Home Articles posted by GeorgeB

As It Marks 50 Years, Western Builders Eyes Continued Growth

By
From left, Heather Roy, marketing and communications specialist; D’Lynn Healey, project executive; Bryan Hughes, president; and Ed Ackley, general superintendent.
Building Trades Special Coverage

Golden Opportunity

From left, Heather Roy, marketing and communications specialist; D’Lynn Healey, project executive; Bryan Hughes, president; and Ed Ackley, general superintendent.

From left, Heather Roy, marketing and communications specialist; D’Lynn Healey, project executive; Bryan Hughes, president; and Ed Ackley, general superintendent.

Bryan Hughes says Western Builders has marked its 50th anniversary in several different ways — from a gathering of employees and their families at a local restaurant,to postings on social media celebrating both employee and company milestones, to a new, temporary logo marking the occasion.

And there’s more to come, with a larger gathering slated for September at the company’s Granby headquarters for employees, clients, subcontractors, and more.

But in many ways, it’s been business as usual for this construction firm, which is not the same thing as business as it was done in 1975, or even 2005.

“In decades past, business was generally done with a handshake,” said Hughes, who took over as company president in 2022. “And the new way of delivering a project is more managerial in a sense; when people come to Western, they’re paying for a partnership in solving problems, forecasting challenges, and addressing them.”

Creating more value for clients is just one of the focal points for Hughes and the leadership team at Western, a subsidiary of the O’Connell Companies.

“In decades past, business was generally done with a handshake. And the new way of delivering a project is more managerial in a sense; when people come to Western, they’re paying for a partnership in solving problems, forecasting challenges, and addressing them.”

Overall, the company is in a growth mode — let’s call it a controlled growth mode — fueled by several factors, but especially the region’s (and the state’s) housing crisis. Indeed, many of the firm’s current projects involve initiatives to address an extreme shortage of housing, especially within the affordable category. These include:

• Phase 2 of South Holyoke Homes, a modular construction project led by the Holyoke Housing Authority that features single-family homes and duplexes;

• Baskin West Main Residences, a 105-unit, mixed-income apartment complex being undertaken by Brisa Builders Development;

• Amethyst Brook Apartments, an affordable housing community in Pelham being undertaken by Home City Development; and

• An expansion of Clinical & Support Options’ Friends of the Homeless campus on Worthington Street in Springfield, a 23,974-square-foot facility that will provide critical shelter and supportive housing to individuals experiencing chronic homelessness.

Meanwhile, several projects completed recently involve housing — everything from East Gables, an affordable housing project on Northampton Road in Amherst undertaken in collaboration with Valley CDC, to Aspen Heights, a student housing apartment facility, also in Amherst.

The housing crunch is not a problem that will be solved quickly or easily, said Hughes, adding that this reality should provide ongoing growth opportunities for a firm that has made its mark in that arena.

“The way the crisis is described to us by local, state, and federal officials is that it will be a never-ending challenge to overcome,” he noted, adding that, as the Commonwealth and local agencies ranging from Way Finders to Home City Development address the crisis, Western will have opportunities to not only do more work in the 413, but expand its service radius as well.

Among the many projects in the Western Builders portfolio is renovation work at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. (Photo by Red Skies Photography)

Among the many projects in the Western Builders portfolio is renovation work at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. (Photo by Red Skies Photography)

“We definitely have a local edge, with local subcontracting partners and local relationships and clientele — that’s why we’re Western Builders, because we typically stay in Western Mass.,” Hughes explained. “But part of the future vision of the company is to push the limits there a little bit, because the housing crisis isn’t limited to Western Mass.

“Moving forward, we want to grow the company at a comfortable clip — we want to be able to sustain our methods and our confidence in ourselves,” he went on. “But I think we’re ready to take on more.”

Any firm marking 50 years has survived many kinds of challenges, and that’s true of Western as well, which has weathered downturns and a Great Recession, but also a pandemic and ongoing workforce issues, including the need to replace the many talented workers approaching, or already at, retirement age.

Like other firms, it is taking a proactive approach to the problem, as we’ll see, promoting the trades and getting young people involved early, giving them a taste of the work as well as the financial rewards and relative stability of the sector.

For this issue and its focus on the building trades, we’ll look at the first 50 years for Western Builders and what will likely come next at a time when some golden opportunities are emerging.

 

Firm Commitment

Tracing the history of the firm, D’Lynn Healy, project executive, said it was created by O’Connell to work with the company’s development group and also with local private colleges and development companies.

And from the beginning, diversity, in all its forms, has been perhaps the company’s strongest suit.

Indeed, while it’s perhaps best known for wood-frame construction — as seen in projects ranging from phase 1 of Glenmeadow in Longmeadow to transformation of the former Yankee Pedlar in Holyoke into a PeoplesBank branch; from River Mills Assisted Living in Chicopee to restoration of the historic Gaylord mansion on the Elms College campus — it has worked with stone and steel as well.

