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East Longmeadow Is on the Road to Progress

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The infamous rotary in East Longmeadow, as seen in this Google Earth image, with its seven converging streets.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

The infamous rotary in East Longmeadow, as seen in this Google Earth image, with its seven converging streets.

The infamous rotary in East Longmeadow, as seen in this Google Earth image, with its seven converging streets.

Tom Christensen says most East Longmeadow residents have learned to live with — and drive through — the infamous rotary in the center of town.

And some even take a small bit of pride in that it once owned a line in the Guinness Book of World Records for having seven converging streets, several of which carry heavy volumes of traffic, with no traffic lights, making it — unofficially, of course — the most dangerous intersection in the world. The rotary has been featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for the same reason.

“We seem to wear this Ripley’s Believe It or Not! as a badge of honor, but I believe that list is for things that shouldn’t exist in nature,” said Christensen, town manager since 2023 and, before that, deputy director of Public Works. “It’s one of the most inefficient intersections ever devised, and while, at some point, it wasn’t so cumbersome due to the number of cars — and it wasn’t even cars at the beginning — now, with the traffic we have … we need to do something.”

He’s not alone in this thinking, which helps explain why, as the town makes progress on several different fronts — from ongoing construction of a new high school to a new fiber optic network to an emerging blueprint for development in the town’s center — there is renewed interest in trying to fix this seemingly most difficult and stubborn of problems.

Indeed, the rotary has been studied, and studied, and studied some more, said Christensen, adding that there is building momentum for finally finding a practical, affordable solution.

“There’s a lot of logistics and a lot of money, but for the health of the community and the future of the community, we have to do something to make this intersection more efficient.”

It won’t come tomorrow, and will likely take 10 to 15 years, he said, but a fix involving a reduction in the number of streets converging on the rotary — maybe to four — is in the earliest of stages.

“We want to take a look at reimagining this intersection. Obviously, it handles all area traffic, not just East Longmeadow traffic, and we need to figure out how to make it more efficient,” he said. “We have this traffic problem that expands out from the hub, but it all starts in the center, where everything grinds to a halt at least a few times a day.”

As for those other projects mentioned above, most are much further along, especially the high school, which is on track to open for the start of school next September.

The new school and adjoining natatorium (which will be open to the public), with a combined price tag of nearly $200 million, will make one of the region’s more attractive communities to live and own a business even more so, said Tanzi Cannon-Eckerle, who owns two businesses in town, a law firm and a craft brewery.

She noted that a modern high school (the current structure opened in 1960) is one of the few missing pieces in a town that boasts a large industrial park, a strong and diverse business community, attractive neighborhoods, and land for new development.

“If you don’t have a fairly new high school, are you going to lose residents to the next town?” she asked rhetorically. “Maybe, maybe not, but it’s good to keep up with the latest technology; this new high school is a great asset for the community.”

Tom Christensen says that, while a fix for the rotary is 10 to 15 years away, more immediate progress is evident on many fronts in town.

Tom Christensen says that, while a fix for the rotary is 10 to 15 years away, more immediate progress is evident on many fronts in town.

Another missing piece, if you will, is a solution for the eyesore that is the long-dormant site of the former Package Machinery manufacturing plant and warehouse on Chestnut Street.

Developers who had proposed a 560,000-square-foot warehouse, a plan that met with considerable opposition from abutters and was ultimately rejected by the Planning Board, recently submitted new plans calling for four warehouses totaling roughly 450,000 square feet.

That plan is still before the Planning Board, said Christensen, adding that the area in question is considered part of the town’s industrial garden park zone — with that section of Chestnut Street being its northern border — and warehouses are therefore a permitted use.

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the many storylines that are, like the roads in the center of town, converging.

 

Round About

As he talked about the town’s rotary, Christensen acknowledged it’s a complicated engineering challenge and a problem that has defied a solution for several generations of residents.

Locals have gotten used to it, but are still put off by it, he said, adding that, for non-locals, it can be harrowing.

“I have people come to visit, and they come to my house, and their face is all white,” he said. “And they’re like … ‘you have to yield in that intersection?’ I tell them that conventional wisdom says they have the right of way, but not in our town.”

“It would be great to have that area cleared up in the form of a new development in any form, and get the property back on the tax rolls for the community. It’s hard to drive by that every day and see a derelict property of that size.”

The problem won’t fix itself, and it will only get worse as the town continues to grow and, hopefully, add more jobs, Christensen noted, adding that advances in intersection and rotary design could yield a solution.

“Many studies have been done over the years, and the design parameters were too excessive — we’d have to do some takings and knock down buildings,” he said, referring to the area around the current rotary and the size of a circle needed to accommodate seven streets. “Now, all over the region, they’re popping in rotaries and intersections that you didn’t think were feasible.

“There would be some combination of reconfiguring to a traditional circle, with only four roads coming into it,” he said of the likely fix. “The latest idea is to sort of dog-ear some of these streets into other streets before they got to the rotary by way of a stop sign; we have to figure out some way to get some of those entrances out of the circle to make it work.”

East Longmeadow at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1894
Population: 16,430
Area: 13.0 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $19.28
Commercial Tax Rate: $19.28
Median Household Income: $62,680
Median Family Income: $70,571
Type of Government: Town Council, Town Manager
Largest Employers: Lenox; Cartamundi; CareOne at Redstone; East Longmeadow Skilled Nursing Center
* Latest information available

As he noted, this will be a lengthy process, and a solution with a steep price tag — at least $10 million, by his estimate.

“It takes a long time to even come up with a schematic; it’s going to take a long time to design, and then to come with the funding for this or for us to get on a list with MassDOT is going to take some time,” he said. “There’s a lot of logistics and a lot of money, but for the health of the community and the future of the community, we have to do something to make this intersection more efficient.”

While that project plays itself out into the next decade, there is progress on other fronts, and potential progress (depending on one’s point of view) with others.

The latter is certainly true with 330 Chestnut St., an address where industrially zoned land and residential neighborhoods abut.

The public hearing process on the newest proposal, which has included questions on everything from traffic volume to noise and pollution to whether trucks can and should navigate nearby intersections, is continuing, said Christensen, adding that the area has been an eyesore for decades now.

“It was a great idea when the town decided to move all of its industry into that corner of town in the form of the industrial garden park, but naturally, there are places it abuts that are residential,” he said. “You have to work hard to make sure that the impact is not great on any of the surrounding areas.

“It would be great to have that area cleared up in the form of a new development in any form, and get the property back on the tax rolls for the community,” he went on. “It’s hard to drive by that every day and see a derelict property of that size.”

 

New School Thinking

Meanwhile, crews are keeping to an aggressive timetable for the new high school, he noted, adding that the project also includes not only the natatorium, but new athletic fields, tennis courts, and improvements to the football stadium area.

“There’s obvious excitement in the community for the new school — it’s a glorious campus,” said Christensen, who graduated from ELHS in 1997 and brings that perspective to the project. “It’s really exciting on so many levels, obviously for the school system, but also for the community to have this wonderful new space.”

And as that project moves forward, the town is also working toward creating a center town district and bylaws for development in that area.

A $22,000 grant from the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs will be used to hire a consultant to help with the planning of the district, said Christensen, adding that the Town Council has voted not to create the district under the state’s Chapter 40R regulations, which would make the town eligible for state funding, but also bind it to meet specific requirements for housing, including affordable housing.

“The community decided it didn’t want to be beholden to the state, so we have decided to create our own district with our own guidelines, free of any 40R requirements,” he noted. “Depending on how the final parameters of how our bylaw shake out, it could have the parameters of 40R; it just won’t be eligible for that reimbursement to the developer and/or town, because it won’t carry that designation.”

Elaborating, Christensen said that, with all industry moved to the southwest corner of town, several properties in the town center, including the former Carlin Combustion site on Maple Street, could be redeveloped for other uses, including housing. And the development community has interest in that area for that purpose.

The next step in the process is likely to be Planning Board public hearings on the district, he said, adding that he is expecting “robust conversations in a public setting” about what residents want to see regarding density, building heights, and other matters.

“We’re looking at a comprehensive study on not only what the town can handle, but what developers are willing to build,” he went on. “We want to find that happy medium so the bylaws are feasible for all.”

As that project plays out, the community is proceeding with plans to address the lack of broadband competition by building a town-owned fiber optic project with Whip City Fiber, the rapidly growing broadband arm of Westfield Gas & Electric.

“We have a design done, and we’re working with the utilities to get their make-ready costs so that we can formulate a plan on how to roll out this initiative, which we’re really excited about,” Christensen said. “Currently, the town is only served by Spectrum, and residents have long been calling for some competition in town.

“It’s a long process, and a lot of infrastructure has to be put in place,” he went on, adding that the project gives the town the ability to improve services to residents while also generating revenue, which can be put back into the community.

It’s a community that is business-friendly and does a good job of balancing business growth with quality of life for residents, said Cannon-Eckerle, whose craft brewery, Brew Practitioners, is celebrating 10 years.

“They do a really good job of asking questions and doing all the legwork up front,” she said of the Planning Board, Town Council, and other panels that consider plans from businesses. “But then, they take the time to take in the concerns of the residents; they do a very good job of listening to both sides. East Longmeadow does a good job of doing it by the book.”

Aaron Vega to Helm Western Massachusetts EDC as It Writes Its Next Chapter

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Aaron Vega
Features Special Coverage

Taking the Lead

Aaron Vega

Aaron Vega

As Aaron Vega was reading last spring’s announcement that Rick Sullivan would be leaving his post as president of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council (EDC) at the end of this year, he was already thinking that his various skill sets and this high-profile job were a good match — and that this was his next logical career challenge.

“The path that I’m on in economic development and municipal work … there are only a few higher-level jobs in this area — if you want to stay in Western Mass. and care about Western Mass. — and this one of them,” he explained. “And they don’t come along very often, so I decided early on that I should throw my hat in the ring.”

And he wasn’t alone in that thinking.

“I saw Mayor [Joshua] Garcia not long after, and he said, ‘you’re applying for this job, right?’” recalled Vega, referring to Holyoke’s chief executive, beside whom he’s been working for the past several years as director of Planning and Economic Development for the city. “He knew that this was a good fit.”

“The EDC is a connector and a convener.”

Vega did go for it, and, eventually, several teams of interviewers agreed that there was indeed a good match between this job’s demands and Vega’s diverse résumé, which also includes everything from entrepreneurship — he was a freelance film editor and then a yoga studio owner — to two terms as a Holyoke city councilor and then four terms as a state representative.

Thus, he ultimately prevailed in a lengthy, national search, and will take the helm on Jan. 2. Before then, and even moreso after, he said he’ll doing a lot of listening — to EDC board members, mayors, business owners, property owners, developers, and area economic development leaders.

The plan is to take what he’s heard and use his vast experience to blueprint what will be the next chapter for the EDC, a membership-based organization formed roughly 30 years ago with a broad charge of making the 413 more competitive, taking a more regional approach to economic development, and creating a stronger voice for this area statewide.

While Vega will develop a more formal set of goals and priorities in the months and years to come, he told BusinessWest he has some initial thoughts.

“We have not done a good job of marketing Western Mass.”

They include everything from creating regular, industry-based roundtables — similar to the ones he staged in Holyoke and that many attendees, including Sullivan, thought should be regional in nature — to more aggressive efforts to tell the region’s story and market the 413.

Not with newspaper and television ads, necessarily, he said, although that might be part of the equation, but through a multi-dimensional strategy that includes having a stronger presence in regional and even national gatherings, such as the Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, which he attended several times as a Holyoke official.

“The last one was in St. Louis, and the one before that was in Chicago,” he said, adding that communities across the country gather to hear strategies about addressing vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties. “You hear these presentations from Chicago, Detroit, big cities and small towns, on how to reactivate these spaces. I’ve been to these conferences on vacant buildings and transportation — there’s so much networking going on at these events, and we need to be out there.”

Aaron Vega (right), seen here with Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia, says the region needs to do a better job of promoting itself and its many assets.

Aaron Vega (right), seen here with Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia, says the region needs to do a better job of promoting itself and its many assets.

Meanwhile, he said another priority is to work with area cities and towns to create more of the shovel-ready land that developers are increasingly demanding.

Still another priority is to increase awareness within the local business community of what the EDC is, how it functions, and what role it can play, if any, with the many pressing issues in this region.

“The EDC is a connector and a convener,” he said, settling on those two words to describe the agency, adding that he wants to put even more emphasis on regional collaboration on issues such as housing and east-west rail.

 

Pulling on the Same Rope

As noted near the top, Vega spent several years doing freelance film editing work for creators that included Ken Burns and his eight-part series on the history of jazz.

One project Vega worked on was “Race to the Moon,” an American Experience episode that told the story of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, in late 1968. He referenced it as he talked about his approach to his new job, problem solving in general, and one question during one of his final interviews (concerning policies relating to airports) that he didn’t have an answer to.

“Every single challenge they had putting together those Apollo missions … when they would encounter a new obstacle or challenge, they would bring in a person who could fix it — they kept expanding their team,” he explained. “If I don’t know how to do something, let’s bring in the person who does.

“If we do our job in Western Mass. of bringing in these companies that are coming out of UMass and elsewhere and they grow here and we create new housing opportunities … people are going to take the train to come out here to work.”

“If a group of people can come together and put us on the moon, a group of people in Western Mass. who are smart and have all these abilities can come together and figure out what we need to get done,” he went on, adding that this will be the organization’s mindset moving forward.

Overall, Vega has a broad, diverse background working in many different settings to call on as he approaches his next challenge.

Indeed, while editing films, he also opened his own small business, Vega Yoga & Movement Arts, operating it for more than 15 years. And in 2010 (the year he became one of BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty honorees), the Holyoke native won an at-large seat on the Holyoke City Council, eventually serving two terms.

He then moved from City Hall to the State House, capturing the first of four two-year terms in 2013, before returning to Holyoke to become director of the Planning and Economic Development Office.

