Departments
| Alicea, Daniel | Leigner, Arthur R. |
John Bonavita, restaurateur and developer, says he enjoys the challenge of rehabbing old, historic structures. He spent two years and $1 million to convert an old fire station in Springfields South End into the Tavern restaurant. His latest undertaking is the 90-year-old former Post Office building in Westfield, an attractive but challenged site that is now home to his second Tavern.
John Bonavita says he first fell in love with the old Post Office building in Westfield in 1997. Thats when his Tavern Inn restaurant on Columbus Avenue in Springfield was in the process of being taken by eminent domain to make way for the new Basketball Hall of Fame and related riverfront developments, and he was looking for a new home for that venture.
He liked the historical and architectural aspects of the 90-year-old building more on that later and he really liked its location in the center of the city, as well as the growth potential of the Westfield market.
"I like old buildings," said Bonavita, with a classic bit of understatement. "And I really like bringing them back to life. I enjoy blending the past with the present, and with this building I saw nothing but great potential."
But he couldnt make the parking or lack thereof work, and so he turned his attention elsewhere, specifically the long-vacant fire station on Mill Street in Springfields South End, which became home to the Tavern in 2000 after a year-long, $1 million renovation effort.
Bonavita didnt forget about Westfields old Post Office, however, and after concluding that he wanted to build a second Tavern, his thoughts returned to the building on Broad and Main streets.
And this time, he made the parking work.
Indeed, Bonavita struck a deal with the city in late 2002 to lease him 37 spaces in a parking lot across the street from the structure and adjacent to the citys green. Fourteen months and more than $1 million in renovations later, the Tavern-Westfield is nearly ready to open.
The facility housed a reception prior to Mayor Richard K. Sullivans inaugural ball in mid-January and is slated to open its doors later this month. When it does, it will become part of a growing arts and entertainment district in Westfield and a revitalization of its downtown.
It will also usher in a new era for the Post Office building, one of the citys more enduring landmarks, which has been the site of several mostly unsuccessful ventures since the Post Office moved out in 1980, and has been vacant for the past several years.
Meanwhile, it will be an important entrepreneurial stepping stone for Bonavita, who now has a restaurant group, if you will, and is currently putting together a management team to run the enterprise. When asked if there might be a third or fourth Tavern, he said, "I never thought there would be a second when I see an opportunity develop, I move on it."
Stamp of Approval
As he offered BusinessWest a tour of his Westfield Tavern, Bonavita, speaking over the constant roar of an electrical sander trying to bring new life to an old hardwood floor, pointed to teller windows with signs above them reading money orders and registry.
"Back at the turn of the century, people did a lot more of their banking work at the Post Office," he explained, adding that he has kept the windows in their original state to provide part of the atmosphere for the restaurant.
Bonavita has learned quite a bit about old post offices (and this one in particular) in the past 15 months. He said renovating the landmark has been an extreme challenge, but he enjoys such assignments. "There are a lot of easier sites I could have chosen, believe me," he acknowledged. "But none of them had this location or this kind of history."
Bonavita first gravitated to the restaurant business 25 years ago, while working in the familys used car dealership in Springfield. "I bought and sold cars for 11 years," he said, adding that when auto sales, and the economy in general, suffered in the late 70s, he looked for a new business opportunity.
He opened Pub 91 in Springfields South End, and later opened the Tavern Inn on West Columbus Avenue, which thrived for nearly 15 years thanks to a loyal clientele.
But Bonavita was sent looking for a new home when the city took the property and several others to make way for the Hall of Fame project. And while Bonavita desired a location in Springfields South End, from which he drew many of his customers, his search took him to Agawam, West Springfield, Enfield, Conn., and Westfield, where the old Post Office was his first preference.
At the time, the site was vacant, but the subject of much speculation because it was adjacent to the former H.B. Smith boiler complex, which was soon to be demolished to make for a Stop & Shop. Andrew Crystal, vice president of OConnell Development in Holyoke, which had acquired both the H.B. Smith complex and the Post Office site, told BusinessWest that there was a great deal of interest in the latter, especially from national restaurant chains.
"They all saw what John (Bonavita) saw," said Crystal, "an incredible structure with a lot of potential. But there wasnt any parking, and there was no real way to acquire any." Bonavita had a purchase-and-sale agreement on the Post Office, but could not resolve the parking issue.
So he reset his sights on the South End of Springfield, and the block at the top of Mill Street, which consisted of a vacant fire station and an adjoining manufacturing facility in rather poor condition that housed a company which made motorcycle chains.
"The city really wanted something to happen with that block … the fire station had been vacant for nearly 30 years, and the building next door was in disrepair," said Bonavita, who told BusinessWest that he acquired the fire station from the city for a dollar and relocated the manufacturer into a building he purchased in East Springfield.
He then spent the next year rehabbing the station, built in 1894, which at that time was in horrendous condition.
"There was no heating and no plumbing," he recalled. "About 600 square feet of roof decking was completely rotted and missing, which rotted about 1,000 square feet of the second floor decking; so we had a skylight in the building pigeons were roaming free and flying in and out."
Bonavita eventually invested more than $1 million in the building, which is now home to four offices as well as the restaurant. He acknowledged that most developers would have passed on the adventure, but he enjoys a good challenge.
Food for Thought
And he found another one in Westfields old Post Office, which he acquired from OConnell in 2002 for $300,000.
He said the building lends itself well to a tavern/restaurant with its high ceilings and numerous rooms, but it needed a good deal of work to meet all of todays codes and accessibility standards.
For example, one work area at the former Post Office behind those teller windows Bonavita pointed out had to be gutted to make way for a new entrance that was handicapped-accessible.
Working with the Chicopee-based architectural firm Caolo & Bienek Associates, Bonavita says he has kept as much of the original post office intact as possible, including the marble and hardwood floors, as well as the mahogany front entrance (now an emergency exit).
"Theyve really helped me tame this old building," he said of the architects, noting that the bar area maintains the arches and curved windows of the original lobby area of the post office. "We took some things and moved them or used them for different things; what we disassembled, we reassembled in other places."
The Tavern-Westfield will have a main dining room that will sit about 80, as well as a private dining room the old postmasters office that will seat another dozen. Meanwhile, as with the fire station in Springfield, Bonavita will create some office space to lease out. He said hes already had inquiries from an engineering firm and a financial services company.
The old Post Office was adapted for several different uses after its closure. In the early 80s, it housed a variety of small shops in an indoor-mall format. Later, a restaurant was opened in the basement area. It enjoyed initial success, but closed only a few years after opening.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the site became an antiques center, with dozens of individual vendors leasing pockets of space. The lack of parking eventually doomed that venture as well, and the building sat vacant for a number of years.
With the parking problem solved, Bonavita expects his new venture to become one of the cornerstones figuratively speaking of Westfields emerging entertainment district. Several restaurants have opened in the past few years, and Bonavita expects that in time (and not much time), the citys depth of offerings will draw people from across the region, as Northampton currently does.
"I think Westfield can make something happen," he said. "Springfield has made its entertainment district work, and it can happen here, too."
Pushing the Envelope
As he showed BusinessWest the view from the balcony above the main lobby, Bonavita reiterated why he took on the many challenges posed by the old Post Office. "This building makes a statement," he said.
The same might be said of Bonavitas developments, which have enabled two communities to take underutilized properties and put them back on the tax rolls and into productive use.
"I get a lot of satisfaction from doing this," he said. "Its a labor of love."
George OBrien can be reached at [email protected]
| Acevedo, R. Antonio | LaPlante, S. Leisa |
| AMHERST HADLEY |
Charles Ryan was sworn in as Springfields 53rd mayor this month, pledging to restore fiscal order and make ethics his top priority. Thats music to our ears.
He received a standing ovation as he said there was a "new ethic" in City Hall and that /images of FBI investigators hauling boxes of records out of city offices would be a thing of the past. The loud applause was an indication of just how much Springfield has been hurt by the transgressions of members of the Albano administration, and how much hope there is that, with Ryan in office, things will be significantly different.
Greater Springfield can use a little fresh air.
If you talk with development leaders in the area, they will be diplomatic (sometimes), but they will admit that Springfields lengthy run of corruption-related headlines has not been good for business. There have been other factors that have slowed the import of new jobs to the city including the prolonged economic downturn and the sharp decline of the tech sector but FBI raids and arrests of city officials and friends of the former mayor didnt help the cause.
With Ryan, planning officials hope and we expect that Springfield can restore its image and project confidence and progress, not stagnancy, bad politics, and greed.