Indeed, the portfolio includes projects like Way Finders’ new home in downtown Springfield, the Educare early learning facility, also in Springfield, and renovation work on the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, including refurbishment of the sphere, which involved removing thousands of fiberglass panels and resurfacing them, but also extensive interior renovations.

The PeoplesBank branch in the former Yankee Pedlar in Holyoke. (Photos by Red Skies Photography)

The PeoplesBank branch in the former Yankee Pedlar in Holyoke. (Photos by Red Skies Photography)

Work in the Health Sciences building at American International College (right) showcase the diversity of projects in the Western Builders portfolio. (Photos by Red Skies Photography)

Work in the Health Sciences building at American International College (right) showcase the diversity of projects in the Western Builders portfolio. (Photos by Red Skies Photography)

Beyond diversity with materials, the company has worked in several sectors, including public and private clients, new construction as well as renovations, such as at Elms College, and different realms, everything from housing to the new Phoenix Academy Public Charter School at the Springfield Technology Park, to emergency renovations to the Courniotes Building at American International College (AIC) after a fire there.

“Our focus can remain in housing, but we want to emphasize diversity,” Hughes said. “We’ve won some hard-bid projects for public work, which has helped us diversify in our project types. We’re back at some institutions, like AIC and Smith College, building on existing relationships.”

Signature projects over the past five decades, and there are many, include work with O’Connell Development to build a new 152,000-square-foot, LEED-certified manufacturing facility and corporate headquarters for L3Harris Integrated Mission Systems/KEO, formerly Kollmorgen, at the site of the former Northampton State Hospital; the Educare facility, considered state-of-the-art in that sector; the work at the Hall of Fame; the new Girls Inc. headquarters in Holyoke, located, ironically, in the former home of the O’Connell Companies; and the Holyoke Crossing retail facility in Holyoke, another project where O’Connell Development was the client.

Today, Western is doing far less for O’Connell and much more with a growing list of clients, many of them involved with housing, including Way Finders, Valley CDC, Home City Development, and others.

A common denominator is repeat business, said Healey, adding that clients such as Way Finders, American International College, PeoplesBank, and others have turned to Western for several different undertakings.

“A lot of clients are repeat clients that we’ve worked with,” she explained, adding that one of the firm’s strengths is relationship building. “When these clients have another project, they reach out to us.”

And much of this repeat business stems from the firm’s ability to create value and effectively manage projects, as Hughes mentioned earlier.

“It used to be … construction was definitely a ‘work-harder industry,’” Healey explained. “Now, we’ve finally acquiesced and realized that we have to work smarter and not just harder. You have to be strategic, and you have to plan — you have to make sure that you have everything lined up before you start working.”

 

Building Relationships

As noted earlier, housing has become a major focal point for Western over the past few decades as need grows and agencies take imaginative steps to address it. And the company has several projects in this realm in various stages of development.

Amethyst Brook should be fully occupied by the end of this month; the projects in Chicopee (Baskin West Main Residences) and Springfield (expansion of the Friends of the Homeless complex) are in early-stage work, while the Holyoke initiative is moving toward completion, with the Holyoke Housing Authority now running commercials urging people to enter the lottery to purchase those homes.

That Holyoke project represents a first — working with modular construction, said Hughes, adding that it has been a learning experience.

“Boxes are prefabricated in Pennsylvania and shipped to Holyoke and put together as side-by-side townhomes,” he explained, adding that the process significantly streamlines the timeline for construction.

“It’s nice to see an emphasis on the trades. You see commercials about it, you hear the unions talk about it, the non-unions talk about it … anyone in the trades can be, if they want to apply themselves, as successful as someone who wound up with a giant college loan that they have to pay back and may or may not be able to work in the field they trained for.”

Meanwhile, many initiatives, including one of the buildings at Amethyst Brook as well as East Gables in Amherst, involve what’s known as passive housing, a voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building that has surpassed LEED as the cutting edge in that realm.

“There are more passive houses in development and pre-construction because that’s the popular trend moving forward with energy efficiency and sustainability, which is what clients want,” Hughes said. “But there’s also a code aspect — client developers need to meet the Massachusetts Stretch Energy Code, which is one of the most stringent in the country.”

Beyond housing and the growth opportunities it presents, the company has been focused on relationship building — continuing long-standing partnerships and forging new ones — and also on perhaps the biggest issue facing this sector — maintaining a workforce.

Indeed, since arriving at Western, Hughes said one of his priorities has been to generate interest in the field among the younger generations.

He cited several initiatives, including work with Dean Tech High School in Holyoke, hiring co-op students to work for the company part-time at job sites while also attending school.