Vega told BusinessWest that, while each career stop provided invaluable experience that will help him with his latest career challenge, that is especially true of his time in Holyoke.

Indeed, over the past five years, he’s been part of several key initiatives, from the growth, and subsequent decline, of a cannabis cluster in the city to the emergence of new clean energy and food-tech companies, such as Sublime Systems and Clean Crop Technologies; from the designation of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center as state’s hub for artificial intelligence and quantum computing to the years-long effort to convert the long-vacant Farr Alpaca complex into 88 units of mixed-income housing for adults 55 and over.

“I understand how these things happen — how do businesses locate? How do housing developments happen? How do you put together a $40 million financial stack to make 88 units of housing together?” he said, adding that his experience on the ground, and the relationships he’s forged — with those in the State House, regionally, and locally — will also be assets in his new role with the EDC.

Returning to those thoughts about the EDC being a connector and convener, Vega said issues such as the housing crisis and the 413’s declining population require a regional approach and a high level of collaboration among area cities and towns. And that’s one example of how the EDC might be able to help identify key issues for the region, set goals, and develop strategies to meet them.

“If we want to think about Western Mass. as a hub, we need a population goal for Western Mass. because this region is bleeding population, especially among younger people, ages 24 to 45,” he said. “If we say we have a population goal for the region — 20,000, 30,000, whatever the number is — over the next 10 to 15 years, then every municipality is going to have a role in that.

“Our small towns are going to have to bring on four to 10 units of housing, while our Holyokes and Westfields are going to have to bring on hundreds of units of housing,” he continued. “How do we work together to make sure we’re pulling on the same rope? A lot of people say, ‘pull in the same direction.’ I’m saying that we need to pull on the same rope together.”

 

Selling the Region

And while getting communities to pull on that same rope, the EDC should also be continuing to stress a regional approach to economic development, Vega said, while spearheading better efforts to promote the region and its assets.

“We have not done a good job of marketing Western Mass.” he said. “We should be talking about the health systems we have and the education systems we have, and the idea that you can live in a farmhouse if you want and be in downtown Springfield or downtown Holyoke in 20 minutes, even without public transportation. I think we should talk about the fact that Western Mass. believes in science, believes in education, believes in opportunities.

“Maybe that story isn’t being told, but we need to make sure that, if the EDC is out there telling the story, the chambers are telling the story, the mayors are telling the story — everyone is telling the same story,” he said, citing the example of Lowell, which he acknowledged is a city and not a region, where there was a solid, consistent message about the ‘Lowell plan.’ “The message in Lowell was so strong that the barbershops were talking about it, as well as the mayor.”

He noted that, under Sullivan, the EDC has done a solid job of creating a strong voice for the region on a statewide level and making sure Western Mass. is part of statewide initiatives, and these efforts must continue as part of those broader efforts to promote the area and prompt businesses to look this way when considering expansion or additional locations.

“When those Boston-based firms are looking for R&D or prototyping, they don’t need to look any further than Western Mass.,” he said. “If they need a second location or warehouse space or their manufacturing done, it’s way too costly to manufacture inside the 495 belt. These firms should be creating partnerships and doing that manufacturing out here; we have great manufacturers and companies that can help with research and development. These connections need to be made stronger.

“People in Boston don’t know what we make out here,” he continued. “So when they look for service or they look for something, they look at the West Virginias; they look out of state before they look in-state. We need to change that.”

Summing up the challenge — and opportunity — for the EDC and the region, as well as perhaps his own job description, to some extent, Vega returned to the subject of east-west rail and what would be the best-case scenario.

“A lot of people talk about east-west rail coming and how that will be a benefit for people in Western Mass. to get on the train and go to Boston or Worcester and go to work,” he said. “But if we do our job in Western Mass. of bringing in these companies that are coming out of UMass and elsewhere and they grow here and we create new housing opportunities … people are going to take the train to come out here to work.

“That’s a shift in mindset that needs to happen,” he went on, adding that this just one of his goals as he takes on his next career challenge.

 

Ludlow Features Some Developing Stories

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Marc Strange calls new and growing businesses “the economic engine that supports our budget.”
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Marc Strange calls new and growing businesses “the economic engine that supports our budget.”

Marc Strange calls new and growing businesses “the economic engine that supports our budget.”

 

It’s called Get Lost in Ludlow.

That’s the theme of a campaign — being promoted in many ways, including a website and streetlight banners — in this town of just over 21,000 residents, encouraging locals and visitors alike to explore the amenities of Ludlow, from local produce, baked goods, and craft beer to scenic outdoor spaces; from historical landmarks to Lusitano Stadium, home of the Western Mass Pioneers soccer team.

“We’re trying to let people know what Ludlow has to offer,” Town Administrator Marc Strange said of the grant-funded campaign, noting that each banner is also visibly sponsored by a local business, “which adds a little bit of placemaking to the area.”

With his deep background in economic development — he came to Ludlow Town Hall in the spring of 2022 following stints as director of Planning and Development in Agawam and selectman in Longmeadow — Strange has been focused on ways to boost business in town and especially draw new business.

One focus over the past few years has been development and infrastructure improvements around the ongoing Ludlow Mills project and along the nearby East Street corridor, as well as expanding the town’s District Improvement Financing area, which had previously covered just the footprint of the mills, to East Street.

“The plaza that I eventually purchased, as you’re crossing over the bridge, it’s just to your right. And it began to look a little outdated and not really well kept up. Businesses started leaving, and I started noticing that.”

“We have some really iconic businesses, but on East Street, we just need to make it welcoming for new businesses,” Strange said, noting, as one example, the arrival in 2024 of BarBurrito, a new eatery from Bill Collins of Center Square Grill fame in East Longmeadow. “We feel like, if we can redo the infrastructure and make it more aesthetically attractive for new businesses, people will come in from out of town.”

As for the ongoing work by Westmass Area Development Corp. and WinnDevelopment on Ludlow Mills — which has added 170 housing units to its mixed-use complex over the past couple of years — “one of the aspects that really attracted me to Ludlow, coming from an economic development background, was seeing the potential of the mills and everything that we can create in the downtown area,” Strange said. “That continues to be our future, and where my mind goes when we talk about economic development.”

Marco Vieira, in front of the new Grit 24 Fitness, says his plaza on East Street can be a key cog in building economic momentum in that area of town.

Marco Vieira, in front of the new Grit 24 Fitness, says his plaza on East Street can be a key cog in building economic momentum in that area of town.

Some of the destination spots in town, such as Randall’s Farm, Vanished Valley Brewing, and Sole Syndicate Brewing (formerly Iron Duke) — have been complimented by new businesses, like Tandem Bagel, which opened near Ludlow Mills last year.

“They’re doing well, and that adds a little bit more to the mills and to Riverside Drive,” Strange said, also noting success stories like the business park on Moody Street that’s typically fully occupied.

“So we have a lot going on. But certainly, any time we think about economic development, it always starts with the mills. It’s our future. It’s our economic engine that supports our budget.”

That’s a budget that’s constrained by Proposition 2½, which restricts how much a town can tax property. “Between the limitations of Prop 2.5 and limited state aid, you really need new growth. It’s really the buttress of our budget.”

“Our parks in town don’t have the best reputation, and I think that’s deserved. We really haven’t invested too much in our parks in terms of new equipment, the turf, the grass.”

Marco Vieira is one developer who sees potential in the area around the mills. That’s why he purchased the plaza on East Street near the Route 21 bridge connecting Ludlow to Springfield, which includes 39,000 square feet of commercial space and nine separate businesses.

“This side of town has struggled over the last decade. It used to be thriving back when the mills were open. Once they shut down, it started to look a little abandoned,” Vieira told BusinessWest. “The plaza that I eventually purchased, as you’re crossing over the bridge, it’s just to your right. And it began to look a little outdated and not really well kept up. Businesses started leaving, and I started noticing that.

“But then when Mill 8 and Mill 10 were built [at Ludlow Mills], they came out beautiful. And this side of town began to look like it was starting to wake up again — they rebuilt this whole riverwalk over here, too. So when that all came to life, it just so happened that the plaza came up for sale, and I jumped on the opportunity to purchase it with a couple of my partners.”

Tandem Bagel on Riverside Drive has been one of Ludlow’s recent success stories.

Anchored by a Walgreens and featuring an array of smaller businesses, the plaza used to be home to a gym, so Vieira’s largest improvement at the site was the design and construction of Grit 24 Fitness, a 24-hour gym that also offers personal training, which opened last year. Vieira said he wanted the atmosphere to evoke a gym that might be found in Miami or New York City in its elements of design, lighting, sound, and equipment.

“We’re trying to create something where we can bring the community together and gather — and it’s also going to help out the businesses in that plaza,” he explained. “East Street has about 20,000 vehicles passing through daily. So it’s not a dead zone. There’s a lot of potential there.”

 

Walk in the Park

The city is also planning infrastructure improvements downtown, including repaving, traffic calming elements, and new sidewalks.

“There’s also a new Select Board member who got elected in March, Anthony Alves, and he’s really prioritized the parks,” Strange said. “Our parks in town don’t have the best reputation, and I think that’s deserved. We really haven’t invested too much in our parks in terms of new equipment, the turf, the grass.

“So with Anthony’s leadership and the board’s support, we’re looking at improving Whitney Park and Veteran’s Park, and then Memorial Park. We really just need new equipment, to give them some attention. Those projects are going to be coming down the pike.”

Whitney Park, which is where the town’s summer camp has been held, includes a baseball field and a football field, he noted. “Years ago, it was very heavily used, but it’s not as attractive as it really needs to be, and the equipment is old; it’s not ADA-accessible. We’ve already gotten quotes for replacing all the equipment, so it can be a more exciting place for kids to go. Hopefully, when we replace the equipment, that’ll drive more traffic. We’re also looking at potentially redoing the tennis courts into something; we’re not quite sure what that’s going to look like yet.”

Meanwhile, “Vet’s Park is where the elementary school used to be, and right now it’s basically just open space, green space. There’s a soccer field there now, and a baseball field, but we’re working with Tighe & Bond on a redesign to put in a full, 11-on-11 soccer field and a 50-yard practice football field because the high school teams don’t really have any place to practice. And we’ll be redoing the softball field that’s over there, but also putting in pickleball and then some awesome playground equipment for the kids.”

In other municipal business, Strange noted that a recent town meeting approved the creation of a Finance Department and the hiring of Ludlow’s first Finance director, likely early next year. The same town meeting also allowed the town to create a capital stabilization fund and a Parks and Recreation stabilization fund.

Ludlow at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1774
Population: 21,002
Area: 28.2 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $17.35
Commercial Tax Rate: $17.35
Median Household Income: $53,244
Median Family Income: $67,797
Type of Government: Board of Selectmen, Representative Town Meeting
Largest Employers: Hampden County House of Correction; Encompass Rehabilitation Hospital; Massachusetts Air National Guard; Kleeberg Sheet Metal Inc.
*Latest information available

“That will allow us more transparency and more more predictability in terms of how we’re spending our money on capital projects in general, but also how we’re spending capital money in the parks. That’s important to us,” Strange said.

The town meeting also approved a noise bylaw, he added. “Throughout the year, we’ve gotten noise complaints about early trash pickups, noise from construction, noise from the pike, noise from some music venues. They were building up, so we felt like we had to do something. There was a lot of discussion on that, and it was a very close vote, but I think it’s necessary to give our Police Department more authority to enforce things.”

 

It Takes a Village

Vieira has always loved building.

“Creation was my big thing, even growing up. My parents didn’t have much money, so if I wanted a toy or something, I’d figure out a way to make it, build it — out of cardboard or paper mache, whatever. I just always loved to build.”

That passion carried over into adulthood, and in 2008, he opened his own building and remodeling company, Vieira Building & Home Improvement, in Ludlow.

“It eventually turned into a lot of additions and new construction, and I slowly got into commercial,” he told BusinessWest, noting that his purchase of the plaza and opening of Grit 24 is just the latest blending of his passions for building, creating, and his town.

“One year, my wife and I went to Florida, and what stood out the most was the gyms in Miami. You could walk in there, and you didn’t want to leave. So we ended up hiring a gym designer out of Miami.”

He said he takes pride in being just one piece of the puzzle downtown.

“In order to bring life back into a section of town, you can’t just depend on one person. You need to depend on the town leadership, the business owners, real estate owners, whether it’s just giving something a makeover or a facelift or opening up a small business — everyone needs to chip in. You can’t depend on WinnDevelopment or Westmass to improve the whole area.”

Strange agrees. “With respect to our downtown area, I feel like that’s the location with the most promise. And economic development is everything. You want an exciting space that people are going to go.”

That’s the idea behind the Get Lost in Ludlow campaign — to let people know there’s plenty to do, and stick around for.

“If you live in another town and you always come to Randall’s to do some pumpkin picking and stuff like that, but you don’t really know what else is in Ludlow, you can go to getlostinludlow.com, and there’s a calendar of events and a listing of businesses with pictures and links to the websites, so you can see what’s going on,” Strange added.

Vieira, for one, is grateful for that sense of connectivity. “It all goes back to everyone helping, helping pitching in and shining a light on the community, on this whole area.”

Rick Sullivan Reflects on Legacy of Economic Progress

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Rick Sullivan says the Westfield data-center project
Features

Exit Interview

By George O’Brien and Joseph Bednar

[email protected]; [email protected]

 

Throughout his lengthy career in public service and, most recently, within the business community, Rick Sullivan said his broad goal has always been to leave things better than he found them.

That was the case when he was mayor of Westfield for a dozen years, and also when he left that post to work for Gov. Deval Patrick in the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and then as chief of staff in the governor’s office.

And he had the same goal when he left Boston to return to the 413 and succeed Allan Blair as president and CEO of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council (EDC) in 2014. And he believes he’s succeeded in that mission.

Indeed, Sullivan, who will step down from that role at the end of this year, said he believes the EDC is in a better place today, with more members, more programs, and what most would say is a broader approach to its mission, one focused less on filling industrial park space (although that remains an important goal) and more on developing new business sectors, tackling workforce issues, making the region more competitive in the ongoing quest for employers and jobs, and, perhaps most importantly, growing the agency’s influence with statewide leaders and policy makers.