A renewed focus on ethics is part of Ryans larger plan to move Springfield forward, and in some ways there will be pain before there is actual gain. The Albano administration habitually spent more than it took in, and now tough decisions will have to be made.
Ryan made one when he announced that the citys Community Development Department would no longer fund the salary of Spirit of Springfield director Judy Matt. This was a hard decision because the Spirit of Springfield runs a number of fine programs, including Bright Nights, the balloon parade, and the Taste of Springfield, and Matt has done an admirable job of pumping some life into Springfield.
But in a way, it was an easy decision because a city like Springfield cannot fund every program and every salary that people want funded a point lost on Albano and many members of his administration. Sometimes, a city has to say no and turn to the private sector and the business community for support. By using some imagination, Matts salary will certainly be funded, and the city will have about $85,000 to either put somewhere else or cut from the budget.
Inspiring imagination and innovation is another cornerstone of Ryans plans for the city. Inspired by MassMutuals Center for Innovation, a new department created to encourage the flow of ideas and facilitate the implementation of the concepts generated, Ryan wants to do something similar in Springfield City Hall.
This will be an interesting development to watch. In many city halls, workers are too overwhelmed by day-to-day responsibilities to think outside the box. Meanwhile, its often difficult to maneuver new ideas through an undercurrent of politics, red tape, and competing interests.
We hope Ryan is successful in eliminating those roadblocks to progress and creating an environment where ideas are listened to and then acted upon. This city could use some creative thinking.
Although there has been some progress made in the citys downtown, and there are exciting projects in the works, such as the new federal courthouse, the MassMutual Center project, and Union Station, it would be fair to say that Springfield is in many ways stagnant.
By initiating a program encouraging innovation, Ryan could unearth some imaginative economic development proposals it seems that most of the old ideas are not working and also come up with some methods for serving city residents (and business owners) more completely and effectively.
Another priority for the Ryan administration is to challenge individuals and businesses to step forward and help the city where possible. He said residents can no longer be spectators, and hes right.
At his inaugural address, Ryan said he was offering the city the "torch of idealism, not cynicism; of excellence, not mediocrity; of gratitude, not resentment." This would be a refreshing change from the past several years, and an Albano administration that seemed all too cynical, mired in mediocrity.
Charlie Ryan says Springfield is on the verge of a breakthrough. We hope hes right, and believe hes setting the proper course. Before Springfield can step ahead, it must repair its image, restore its fiscal health, get people excited about what can be done in this city and get residents and business people involved in that process.
And the time to start is now.
Its been nearly 20 years since Tim Daggett scored a perfect 10 on the horizontal bar to clinch a gold medal for the U.S. mens gymnastics team in Los Angeles. Today, hes a diversified entrepreneur, balancing life as business owner, coach, broadcaster, and motivational speaker. He says success comes from bringing the same intensity to those assignments that he did to his Olympic quest.
But as nearly everyone from this region knows, he didnt just get into gymnastics; his perfect 10 on the horizontal bar helped propel the U.S. mens team to a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, putting the West Springfield native into the national spotlight in the process.
And because of his ambitious/aggressive nature, not to mention a strong commitment to excellence, Daggett has made the very most of the opportunities presented to him by that day in the Olympic sun and what happened in the years to follow.
Indeed, he has enjoyed success as a diversified entrepreneur, with ventures ranging from TV commercials to a gymnastics school that bears his name. He has gained acclaim as a motivational speaker, centering his talks not so much on the triumph in 1984, but his ultimately unsuccessful effort to return to the Olympics in 1998 and the lessons he learned from that experience. Meanwhile, he is a successful television commentator now preparing for next summers Olympics in Athens and a coach of many aspiring gymnasts.
In a wide-ranging interview, Daggett told BusinessWest that his Olympic experience like other moments that catapult individuals into fame certainly opened some doors. But those same doors can close quickly if people fail to commit the same time and energy to their new endeavors that they did to the ones that earned them their fame, he noted.
"There were probably 50 Americans who won gold medals at that Olympics who could have honed their story to be just as good as mine," he said of the public-speaking aspect of his business career. "But within a year, the phone stopped ringing for most of them because they didnt apply the same energy to their business that they did to becoming an Olympic gold medalist."
Two decades later, Daggetts phone still rings hes actually had to cut back on his speaking engagements to spend more time with his family because he continually hones his message to provide value to his audiences, which include business groups, individual companies, and sales teams.
And he applies that same formula to his other ventures, knowing that if one stands still, opportunities to advance will be lost.
"A lot of people told me after the Olympics that I had to take advantage of my opportunity while I could, because it wasnt going to last for long," he said. "Every time someone said that to me, I said to myself, Im going to prove you wrong. And I believe I have."
Exercise in Commitment
While the perfect 10 in 1984 is what Daggett will be remembered for, he told BusinessWest that the defining moment in his life came a few years later as he was attempting to return to the Olympics.
While executing a vault at at the World Championships in Rotterdam, Holland in 1987, he shattered his left leg, breaking both the tibia and fibula. The injury was so severe "I looked down and saw the bone sticking out of my leg" that amputation was a real possibility and the talk among doctors wasnt about whether hed compete again, but whether hed walk again.
But nine months later, Daggett was leading the field after two events in the Olympic trials in Salt Lake City. The pain in his leg would eventually force him to withdraw from that event, but merely making it back from that horrible injury to world-class competition was the highlight of his athletic career.
Daggett retells the story of his recovery during many of his motivational speeches, during which he talks about commitment to excellence and the hard work it takes to succeed at anything.
"My talks all vary with the audience and the circumstances," he said. "But there are common threads about teamwork, overcoming adversity, and not letting go of dreams. There are messages there for everyone in business."
Daggetts exploits on the lecture circuit are just part of a multi-faceted enterprise. He also does commentating on both mens and womens gymnastics for NBC, and he is the hands-on owner of his school in Agawam, Tim Daggetts Gold Medal Gymnastics. Hes also co-written a book, a memoir titled Dare to Dream, and coaches a number of young gymnasts, many of whom have enjoyed success at the collegiate level and beyond.
He attacks each of these pursuits with a passion similar to his drive for the gold medal. For his broadcasting exploits, for example, he devotes several hours each week to keeping track of not only the U.S. gymnasts, but those from around the world. The workload will only escalate as the Summer Olympics approach and Daggett must prepare himself to not only comment on what happens on the gym floor, but know and tell each athletes personal story.
Meanwhile, hes at his home office at 7 each morning, and then at his gymnastics school by noon, often to stay well into the evening. Hes also there every Saturday. Daggett has expanded the school twice since he and a partner purchased it in 1990, and hes now exploring plans to franchise the business regionally and perhaps nationally.
"I could always hire someone to run the school, and maybe someday I can," he said. "But I like being there, and I feel I need to be there to make this as successful as it can be."
Daggett, who studied psychology at UCLA while on a gymnastics scholarship, and says his business experience prior to the Olympics was limited to working in the familys music store as a youth, said success in his various endeavors has come the hard way as in gymnastics through work and commitment. Its also a result of making the most of the opportunities that his fame has afforded him.
And those opportunities started coming hours after his performance on the horizontal bar.
Indeed, in the days to follow, Daggett was on every morning news show, and many of the evening talk shows. He never got his face on a Wheaties box, but there were several other opportunities to get in the spotlight and make some money.
"For about four months after the Olympic games I was in at least one city a day, sometimes two or three," he said. "I was doing appearances, television, exhibitions, demonstrations, and motivational talks."
There were some regional and national endorsements and sponsorships, said Daggett, noting that he had contracts at one time or another with Nissan, Coca-Cola, several apparel makers, and some local car dealers. There were so many opportunities, hes actually lost track of them.
"Its embarrassing … I dont even remember some of the products I endorsed, there were so many of them," he said, adding that the intense travel schedule often led to some confusion as well.
Off The Mat
Indeed, a few years after the triumph in Los Angeles, Daggett remembers waking up in a hotel room not knowing what city he was in.
"It was scary; I looked out the window and said to myself, where am I? I had no idea," he said. "I started rifling through my stuff looking for clues that might tell me where I was. Thats when I realized that I still wanted to be a gymnast."
And it was then that he started preparing for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which he thought would be his best, only to incur setbacks that would in many ways inspire his later business success and help him inspire others.
The first came when, while practicing for the 1987 American Cup, he fell 15 feet from the horizontal bar. Landing on his head, he ruptured a disc in his neck and incurred a tremendous amount of nerve damage on his left side. While most neurosurgeons told Daggett his career was over, he found one who thought otherwise and followed his advice. He was in traction for 10 days, followed by aggressive steroid injections and intense physical therapy. Only a few months later, however, he found himself in medal contention in two events after the first day of the World Championships in Rotterdam.