“It’s been cool to see that youthful excitement about construction,” he said, adding that, by exposing young people early to the lifestyle and opportunities the trades create, the firm is helping to put more future workers into the pipeline.

Ed Ackley, the company’s long-time general superintendent, agreed.

“The workforce is aging, and it’s retiring out,” he said. “So one of things we’ve been doing is trying to attract young people as project managers and assistant superintendents in hopes that they can gain experience, so by the time they become a super, they’re as effective as the seasoned personnel we have now.

“It’s nice to see an emphasis on the trades,” Ackley went on. “You see commercials about it, you hear the unions talk about it, the non-unions talk about it … anyone in the trades can be, if they want to apply themselves, as successful as someone who wound up with a giant college loan that they have to pay back and may or may not be able to work in the field they trained for.”

And, unlike jobs in many other fields that face uncertain futures with advancing technology, including AI, those in the trades are relatively secure, Hughes told BusinessWest. “You can’t ask ChatGPT to build a masonry wall.”

 

UMassFive College Federal Credit Union Remains Focused on Growth

By
Rich Kump says UMassFive College Federal Credit Union is persevering
Banking and Financial Services Special Coverage

Setting Its Sites

Rich Kump says UMassFive College Federal Credit Union is persevering

Rich Kump says UMassFive College Federal Credit Union is persevering through challenging times for this sector.

Rich Kump says UMassFive College Federal Credit Union is in a mood to “make up for some lost time.”

Elaborating, he flashed back more than two years, to when the institution was starting to move ahead with plans to move its flagship location in Hadley to a new location just down Route 9, while also advancing efforts to make a push into Hampden County with a location in or near Springfield and a smaller satellite office within Springfield that would serve one of the city’s many banking deserts.

Returning to today, he said the credit union — which he serves as president and CEO — has made very little, if any, progress on those fronts, due to issues with all three sites that we’ll get into later.

He summed it all up with some understatement, and a needed sense of humor, saying, “what I have surmised from all this is that we’re not very good at picking branch sites.”

Now, the institution is looking at 2026 for the Hampden County locations, and a longer timeline for the new Hadley location, which he admits is less of a priority now than it was back in late 2022, due primarily to remote-work options that have alleviated space concerns that were a prime motivator for relocating the flagship branch.

“Moving the Hadley branch does not generate a whole bunch of new loans and deposits and members.It provides some great visibility, but not many growth opportunities.”

These are all still priorities, but they have been supplanted by larger concerns and dramatically changing times — for all banks and credit unions, one in which the rising interest rates of 2023 and early 2024 tightened already-thin margins, reduced profits, and pushed many credit unions to the point where they needed to merge with another institution or close.

“It’s been a troubling time, with many credit unions posting losses,” Kump said, noting that there were 41 credit-union mergers nationwide in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, some of them generated by a need for small credit unions to expand services, but many others prompted by poor financial condition.

UMassFive has been looking to move its flagship branch in Hadley

UMassFive has been looking to move its flagship branch in Hadley (pictured) to a new location down Route 9, but other priorities are currently more important.

UMass Five, which has six branches across Western and Central Mass., including one at its namesake, UMass Amherst, is not so imperiled, but it has seen deposits tumble and overall performance slide due to these colliding factors.

“We had to increase our rates to keep the deposits we had, and, of course, that increased our cost of funds quite a bit. And while the cost of funds increased, we still have a loan portfolio, much of which was at much lower than market rates,” he said, explaining, in simple terms, the main challenge facing all institutions.

UMass Five, with roughly $570 million in deposits and around $700 million in total assets, didn’t load up its balance sheet with large numbers of low-interest borrowings, he went on, but it certainly felt the pinch.

“Our net interest margin did shrink a little — not as much as others, but overall, we saw our net income decline,” Kump said, adding that the bank grew at just 0.24% in 2024, what would normally be considered an off year, but, under these circumstances, acceptable.

Moving forward, the credit union, like many other financial institutions, must balance life in these more difficult times with the need to grow, attain more deposits, and create economies of scale, and thus become better able to handle the ongoing headwinds.

UMassFive is not in a position to be acquired, and it is not exactly looking for opportunities to acquire others, although it will certainly consider them as they emerge, said Kump, adding that, for now, the preferred method of growth is organic.

Which brings us back to those branches that have been in the planning stages. They are important parts of the credit union’s overall growth strategy, and while the institution will move forward, it is not going to rush anything.

Indeed, while he regrets losing time with these initiatives, as he said at the top, the process of selecting new branch locations — an art and science that involves everything from visibility to the volume of other traffic-generating businesses, to the number of competing banks and credit unions in the general vicinity — is necessarily slow and involved, and UMassFive will take its time and get it right.

“We’re back to square one,” he said of the Hampden County locations. “But it’s more important to do this well then do it quickly.”