Elaborating, he said one of the goals he and the EDC’s membership set was for the agency to become a louder, stronger, more definitive voice for this region and its business community — and it has become that.

“The membership, at the time, was really looking for the EDC to become the lead organization in Western Massachusetts with regard to issues of business and business development and the economy — with the state, with the business leaders (mostly in Boston), with the policy centers, and the regulators,” he explained. “Because it was really felt — and I do think it’s true, and having spent some time in Boston, I really know it to be true — that when the regulators and the policy makers sit around the table down in Boston and make the rules and the policy and the laws, they don’t have a Western Mass. perspective … they don’t have a perspective of what happens on the ground in Western Massachusetts and how that’s going to impact things.

Rick Sullivan

Rick Sullivan

“If the economy is doing better and people have more disposable income, then they’re buying more groceries or they’re going to the Big E … whatever they will spend their money on. And that’s going to help all of the companies that sit around my table.”

“So the membership was really looking to be the place, the clearinghouse, if you will, the go-to place, where governors, lieutenant governors, cabinet secretaries, those regulators would come and have those conversations,” he went on. “And I think we’ve been highly successful in that.”

Beyond progress on this important front, Sullivan said the EDC has made strides in other areas as well, especially when it comes to what he calls “catalyzing” new business sectors putting down roots here and that he hopes will be headquartered here, another goal for his board when he arrived.

That list includes quantum manufacturing, quantum computing, cybersecurity, and the broad realm of food science, sectors that are already making their mark here and should only grow in size and impact in the years and decades to come.

“These are sectors that are going be more important tomorrow and 10 years down the road than they even are today,” he said of these evolving industries. “AI is booming, and quantum is booming, and the issues of food science and food scarcity, water delivery systems and water scarcity … those problems are only going to grow and be more important in 10 years.

“And again, that’s kind of who we are in Western Mass.,” he went on. “So I think I’m actually leaving a couple of really exciting opportunities behind for the next CEO and, quite honestly, for the EDC moving forward.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Sullivan about his tenure with the EDC, the progress that’s been made on several fronts, and the work still to be done.

 

Progress Report

When asked why he was stepping down now, Sullivan summoned some thinking he attributed to former NFL head coach Bill Parcells.

“He said you shouldn’t coach a team more than 10 years — and I think there’s some truth to that,” Sullivan noted. “You get to a point where you’ve done some of the same things that you’ve done for a long period of time, and it’s just time for the organization to change it up. So I think, for the organization and myself, it was just a really good time to have this happen.”

Looking back on his 11-year tenure, he said it’s been an interesting and challenging time for the region and the EDC, one marked by a global pandemic that changed everything, but especially where and how people work; the emergence of a new generation of leadership at many businesses across the region; shifting, but nearly constant, workforce challenges; ongoing efforts to create more jobs; work to leverage the region’s assets, especially its precision manufacturing sector, but also its cadre of colleges and universities; and a broad effort to lift the region’s economy and the prospects of its residents.

That last one is the underlying mission of the EDC, he noted, one that is not totally understood by some in the region’s business community.

“I think we need to do a better job as an EDC and as a region, not only celebrating but really marketing the advantages that we have here and the high quality of higher education that we have.”

“The simplest way to look at it is that our membership is really committed to growing the economy of Western Massachusetts,” Sullivan explained. “Growing the vitality economically, growing jobs, growing the ability for all residents of Western Massachusetts to enter the workplace and have a better quality of life — it’s pretty simple, and it’s a little bit of the ‘rising tide raises all boats’ theory.

“If the economy is doing better and people have more disposable income, then they’re buying more groceries or they’re going to the Big E … whatever they will spend their money on,” he went on. “And that’s going to help all of the companies that sit around my table.”

As for that table, it’s much larger now than it was 11 years ago, at least in terms of the number of people sitting at it, he went on, adding that membership has nearly doubled since he started, growing from 50 to roughly 90, and it has become more diverse as well, meaning companies of all sizes and across nearly all sectors.

More voices, and more diverse voices, make the EDC even more representative of the region and its business community, said Sullivan, adding that the strength and overall impact of the organization lie not in its president and CEO, but in its membership.

And growth of this membership, comprised of the leaders of area businesses and nonprofits, is among the most significant accomplishments recorded during his tenure.

Others include the maturation, if you will, of those emerging sectors listed earlier, sectors that were already here and now offer strong potential for continued growth.

Quantum computing is certainly on that list, he said, adding that the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center has been designated by the Healey administration as the state’s hub for artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and $16 million in state and private investments have been made toward building a new quantum computer there.

“And I think it’s a significant investment … I think you will see the state come in with additional resources to really move this forward,” Sullivan said. “Part of the argument has been that the state did a great job investing in biotech and clean energy and IT. And that was great, and they’ve been wonderful for the state economy, but those benefits really didn’t come back out here toward Western Massachusetts. So this investment in quantum really identifies strengths that we already have here.”

Another of these strengths is the broad food science sector.

“This relates back to everything from agriculture to water delivery and water filtration and water scarcity issues but also can go as far as alternative proteins and innovation and entrepreneurship within the space of food science,” Sullivan explained. “And little did we know that probably the leading institute in the country, and one of the international leaders, is UMass Amherst; they do great work out there already. And then, when you combine that with companies that are already here, like Big Y or Friendly’s or Hood, and then smaller companies and some new ones starting something, like Clean Crop out of Holyoke, those are all under that food science umbrella.”

 

Looking Ahead

As he talked about the work still to be done in the region and the challenges facing the 413, Sullivan said there are many items in both categories.

As for challenges, he put workforce and housing at the top of the list, while noting that they’re obviously related.

Indeed, one of the state’s weaknesses, from a competitiveness standpoint, is the sky-high cost of housing across most of the state. And while conditions are better in many Western Mass. cities and towns, there are several where potential workers are simply priced out, creating hardships for employers and shrinking the size of the populations, and workforces, in area communities.

“In terms of population growth, I think this is a good opportunity, in terms of a moment in time, to be able to have a growth strategy,” he said. “The state, under Governor Healey, is making significant investments in housing, and I really encourage every single city and town to take advantage of the incentives that are out there for development across the housing spectrum.

“From the higher end to market rate to workforce housing, it needs to be everything,” he went on. “Because right now, many parts of the region have no growth — in some cases, even declining growth. If it wasn’t for immigration, there would probably be no growth. Having no growth means that it makes it harder to fill those jobs. It’s harder to make that case as to why somebody should move here.

“I know there’s an old saying — and I don’t think it was Bill Parcells who said it this time — that if you’re not growing, you’re dying,” he went on. “And I think the growth strategy needs to be in every single community, and now is the time to be able to do that because, if you create a housing stock, people will move in.”

More housing, and more affordable options, are key now, he said, because people have more options when it comes to where and how they work, creating some real opportunities for this region.

“They can go, and they can live in a less costly community,” Sullivan said. “And when you stack things up in terms of energy costs and taxes and food costs and transportation costs, Western Massachusetts can make a very compelling case as to why we’re a very good place to live. Our quality of life is excellent. Going back to our commitment to recreation and outdoor activities and the environment, those are all things that are important when people are deciding where they can live, and today they have more choices than ever.”

Another challenge for the region moving forward is to more effectively leverage its considerable assets, especially higher ed.

“One of the other things that I think we can do a better job at is recognizing that we’re fortunate here in Western Massachusetts to have a really strong higher ed sector,” he noted, from UMass Amherst and the community colleges to a host of nationally regarded private colleges and universities.

“I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job leveraging that sector, because when companies look to come here, the first question they ask is ‘can I find the workforce?’” he went on. “When they’re looking for that talent, that talent is sitting in the classrooms of our higher ed institutions. So I think we need to do a better job as an EDC and as a region, not only celebrating but really marketing the advantages that we have here and the high quality of higher education that we have.”

When asked if he had any words of his advice for his successor, due to be named later this month, Sullivan said simply, “stay close to the membership.”

“The quality of individuals that sit around that table, the companies they represent, really are the companies that drive success here in Western Massachusetts,” he continued. “And while the CEO of the EDC is important because he or she will be the implementer, it’s really the agenda of the membership. They’re all really smart, and they’re all really committed to this region, and they want to see the best for the region. And not in a parochial sense — they’d really like to see everybody doing better; they would like to see the economy grow.”

If Sullivan’s successor does that, as he did, he or she will be in a position to ultimately follow his lead and leave the organization — and the region’s business landscape — in a better place.

 

Employing People with Disabilities Can Be a True Win-win

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Emily Benoit (left) and Erika Lamere say the Lincoln Street Stop & Shop in Holyoke has strived to cultivate an inclusive workplace.
Features Special Coverage

Hire Calling

Emily Benoit (left) and Erika Lamere say the Lincoln Street Stop & Shop in Holyoke has strived to cultivate an inclusive workplace.

Emily Benoit (left) and Erika Lamere say the Lincoln Street Stop & Shop in Holyoke has strived to cultivate an inclusive workplace.

 

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. But for Lhea Destromp, it’s a year-round effort.

“This isn’t just seasonal. It’s about carving out intentional opportunities and making our workspaces more inclusive. And that’s a slow and thoughtful process,” said Destromp, an employment counselor in Regional Employment Services for the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS).

That said, the increased awareness in October does present an opportunity to create more dialogue around the value that workers with disabilities add to the workforce, the importance of inclusive employment policies, and barriers to employment that people with disabilities may face.

“When I’m talking to employers, I’m talking to them in terms of value and what they’re looking for, so I need to be able to convince them that an individual, or a whole group of people, are reliable and not a risk — because, at the end of the day, business people are thinking about risk. So it’s about putting the facts in front of people so that they can make informed decisions. And a lot of people don’t realize that individuals with disabilities tend to have the greatest longevity in their careers.”

As an example, she connected BusinessWest with the Stop & Shop store on Lincoln Street in Holyoke, where a man with a developmental disability named Michael has been bagging and retrieving carriages — and occasionally other tasks — for the past 35 years.

“Michael has been like a brother to me,” said Erika Lamere, an administrator at the store who has roughly the same tenure at the store. “We grew here together. And he feels like this place is his home because he’s been here so long.”

Emily Benoit, a department head who works closely with Michael, said there are rough days when he’ll get a little overwhelmed.

“Whenever something’s bugging him, like if he had a bad interaction with a customer, he’s able to talk to us and explain what happened and what he’s feeling, and we can kind of direct him — ‘OK, that’s all right, this happens, it’s normal.’ And talking about it helps him and brings him down a level so he’s not overwhelmed.”

That said, Michael’s time at Stop & Shop is marked by mostly good days, and the same goes for Chris, another employee with a developmental disability who mainly bags groceries. They’re popular with customers and — importantly — extremely reliable, Benoit said, something Destromp says is true for many of the clients she works with and helps connect with jobs.

Lhea Destromp

“It’s about putting the facts in front of people so that they can make informed decisions. And a lot of people don’t realize that individuals with disabilities tend to have the greatest longevity in their careers.”

“Why should these people not be included?” Lamere asked. “We’ve had supervisors come through the building that say, ‘what do they do?’ Well, they can do anything anyone else can do if they’re just taught how to do it.

“That’s one thing I love about this place — in all my years here, we have always made sure that everyone is included, no matter what it is: a disability, your race, your sexual preference, I don’t care,” she went on. “Everyone is a person and deserves to work if they want to. And yes, they may not be able to perform all tasks, but that doesn’t mean places shouldn’t hire them. And once they get comfortable, you’d be very surprised with the other things they are willing to do and end up doing.”

And doing well, Destromp added.

“Not only do many of these folks work in their positions for a long time, they’re very reliable, they very seldom call out, and individuals with disabilities have the lowest of workers’ compensation claims. So when we think about how an employer defines risk within the context of an employee, we’re checking all the boxes here.”

 

Meaningful Connections

Destromp, as noted, helps people with developmental disabilities secure meaningful work, and she does this from both sides.

“I work with job coaches on job development with individuals who are looking to get jobs. Typically they have a number of obstacles and barriers that have led to a pattern of instability that has made it so they can’t retain work. So I help create goals and strategies to work with these folks so that they can resolve these issues,” she explained.

“At the same time, on the other end, I’m working with employers and helping to prepare them so that they can embark on this journey. For some of them, it’s an easy job, and it’s just about placement. For others, we’re really carving in — helping them identify roles for people and supports.”

In many ways, she said, her department acts as a training program to determine where the barriers are and what someone needs to overcome them and secure employment.

“It really depends on the individual, almost how you think about physical therapy. If somebody has an issue with their leg versus an issue with their back or their core, they’re going to have a whole different regimen to support them and strengthen what they need. So, for us, it’s really about targeting those areas,” she explained. “We’re working to assess where the deficits are, and then we can identify strategies to support them.”

She’s also busy with engaging different constituencies around the issue of inclusive workplaces and what that means to both job seekers and employers.

“I’m doing more around community engagement and around finding places where folks can be establishing and deepening their skill sets and then connecting them more meaningfully to opportunities in the community, and then also working more closely with employers and helping them figure out ways to establish value and take that leap of faith.”

Jason Randall

Jason Randall

“When they find an employer like ours and get into an environment where they feel accepted and wanted, their loyalty is increased, and their length of service with us is higher than others.”

As one motivation, she directs them to tax incentives for hiring disabled workers. The federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit reimburses 40% of up to $6,000 in wages to any employer that hires disabled individuals certified by a state workforce agency. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Disability Employment Tax Credit provides up to $5,000 or 30% of the wages paid to each qualified employee with a disability in the first taxable year of employment, whichever is less, decreasing to $2,000 or 30% of the wages paid, whichever is less, in subsequent years.

Those are attractive incentives, Destromp said, but they’re not the whole picture — more important is tapping into an employee pool that, as she noted, tends to be longer-tenured and more reliable than workers in general, at a time when businesses of all kinds are struggling with maintaining a workforce.