He told BusinessWest that when his feet hit the ground after that fateful vault, he heard a sound like the crack of a rifle shot. In the process of breaking two bones in his left leg, he also severed an artery and lost a life-threatening five pints of blood.
"I knew I suffered a super-serious injury," he recalled. "While I was in the hospital, one of the doctors said to me in broken English, were going to have to operate immediately.
"I said to my trainer, dont let them cut me over here let me get home," he continued. "And he said, then youll lose your leg. So I reconsidered."
After five surgeries to repair the considerable orthopedic and vascular damage, Daggett was back in competition at the Olympic trials. He recalls with great frustration having to withdraw in the second day of that event, but he says his comeback which no one thought was possible yielded the most memorable and special moments in his life, save for his marriage and the birth of his children.
"That whole experience taught me more about life than anything that I had done prior to that," he said. "I used to say that in many ways it is what defines me; now I say that it does in all ways.
"I know what it took to make it to the Olympic games and win a gold medal," he continued. "And I know what it took for me to come back from that injury and make it to Salt Lake City and the comparison is ridiculous."
Daggett knew after Salt Lake City that he was through in gymnastics, but he was really just getting started in business. He went back on the road, keeping a pace similar, if not more grueling, than the one he set after the 84 Olympics.
He developed a one-man gymnastics show often doing six performances a day that he took to malls across the country. Meanwhile, he did exhibitions for Nissan, IBM, Coca-Cola, and an electronics franchise called the Incredible Universe. The work was lucrative, but also exhausting.
Meanwhile, he ramped up his motivational speaking exploits, and was at one point enrolled with 35 different speakers bureaus. He said offers to speak kept coming in because his message, while outwardly about sports, easily translates to the world of business.
Balancing Act
In fact, for some of his motivational speaking engagements, Daggett will borrow a pommel horse from a local gym and actually conduct a short routine for his audience. He says he does so to drive home points about such things as strength, flexibility, balance, change, and critical mass and how they apply to business as much as they do to gymnastics.
This is part of the "program," as he calls it, which also includes video of both his triumphs and tragedies in gymnastics. And by honing that package, Daggett has remained an in-demand speaker earning $7,500 or more for each appearance years after nearly every other member of his Olympic class and most subsequent classes have faded from public view.
"I can show business people how change is important, and how they should think outside the box when it comes to their performance," said Daggett. "One of the reasons Ive been so successful and Im still doing this is that I keep the message relevant; Im very opinionated on being successful and the ways to get there."
But life on the road isnt easy, as he learned in the months just after his Olympic triumph, and Daggett said he knew years ago that even though he could, he didnt want to spend 200 or more days a year away from home.
Thats why he decided to diversify his business interests more than a decade ago and purchase a small gymnastics school in West Springfield called New England Gymnastics. Daggetts name was soon put over the door, and the business was moved to Gold Street in Agawam and a site that was eventually expanded to its present 80,000 square feet.
Daggett said the school serves a number of functions for him personally and professionally. First, it gives him a chance to stay close to gymnastics, something he knew he wanted soon after he officially retired. But it also allows him to stay in this area code, and it gives him what should be a reliable revenue stream for down the road, when his endorsement and speaking work slows down.
The school itself has diversified over the years, adding a martial arts component and some dance to the repertoire, but it is mostly about gymnastics, with more than 1,000 children coming in for lessons each week. And while instructing the young people in proper tumbling techniques, Daggett and his staff are offering life lessons as well.
"As the kids grow through the program, the object for them is to still have fun, but it becomes a lot more about having dedication, making some sacrifices, having commitment, and learning how to have a goal," he said. "We help them, step by step, to accomplish those goals.
"School is important," he continued, "but I firmly believe that many of the tools that our children need to become successful individuals in society can be more easily learned in an environment where play is more prevalent."
For the future, Daggett says he will limit his speaking engagements to a few a month, while continuing to work for NBC. Meanwhile, he says his gym, which is unique in many ways because it is more personal than the huge facilities in some parts of the country and more comprehensive than small, mom-and-pop outfits, could eventually be franchised.
For now, he is focused on keeping his business enterprises diverse, while maintaining the image that he has so carefully crafted.
"My image is who I am," he said, noting that he has turned down a number of opportunities to pitch products locally. "And all these things I talk about when I speak to different groups theyre real. Thats why if I dont think something is a good match for me, then I wont do it."
Sticking the Landing
On the surface, Dare to Dream would appear to be a book about winning an Olympic gold medal. Its not.
Its mostly about what happened after that perfect 10. Its a story about overcoming adversity and finding success after gymnastics. And the best part about that story is that its still being written, said Daggett, who told BusinessWest that he is exploring a number of other entrepreneurial opportunities and has new goals to meet and dreams to dream.
Hes proven to everyone who said the door of opportunity would close quickly on him that he can keep it open but only if he continues to apply himself as he did when going for the gold.
George OBrien can be reached at [email protected]
| Alvarado, Rosa | Horstman, Steffen O. Jones, Gina Marie Kowal, Dennise M. LaFleur, Richard R. | Salgado, Mary Lou Timms, Brenda A. |
| AGAWAM |
| AMHERST |
Since taking the reins at the United Way of the Pioneer Valley early this year, Jim Horne has been working hard to make the agency more visible in the communities it serves. His broad goal is to see the institution evolve from an organization that merely raises money and then distributes it, into one that helps communities identify needs, establish priorities, and set agendas.
Jim Horne says that, historically, the United Way has been an organization known for raising money and then allocating it. It’s also been known as a group that is anywhere and everywhere during the annual fall campaign, but then goes into hibernation when it’s over.
Since he became president and CEO of the United Way of the Pioneer Valley (UWPV) in January, Horne has been working overtime to change both of those long-held perceptions.
He wants the United Way to be known as group that doesn’t just ask for money every September. Rather, he wants it understood that this is an organization actively involved in the cities and towns it serves — one that takes a leadership role in determining where and how investments should be made in area communities.
In other words, he wants the organization to be part of the agenda-setting process in those communities it serves.
Meanwhile, he’s been working to significantly raise the United Way’s profile in those communities, with the goal of familiarizing people with its purpose, and letting people know that when they take part in a YMCA program or join the Girl Scouts, they’re benefiting from United Way-funded agencies, or partners, as they’re now known.
In his first nine months at the helm, Horne, 43, has made visibility a priority — for himself and the United Way as a whole. He’s spoken to every Rotary Club in the region and has been a regular on the chamber of commerce breakfast circuit. But he’s also gone much further in his efforts to get to know the cities and towns in the area and the issues that impact them.
"I want to establish relationships," he explained. "To do that, you have to really know a community, its leaders, and its issues. I’ve spent a lot of time in Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield, Palmer, Monson, and all the other communities we serve; I’m doing a lot of listening, and I’m showing them the face of the United Way."
Horne, who came to Western Mass. after a stint as vice president and COO of the Akron, Ohio-area United Way, told BusinessWest that United Ways across the country are facing a number of challenges today.
For starters, he noted that, while Baby Boomers and those who preceded them generally understand the United Way and the reasons for its existence, the younger generations do not, and they need to be convinced there is still a place for it. "It’s not enough to say we’ve been around since 1918 — that’s not going to cut it," he said. "We need to show people that through our work, we can make the community stronger."
Meanwhile, the business landscape has changed across this region and the entire country. The large corporations that facilitated fundraising efforts for United Way chapters are disappearing from the landscape, replaced by smaller businesses whose employees and managers are much more difficult to reach.
Locally, Horne said, there is a perception that the United Way is a Springfield organization, leaving many in area suburbs with questions about if and how the organization benefits them. At the same time, the local business community’s involvement in the UWPV has declined over the past decade or so, he said, adding that he wants to "re-engage" many business leaders.
Since arriving in January, Horne has been addressing all these issues simultaneously. His first priority has been to make the United Way more visible — 12 months of the year — but he is also working to make sure the organization is heard, not just seen, and that, more importantly, it listens.
The Job at Hand
"Upside potential."
That’s the phrase Horne used to describe the UWPV, and the reason why he chose that organization over a United Way in Michigan that was also vying for his services.
While he didn’t actually use the term, Horne implied that the local organization has been underachieving in recent years — from a fundraising perspective and several others — and he saw an opportunity to achieve profound growth.
"I like challenges," he said, noting that, while the UWPV has been successful in raising millions for the dozens of groups it supports, it lags statistically compared to other United Ways nationwide. For example, the UWPV has 12 ’major gift’ donors ($10,000 and above), while other groups its size average between 30 and 50. Meanwhile, the UWPV has 600 gifts in the $1,000-to-$9,000 range (the group known locally as the "Pillar Society"), while others its size have 800 to 900.
