primary reason why he is part of the Difference Makers class of 2024. He said it’s a part of his job, and also a way to see first-hand the work being done in some of the areas listed above, and be a part of that work.

“The more I can roll up my sleeves, the better I feel about who we’re giving to,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he is certainly selective about the groups and causes he gets involved with.

“In the beginning, it was because they asked me,” he said with a laugh. “Now, it’s more the groups that are working boards that have a vibrant cross-section of the community involved, and that I think we can benefit by being involved.”

Since joining PeoplesBank, Matt Bannister has donated his time, energy, and talents to several nonprofits and causes, including Revitalize CDC.

That includes Revitalize CDC, which undertakes a number of projects that fall into broad category of public health, including critical repairs on homes of low-income families with children, the elderly, military veterans, and those with special needs, but also initiatives involving interventions for adults and children with asthma, nutrition programs, and making home improvements that allow seniors to remain in their homes.

He is active with all those intiatives, but has carved out his own niche.

“My favorite thing is mowing the lawn — no one thinks to do that. It’s the curb appeal,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not a skilled laborer, and mowing the lawn is hard to screw up.”

Turning serious, he said the organization’s work is critical to improving health and quality of life in the region.

“Their work involves prevention more than treating the symptoms, which is what a good public-health person cares about,” he said. “It’s not as glamorous, and it’s harder to quantify, but it’s much more important work.”

As he talked about what he does for a living and within the community, Bannister made sure to thank the bank for giving him the opportunity to be part of a winning team, and to thank his wife, Sharon, for … well, being understanding and tolerant of a schedule that has him on the road a lot, maybe three or four days a week and sometimes for several events on the same day during the busy season.

It’s a big part of the job, he said, adding quickly that the job, the travel, and the events involve two states and a much larger radius now that the bank has made a push into Connecticut, one that promises to involve more zip codes in the years to come.

What’s not necessarily part of the job — and this becomes clear in Bannister’s expense sheets and Senecal’s reaction to them — is his commitment to getting very involved with several of the organizations that the bank ultimately writes checks to.

He admits to gradually learning how to say ‘no’ to those who ask him to serve on boards, but often, the answer is still ‘yes.’

Bottom Line

If Matt Bannister had to introduce himself at a third-grade career day, he might start by saying what he often tells people about his role: “I work at a bank, but I’m not a banker. And I absolutely love my job at the bank.”

Others who really know, people like Senecal and Colleen Loveless, president and CEO of Revitalize CDC, might be tempted to borrow the line used by his daughter and say that he saves lives.

Or … they could keep it very simple, yet powerful — and introduce him as a Difference Maker.

That says it all.

Chicopee Takes Full Advantage of Its Location

By George O'Brien February 2, 2024