“It’s smart business, and the data doesn’t lie,” said Jason Randall, executive director of Human Resources at MGM Springfield, another employer that has embraced inclusivity in hiring.

“These employees do have a longer tenure with us. And in return, they find loyalty in a company that is taking a chance on them because other doors get closed on them through various interview processes or companies that don’t want to engage,” he noted. “When they find an employer like ours and get into an environment where they feel accepted and wanted, their loyalty is increased, and their length of service with us is higher than others.”

Randall explained that MGM has partnered with a number of organizations, not only DDS, but also the Western Mass Employment Collaborative, Viability, and ServiceNet — that support individuals with disabilities who are looking for work.

“We have great relationships with these organizations, meet with them frequently, and are very candid up front about the environment that we provide as a workplace as they’re trying to match their constituents to employment,” he noted. “We know that this environment may not be for everybody. Certainly, working front of house with guests isn’t for everybody, and working back of house, without guest contact, isn’t for everybody. So being candid and having dialogue up front helps create an expectation that these agencies can place or help their candidates apply for appropriate positions.”

The partnership doesn’t stop after hiring, onboarding, and training, Randall added, as the casino complex provides employee accommodations when needed, and works with the aforementioned agencies to determine those needs. “We’ve worked with employees who have a variety of disabilities, and some you can notice by sight, and some you don’t know what’s going on in their life, but they do have a disability.”

Destromp noted that employers she works with are never asked to hinder their productivity with a hire that’s not the right fit.

“If you’re accommodating an employee in a way that is impacting the flow of your environment, then that’s not a reasonable expectation, and you, as an employer, are not expected to meet that expectation,” she said. “But, while that will be a difficult conversation, some difficult conversations yield high rewards — you may say to that person, ‘this is not the right role for you. Let’s examine the other things that are going on in our place of business and needs that we have that you may be able to fill.’”

 

Continuing the Conversation

To mark not only the 80th year of National Disability Employment Awareness Month and 35 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the DDS will present a panel discussion on disability inclusion practices in collaboration with the Springfield Regional Chamber, New England Business Associates, Springfield College, and the ADA National Network.

The event, to be held on Monday, Oct. 27 from 9 to 11 a.m. in the Springfield College Learning Common, will bring together leading employers to share innovative strategies for building inclusive workplaces — including how companies have successfully carved out roles tailored to employees’ strengths and support needs, creating true win-win outcomes. Panelist topics will include ADA recommendations, universal supports, expanding one’s labor pool and cultivating an inclusive culture, and addressing difficult disability-related questions. Email Tina Macy [email protected] with questions and to register.

“I think that individuals with disabilities have long been an overlooked and undervalued and marginalized group of people,” Destromp said. “I think that’s such a shame because these are people who are so eager to prove their worth, to prove their value, and who deserve just the same as anybody — that opportunity to be able to feel the value and the worth that comes along with contributing to your community.”

She said she was excited to meet Michael at the supermarket in Holyoke. “Everybody’s eyes lit up when they saw Mike — he was like the mayor of Stop & Shop.”

That’s gratifying for Lamere, who appreciates what her employees with disabilities have contributed to the store.

“Michael comes in every day, he stays his whole shift, he is reliable. And Chris is the same way. He was hospitalized recently, but he came right back to work. They’re both very reliable. We’re lucky to have them.”

At the same time, an inclusive workplace helps all employees understand differences, and that’s valuable in itself, she added.

“It gets you to open up and see they are people too, and they’re very capable of doing the things we do if they’re just given a shot. [Employees] learn very good lessons — that if you have the right people showing them and the right people giving them the courage or whatever they need, they end up doing it.”

That said, “some customers can be pretty rough,” Lamere went on. “With Michael, he sometimes will struggle with that because his feelings get hurt easily or he feels like he did something wrong. We’ve had customers call him stupid before. And the second I hear that, I’m flying downstairs, because nobody’s doing that. We try to make sure they feel protected.”

Randall said an inclusive workplace, like MGM Springfield, benefits everyone, including the company as a whole.

“Whether it’s a member of the LGBT community, veterans groups, women in the workplace … having an environment that accepts, promotes, and encourages everyone helps from a retention perspective,” he explained. “When employees feel proud about the workforce they are a part of and the company they work for, they become your recruiters. They’re going to tell their friends or family members the experience that they’ve had, and that brings us more candidates coming in the door.”

Destromp agreed. “I think it’s about shining that light and helping local employers see that value and understanding the many unique characteristics and qualities that individuals with disabilities bring to the table as a whole — and that’s even before we take a step closer and get to know each individual better and unpack their unique qualities.”

North Adams Continues to Redefine Itself

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James Birge says MCLA owes its high ranking among liberal arts colleges to many factors, but especially its strong track record with helping students succeed.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

 

James Birge says MCLA owes its high ranking among liberal arts colleges to many factors, but especially its strong track record with helping students succeed.

James Birge says MCLA owes its high ranking among liberal arts colleges to many factors, but especially its strong track record with helping students succeed.

Marya Kozik says North Adams is much like its larger neighbor to the south, Pittsfield, in that it is working very hard not to live in the past.

This is a past dominated by massive mills, led by Sprague Electric, that employed thousands; a thriving downtown fueled by payday at those mills; and a population that was significantly larger and much younger, said Kozik, director of Community Development and someone who grew up in the city.

“We’re trying to look forward to new opportunities, whether it be the creative economy or food science and entrepreneurship,” she said, adding that the focus is squarely on the present and the future, and continuing the process of redefining the community known as Steeple City because of the many church spires that dominate the skyline.

Elaborating, she the city is working to build its creative economy, headlined by MASS MoCA, located in the Sprague Electric complex, but including a growing number of art galleries and related businesses, while also trying to attract the many kinds of businesses that will bring young people here — and keep them here.

“The creative economy is taking off,” Kozik said. “We have a lot of artists coming into the community; we have small-scale manufacturing of artistic products and home goods that use the skills of artists who are here and, hopefully, the skills of other people who had left jobs that required that kind of manufacturing skill. There are opportunities coming back, and it’s nice to see new people coming in to the community.”

These efforts comprise many of the storylines now converging in North Adams, a community of roughly 13,000 people. Others include:

• Continued progress at the mill revival initiative known as Greylock Works. The former cotton-spinning mill has been converted into a thriving campus that includes a restaurant, a co-working community, a craft distillery, the Berkshire Cider Project, and event spaces that include the Weave Shed and Engine House, as well as 50 loft condos;

• The reopening last year of North Adams Regional Hospital. Now part of Berkshire Medical Center, the facility, closed after financial problems, was honored with a MassEcon Impact Award earlier this year;

• Progress, in the form of a $17.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity program, toward creation of the Adventure to Ashuwillticook trail, a 9.3-mile stretch of shared-use pathway connecting the existing Ashuwillticook Rail Trail to the Williamstown Mohican Path by way of downtown North Adams and the rotary at the MASS MoCA campus;

• The North Adams Steeplecats, a team in the New England Collegiate Baseball League (which also includes the Holyoke Blue Sox), which continues to draw fans to Joe Wolfe Field, playing an important role in economic development within the community; and

• Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), one of the city’s largest employers. The school recently maintained its ranking of sixth among the nation’s public liberal arts colleges — marking 11 consecutive years in the top 10.

“This consistency in rankings reflects our core mission — providing an affordable, transformative liberal arts education that empowers students,” MCLA President James Birge said, adding that the school continues to evolve and add new programs and majors — from nursing to ‘music, industry, and production,’ to meet the needs of students and the business community.

 

Progress Report

As she talked about North Adams, what’s been achieved, and the work still be done, Kozik said the city’s evolution from a mill town to a city with an arts- and hospitality-based economy is still very much a work in progress.

MASS MoCA has been a part of this story, she said, noting that, while the facility — the most spacious modern art museum in the world, known for its large-scale installations — has not spurred the kind of economic development that had been hoped, it has become a valuable asset for the city and perhaps the most important piece of an economy now based mostly on tourism, hospitality, and arts-related businesses.

“Do we bring people here when we don’t have all the elements to support them? And how do we create the elements to support them, like restaurants and shopping venues, when we don’t actually have the people to support them?”

Pieces are coming into place, she said, but North Adams, like most all cities trying to attract young people, is facing what she called a ‘chicken-or-the-egg’ scenario.

“Do we bring people here when we don’t have all the elements to support them? And how do we create the elements to support them, like restaurants and shopping venues, when we don’t actually have the people to support them?” she asked rhetorically, adding that the city is essentially working on both sides of the equation simultaneously.

There have been several intriguing additions to the landscape in recent years, businesses created to meet needs and create vibrancy, Kozik noted, citing, as one example, Steeple City Social, a community-oriented bakery, café, and cocktail bar on Eagle Street, launched by a recent transplant to the city, Andrew Fitch.

“He saw a need for what they call a ‘third space,’” she said, meaning a place that’s not home and not the office. “He opened a space that’s a bakery in the morning and a café in the evening; it’s a place to gather, and people have been very supportive.

“Spaces like this build community,” she went on, adding that there have been other additions that fit this description, including several art galleries, many with ancillary products and services, such as tea, that make them more financially viable.

Still, there are considerable challenges to revitalizing the downtown, Kozik said, citing the loss of vitality that came with the loss of all those mill jobs as well as the aftereffects of ’60s-era urban renewal, which essentially left one side of Main Street intact and the other side demolished in favor of a parking lot and mini-mall, plagued by a high vacancy rate in recent years, that has gone by various names, including Steeple City Plaza, the Parkade, and the ‘L-shaped mall.’

“We have one side with beautiful old buildings, and the other side, across a four-lane road, which is unheard of in small cities, two vacant lots,” she explained. “We’re looking to restore the vibrancy of downtown in the storefronts, working with developers who are interested in restoring the top floors into apartments, but we also have these huge vacant lots.”

Meanwhile, outside the downtown, the city is seeing several signs of progress, including adaptive reuse of former mills.

North Adams at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1878
Population: 12,961
Area: 20.6 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: $16.71
Commercial Tax Rate: $35.22
Median Household Income: $35,020
Family Household Income: $57,522
Type of government: Mayor; City Council
Largest Employers: BFAIR Inc.; Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts; North Adams Regional Hospital
* Latest information available

Indeed, Greylock Works has become one of the better success stories in North Adams. The initiative, led by architects and entrepreneurs Karla Rothstein and Sal Perry, who acquired the mill in 2015, has several intriguing elements, the latest being loft condos that will provide another housing option in the community.

Meanwhile, another former mill, the Norad Mill in the Braytonville section of the city, has been repurposed into office space and home for a diverse mix of tenants, including a yarn manufacturer, a dog biscuit baker, a coffee shop, and a candy company.

Overall, the city’s goal is to create more jobs — it will likely never replace all those lost when the mills closed — with a diverse mix of smaller businesses in those mills, and across the downtown.

 

School of Thought

Creating a workforce to support such businesses is one of the overriding goals at MCLA, formerly North Adams State College, which continues to thrive in its category because of its commitment to liberal arts, even as some colleges and universities have been cutting back on programs in that realm.

“There’s an initiative among institutions today to eliminate academic programs or majors that don’t really generate positive revenue streams, that don’t contribute to the overall revenue of the institution; that hasn’t been my approach here,” Birge said. “Because we’re a liberal arts institution, it’s important to have a broad base of academic programs and majors for students to develop critical-thinking skills.

“For example, we offer philosophy and modern language majors that don’t generate lots of tuition revenue for us, but they’re essential to a liberal arts education. We’ve leaned into those things, like history — we think that’s an important element in a liberal arts education,” he went on. “And because of the facility we have, students who major in those departments do very well.”

Elaborating, he said the school is far more likely to add new programs with potentially strong revenue streams so that it can maintain programs like those he just listed, rather than make cuts.

One example of this is the radiological technology program added just a few years ago, but one that has already become one of the most popular majors, along with health sciences and more traditional offerings such as business, education, and psychology.

“Because of the population of students we have — 50% are first-generation college students, and 50% come from families earning less than $38,000 a year — there are some challenges in terms of what they understand college to be and how they can be here, coming from an economically challenged background.”

As it offers such programs, MCLA has put a hard focus on helping its students, many of them the first generation in their families to attend college, succeed with their goals, whatever they may be.

And these efforts take many forms, from various mentoring programs to the school’s Essential Needs Center, which addresses hardships outside the classroom that can become obstacles to student achievement and overall well-being. The space, run by students, offers food, essential items, housing and transportation assistance, seasonal clothes, SNAP applications, and more.

“Because of the population of students we have — 50% are first-generation college students, and 50% come from families earning less than $38,000 a year — there are some challenges in terms of what they understand college to be and how they can be here, coming from an economically challenged background,” Birge explained. “So, as a result of that, we really try to help students through programs that don’t just advise students, but mentor them so that they can be successful with their academic goals.

“And we don’t necessarily define that in a limited fashion as graduation, but also, how do you achieve a certain grade point average? How do you make sure you succeed in a course that’s going to help predetermine what your major will be? How do you make sure that your academic success is meeting the standards in order to be a student leader in athletics, student government, or in the residence halls?” he went on. “A few years ago, we implemented this success coaching model, in addition to our academic advising, to guide students throughout their time here, not just as they’re coming in, but all along the way.”

 

UMass Amherst Will Intensify Focus on Economic Development

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Features

Doubling Down

UMass Amherst has always been an economic engine for the region, and officials there want it to be even more of a force.

Tony Maroulis says UMass Amherst has always been focused on regional economic development, and it has always been an economic engine within the 413 and often well beyond, from its own large workforce to providing interns for area businesses, to concepts that are taken from its labs to the marketplace.

But now, the flagship campus of the state university is … well, let’s call it sharpening and broadening that focus, said Maroulis, executive director of Community and Strategic Initiatives for the university.