Overall, the UWPV has a rate of participation (those who donate) of about 26%, while the national average is closer to 35%. Over the past several years, fundraising has been flat (at or around the $6 million mark), Horne said, noting that there have been several factors contributing to this, including the sluggishness of the economy, a sharp decline in the number of major employers, and some campaign strategies that haven’t been effective in getting the message out.
Beyond the dollars raised, however, the UWPV has some work to do to become more involved in the communities it serves, he said, and move beyond the roles of fundraiser and check-writer.
"I looked at the two geographic areas that I was considering and what their needs were, and became intrigued by the possibilities in the Springfield area," he said. "I wanted to be part of raising the profile of this United Way."
Horne has been involved with the United Way since 1994, but he likes to say that the relationship began much earlier, when, as a 10-year-old growing up in Bridgeport, Conn., he would venture to the city’s Boys & Girls Club after school while his mother, a single parent, worked.
The club was a beneficiary of United Way funding, but he didn’t know it at the time. He would find that out nearly two decades later, when, as a production analyst for Sikorsky Aircraft, he became a loaned executive for the United Way of Eastern Fairfield County.
Active in the Bridgeport community — he was on the school board for three terms — Horne enjoyed the work as a loaned executive so much he decided in 1994 to make a career change and join the organization. He described it as a difficult decision, but one he has never regretted.
"I loved the work I did at Sikorsky … I enjoyed my assignments there, which included product support for the presidential fleet and being involved with some experimental projects," he said. "When the offer was put in front of me and I was trying to decide which way to go, my vice president at Sikorsky, who was also board chair for the United Way, sat me down and asked me where my passion was, and where I saw myself being the most productive in the future.
"I really enjoyed helping people see the value of supporting the community through philanthropy," he continued. "It was my experience then that a lot of folks didn’t understand fully the work that the United Way was involved with and how that work improved the community. I realized that there was enormous potential to engage the business community and potential donors to support the United Way."
He started in Bridgeport as a campaign division manager, and in two years became executive vice president of that United Way. He left in April 2000 to become vice president of the United Way of Summit County, Ohio, and eventually assumed the title of chief operating officer there.
Summit County is what’s known as a metro-1 United Way — one that exceeds $10 million in fundraising — and Horne was enjoying his work there, but he desired to direct his own United Way. Late last year, he became one of 70 candidates vying for the opportunity to succeed long-time UWPV director Ty Joubert.
Horne has spent his first several months in the region getting to know the communities served by the UWPV, and also setting a course for expanding the organization’s role in the region.
The Buck Stops Here
When asked how to go about improving the UWPV’s fundraising numbers, Horne said that assignment has a number of components. Generally, however, it comes down to two factors: access and education. In other words, the organization needs to get in front of more people, and when it does, it needs to present a strong case for the United Way and its partner organizations.
The first task becomes more complicated in today’s business community, one dominated by small companies rather than large corporations, he said. In years past, the United Way could visit those large employers and make a presentation that would reach hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Today, there are only a handful of companies in that category, while the numbers of sole proprietorships, home businesses, and telecommuters are on the rise.
And in many smaller businesses, time-strapped managers don’t have the hours in the day to offer a lengthy program highlighting the reasons why someone should give generously to the local United Way.
To reach the managers and employees of smaller companies, as well as professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and dentists, the UWPV will rely on modern tools like the Internet and direct mail, said Horne, and it will also make more and better use of volunteers who have connections to those in hard-to-reach groups and can provide access.
"What we know is that people give to people," he continued. "And people give to causes — good causes."
Which brings Horne to the second part of the equation — education. "Once we get access, I feel we have a compelling message," he said. "We can show people that, when they contribute to the United Way, they can make their community stronger."
Horne was hesitant to set hard goals for the UWPV, but he believes the organization can reach the $8 million-to-$10 million mark within the next decade.
"If all things remain constant, I think we can get to that level," he said, adding quickly that he will likely need more support from the business community to get there.
"There are a number of community leaders and business leaders who are actively engaged in improving the quality of life in the Pioneer Valley," Horne told BusinessWest. "One of my goals is to find ways to increase their involvement with the United Way’s agenda and have them become a greater part of our work."
"Looking back at the ’70s and ’80s, we had more involvement from the business community," he continued. "While things have improved somewhat in recent years, we still have a number of opportunities to re-engage."
While working to improve fundraising totals, Horne said he also wants the United Way to play a much larger role in setting priorities for how the funds that are raised are allocated — and he said the two initiatives are in many ways intertwined.
"When we increase the visibility of the United Way, and people see us as a true community partner," he said, "I believe people will donate more and they’ll donate more often."
Horne said the goal for the UWPV is to be part of the agenda-setting process, which is somewhat of a departure from its historical mission, but a necessary evolutionary step if the organization wants younger generations to fully understand its purpose and importance to the community.
"Our current process is to raise money in the campaign and then talk with our community agencies to understand better what programs they’d like for us to invest in," he said. "Part of our new strategy is to continue conversations with those member agencies, but also expand them to other service providers and potential programming partners so that we’re better understanding how to maximize our resources."
Ultimately, the goal is to create partnerships with a broader range of non-profit groups, said Horne, who told BusinessWest the shift is part of a nationwide trend toward moving well beyond fund allocation.
Part of the process of partnering with communities is convincing area residents and business leaders that the UWPV is not a Springfield organization, he said, and to that end, the chapter this year staged five campaign kickoff events, instead of the one program traditionally held in Springfield.
"That’s one of the ways we’re making the campaign more personal," he explained, adding that the UWPV is also encouraging its employees to become more involved in their communities by joining civic and fraternal groups and taking roles with neighborhood organizations, human services agencies, and economic development bodies.
"The more people are involved, the better they can help assess the needs of a community and find ways to address those needs," he said. "That’s part of the process of becoming better partners."
United Front
Horne said it wasn’t until he became a loaned executive that he realized that, as a youth, he was benefiting from programs supported by the United Way.
He told BusinessWest that he doesn’t want people to recognize 20 years after the fact that their lives have been improved thanks in part to the United Way.
Through awareness, visibility, and active involvement in area communities, Horne wants to raise the United Way’s profile. By doing so, he knows he can also raise a few more dollars.
In the wake of the tragic nightclub fire in Rhode Island last winter, most cities and towns in the Commonwealth have become more serious about code enforcement and the broad issue of public safety. Here in Springfield, however, we are apparently going in the opposite direction.
The city’s Building Department is currently rudderless and woefully understaffed. There is no building commissioner per se — the the man who owns that title, Peter Garvey of East Longmeadow, is officially on unpaid leave, but working a full-time job with Barr and Barr Inc., a regional commercial builder, and reportedly trying to figure out what to do with his life. At the same time, an official from the Personnel Department is signing the checks and keeping track of payroll, while the people left in the department can’t begin to keep up with the workload.
Meanwhile, the city’s senior building inspector, Steven Desilets, has been promoted to acting assistant building commissioner, passed over for the top post due to politics, not credentials. What that does is give the city someone who is properly credentialed in a position of quasi-authority — someone who can sign permits and legally conduct inspections. What it doesn’t do is resolve the larger issue confronting the city — a situation where an office critical to public safety and economic development is being run into the ground in the name of cost-cutting and politics.
To be succinct, Springfield needs a full-time building commissioner — not four months from now when the Albano administration thankfully comes to a close, or whenever Garvey decides to end his leave in the private sector — but now. And we urge city officials to take the steps necessary to resolve this matter and give this department leadership.
What’s happening in the Building Department — or not happening, as the case may be — is very important to the business community and to the public at large, for a number of reasons.
For starters, the department is, in effect, City Hall’s liaison to the business community. Anyone who wants to construct a building, put on an addition, add a pool, or install a new bathroom needs permits from the building office to proceed.
Many business owners have seen their projects delayed over the past year because inspections are backlogged and paperwork is getting lost in the shuffle due to a lack of personnel. And when businesses can’t move forward with their projects, they move on to other cities and towns without Springfield’s problems. The city also loses vital revenue when inspections — for which businesses and individuals are charged a fee — are not conducted.
But the larger issue is public safety. The Rhode Island nightclub fire showed just how critical it is to have each and every nightclub, bar, and restaurant inspected regularly for code violations. Springfield has a large stock of older buildings that could become instant death traps. It appears the mayor doesn’t feel it’s an important issue. But this city can’t keep the public safe if it doesn’t have enough people to conduct needed inspections.