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, we talked with Kump at length about what’s in the business plan for UMassFive, and just how the institution will make up for that lost time.

 

Points of Interest

Recapping what’s happened with those three planned branches, Kump said not much has gone right, and each story is different.

In Hadley, the property where the credit union intends to go is occupied by an auto-repair shop and a small single-family home being rented from the property owner. Long story short (we’ll do a lot of that), that tenant has not gone quietly — the matter has wound up in Housing Court in a protracted battle — and won’t be out for another six months or so.

“We’re still interested in that site … we’re putting together a new purchase agreement because we hadn’t anticipated such a lengthy delay,” Kump said. “But it’s still in our future, and we do want to move our flagship location to that more visible site on Route 9.”

Meanwhile, in Hampden County, at a location in East Longmeadow near the Springfield line, a site chosen after extensive research, a new branch has been scrapped due to issues with the sewer system. And that satellite location? After more than a year of deliberations, the owner of that property ultimately decided not to sell or lease it.

So UMassFive is now essentially where it was two and half years ago on all three projects — waiting to get started in Hadley and trying to find the right sites in Springfield, Kump noted, adding that, over that time, the landscape for credit unions and banks has changed when it comes to liquidity, profitability, and, in this specific case, priorities and growth strategies.

“As many other financial institutions are doing, we’re managing our growth,” he explained. “Your income fuels growth, and when your income is down, you can’t grow as much.”

Elaborating, he said the Hadley initiative is certainly still important, just less so in the larger scheme of things, adding that the relocation of that flagship branch is now targeted for completion in 2028 at the earliest, for a few reasons, starting with logistics.

A few years ago, the plan was to close an operations center in Hadley and move the employers there into space created by moving the headquarters branch to that aforementioned location at the Amherst/Hadley line. But with heavy use of telecommuting and hybrid schedules, the credit union has moved the last department from the operations center into the flagship site, with the branch still operating.

Meanwhile, with a focus on gaining new members and growing deposits, the credit union’s top priority now is expanding into Hampden County.

“Moving the Hadley branch does not generate a whole bunch of new loans and deposits and members,” Kump explained. “It provides some great visibility, but not many growth opportunities.”

He expects these to come in Hampden County, where the credit union has a small presence — a branch in Mercy Medical Center — with intentions to become a larger player in that region, through further use of what he called a “hub-and-spoke” operating philosophy.

Elaborating, he said this model calls for a main facility, such as the one in Hadley, with smaller, satellite facilities around it, including those at UMass Amherst, downtown Northampton, and the Veterans Administration facility in Leeds.

There were plans to create something similar in Hampden County, starting with the property at the East Longmeadow/Springfield line, as the hub. But, as we’ve seen, that site didn’t work out, a huge disappointment for the institution.

“We were very excited … we did an extensive branch study, used lots of data, socio-economic factors, traveling routes, destination points at this one location, and it came up roses for us,” he explained, adding that the roses soon wilted amid sewer-backup issues that could not be resolved, forcing the credit union to walk away from the deal four months ago.

Now, as he said, UMassFive is back to square one, and it will take its time putting a new plan together. With that, he gave some insight into the complicated nature of finding sites for branches, an undertaking many institutions are familiar with as they seek out growth opportunities in a no-growth area with many communities that could only be described as ‘overbanked.’

“There is a lot that goes into this … for bank branches, you have to be visible, you have to be in high-traffic areas, and there have to be destination points around you,” he said, adding that, to find such sites, institutions must invest time, money, and resources — and then hope things go right with the sites they choose.

But as difficult as finding good branch sites can be, securing them is critical, said Kump, adding that, in this environment, pursuing growth and achieving size are critical for all financial-services institutions.

“Eventually, you have to grow again, and we feel that will happen,” he said, adding, again, that, while the organic route is preferred, the credit union will certainly look at merger opportunities as they emerge.

“We’re not aggressively seeking mergers, but if there is a credit union that has interest in merging into us, we would definitely consider that, and that’s really who we’ve been throughout our existence,” he said, adding that the institution’s locations at Mercy and the VA facility came about through mergers.

 

Location, Location, Location

Looking ahead to the balance of 2025 and beyond, Kump said it’s difficult to project what will happen — with both the economy and financial-services institutions.

Indeed, only a few months ago, the Fed was projecting several interest rate cuts in 2025; by December, it was anticipating few, if any.

“All bets are off,” he said. “We see employment numbers coming down, inflation numbers seem to be going up, and if inflationary pressures continue to push, it wouldn’t surprise me if, in 2025, we saw some rate increases again.”

In this climate, UMassFive will continue to work to manage its growth and align its priorities to that end.

It will also endeavor to make up for some lost time and find some better luck and good fortune when it comes to picking branch sites and taking full advantage of those new locations.

It is certainly overdue.