“It’s an emphasis on economic development that we perhaps haven’t put on it in the past,” he explained, referencing an announcement by UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes at the university’s annual Community Breakfast late last month — specifically, the launch of an initiative to leverage the full breadth of the university’s expertise, talent, innovation, and partnerships to spur job creation, entrepreneurship, and community revitalization, as well as workforce and small business development locally, regionally, and across the state.

“As the state’s flagship public university, UMass Amherst has a responsibility to serve as a catalyst for economic development at the local, regional, and statewide levels,” Reyes said at the breakfast. “Embracing this responsibility creates important opportunities for programming, analysis, and collaboration that can foster more inclusive, resilient, and innovation-driven growth across the Commonwealth.”

When asked about the initiative’s goals, how they will be addressed, and how success will be measured, Maroulis started by saying virtually everything the university does has an economic development component.

“Whether it’s our sporting events, which have an economic impact on the community, to the construction on our campus, to the graduates we place in the workforce — all of that is economic development,” he said. “What the chancellor is interested in us doing at this particular time is being a more active participant in the economic development efforts of our local communities, our region, and also the state.

Javier Reyes

Javier Reyes

“As the state’s flagship public university, UMass Amherst has a responsibility to serve as a catalyst for economic development at the local, regional, and statewide levels.”

“This means being a more visible player in these conversations that happen in all three places,” Maroulis went on, “and contributing with our expertise and with the faculty and staff, researchers, and students that we have here in that economic development discussion.”

Elaborating, he said Reyes has essentially challenged the campus community to “wake up thinking about economic development, how we impact those three spheres — local, regional, and state — and how we can increase that impact.”

 

Ambitious Goals

Overall, the announced initiative, to be guided by an executive committee consisting of senior campus leadership, will have several principal goals, including:

• Collaborating with communities to address challenges and opportunities around housing, healthcare, transportation, and services to overall infrastructure;

• Advising university leadership on strategies, partnerships, and investments that expand economic development impact with local, regional, and statewide focus;

• Identifying opportunities for university collaboration with industry, government, nonprofits, and community organizations.

• Providing input on and supporting the growth of university initiatives encouraging workforce development, entrepreneurship, innovation, and applied and translational research;

• Offering recommendations on policies, programs, and practices that promote resilient, innovative, and inclusive economic growth;

• Driving investment to the region and across the Commonwealth;

• Supporting strategic initiatives critical to the Commonwealth’s future;

• Creating talent pipelines for study, internships, and employment for the region and the state; and

• Cultivating research capacity with economic development priorities.

Assessing this list, Maroulis said there are many things the university is already doing within these various realms.

Examples include the recent announcement that the university will partner with Baystate Health to create SHINE: Strengthening Healthcare Innovation through Nursing and Engineering. Funded with a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the initiative will establish the nation’s first graduate training program designed to combine nursing’s hands-on patient care with engineering’s technical knowledge.

Tony Maroulis

Tony Maroulis

“Our workforce development career pathways work … we do that locally, regionally, and statewide. We want to create deeper engagement with industry so there’s more opportunity for students to have pathways to jobs post-graduation and to have access to internships.”

The goal moving forward will be to simply ramp up such efforts. This will be the case with issues as disparate as workforce development and the state’s housing crisis.

“Our workforce development career pathways work … we do that locally, regionally, and statewide,” Maroulis said. “We want to create deeper engagement with industry so there’s more opportunity for students to have pathways to jobs post-graduation and to have access to internships. These are things the chancellor would like to see us do even better than we do it now.”

As for the housing crisis, the those involved with the initiative will look at how the university can better work with municipalities on land use reform and infrastructure development to develop critically needed new housing.

That housing would benefit the university, its staff, and students, but also the region’s business community by giving their workforce access to more housing — specifically more affordable housing.

Other issues to be addressed include transportation and childcare, he went on, adding that there are barriers to opportunities for university students and area residents alike.

“These are the kinds of issues that we will be engaged in, both as a thought partner and sometimes as a thought leader, and as an advocate with other organizations and agencies in the region that are working on these kinds of issues.”

 

Collective Engagement

One key to the initiative’s success will be its council, made up of officials from across the university, including representatives of the Isenberg School of Management, the Berthiaume Center, the Mount Ida campus, Government Relations, the Donahue Institute, the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center, and the Institute for Applied Life Sciences.

The council will work with a leadership team — Maroulis; Sundar Krishnamurty, vice provost for Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Creativity; and Carl Rust, assistant vice chancellor for Corporate Engagement — to recommend priorities and track progress.

This will be an ongoing initiative, meaning it’s not necessarily a five-year or 10-year plan, said Maroulis, but one that will seek some “quick wins,” as he called them, but also focus on the long term.

When asked how success will be measured, he said there will be several metrics and yardsticks, everything from growth of the current $2.9 billion in direct and indirect impact on the state’s economy to increases in local purchasing, to the number of startups created at the university and the jobs that result.

“The chancellor believes that we have a responsibility to serve as a catalyst for economic development,” he went on while summing up the initiative, adding that the university has always been that.

The mission moving forward is to take it to a new, more impactful level.

Bill Collins Reflects on a Satisfying Culinary Journey

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Where Are They Now?

Where are they now?

Seventeen years after being honored among the 40 Under Forty, Bill Collins says he hasn’t lost any of the enjoyment he gets from seeing people enjoy good food — and each other.

Seventeen years after being honored among the 40 Under Forty, Bill Collins says he hasn’t lost any of the enjoyment he gets from seeing people enjoy good food — and each other.

When BusinessWest caught up with Bill Collins this month at his East Longmeadow restaurant, Center Square Grill, he was about to head over to the Big E. It’s a relationship that started in 2014 when the director of the fair’s agricultural programs asked him to stop by.

“She said, ‘hey, I’ve got a group of 4-Hers, and I’ve got some lamb. Any chance you’d come in and cook a recipe?’ So I did that. And 11 years later, I’ve surpassed 96,000 samples of recipes that I’ve cooked there and given away. Every day of the fair from 11 to 1:30-2, I go in, get on a microphone, and cook a dish, and all the dishes I prepare are from local farms around New England.

“It has become a little bit of a passion for me,” Collins went on. “It’s a cool experience to be able to take somebody who might not understand the economics of where the money goes in the community if you buy local, versus at the big box store, and the differences in the meat. To be able to talk about that stuff is pretty cool.”

The same year he started demonstrating recipes at the Big E, Collins opened Center Square Grill, which was a success out of the gate and has remained so, albeit not without some challenges, from the difficult pandemic years to the current inflationary landscape that has made everything more expensive, to a sprinkler system that malfunctioned last year and shut the place down for a few months — followed by a fight with the insurance company.

“We paid all of our front of the house and back of the house employees for eight weeks while we were shut. And I paid the employees in the front the average of their tips as well, because we felt there was some gray area in the way our policy was written, and we felt that we could get paid back for that,” Collins said.

“When I talked to my wife, I said, ‘listen, we’re going to do this, and I’m scared because it’s a lot of money.’ But if we didn’t, the employee market was so competitive at that point. And everybody was so well-trained that if we didn’t do that, you know, it wouldn’t have been two months we were closed — it would be more like six by the time we hired, retrained, and everything.”

So Collins cashed in a retirement policy to pay his staff in full, and when the insurance company initially refused to cover the tip pay, he stood firm and made it clear he’d fight that decision — and eventually was reimbursed for all of it.

“What was the alternative? Center Square Grill goes away for six months, right? Nobody wins there,” he recalled.

When Collins was named to BusinessWest’s second-ever 40 Under Forty class in 2008, he was 28 years old, working as director of Operations in the Spoleto Restaurant Group, overseeing six dining locations owned by noted restaurateur Claudio Guerra.

“You know, it’s funny — when I met Claudio, I was 19 years old, and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but I always envisioned being in business for myself. I was always a hustler,” Collins recalled.

“I don’t believe I actually deserved to win that award in 2008,” he added. “I think now I do; we’ve accomplished a lot. But I don’t know that I was fit to be in that group of people at that point, but I’m still appreciative — it was an awesome honor.

“But at that point, I was definitely thinking about being on my own. And when I did go on my own, I probably wasn’t economically in the right position to give it a shot, but when is the right time, you know? You eventually have to go for it. And it had been in the back of my head since I was a kid.”

The original vision for Center Square Grill was a creative American eatery with multiple culinary influences, where people would want to visit more than once a week.

“We didn’t want to be too specific. Everybody in town already had their favorite Italian place, they already had their favorite Chinese place. What I felt was lacking was a quality, slightly upscale version of a tavern — a place where you can get a burger and a beer or come in for a date night for steak and oysters.”

“We didn’t want to be too specific. Everybody in town already had their favorite Italian place, they already had their favorite Chinese place. What I felt was lacking was a quality, slightly upscale version of a tavern — a place where you can get a burger and a beer or come in for a date night for steak and oysters.”

These days, Collins employs around 90 people at his businesses, most of them at Center Square. He also owns a percentage of Barburrito in Ludlow, and is a partner in Hawks Landing, a farm in East Longmeadow that the owners plan to use for everything from pumpkins, apples, and a corn maze in the fall to an activity space for community events — while producing farm-fresh produce for their various other businesses, which include One Way Brewing in Longmeadow. He also recently launched a food, travel, and lifestyle TV show on WWLP called The Food Explorer.

Meanwhile, “my wife and I know that the restaurant business is tumultuous. So we decided to live on a fixed income from the restaurant, and anything extra that we earn, we’ve developed into a real estate company. We have about 20 doors in this area for rentals, and a lot of our employees actually live in them. And we continue to be on the hunt for quality properties to add in the portfolio. That, I think, might eventually be bigger than my other businesses.”

Bill Collins said Center Square Grill was an immediate success, but has had its share of challenges, from the pandemic to last year’s sprinkler malfunction.

Bill Collins said Center Square Grill was an immediate success, but has had its share of challenges, from the pandemic to last year’s sprinkler malfunction.

Like he was mentored under Guerra and others in his younger years, he takes pride in seeing his own employees spread their wings, like Andrew Brow, who started working with Collins at age 16 and eventually struck out on his own with a series of area restaurants (and 40 Under Forty honors himself in 2023).

“It’s been a cool journey,” Collins said. “I always say it’s one part luck, it’s one part hard work and smarts, and it’s one part being in the right position and knowing the right people.”

As for what he enjoys most about coming to work each day, Collins may have put it best during a visit last year to the BusinessWest podcast, BusinessTalk.

“It’s the people,” he told us. “When I sit back in the corner of a restaurant that I’ve built and I see people enjoying themselves and having this little bit of escapism going on — whether they got a babysitter and they’re having a date night or they’re celebrating a birthday or an anniversary — and the whole vibe is good, the music’s spot on, the lights are right, the food is good, and I just see two people so happy together, enjoying their night … that’s what does it for me. I love giving people that small escape, even if it’s just for an hour.”

Wilbraham Looks to Build on Recent Momentum

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Developers are planning to transform the former Lakeside Inn into a boutique hotel and restaurant.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Developers are planning to transform the former Lakeside Inn into a boutique hotel and restaurant.

Developers are planning to transform the former Lakeside Inn into a boutique hotel and restaurant.

 

Christal Russo acknowledged that Wilbraham hasn’t historically enjoyed a reputation for being ‘open for business,’ as communities like to say.

And that’s understandable given its rural nature and status as one of the more desirable of Springfield’s bedroom communities.

But it has always welcomed businesses that enhance the quality of life there and meet the needs of its residents, said Russo, the recently named chair of the town’s resuscitated Economic Development Committee. And now, it is even more so, she noted, adding that the community has many strong selling points, ranging from a single tax rate to some developable parcels along busy Boston Road, to a recent vote to squelch a proposed meals tax.

And there’s two developments to either side of the town — new development on the site of the former Eastfield Mall and a planned rail station in nearby Palmer as part of planned east-west rail — that can be added to that list.

Meanwhile, the town has seen some real momentum when it comes to new business in recent years, from a Delaney’s restaurant and Domino’s Pizza to a new development in the center of town featuring a pizza restaurant, brewery, and several apartments, to the recent announcement by developers of plans to transform the former Lakeside Inn (which was home to several other restaurants in recent years and is now used as office space for a transportation company) into a boutique hotel that will include a high-end restaurant (more on this later).

“And we want to keep that momentum going,” said Russo, a project manager at MassMutual, adding that the Economic Development Committee, resurrected a few years ago, is committed to promoting the town’s assets and growing its business community.

“What we want to do as a committee is let the public know is that Wilbraham is open for business and we support our businesses,” she said, adding that the community is poised for additional growth. “We’re looking to better understand what we can do and what our businesses need so we can support them.”

Jim Rooney, chair of the town’s Planning Board, agreed, noting that the single tax rate and other measures taken recently — or not taken, in the case of the meals tax — should help efforts to sell the town to business owners.

“We have a few open storefronts and some land available for additional development. We’d love to be able to fill those spaces and bring some businesses here to develop some of our open parcels.”

As for redevelopment of the Eastfield Mall, a project called Springfield Crossing, a planned mix of retail, service businesses, and, eventually, housing, should create more traffic on Boston Road, which will not only benefit existing businesses there and elsewhere in town, but inspire more business owners and entrepreneurs to give Wilbraham a hard look, Rooney said.

“We would definitely think that, with the increased traffic, someone will be driving down and thinking, ‘this would be a great place for my business.’”

For this latest installment in its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Wilbraham and the many forms of momentum being seen in the community.

 

Delivering Results

Paul Robbins remembers driving past the site of Post Office Park on Boston Road while it was under construction a quarter-century or so ago. “I was thinking to myself, ‘who’s going to want to move in there?’”

Well … he did.

Indeed, not long after the facility opened, Robbins, a principal with the marketing firm Paul Robbins Associates, left his offices in downtown Springfield after 20 years there and relocated to the park. It was a move of convenience, he told BusinessWest, adding that he had moved his family to Wilbraham a few years earlier, and it just made sense to put his business there as well, especially since there was a new business park in town. (He recently relocated his business to the Brewer-Young mansion in Longmeadow.)