Yet, staffing is only one reason why the Building Department is in such disarray. The larger issue is leadership, or a lack thereof.
The department didn’t have much leadership when Garvey was on the job. Nor did he set a good example by misleading city officials and the press about his residence, according to sources (department heads are required to live in the city; he did not). But it’s had no leadership since he took the private-sector job.
It appears the mayor sanctioned Garvey’s leave as a cost-cutting move; one can’t fill a position if it is technically still occupied, and with Garvey on leave, the city can save his salary or use it to keep other people employed. While that might help Springfield with its current budget crunch, it is putting the city in a very dangerous position — one where it is playing with fire, figuratively if not literally.
The Building Department is certainly not the only city department facing difficulties. There have been layoffs across the board, including devastating cuts in the schools and police and fire departments.
But the building office is one of the three pillars of the city’s public safety infrastructure, and it needs a solid foundation — it needs leadership. A police department or fire department can function without a chief, but it shouldn’t. And neither should a department that plays such a critical role in business and economic development.
The city should move immediately to put a qualified, full-time commissioner in the Building Department, and then give that individual the tools needed to get the job done. In short, Albano should stop playing politics with public safety.
Mary Ellen Scott, president of United Personnel Services, has forged a successful career in the challenging staffing industry, a field she joined somewhat reluctantly nearly 20 years ago. She’s also made her mark in the community, taking a lead role with several business and economic development groups.
Like many women, Mary Ellen Scott said her early career path was defined largely by her husband’s professional travels. Manhattan; Teaneck, N.J.; Boston; and Springfield. Those were some of the places where her first husband, Jay Canavan, found management positions at non-profits ranging from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to the Quadrangle. As she followed her husband from city to city, Scott managed to find jobs, she told BusinessWest, but not a career.
But the last time she followed him, however, she did.
That was when Jay, then 51 and in search of work after a five-year stint at the Quadrangle, decided to start his own company, an employment agency, in Hartford. He asked her to join him in that venture, but she told him she already had a job — director of human services at Gemini Corp. in Springfield. She eventually acquiesced, however, and, after the company survived a rocky start, she took the lead role in making it one of the most successful staffing services in the region.
Jay Canavan passed away in 1999, several years after officially retiring from the business. Mary Ellen, who remarried in 2001, continues to grow the company now known as United Personnel Services. The company has three offices — Springfield, Hartford, and Easthampton — and recorded 20% growth last year, in the midst of sluggish economic times that usually pose stern challenges for this industry.
Meanwhile, Scott has taken an increasingly larger role in the community. She is currently president of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, and board member
at the Economic Development Council (EDC), the Springfield Enterprise Center, and Springfield Symphony. She enjoys being active, and is upbeat about the region and its prospects for further development.
In a wide-ranging interview, Scott talked about the process of making the transition from employee to entrepreneur, and the risks and rewards that are part and parcel to that change. She also weighed in on the economy, and the prospects for the Pioneer Valley and the city of Springfield, which has been her home for 25 years.
"We’ve seen some good things happen in this city, but there are lot of challenges ahead," she said, referring to both the economy and the controversies that have damaged the city’s reputation. "There’s lots to do and no money for anything. But Springfield is resilient, and it has a lot going for it."
Work in Progress
Scott says she is asked often about the state of the local economy, especially during trying times like these.
She theorizes that her vocation might have something to do with that; those in the staffing business will often know what’s happening before those in other sectors. Also, her involvement with various business and civic groups helps keep her ear to the ground, and people want to know what she hears.
But she told BusinessWest that, despite all that, her crystal ball doesn’t work better than anyone else’s, and she admits to being puzzled by the current economic slump, which follows some, but not all, of the patterns of traditional downturns.
"Some sectors have really been hit hard, while others don’t seem to be impacted nearly as much," she said. "The economy is down — a look at the skinny help-wanted section in the paper will tell you that — but we’re having a very good year at this company; how do you explain that?"
Canavan has seen a number of economic cycles since she segued into the staffing industry two decades ago. She and her husband started in the booming mid-’80s and rode the wave that defined the end of that decade — expanding the operation into Springfield as they did so. They then toughed out the prolonged recession of the early ’90s, when many companies in that sector did not, and positioned itself to capitalize on a surge in the use of temporary and temp-to-hire workers in the mid- to late ’90s.
"It’s been a bit of a roller coaster," she acknowledged. "But that’s what this business is like. For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed the ride."
How she got on the roller coaster is an intriguing story. As she told BusinessWest, Scott initially rejected her husband’s requests to join his entrepreneurial venture. However, new management at Gemini — which saw things differently than Scott did on many personnel matters — and Jay Canavan’s difficulties with finding the right idividual to help him get the company off the ground eventually led them to team up.
"He couldn’t pay a ton of money, and joining a start-up operation was a risk that many people weren’t willing to take, so he really had a hard time finding the right person," she said. "Eventually, we decided that if we were going to do this, we should do it together, so I gave my notice."
The venture, known then as United Industrial Temporaries, struggled to get off the ground. "We didn’t have an order for three months," she said. "I got a paycheck, but Jay didn’t get one for nine months."
The economy was booming then, with unemployment at 2.3%, and companies were desperate for good help. The problem was establishing a reputation and breaking into the market. "Those were scary times," she recalled. "The phone didn’t ring."
Eventually, it did, however, as some of the larger insurance companies, like Aetna and Travelers, placed some orders. United opened a Springfield office soon thereafter, and that facility provided some cushion for the company when the Hartford financial services sector went through a period of downsizing in the early ’90s.
Scott said she quickly assumed many of the managerial responsibilities from her husband, who eventually retired in 1995. She presided over strong, steady growth and watched the company crack the Inc. 500 list of the country’s fastest-growing companies in 1993 and 1995. Current revenues are approaching $6 million.
Today, a staff of 18 works in the company’s Main Street offices in the former Springfield Five Cents Savings Bank building, where Scott says she acts largely as the company’s public relations person. "I’m the face in the community," she said. "I still do some sales, but mostly I try to promote the company and keep our name visible."
She described the staffing industry as one that is relatively easy to get into — despite her own personal experiences — but one that is much harder to stay in because of the heavy competition and the economy’s wild mood swings.
She said United has done well because of its diversity and also its ability to "go the extra mile," as she put it. "When one side of this business is down, the other seems to pick up."
Canavan described herself as a good delegator who doesn’t micromanage, but does like to challenge employees.
"I like to give people responsibilities — and then I expect them to handle those responsibilities," she said. "I try not to step on anyone’s toes, and I essentially just let people do what they were hired to do. We have a very collegial atmosphere here. I want people to say they enjoy working here; that’s important."
She said she has no real pearls of wisdom for women, other than advice to give their entrepreneurial talents a chance to flourish.
"It’s scary to go from getting a paycheck every week to the situation we faced when we started — when we didn’t know if we’d get a paycheck," she said. "But what makes it scary also makes it fun."
Getting Down to Business
As Scott’s status in the local business community has grown, she has become involved with a growing list of business and civic groups, including the EDC, the symphony, and the Enterprise Center at STCC. She told BusinessWest that she understands that some of the requests for her participation are made with the goal of achieving gender diversity on those boards, but she acknowledged that the pool of women business leaders is not particularly deep, and thus her phone rings often.
Two groups she has become very involved with is the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, and, more recently, the Springfield Chamber — she’s the first woman to be named president of that group — which was created in 1996 and now boasts nearly 900 members.
Scott told BusinessWest she’s been involved for years with the thorny subject of tax classification — she’s one of the few business owners who also lives in the city and thus sees the issue from both sides — and the ongoing effort to bring the commercial rate down, thus making it more attractive to current and prospective businesses.
"That’s just a part of the larger issue of making the city more business-friendly," she said, adding that the Chamber and the Albano administration have made it a priority to not only attract new businesses, but work to retain those already here. "Retention is a very big part of that equation, and it often goes overlooked. Everyone’s focused on bringing new businesses here, but you also have to create an environment that makes companies want to stay."
Meanwhile, she says that perhaps a bigger challenge will be enticing people to live in the city.
"Young people are not opting to move to Springfield, and that’s a big problem," she said, noting that, while a long list of attractive suburbs certainly contributes to the dilemma, the city’s struggling schools and other quality-of-life issues don’t help, either. "Springfield is just not an attractive option for many people.
"I’m not sure how we go about changing that situation," she continued. "But it’s something we all have to work on."
She told BusinessWest that a confluence of recent issues — everything from the economy and the state budget to the controversy enveloping City Hall, to the pending departure of UNICARE and its 800 employees from 1350 Main St. — has created a number of challenges for Springfield that will certainly test its mettle.