Getting back to his original commentary and skepticism about the park, it was grounded in the notion that Wilbraham was somewhat of a remote outpost, business-wise, hard to get to from Springfield — and many other parts of the 413.

And it still is.

But Wilbraham and, more specifically, the Boston Road corridor have become home to a growing number of businesses across several sectors, including hospitality, retail, and the broad realm of health and wellness, bringing people from several nearby communities into town.

A redeveloped Eastfield Mall is expected to boost existing businesses in Wilbraham and perhaps inspire more entrepreneurs to want to call it home.

Indeed, the park has made the community more of a destination, as it now hosts a post office (hence the name), the Scantic Valley YMCA, Monson Savings Bank corporate offices, a few medical offices, a hair salon, a shredding company, and other ventures. Looking at what’s happened, Robbins said the park has helped the community shed that ‘outpost’ label, and there have been many new developments along that stretch since.

And there’s land at the site for additional development, said Russo, adding that new businesses along that corridor, and the prospects for more, are one of the main forms of momentum in the community.

Perhaps the biggest are the announced plans for redeveloping the former Lakeside Inn. Built on Nine Mile Pond in the 1940s as an inn and restaurant, it was always a popular destination, drawing diners and guests from neighboring communities and well beyond.

Wilbraham at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1763
Population: 14,613
Area: 22.4 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $17.88
Commercial Tax Rate: $17.88
Median Household Income: $65,014
Median Family Income: $73,825
Type of government: Board of Selectmen, Open Town Meeting
Largest Employers: Baystate Wing Wilbraham Medical Center; Friendly Ice Cream Corp.; Big Y; Home Depot; Wilbraham & Monson Academy
*Latest information available

The hope is that the planned boutique hotel and restaurant — conceived by unrelated business owners Joe Sullivan and John Sullivan, owners of several ventures in the area, including Nathan Bill’s Bar & Restaurant and Boulevard Tavern and Grill in Springfield and East Village Tavern in East Longmeadow — will do the same.

“This is a really exciting development for the community,” Russo said. “It’s going to bring new life to a true landmark.”

Rooney agreed. “We’re extremely excited to see this come back as a restaurant — they’re looking to have lakeside dining — and a boutique hotel, small rooms to support activities like when parents come in for events at Wilbraham Monson Academy,” he said. “We’re really looking forward to this happening; it will be a great addition to the landscape.”

Plans call for a restaurant on the main floor, with eight guest rooms on the second floor and another six on the basement level. If all goes as planned, both components of the business should be completed by the fall of 2026.

 

You Can Get Here from There

Overall, Wilbraham, its officials, and its town meeting voters have taken several steps that are making the community more business-friendly, said Rooney, listing everything from that vote to reject a meals tax, which will provide a boost for the town’s growing roster of restaurants, to a measure allowing used car sales (something not allowed in town previously) as an accessory to an existing business.

The latter is a nod to changes in that business, Rooney noted, adding that most of the business involving the sale of used cars is done online, reducing the need for large lots full of cars.

“This measure will allow that kind of business to flourish in Wilbraham,” he noted, adding that it is indicative of efforts to facilitate business growth in the community.

And while such growth will largely be limited to the Boston Road corridor and the center of town, as it has been historically, there is room for more, said those we spoke with.

“We have a few open storefronts and some land available for additional development,” Russo explained. “We’d love to be able to fill those spaces and bring some businesses here to develop some of our open parcels.

There is already ample motivation for doing so, said Russo and Rooney, but those twin developments mentioned earlier — the reimagined Eastfield Mall, known as Springfield Crossing (just a few hundred yards from the Wilbraham line), and the planned rail stop in Palmer — might provide additional incentives.

Construction is well underway at Springfield Crossing, a 360,000-square-foot strip mall that will include Target, BJ’s, Hobby Lobby, PetSmart, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, and other regional and national retailers. It expected to make that corner of Springfield a more popular destination, as it was decades ago when the mall was thriving, said Rooney, bringing traffic from all directions, including east, through Wilbraham.

As for the rail stop, it is expected to make the eastern portion of the 413 more accessible, and more attractive, to potential residents — and also to business owners looking to create ventures to support those residents.

These are just some of the reasons why Wilbraham is enjoying some momentum, and why leaders there believe it can generate more in the years to come.

MassHire Merger Streamlines Services for Employers, Job Seekers

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Executive Directors Sarah Wilson (left) and Maura Geary
Features Special Coverage

Making It Work

Executive Directors Sarah Wilson (left) and Maura Geary

Executive Directors Sarah Wilson (left) and Maura Geary

 

To explain why the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Career Center and the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board merged their operations in July, Maura Geary first explained how the MassHire network is set up.

“There are 16 workforce areas in the state of Massachusetts, and every area has one workforce board and at least one career center,” she noted. “And the career center has two customer bases. One is job seekers; one is employers. We work with employers to find out what jobs they have, how we can help them find the talent they need, and we work with job seekers to find out what barriers they may have to employment in the jobs that exist in our region, and how can we help them overcome the barriers so that they’re prepared with the skills they need to enter the workforce.”

Meanwhile, the Workforce Board is more of a “30,000-foot view,” Sarah Wilson said. “We’re looking at regional trends, labor market information for the region. We’re convening employers. We’re bringing all this information to the Career Center, which does more on-the-ground work.”

Until July 1, Geary headed up the Career Center, while Wilson helmed the Workforce Board. But today, they’re co-executive directors of the first MassHire operation in the state to merge their operations into one, simply called MassHire Franklin Hampshire.

“Having the labor market information and understanding what trends are happening, we ask, ‘what are the challenges that exist in our region? Where are there opportunities? How can we bring in more resources to support the workforce that we have or the economy that we have?’” Geary told BusinessWest. “This merger really helps us align even more closely with the big picture of the region and the strategies that exist.”

When the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Career Center and the MassHire Franklin Hampshire Workforce Board announced the merger, they characterized it as a strategic unification and a significant milestone in the region’s efforts to deliver more coordinated, efficient, and impactful workforce development services across Franklin County, Hampshire County, and the North Quabbin region.

“They basically have paid internships at local businesses, where the grant pays for the wages of the participants. Employers get that labor, and they also have the opportunity to expose their businesses and their career pathways to the next generation of the workforce.”

The newly merged organization aims to streamline operations and enhance services for job seekers, employers, training providers, and community partners by combining the strategic oversight and policy leadership of the Workforce Board with the direct services and employer engagement expertise of the Career Center.

The merged organization will continue to operate offices in Greenfield and Northampton; its headquarters are still in the Greenfield Corporate Center, where the two halves formerly had separate space on the same hallway but now operate out of shared space.

“We were sort of set up for this in some ways because we were already co-located; the Workforce Board used to be just across the hall,” Wilson said. “And we shared resources — besides the space, we also shared HR and IT. And we’d been working hand in hand for many years.

“But this really solidifies it, and it brings together disparate teams and disparate strategies,” she went on. “I had my own thing on the Workforce Board, and Maura had her own thing in the Career Center. We would collaborate, but it wasn’t as structured as it is now. The communication between teams is now streamlined, so we can really streamline the work. This makes it much more efficient.”

The two MassHire Franklin Hampshire divisions were both located in separate offices at Greenfield Corporate Center, and now share space — and operations — as a single entity there.

The two MassHire Franklin Hampshire divisions were both located in separate offices at Greenfield Corporate Center, and now share space — and operations — as a single entity there.

Allison van der Velden, chair of the MassHire Franklin Hampshire board of directors, agreed.

“The merger is a natural next step in the evolution of our work,” she said when the merger was announced in June. “It strengthens our ability to deliver results and ensures that public workforce dollars are used efficiently, effectively, and equitably.”

 

Early Exposure

Another example of how the merger makes sense has to do with its young adult programs, Geary said.

“There’s separate funding for three different young adult programs, major funding that we oversee. Some of that funding was directed to the Workforce Board, and some of it was available to the Career Center. But now that we’re under one roof, we have completely merged all three of those programs into one unified program.

“When they existed between the Workforce Board and other providers and the Career Center, we were not maximizing those funds,” she went on. “So there’s a lot of opportunity to integrate programs on the ground, and we weren’t able to do that before because of the artificial silos that were in place.”

Mass Hire Franklin Hampshire’s state-funded YouthWorks programs are, in fact, among its most robust offerings; the organization receives about $530,000 in funding over both a summer cycle and a year-round cycle, and serves youth from ages 14 to 25.

“For the youngest participants, we’re going into the schools during the year and setting up after-school programs or different ways to engage them so they are learning about what career pathways are available. So the earliest contact is really about career awareness,” Geary explained. Meanwhile, the second tier serves 16- to 18-year-olds with paid work experiences.

“It’s the future of workforce development — it makes us more streamlined, more efficient. I think it’s better for the customer as well, whether that’s an employer or a job seeker.”

“They basically have paid internships at local businesses, where the grant pays for the wages of the participants. Employers get that labor, and they also have the opportunity to expose their businesses and their career pathways to the next generation of the workforce.”

Young people can also access a curriculum that delivers work readiness skills, financial literacy, and other competencies needed to enter the workforce.

“And with our oldest participants in YouthWorks, we actually are paying for them to enter into training programs and get their first job,” Geary went on, giving as one example a partnership with Greenfield Community College (GCC) to help young people earn clean energy HVAC certifications.

Meanwhile, from a Workforce Board perspective, MassHire convenes employers to learn about the different needs of the region, Wilson said. “But we can also think of training opportunities, grant opportunities, how we can bring funding into the region to help support some of those needs. It’s not just connecting to the workforce, but determining how we can go about that.”

One strategy is through on-the-job (OTJ) training and registered apprenticeships.

“Both of those get money to the employer, and they are also paid training opportunities. With OJTs, we can reimburse the employer up to 50%. And we’ve been doing that for manufacturing over the past year.

“We’re starting to get into registered apprenticeships, but there’s a tax credit that could be applied to that,” Wilson added. “It really helps with retention for the employer because they’re investing in that employee. There’s a structured training program and wage boosts that are built into that. There’s mentorship. So we see a lot of positives other than just the tax incentive.”

Much of MassHire Franklin Hampshire’s funding targets workforce training in its priority industries of education, healthcare, and manufacturing, Geary explained, while helping job and career seekers find a path that works for them.

“One of the models that we’re moving toward is recognizing that most people, when they’re looking for a job, can’t afford to go to training. It’s a paid training, and that’s amazing, but most people can’t take 12 or 16 or more weeks in a free training without having an income. So we’ve been promoting, with our employers, models where people are getting paid while they’re in the training. That’s something we’re excited about.”

 

Ready to Learn

Geary noted that, when MassHire surveys employers about what they’re looking for, they often say they can give people the technical training needed to do this job, but too often, prospective employees are coming in without professional skills or soft skills — what she and her team more commonly call ‘work readiness skills.’

“So we have a workshop team here developing content that is specific to different trainings. We’ll go into a training program and deliver the work readiness workshops and make sure that we’re preparing people across multiple industries to just be ready to be good employees.”

Speaking of training, MassHire Franklin Hampshire also has a strong relationship with GCC.

“We’re really lucky that GCC is a community college that is really interested in being innovative and responsive to the employers in our region,” Geary said, adding that the college has expanded and invested in its workforce training programs on campus over the past few years.

“If you look at their website, you’ll see they have really comprehensive career pathway programs that match our priority industries and engage employers and students. So we partner with them all the time. When they have a new grant-funded training program, we help them recruit students. We help provide the work readiness.”

MassHire is also expanding its business services team that works directly with employers, she added. “We want to make sure that, when GCC has any training program ending, we have employers who are in that industry lined up to receive them. So we’re doing more events early on, helping people prepare for the employers that are going to come to a job fair that are specific to that training cohort.”

Besides key sectors like education, healthcare, and manufacturing, MassHire Franklin Hampshire also keys in on industries that are particularly relevant to its region, including clean energy, outdoor recreation, and agriculture.

“We are seeing, nationwide, a decrease in the agricultural industry. But in Massachusetts, we’re seeing a slight increase. And Franklin Hampshire holds about 20% of the state’s agricultural industry right here,” Geary said. “So we’re really looking at what we can be doing with small and mid-sized farms. It’s a lot of small businesses, so we want to have an industry sector partnership where we do some of the legwork and say, ‘what do you need? Let us help you design some strategies that will meet your workforce needs.’

In the realm of clean industry, she noted that GCC has partnered with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which funds clean energy grants and workforce training, among other things.

“They’re really developing a comprehensive career pathway and training program, and we’re working on engaging young adults, but also the adult population, to get trained in that industry as we’re seeing more and more employers start to pop up in our region.”

It’s a region that has unique challenges in that it has the largest geography of any of the 16 workforce areas, but with relatively few residents.

“We’re serving 50 cities and towns in Franklin, Hampshire, and the North Quabbin, and a lot of it is rural. So we have fewer funds than other workforce areas that have larger populations. And some of the challenges of the rural communities that impact the workforce are the same challenges as everywhere else, like transportation and childcare, but they have a little different flavor up here,” Geary explained.

“So those are really difficult barriers to overcome when we have people trying to get to jobs over this 1,400-square-mile region, and there’s not really any transportation infrastructure to speak of.”

 

One-stop Shop

The majority of MassHire’s funding comes through the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which brings up another current challenge: the general uncertainty organizations of all kinds are feeling about federal funding.

“That’s very much up in the air. We don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Wilson said. “So coming together gives us a little more stability to be able to weather that. But it’s also setting us up for the future, no matter what. It’s the future of workforce development — it makes us more streamlined, more efficient. I think it’s better for the customer as well, whether that’s an employer or a job seeker.”

Geary said that speaks to something she hears all the time from clients on both sides.

“Once they’re engaged with our services, they all inevitably say, ‘oh my gosh, I had no idea I could get so much help by working with you. I didn’t know you existed.’ We hear that all the time, so streamlining our messaging helps with that, too. We don’t have to get into that confusing conversation — ‘you’re going to work with them over here for that, and then you’re going to come to us for this over here.’”