"UNICARE’s leaving will have an effect on a lot of businesses downtown, especially the restaurants, bars, and clubs, and even the parking authority," she said. "It’s going to take some time to replace that many workers and fill that much office space, and that’s why we have to keep working to make the city business-friendly."
She said the controversy that continues to swirl around Albano and many current and former members of his administration, won’t help in the regard, but she’s not sure just how much damage the prolonged FBI investigation and the Feds’ almost weekly raids of downtown bars and city agencies will have on the city’s psyche and its economic development efforts.
"There’s a bit of a dark cloud over the city right now," she said, "and that’s too bad in a way, because Mayor Albano has done a lot to revitalize downtown and give it some life."
The Bottom Line
When pressed to comment on the prospects for the local economy, Scott said the region is in what she called a holding pattern.
"People are hesitant to make moves," she said, "because they don’t know what’s around the corner. They’re looking for some sign that things are better, and they’re just not seeing one they can believe in.
"Business owners are waiting for something positive to happen," she continued.
Plenty of positive things have happened to Scott since she arrived in Springfield. Some of her success can be attributed to the whims of the economy and some good fortune, but mostly, she’s made her own luck.
She believes Springfield and the Pioneer Valley can do the same.
"We have a lot to build on here," she said. "But we can’t wait for it to happen — we have to make it happen."
BusinessWest turned some heads last month when we suggested that Springfield Mayor Michael Albano could no longer effectively lead the city in the final months of his term and should thus step aside. We said the ’starting-over’ process should begin now, not next January, when his eight-year tenure comes to an official end, or when he gets another job — a task made more difficult by the specter of a probable indictment.
Some people wondered what a business publication was doing focusing on City Hall and what the mayor is doing or, more to the point, not doing. And some readers must have been confused because, only 16 months before, we were strongly endorsing Mayor Mike over respected challenger Paul Caron.
Well, some things have happened in the past year and a half that have prompted us to reconsider some of those earlier opinions. Summing them all up, we’d call it a betrayal of the city’s residents and the business community. Meanwhile, we believe what happens in any city hall has an important impact on any community’s economic health and well-being. That’s why we reacted as strongly as we did to recent events.
The perception of this city has been damaged to such an extent that the Albano administration has become a source of chaos and embarrassment to both area residents and the business community, not the instrument of progress that an administration should be. The residents and the business owners of Springfield deserve better, and they deserve it now.
You might ask, what should people in business expect from City Hall?
Often, they expect too much, which can be a problem in itself. Indeed, almost any time a business fails or never gets off the ground, the entrepreneur in question will say, ’the city didn’t do anything to help me.’
And while such claims are often an exaggeration and a cop-out, sometimes they are not. Springfield is a good case in point.
Any city or town government can do things to make it easier for businesses to succeed — everything from a small grant or loan to help get a company off the ground; to help with zoning, traffic, or parking; to a tax-incentive plan that makes coming to a community more attractive. And local government can set a tone that makes businesses want to come to a city and stay there. The phrase business-friendly is often overused, but some communities are certainly more friendly than others. Springfield is friendly to a chosen few, friends of the mayor, and that’s wrong.
A municipal government can and should deal with matters in a fair and equitable manner, and that’s what we didn’t see from the Albano administration. Instead, we saw grants, loans, leases, and no-bid contracts — some possibly against state law — go to people with connections to Albano.
We know and understand that a certain amount of graft and favoritism happens in many large cities. But in Springfield it was carried out to a degree that it created a sense of frustration in the business community, a feeling that insiders and power brokers were running the city — and running it into the ground. Businessmen and developers have voted with their feet and located their companies and buildings in other Western Mass. cities and towns rather than hire Albano’s friends as "consultants."
When all is said and done — and as the revelations from the FBI probe have made clear — the record will show that some of those connected to Albano effectively looted Springfield. That’s a strong word, but it fits. They took jobs, those aforementioned grants and loans — some to reputed organized crime members — and sweetheart deals, all with Albano’s approval and, in some cases, with his signature on the agreement.
Even more alarmingly, Albano and his friends stole the city’s reputation and a good deal of the momentum that had been built up from such efforts as the Basketball Hall of Fame, the riverfront, and the downtown entertainment district.
It was this ’looting’ that prompted BusinessWest to step out of its traditional role, to forcefully criticize Albano and his administration, and advocate for moving Springfield forward now.
City Hall can’t do everything for a business, and it cannot, by itself, make a venture work. But a municipal government must be fair and work for all the people — not a chosen few. Because it failed to do so, the Albano administration has failed Springfield miserably.
Easthampton is finally shedding its old mill-town identity in exchange for a new image and commercial dynamic, a hybrid of grit and glitz, with strong hometown flavors. The change has been a long time coming and is the result of a variety of factors, including an emerging arts community, a reinvented government, strong and community-minded business leadership, and real estate assets ranging from recycled factory buildings to picturesque millponds reflecting the stunning escarpment of Mt. Tom.
Twenty-five years ago, local boosters were talking up Easthampton as a diamond in the rough poised for a renaissance like its neighbor, Northampton.
It turns out they were a couple of decades ahead of themselves.
The local business news in the late 1970s and early 1980s had mainly to do with factory closings and layoffs and halting attempts to spruce up a crumbling downtown. Still, to give the enthusiasts credit, they had, even then, some grounds for optimism.
The vast, previously abandoned factory complex on Cottage Street in the heart of the town, facing onto Nashawannuck Pond — Easthampton’s scenic crown jewel — had been taken over by Riverside Industries Inc., a non-profit agency serving the developmentally disabled. With prescient entrepreneurial spirit and skill, Riverside was rapidly bringing the building back to productive life with a vibrant, unique mixture of enterprises: its own collection of offices and program space and piecework assembly workshops, plus chunks of cavernous space it rented out to independent craftspeople who were converting the raw real estate into studios and workshops.
So the seeds of change had been sown. But that change was slow to catch on. The blossoming of One Cottage Street for years seemed to be a kind of hothouse phenomenon, little noticed outside the building; just this year Riverside has hired a community development director to actively promote itself. It wouldn’t be until the turn of the millennium that Easthampton convincingly started to turn the corner.
As late as the mid-’90s, the downtown’s four main commercial streets had a combined 30% vacancy rate, while a million square feet of traditional, red-brick industrial space was going begging, according to city planner Stuart B. Beckley, who arrived on the scene in 1989.
That was the nadir. The trend since has been one of dramatic recovery. The numbers have caught up with the hopeful rhetoric. Today, the downtown retail vacancy rate is down to 5%, and more than a half-million square feet of formerly vacant factory space has either been converted to business and residential use or is being actively developed, according to Beckley.
New independent shops, galleries, restaurants, and entertainment venues have cropped up on Cottage and Union streets. Existing, family-owned retail enterprises like Manchester’s Hardware and Village Pizza on Union Street have undertaken major downtown building projects. Manchester’s has just torn down a derelict furniture store and built a new addition in its stead to house a new equipment-leasing division. The city’s surviving manufacturing enterprises, concentrated now in modern, single-story plants in the outlying industrial areas, seem to be thriving, and, in the case of Tubed Products, the October Co., and Liebmann Optical Co., among others, investing in new or improved facilities is paying off.
BusinessWest looks this month at the remaking of Easthampton, and what the future holds for this community on the other side of the mountain.
A Work of Art
Unquestionably the single most important development in the town since One Cottage Street, which served as its original inspiration, has been the continuing transformation of the massive former Stanhome factory on Pleasant Street into a multi-use commercial and residential ’community’ called Eastworks (see related story, page 22). Eastworks has brought an important new wave of entrepreneurs and artists into town, many to live as well as to work. They in turn have been integral to the revitalization of the downtown, becoming customers for food, services, and hardware, as well as patrons of new restaurants.
Two other projects involving high-profile properties, while far smaller in scope and general impact than Eastworks, have been just as important as symbolic affirmations of the town’s new direction, according to Mayor Michael Tautznik, who calls them "investments of hope in the future of the community."
Silas Kopf, a nationally known master of marquetry (the art of decorative wood inlay) who was among the first group of craftspeople to move into One Cottage Street, bought the former fire station at 84 Union St. for $230,000. Plowing into it multiples of that sum he doesn’t wish to reveal, he has had it completely renovated into a spacious first-floor studio and showroom/office, and second-floor apartments.
Almost simultaneous with Kopf’s undertaking, Jo Roessler and Nora Kalina, owners of Nojo Design, formerly tenants in Eastworks, bought the derelict former X-rated Majestic Theater on Cottage Street, the downtown’s most embarrassing liability, and converted it into another high-end woodworking shop and showroom.
"Silas has done a wonderful job with the fire station. It’s exactly what I wanted there, from the point of view that it’s an interested business person in the community who’s making an investment in a very vital piece of property," said Tautznik. "More important than what’s going on inside the building is what the investment means. It represents a lot of hope in the future of the town and the belief that property values will continue to increase. We continue to be impressed by people who make those kinds of investments."
As a result of the progress that’s been made, Easthampton in 2003 is finally starting to deal with "problems" that, 15 years ago, it only dreamed of having. These include congestion, insufficient downtown parking, and lack of vacant industrial space, notes Thomas W. Brown, vice president for retail banking at Easthampton Savings Bank and president of the town’s Economic and Industrial Development Commission.
"The visible proof of a revitalization in the city today is Cottage Street; if you drove through there two or three years ago, you would have found vacant storefronts and no issues with parking," he said. "I remember getting together with merchants back then, and they said, ’we’ve got a parking problem,’ and I would say, ’no, we wish we had a parking problem.’
"Well, today we do have a parking problem. It’s real. Fortunately, we have a municipal parking lot being built on Cottage Street. Try to find an empty storefront in that area today; you’d be hard-pressed."
Among the catalysts for revitalization in Easthampton cited by Brown, Tautznik, and others are:
ï the adoption of a mayor/council form of government, which has proven more efficient and more responsive than a volunteer selectboard;
ï the municipality’s success, beginning in the late ’90s after almost a decade of drought, in landing key state and federal grants targeted to economic development;
ï the strong local presence of the non-profit, Northampton-based Valley Community Development Corp., which, funded with $200,000 in grants from the city, staffs a storefront on Cottage Street providing assistance to small, startup businesses;
ï ’spillover’ from nearby Northamp-ton’s growing regional and national reputation as a magnet for young professionals and creative entrepreneurs;
ï plenty of flexible, upper-story, former factory space at an affordable price;
ï the emergence of the arts in particular, and small independent businesses in general, as an ’economic engine’ in the community; and
ï the town’s fabled hometown spirit, reflected in such organizations as an Economic and Industrial Development Commission, the Chamber of Commerce, and Cottage Street Stations (a grassroots merchants group), which have worked hard to market Easthampton, provide a variety of business services, and physically upgrade downtown commercial districts.
The community still has plenty of its rough edge left. It remains a blue-collar town and proud to be unpretentious and community-minded, says Michael Garjian, a resident, indefatigable promoter of Easthampton, and small-business director for the Valley CDC. He can count numerous new enterprises in town, including the non-profit Flywheel Arts Collective on Holyoke Street and the Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton on Union Street, among his clients.
"Easthampton is all about community," he said. "It’s what makes this a great city. It’s a blue-collar city … the sense of community in this town is strong."
Look to the Future
That the gritty old town is giving way, nevertheless, to some kind of hybrid of the old and the new is evident on Cottage Street at noontime on the first really balmy day of spring in mid-April. There hasn’t been energy and bustle like this since the heyday of the mills, oldtimers say.
The street is swarming with pedestrians, including fishermen who’ve spent the morning angling in the pond, school children who’ve been let out early for the day, and a variety of workers enjoying a lunch break. The latter include laborers who are constructing a long-awaited new municipal parking lot on Cottage Street and a number of people who work at One Cottage Street.
Pedestrian traffic is good news for the shops on Cottage Street, including Carl Charrette’s Sunrise Pastry Shop at 42 Cottage St. and, two doors down — just opened in April — his Sunrise Sweetie’s, an old-fashioned candy shop and soda fountain.
The bake shop is full this day; customers are lined up in rows three deep at the counter to place their take-out orders for homemade soup and sandwiches. Two doors down, youngsters are streaming into Sunrise Sweetie’s. Shiny metal lids chime as the kids, scampering down the polished wooden aisles, open and peer into some of the 300 glass candy jars laid out in gleaming, inviting rows. A couple of adult customers peruse a glass case containing the chocolates that are made in the large commercial kitchens that Charrette constructed in the basement of the building. He employs 11 people among the two retail establishments and his wholesale business.
Charrette says he’s fortunate that his retail businesses are perking along just when his wholesale trade, due to the sluggish general economy, has fallen off steeply.
He acknowledges he has reason to be grateful, now more than ever, that three-plus years ago, his landlord, Mai Stoddard, "cut me a deal to get me here."
Stoddard, who is a native of Estonia, is a longtime local travel agent and Realtor who owns the building where Charrette’s shops are located, as well as being the proprietor of the Nashawannuck Gallery at 38 Cottage St., which she launched five years ago in the storefront between Charrette’s two shops.
Before Stoddard and Charrette met, he was operating his wholesale-only bakery from a rented barn on the edge of town on Park Hill. Stoddard was looking for a solid, stable business to take root on the street and be a good companion business to her own. She was tired of renting to fly-by-night tenants who "would paint the places purple, then leave town after a half a year, owing me money," as she put it. To lure Charrette, she offered to let him occupy the space at 42 Cottage St. rent-free for six months and walk away after that if he chose, with no further obligation.
This was not a case of altruism on her part, but a practical decision aimed at furthering the "revitalization of the street," and thus strengthening her real estate investment over the long haul, Stoddard explains. To get good, reliable tenants to rent upstairs, something she’d had trouble doing, she needed to have viable businesses downstairs, she told BusinessWest.
"Good business decisions don’t always translate immediately into money," Stoddard noted. Her gallery, for example, isn’t making her money, she said, but it is paying off in a larger sense, she believes, by helping to change the image of Easthamp-ton and put it on the map as a haven for artisans and craftspeople, and a destination for their customers.
As the first shop in town to carry high-end fine arts and craft objects made by the artisans next door at One Cottage Street, the gallery "tapped into a real strength of the community,’’ she said. The gallery also has served as a venue for a variety of special community events, including the annual wine-tasting party put on as a fundraiser by Cottage Street Stations at Nasha-wannuck Square, a merchants group of which she and Charrette are active members. Cottage Street Stations is focused on making physical streetscape improvements to the Cottage Street area.
Road to Recovery
It’s one of her business maxims, Stoddard says, that — whether growing a business or growing a prosperous community — "sometimes it’s more important to look good than to feel good."
These days, Easthampton is doing both.
The renaissance predicted a quarter-century ago has been unfashionably late, but it was well worth the wait.
These certainly haven’t been the best of times for the capital of Western Mass.
Indeed, just reading the newspaper these days can be a depressing exercise. Between reading about budget cuts, who’s been arraigned, and who’s not running for mayor, one might get the opinion that this city is paralyzed and devoid of hope.
It isn’t.
OK, maybe it is temporarily paralyzed while people in City Hall, the Mass. Career Development Institute, the Springfield Housing Authority, and just about every other agency in the city wait to see who gets indicted next. Meanwhile, the budget news isn’t good, and the general feeling that things will get worse before they get better is keeping many people out of the mayoral race.
But there’s no reason to give up hope.
As we’ve said many times, there are some good things happening in the Pioneer Valley, and especially Springfield. But right now, they’re being overshadowed by a war in Iraq, uproar over Gov. Romney’s various efforts to close the state’s budget gap, and a seemingly endless run of embarrassing stories about officials abusing their authority and wasting the taxpayers’ money. The latest allegations concerning Gerald Phillips and his management of the Mass. Career Development Institute are particularly disturbing.
And if it seems that many in City Hall and various economic development agencies are letting the events of the day not to mention the question of who will be the next mayor get in the way of progress Ö well, they probably are.
That’s why this is a time when the city desperately needs some leadership and we’re not talking about the next mayor. We’re talking about this one.
Mike Albano has done too much for the city over the past seven years to spend his last 11 months in office trying to keep anything else bad from happening which seems to be his MO right now. He has to pump some resolve into City Hall departments, especially those charged with economic development.
We know there’s a war and a recession on and neither of those are good for business but right now, it seems like economic development in this city is confined to waiting and hoping for someone to come along and develop the York Street Jail, the Gemini building, or the Technical High School property. That’s not economic development that’s crossing your fingers.
Now is the time when the city should be putting the next phase of riverfront development on the drawing board and looking ahead to the time when the war and the recession are over. Meanwhile, as we’ve said
before, some work needs to be done to make this city more business-friendly, and the planning department would be a good place to start. More often than not, roadblocks are put in the way of developers and would-be entrepreneurs, not ’welcome-to-Springfield’ signs.