Instead, she said, “we can eliminate that point of confusion and just say, ‘come to MassHire Franklin Hampshire, and we’re going to help you solve your workforce needs.’”

Hadley Faces Challenges, Decisions

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Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Paragus Strategic IT has become a regional success story from its Route 9 headquarters in Hadley.

Leaders and business owners in Hadley know the value of Route 9, which accounts for the vast majority of non-farm commerce in this community otherwise dominated by agriculture. Roughly 100,000 cars traverse Russell Street every day, but they’ve been slowed — and business owners have been frustrated — by a massive project to widen and reconstruct about 2.5 miles of the thoroughfare.

But relief in in sight, as the project is expected to wind down by next spring, and most agree the end result will be worth the trouble.

At the same time, Hadley residents are also being asked to make tough decisions about the town’s budget and its impact on their property tax bills.

Specifically, they’re being asked to consider a Proposition 2½ override. Proposition 2½ is a 1980 Massachusetts law that limits the amount of property tax revenue a municipality can raise. Each year, a community’s levy limit can increase by 2.5% of the previous year’s limit in addition to added value from new construction, renovations, and other property improvements.

To raise taxes above this limit, a community must seek voter approval through an override. By passing an override, the town can raise taxes beyond the automatic 2.5% annual increase and new growth allowed under Proposition 2½. This results in a permanent increase to the levy limit, meaning the approved amount becomes part of the tax base in all future years.

Ed Augustus

Ed Augustus

“This funding round is about more than bricks and mortar, it’s about people.”

As BusinessWest went to press on this issue, a Sept. 9 town meeting loomed in Hadley to determine whether two measures make it to a Sept. 29 special election: a $2.25 million general override to cover various operating expenses for town and school departments, and a $300,000 capital stabilization override to pay for various assets and infrastructure.

The larger measure stems from several budget needs in town, including $579,435 for an around-the-clock fire department; $824,404 for increased operational expenses, including town and school budgets and a mid-year health insurance increase; and $846,785 to cover free cash that was used to balance the budget approved by a town meeting in May.

Should both measures pass, the town’s property tax rate would increase from $11.63 to $13.57 per $1,000 valuation. That would mean a $679 difference in the annual tax bill for a house assessed at $350,000, $873 for a $450,000 home, and $1,067 for a $550,000 home.

Then there’s the search — currently paused — for a new town administrator. Carolyn Brennan stepped down from the role in December after more than four years in the chair, and Police Chief Michael Mason has been serving in that role on an interim basis. In June, the Hadley Select Board postponed the search for a permanent replacement after members decided not to offer the job to either of the two finalists — Nate Malloy, an Amherst senior planner, and Nick Caccamo, Williamsburg’s town administrator — who conducted in-depth interviews.

“There’s work that needs to be done on the Russell School. However, it is a strong building, one that is ripe for redevelopment, and one that we think should have a future in this town, from our perspective.”

Select Board members cited the Proposition 2½ matters and the looming town meeting as circumstances making it difficult to focus on hiring a permanent town administrator, and determined to resume the effort soon. In all, the search committee reviewed 16 applications and interviewed five semifinalists before narrowing the list to two and, ultimately, turning both down.

 

No Place Like Home

Affordable housing remains an issue in Hadley, as it does in most communities in Western Mass., and while it’s far from a broad solution, one state-funded project aims to make a dent.

On July 31, the Healey-Driscoll administration announced $182 million in low-income housing tax credits and subsidies to 21 rental housing developments that will create or preserve 1,245 homes across Massachusetts.

Paul Kozub

Paul Kozub

“This anniversary is not just a celebration of V-One’s growth, but also of the passion and vision that have driven us since day one.”

One of those projects will be the EconoLodge redevelopment in Hadley, the adaptive reuse of a closed hotel as permanent supportive housing. The nonprofit sponsor is Valley Community Development Corp. The completed project will include 50 units for individuals or small households earning less than 60% of area median income (AMI), with 31 units further reserved for individuals or small households earning less than 30% of AMI. The completed project will primarily serve homeless individuals.

These awards were made possible in part through the Affordable Homes Act and by Gov. Maura Healey’s tax cuts package, which raised the low-income housing tax credit to $60 million annually, a $20 million increase that allows the state to support more affordable housing production.

“Our administration is working on all fronts to build more reasonably priced housing and lower costs for everyone,” Healey said. “These awards are creating thousands of apartments that people can actually afford. This is helping seniors age independently and close to their families and helping workers afford to live in the communities where their jobs are.”

Other Western Mass. projects receiving funding from the program include Ferry Street, a new construction project in Easthampton, which will offer 96 units on a site including former mill buildings; South Holyoke Homes Phase 3, a new construction family housing project in the Paper City that will offer 40 total units; and Eagle Mill Phase II, a new construction project adjacent to Eagle Mill Phase I, a mill conversion project now underway in Lee; Phase II will offer 44 units.

“This funding round is about more than bricks and mortar, it’s about people,” Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Ed Augustus said. “Whether it’s a formerly homeless individual in Boston, a senior in Topsfield, or a working family in Easthampton, the homes we’re supporting will change lives.”

In Hadley, housing is one option being considered for the iconic, 131-year-old Russell School, which has been vacant since 2015. A reuse study has identified several alternatives, including keeping the property as a municipal building and renovating it and creating a public-private partnership.

Pulse Café, a popular vegan restaurant, is among the many eateries located along Route 9 in Hadley.

This past spring, Architectural Heritage Foundation (AHF) Boston, working with Allegrone Companies of Lenox, completed a report on the 1894 building at 131 Russell St. That feasibility study determined that the structure can be rehabilitated into micro apartments, office space, or classrooms and art studios for less than $10 million. The study and resulting 24-page report were funded by the town and the Community Preservation Act.

“There’s work that needs to be done on the Russell School. However, it is a strong building, one that is ripe for redevelopment, and one that we think should have a future in this town, from our perspective,” said Jake Sanders, project executive for the nonprofit AHF Boston.

Hadley at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1661
Population: 5,325
Area: 24.6 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $11.63
Commercial Tax Rate: $11.63
Median Household Income: $51,851
Median Family Income: $61,897
Type of Government: Open Town Meeting, Board of Selectmen
Largest Employers: Super Stop & Shop; Evaluation Systems Group Pearson; Elaine Center at Hadley; Home Depot; Lowe’s Home Improvement
* Latest information available

“In our research, we have found the Russell School is an ideal candidate for housing or a community use,” he added, noting that options range from active use to repairs to demolition. “We have a path forward for the town.”

 

Something to Celebrate

Meanwhile, business owners along Russell Street continue to anticipate the finish line of the road project — and they are myriad, from law firms, restaurants, and car dealerships to big box stores at Hampshire Mall and Mountain Farms, to well-established local success stories like Paragus Strategic IT and V-One Vodka, which, in fact, just marked 20 years since opening its doors in Hadley.

“This anniversary is not just a celebration of V-One’s growth, but also of the passion and vision that have driven us since day one,” owner Paul Kozub said.

And while Hadley has plenty on its plate, grappling with budgetary realities, leadership discussions, housing, and more, it’s also a town on the move — and hoping to move a little more quickly down Route 9 next spring.

The Craft Beer Industry Is Definitely Flat

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Ray Berry (left) and Mike Yates at White Lion Brewing in downtown Springfield.
Features Special Coverage

Tapped Out?

Ray Berry (left) and Mike Yates at White Lion Brewing in downtown Springfield.

Ray Berry (left) and Mike Yates at White Lion Brewing in downtown Springfield.

Mike Yates says it’s a matter of simple math.

“People aren’t drinking as much, and when they do drink, they have a lot more options,” said Yates, brewmaster and business partner with Ray Berry in Springfield-based White Lion Brewing, adding that this math presents a challenge for area craft brewers, and it has for a while now.

Berry agreed, noting that, while they didn’t do it single-handedly, it was the Millennials that provided the foundation for the craft beer industry to build and boom. And now, those in that generation, the oldest of which are in their mid-40s, have more and different responsibilities and are thus spending less time at brew pubs and buying fewer cans and growlers.

“Ten, 15 years ago, it was the Millennials that propped up the craft beer trade and provided the enthusiasm,” Berry explained. “As those 10 to 15 years have gone by, the Millennials’ palates have changed, they have different work-life challenges, they may have children and the children are getting older … there are different priorities.

“So they’re not visiting the breweries as often as they used to,” he went on. “And the generation that stands behind them, the Gen Zs, are not as inclined to visit craft breweries as the Millennials were, nor are they as loyal.”

Meanwhile, as noted by Yates, there are more options for Millennials and everyone else — a still-dizzying number of craft beers, domestics, distilled spirits, hard seltzers, cannabis, and more. On top of all this, there are other pain points that range from inflation to workforce issues (including cost and availability) to post-COVID realities, such as fewer workers in their offices to support brew pubs in business districts — like White Lion.

“Ten, 15 years ago, it was the Millennials that propped up the craft beer trade and provided the enthusiasm. As those 10 to 15 years have gone by, the Millennials’ palates have changed, they have different work-life challenges, they may have children and the children are getting older … there are different priorities.”

All this prompted Brewers Assoc. President Bart Watson to sum up 2024 with the single word ‘painful,’ a nod to statistics showing a 2% decline in overall craft beer production and more breweries closing last year (399) than opening (335) — a sharp reversal from just a few years ago.

All this adds up to more challenging times and the need to adjust and pivot.

Which explains paint-and-sip nights at Skyline Brewery in Westfield, where participants can get a painting lesson and a cold brew, or a glass of wine, on the side, said Lisa Lafreniere, co-owner with Dana Bishop. It also explains Skyline’s popular trivia nights, live music, full food menu, wine, ciders, slushies, homemade sodas, and back patio area, which comes complete with stunning views of the farm below.

“People have to have a bigger dynamic than craft beer — the people who are struggling now are places just relying on their beer and not much else,” said Lafreniere, who, like Bishop and everyone else in this business, has noticed not-so-subtle changes in the landscape and what people are calling a ‘maturation’ of the industry.

It’s been marked, as noted, by consolidation and closures of some operations and declining sales overall and that need to pivot and offer more than pilsners, sours, IPAs, and stouts.

Dana Bishop and Lisa Lafreniere, co-owners of Skyline Brewery, say today’s craft brewers have to offer customers much more than beer.

Dana Bishop and Lisa Lafreniere, co-owners of Skyline Brewery, say today’s craft brewers have to offer customers much more than beer.

At White Lion, for example, its Pridelands on Mane event destination in Tower Square Park, across the street from its brew pub, recently hosted a puppy pool party that attracted a few dozen four-legged participants and their owners. A few days later, it hosted a seafood festival and has plans for a wine-tasting event and also a town meeting of sorts featuring candidates for Springfield City Council.

Such programs are designed to fully activate the space (complete with custom-designed shipping containers), give area residents more opportunities to sample White Lion brews, and provide more of an experience than simply sampling the latest offering.

It’s not a recent phenomenon, to be sure, but it is becoming more critical with each passing year, if not each passing quarter.

“The days of going out of your way to visit a brewery for a pint or two and then maybe spinning off to another brewery for a pint or two … that still happens, but not to the extent that it did,” Berry said. “So now, you have to create an additional experience.”

 

Pint of View

Over the past 30 years or so, BusinessWest has chronicled the rise of the craft beer sector in this region, from its infancy to an impactful presence in communities across the 413.

The names of these businesses have become part of the landscape — Tree House, 7 Railroads, Hot Plate, Abandoned Building, Vanished Valley, Barrington Brewery, Skyline, White Lion, and many more.

These ventures are still thriving, but several breweries have closed in this region and across the state, including some big players, such as Cambridge Brewing.

Pioneer Valley Brewing in Turners Falls was a recent local casualty, closing its doors on May 31, for all the reasons listed above.

“Expenses have gone through the roof,” co-owner Steve Valeski told the Greenfield Recorder. “The last two years have been devastating. Prices went up, everything’s gone up. It’s the market, it’s the economy. People aren’t going out as much. Shipping’s more expensive. Cans are more expensive. Everything is more expensive. We just can’t keep charging more and more for a glass of beer. It gets to a certain point where you have to say no.”

Most area brewers are still saying yes, but success is not coming as easily as it did a few decades ago, or even five years ago.

“People have to have a bigger dynamic than craft beer — the people who are struggling now are places just relying on their beer and not much else.”

There are many reasons for this, said Bishop, noting those demographic changes mentioned earlier, but also rising costs of everything from barley and malt to labor. In response, Skyline has taken steps to bring many products in-house, such as soda, while also implanting strategies to manage the skyrocketing cost of yeast.

Tanzi Cannon-Eckerle, majority owner of Brew Practitioners in East Longmeadow, summed it up succinctly and effectively: “there’s fewer butts in seats.”

Elaborating, she said her brewery, which does not serve food and focuses exclusively on beer and other beverages, tracks business performance in several ways, from overall visitation to new customers to spending, and the numbers tell a story.

“From last year to this, we’ve seen a decrease in the number of people coming in the door,” said Cannon-Eckerle, an employment lawyer by day and brewer … well, the rest of the time. “Spending per person has been about the same, but the number of people has changed.”

She wasn’t about to put it all on Millennials, although she has seen that maturation of the market in Western Mass. and beyond, and less overall enthusiasm for breweries and craft brews.

“This academic or intellectual pursuit of all things craft beer and it becoming cool to visit all the breweries … has that gone by the wayside? Maybe it’s not as popular with the younger drinkers,” she acknowledged, adding quickly that there is still a healthy thirst for beer, and it’s up to individual brewers to maintain a buzz for their products.

Lafreniere agreed, noting that, overall, there is less enthusiasm for craft beer, an observation that extends to everything from sales to the buzz once generated when a local brewer would roll out a new brand.

Two of the guests at White Lion’s recent puppy pool party.

Two of the guests at White Lion’s recent puppy pool party.

“People just don’t line up for a beer release — you don’t see that anymore,” she said. “They know it’s out, they know they’ll get down there; the hype, the excitement about the business is much lower.