While addressing economic development initiatives, Albano should also take the lead in efforts to restore confidence in the city. This is not a job that can wait for the next person to take over the corner office.
At the moment, Albano seems content to let the FBI do the digging and for his city solicitor to do the talking for his administration. Neither strategy inspires much confidence.
When Albano announced in early February that he would not be seeking a fifth term, we became worried not for him, but for the city.
Despite the mayor’s assertions to the contrary, lame ducks are not good for any community. And we’re not talking about any crusade against Romney’s budget plan and what it might do to cities and towns we’re talking about the day-to-day operation of Springfield.
Eleven months is too long a period to wait for the next leader of a city, too long a time to put things off until the next administration takes over, and much too long a stretch during which to operate in neutral and leave the hard decisions for the next person. Albano needs to act now to instill some enthusiasm in a city hall that is clearly in a funk. He also needs to know that his legacy is on the line and what he does before he departs could make all the difference.
Come next January or before that, if an employment opportunity should arise as many are predicting Albano will depart City Hall and try to convince people that he left the city better than he found it. For him to say that, he still has some work to do.
New England’s largest theme park has room to grow, as evidenced by this year’s major expansion of its water park. Times are good all around, the park’s general manager says, and not just for the company. Agawam is reaping greater tax revenues from Six Flags than ever before, while the park has proven to be a major asset for the region’s increasing emphasis on tourism.
Ron Sevart climbed to the top of a waterslide tower and pointed to the ground below. He then pointed in another direction, and then another.
If he was trying to demonstrate the scope of the newest project at Six Flags New England, a massive expansion of the water park, it worked. The expansion wraps around the existing water area, adding nine slides, a second wave pool, vastly expanded deck space, and a new entrance from Main Street. The end result? Twice as much room for water recreation.
"It was already the largest water park in New England," said Sevart, the park’s general manager. "Now there’s a lot more space."
When it comes to park arithmetic, however, Sevart isn’t content to stop at the doubling of the water park. He also likes to talk in multiples of 10 that is, the fact that Six Flags brings in about 10 times the tax revenues for Agawam that Riverside Park did eight years ago, an increase from about $240,000 to an anticipated $2.4 million this year.
In effect, entering its fourth year as a Six Flags park having added attractions in each of those years the facility is enjoying a better relationship with its neighbors and its town than ever before, Sevart said, and that’s crucial, given that the coming years will bring even more physical growth to New England’s largest amusement park.
Meanwhile, the tourism efforts along Springfield’s riverfront and across the Pioneer Valley offer an opportunity for the park to partner with other organizations in promoting the entire region an effort that promises to be beneficial to the individual attractions.
Six Flags is indeed making a splash one that Sevart thinks you don’t have to get wet to notice.
Water, Water Everywhere
Those who do want to get wet, however, need to look no further than Hurricane Harbor, the new name of the water park originally dubbed Island Kingdom. The new name, said Sevart, is one used throughout the Six Flags brand for water parks that reach a certain size; the only three others are in New Jersey, California, and Texas.
The expansion which cost the company around $8 million doubles the water park’s size, adding more than 10 new attractions, such as the Tornado, a funnel-shaped tube that ’flushes’ riders into the pool below, the first slide of its kind in the world.
In the center of the new wave pool is Hurricane Falls, which features six body slides, and nearby are Zooma Falls and Geronimo Falls, both of which use ’cloverleaf’ rafts in which three or four guests can ride together. Looking down at the sprawling construction from the top of an existing set of waterslides, Sevart said the park is accustomed to major changes.
"The transition from Island Kingdom to Hurricane Harbor sort of mirrors our transition from Riverside Park to Six Flags," he said. "In each case, you can see the effect of the capital investment."
Access to the water park is still free with park admission, and Sevart said the major expansion is meant to give guests something new and hopefully make them repeat customers.
"We’d like to increase attendance," he said, recognizing that wet weather in each of the past two summers has hindered those efforts to some extent. "With this facility, people can experience even more, and at the end of the day, they’ll want to come back again."
A new park entrance is being constructed at the south end, beside Hurricane Harbor, but that doesn’t mark the end of the line for physical growth. With plenty of unused land owned by Six Flags south of the existing park including parking space on the west side of Main Street that stretches to Connecticut Sevart said the company is by no means done with its expansion plans.
The question arises, of course, as to how big is too big, especially with a park that straddles a riverway. Unlike some theme parks such as the Disney parks in Florida which are built in a circular pattern, the Agawam facility is more of a straight line, requiring a longer walk to hit every attraction.
Sevart suggested that some type of people-mover ride, whether a chair lift, a train, or something similar, might be required if the park expands any more to the south. But that ride would be an attraction in itself, he added, asking, "who wouldn’t want to ride a train?"
Besides, he said, some areas of the park, particularly at each end, already form walking loops, and any design for expansion would have to take into consideration the most efficient foot-traffic pattern to save visitors time.
Speaking of saving time, the park’s Fast Lane service, a reservation system for the busiest rides, was a big success after its launch last spring, Sevart said, even though it posed an additional cost to park visitors.
"Time is more important than money for visitors at that point. Once people are here, they want to experience as much as they can without waiting in long lines," he said. "It’s about quality time with family. That’s what we’re selling, and that’s important."
Indeed, Fast Lane was an idea brought about by park visitors’ main concern, which was wasting too much time waiting in line, he added. Another addition last year, the floorless roller coaster Batman: the Dark Knight, alleviated the line issue even more by giving the park another marquee attraction to siphon people away from other long-wait rides, like the hugely popular Superman: Ride of Steel.
In fact, wait times and park traffic in general are a key concern for any facility, which is why Six Flags tries to push visitors to midweek dates with bargain prices.
Sevart said he knows of people with season passes which don’t cost much more than the price of one admission who arrive first thing in the morning, ride Superman once or twice, and leave. Others like to show up on the spur of the moment after a rainstorm.
"If I didn’t work for the park," he laughed, "I’d get a season pass and come when it isn’t busy."
Hot Property
But weekend attendance and ticket sales in general have been steadily on the rise, he said, which is why the Six Flags corporation continues to invest capital in the New England park, which it sees as a growth property, between its popularity and its expansion possibilities. The $8 million water park project comes on the heels of another $8 million in new attractions in 2002, and more than $50 million in the past four years.
"We’re seen as a park that’s experiencing growth, and we’re fortunate to be part of a company that invests in parks that are successful," Sevart said. "We’re competing on an ongoing basis with the other parks for capital investment."
And the park is succeeding even when measured against Six Flags parks in warmer climes that are able to stay open more than six months a year. However, Sevart said, it’s not a huge disadvantage because the high season of most amusement parks corresponds to summer vacation for students, which is why Six Flags parks are typically open only on weekends until school lets out in June.
A more important consideration in Western Mass. is how the park complements and in some ways spearheads a developing tourism industry in the region, characterized by a number of driving destinations, from the new Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield to Yankee Candle in South Deerfield.
Park management sees an opportunity in those attractions, not competition. That’s why Six Flags has teamed up with the Hall of Fame on marketing materials that promote educational programs at each facility, such as a student ’physics day’ at Six Flags. Sevart is aware of how hotels, such as the successful new Hilton Garden Inn bordering the Hall, are doing, and he’s encouraged.
"The attractions are working together," Sevart said. "We know what’s going on in each other’s business."
The town of Agawam is certainly aware of Six Flags’ business side, he added, considering that the tax revenue has exploded in the past decade, which helps to keep down residential taxes. In addition, the park pays for the town’s police and fire services itself this on top of a recent $9 million investment in parking and development of a workable traffic plan.
Meanwhile, Sevart talks to the facility’s immediate Main Street neighbors a few times a year and sends them newsletters to keep them apprised of new developments a necessary part of life when running such a sprawling operation 145 days a year. "I’m finding that it’s the best relationship we’ve ever had with the town," he said.
Exciting Ride
That relationship will be a plus as the park looks to further expansion. It has been open about those plans and aggressive so far in bringing something new to the banks of the Connecticut River.
From his office, Sevart can look directly down on the front corridor of the park, which stretches from the front gate and the classic carousel past the old Thunderbolt roller coaster, now one of eight coasters on the grounds.
Because of those attractions and others, that pathway certainly retains some of the old-style feel of Riverside Park. But now, there’s something new being added every year, and the success of those ventures can be measured simply with a look out the window. "I can tell what kind of day we’re having by how crowded that walkway is," Sevart said.
Similarly, he can tell what kind of year it’s been by what the Six Flags corporation has in the pipeline. And by all accounts, the old amusement park on the riverside in Agawam still has plenty of growing to do.