“The bubble has burst — there’s far less buzz,” she went on. “We are friends with a lot of people who own local breweries, and we talk all the time about what is gone and the struggle to get people in the tap rooms. We’ve seen a lot of our friends that were wicked busy pre-COVID, and now, somewhat after COVID … it’s night and day.”

The challenges facing the industry were made clear at a Massachusetts Brewers Guild annual conference in Framingham 18 months ago, said Berry, where Watson, then the chief economist for the Brewers Assoc., painted a challenging picture for brewers.

“He was monitoring the trends nationwide, and the trends were either flat and going sideways or going down in particular areas of operation,” Berry told BusinessWest, returning to the notion of pivoting and providing more of an experience.

“It just cannot be a location where people come and get a beer,” he explained. “You can get a beer anywhere; you can get a beer in your backyard. What experience are you driving?”

 

Head Games

Berry said last month’s event was the second puppy pool party. The first was pre-COVID, and the second edition drew maybe 30 dogs (puppies and adults alike) and provided another opportunity to grow the brand.

“There’s 30 people that we had an opportunity to engage that we may not have been able to engage otherwise,” he noted, adding that the same is true of the seafood festival (the third annual) and the town meeting featuring City Council candidates.

“It’s about creating new experiences that people appreciate and that may keep them coming back or, at minimum, pay attention to what the city of Springfield has to offer,” he went on, adding this is what breweries must do now if they want to succeed.

Lafreniere and Bishop concurred.

“Getting people in now … it has to be a party,” said Bishop, adding that this explains Skyline’s many efforts to draw visitors, which also include a strong focus on food, initiated in 2024.

“For us, it’s a lot of food; we found that the beer drinkers are here, but we need to have the food be very exciting for them,” said Lafreniere, which is why they’ve gone from pretzels and flatbreads to a full menu that includes everything from chicken sandwiches, lobster rolls, and quesadillas to pulled pork from their own smoker.

Beyond food, there needs to be other ingredients that add up to an experience, they said, adding that trivia nights are part of the equation, as are paint-and-sip nights that draw maybe 12 to 15 people.

“The days of going out of your way to visit a brewery for a pint or two and then maybe spinning off to another brewery for a pint or two … that still happens, but not to the extent that it did. So now, you have to create an additional experience.”

“It’s not going to save us, but it helps,” said Lafreniere, adding that the collective efforts to bring more people to the brewery are paying dividends.

Cannon-Eckerle, meanwhile, stressed that, while breweries are fun — many started as hobbies and evolved into businesses — they are, in fact, businesses. And like all businesses, owners must pivot and adjust, but also focus on building their brands and differentiating themselves from the others.

“As in any business, you have to keep your ear to the ground and watch for market trends and where consumer spending is moving,” she explained.

Operations like Brew Practitioners, which are strictly breweries and focus almost exclusively on beer, have fewer opportunities to diversify and adjust, but they still must do so, and her business has, adding mocktails and other non-alcoholic beverages to meet the demands of younger customers.

“We sell quite a few of them,” she said. “The costs on them are pretty high, but it’s a pivot that we had to do to meet market demand.

“It’s about how we engage the individuals to come see us,” Cannon-Eckerle went on. “Before, when it was super cool and everyone went to see every new brewery, and whenever you went to a new town, the first thing you wanted to was check out the breweries, it was a lot easier. The question now is, how do we adjust to all that? It’s just not enough to hang out your shingle and say you’re a brewery.

“Spending is in flux right now — we don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring,” she continued. “People are being choosy about where they spend their money on a $7, $8, or $9 beer, and it better be good.”

Berry agreed. “If you don’t make adjustments, if you try to stay in a singular lane,” he said, “you will not survive, especially in this trade.”

 

Many West Side Stories Are Converging

By
Eileen LaMountain has been managing the giant slide at the Big E for nearly 40 years.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Eileen LaMountain has been managing the giant slide at the Big E for nearly 40 years.

Eileen LaMountain has been managing the giant slide at the Big E for nearly 40 years.

 

Eileen LaMountain says she’s getting too old to handle the waxing duties at the Big E’s Giant Slide, so she leaves that to her younger co-workers.

That waxing detail generally involves the upper portions of the 46-foot-high attraction, she noted, followed by repeated runs down the slide to spread the wax across its full length.

“That’s why I tell them to hire young people,” she said with a laugh. “A lot of the people I have are not that young, and they can’t go back and forth 10 times.”

But she still handles every other duty involved with managing that popular attraction, which she’s been doing since 1987. She essentially took over for her husband, who had done it the previous five years before moving over to handle admissions, which he did until he officially retired last year after working 58 years at the Big E.

The LaMountains are prime examples of area residents who return each year to work the 17-day fair and become part of a workforce of more than 1,000 people, said Gene Cassidy, president and CEO of Eastern States Exposition.

“Pre-COVID, we retained about 90% of our staff, and post-COVID, we retain about 80% of our staff,” he explained, adding that the fair needs to hire about 200 people for this year’s edition — to handle assignments ranging from parking lot attendant to landscaper to cashier — and is well on its way to doing so.

“I was all in favor of knocking it down originally and building something nice and new and modern. But on the other hand, that’s more expensive. Maybe we can do it with a remodel, but this is probably the last time in my lifetime that we’ll build a police station, so we want to do it right and give them what they need.”

Assembling the workforce is one of the many storylines for the 110th edition of the fair, which will start Sept. 12 and have a very difficult act to follow.

Indeed, 2024 was a banner year for the Big E. Attendance records were set (1,633,937 people came through the gates, breaking the previous mark by seven-tenths of a percentage point) and it was the fair’s most profitable year ever, with more than $6 million in net income.

“And all $6 million will be put into the facility,” Cassidy said, adding quickly that it will make just a very small dent in what he estimates to be $250 million in deferred maintenance on grounds dominated by buildings more 100 years old.

The Big E’s new season is one of many storylines unfolding in West Springfield. Others include:

• Movement toward creation of a new police station at the site of the former Walgreens location on Route 20, which was acquired by the city. A preliminary study by a design team will determine whether the best course is to renovate the facility, just a few feet from City Hall, where the police are currently headquartered, or demolish it and build new, Mayor Will Reichelt said;

• Ongoing infrastructure work on both of the city’s main retail arteries — Memorial Avenue and Riverdale Street — with the former entering the “final stretch,” as Reichelt called it, and the latter in its earlier stages;

• Little movement to create new housing despite critical need, said the mayor, citing a lack of developable land, the high cost of building, and the relative scarcity of funding assistance from the state as the primary reasons why. There is an 11-unit subdivision in the works off Piper Road, as well as 40 to 50 over-55 condos now under construction off Birnie Avenue and continued talk of new housing at the site of a former nursing home off Route 20, but little else on the drawing board;

• More new development on Riverdale Street, which is in a seemingly constant state of change, including the demolition of a few older hotels, including a large portion of the Clarion, and plans to build new ones, as well as a new Balise Honda store taking shape in the parking lot of the existing facility (more on this later);

• A new breakfast and lunch restaurant, the Roundabout, at the Route 20 and Elm Street rotary, another sign, said Reichelt, of how investments in that area, which also include new sidewalks, lighting, and other improvements, are paying dividends in the form of new businesses; and

• Preliminary discussions about creation of a new master plan for the city, one that will provide a blueprint to take the community to 2050 and beyond.

“Our master plan is 16 years old now, give or take, and we’re finishing up a lot of what’s in it,” the mayor explained. “We want to look out 25 years — not to predict the future, but to examine what the retail world will look like, for example, and whether we’re ready for potential changes that could impact Riverdale Street.”

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the many converging West Side stories.

Alex Balise says the new Balise Honda store will better serve customers.

Alex Balise says the new Balise Honda store will better serve customers.

 

Progress Report

Reichelt noted that West Springfield is perhaps the last city in Western Mass. that still has its police station within City Hall — a throwback to when this was a much smaller community, but a situation that has lingered for decades as the city has searched for a suitable site.

It found one when Walgreens closed its Route 20 location in 2024 as part of a larger scaling-back initiative, leaving another question — renovate or build new? And Reichelt can look at two neighboring communities for some possible insight.

Indeed, Westfield is building new on Union Street, and Agawam is nearly done renovating the former Hub Insurance building on Suffield Street into its new headquarters.

“Agawam spent like $30 million less than Westfield’s going to spend” said Reichelt, adding that renovation of the Walgreens, which has a full basement in addition to its spacious retail floor, could be a less expensive option.

“I was all in favor of knocking it down originally and building something nice and new and modern,” he explained. “But on the other hand, that’s more expensive. Maybe we can do it with a remodel, but this is probably the last time in my lifetime that we’ll build a police station, so we want to do it right and give them what they need.”

In either case, the new headquarters will be downtown — which won’t be the case in either Westfield or Agawam — which has its advantages, the mayor noted.

Beyond the plans for the new police station, infrastructure work remains one of the main storylines in the city, especially on those two retail arteries, said Reichelt, adding that there is some light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the work at Memorial Avenue, which recently entered a new, more visible phase with completion of the Complete Streets initiative set for early 2027.

“Until recently, most of the work has been replacing the water main, sewer main, stormwater … the underground stuff,” he explained. “But now, as you come onto Memorial from the rotary at the Memorial Bridge, they’re redoing the road layout, adding new granite curbing, and changing the actual look of the road to get ready for the new pavement.”

On Riverdale Street, infrastructure work, due to be completed in 2027, is in earlier stages, and will include new sidewalks, off-street bike paths, and some repaving, the mayor continued, adding that, longer-term, the state has plans to improve Route 20.

Meanwhile, the new Honda store at the east end of Riverdale Street is starting to take shape.

And for those thinking the existing store isn’t very old … you’re right. It was just 2010 when Balise Motor Sales completed an extensive renovation of the former Yale Genton clothing store and a 20,000-square-foot addition. But Honda is changing the look of its dealerships, with a nod toward less square footage and a design that features a new-look façade and is modular and flexible, and the Balise store will be at the forefront of these changes, said Alex Balise, director of Corporate Strategy for Balise Motor Sales.

“The existing dealership is fully functional, but we have plans to grow,” she explained, noting that talk of building a new store began in 2023. “And to do that, and better serve our needs, we needed a new dealership.”

She said the new facility will be easier to navigate and be very similar to what was done at the chain’s Lexus dealership further down Riverdale Street in terms of easier access to the service area.

A portion of the existing dealership will be salvaged and used for a state inspection center, calibration services, parts distribution, and used-car reconditioning, she went on, adding that the remainder will be demolished and used for parking. The project is on track to be completed in mid-December.

 

Fair Assessment

Cassidy’s attention to detail, especially when it comes to the weather, has been well-chronicled. Indeed, each day of the Big E, he takes detailed notes about what the conditions were, almost hour by hour, entries that help explain attendance figures.

So when he said it didn’t rain much last year, he didn’t generalize. He went right to the book.

“Let’s see … the second Thursday, the 26th, we had light rain late morning and mid-afternoon, but it didn’t really have any impact on our attendance … that was it,” he said, adding that this rainfall total was a big change from 2024, when it rained on several days during the fair, and it goes a long way toward explaining the record attendance and record profits.

West Springfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1774
Population: 28,835
Area: 17.5 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $14.87
Commercial Tax Rate: $30.28
Median Household Income: $40,266
Median Family Income: $50,282
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Eversource Energy, Harris Corp., Home Depot, Interim Health Care, Mercy Home Care
* Latest information available

Those numbers will be tough to repeat, let alone surpass, in 2025, he acknowledged, noting that the weather will likely not be as good this year. But with a shrug of the shoulders, he indicated that anything is possible.

For the most part, he stuck to what is likely, which — again, weather permitting — will be another solid year. He noted that fairs like this one are not entirely recession-proof, but they’re close.

“Fairs represent tradition, and people, at this time in our history, are hungry for that; they desire that,” he said. “And for that reason, fairs tend to be insulated from inflation. People might defer on taking a trip to Disney, but they’re going to come to the fair because that’s their family tradition.”

This explains why many recent fairs have done well, said Cassidy, citing the Wisconsin State Fair, which was on pace to shatter attendance records until heavy rains and some flooding, as one example.

As for the 2025 Big E, like most of the 109 that have come before it, this one will feature ‘new and old,’ a phrase that covers everything from attractions to food to the brews in the many beer gardens.

The ‘new’ this year includes the return of Navy Week programming as a lead up to the nation’s 250th birthday, including performances by the Navy Band Northeast and the Navy Windward Quartet, as well as Collector Car Live: Race Day, a car show featuring race vehicles and NASCAR driver Ryan Preece, and increased ‘strolling entertainment,’ including Fritzy One Man Circus and strolling musician Freddie Marion.

‘New and old’ also refers to the music lineup, which includes everything from ZZ Top and Foreigner to Five for Fighting, Train, Busta Rhymes & Rick Ross, and TLC with Big Boi.

As for the ‘old,’ that would include the giant slide, which has been part of the Big E since 1969. It stretches 135 feet, and LaMountain knows every inch of it, although, as noted earlier, she’s not out there waxing it anymore.

When asked how those applying the wax to those higher areas do so without gravity taking hold, she said “very carefully.”

In addition to supervising the waxing, LaMountain, 73, makes sure the slide is properly staffed (it takes a half-dozen people to operate it) and that the various procedures are followed, including protocols when it rains — it shuts down immediately when drops start falling.

Overall, more than 100,000 people will go down the slide over the course of the 17 days, she said, adding that maybe 9,000 will visit the attraction on a busy Saturday. That adds up to long days, but she endures — and she comes back every year.

“It’s fun. It’s a long day, but … it’s the people you see every year,” she explained, adding that that the money earned over the course of the fair pays for a vacation or some extras, with some going in the bank. “We have a good time, and I would really miss it if I didn’t do it.”

With that, she spoke not only for people who work at Big E, but for everyone who visits each year.

A Fuzzy Picture on Tariffs Becomes Sharper, But Questions Linger

By
Carlo Bonavita
Features

Coming into Focus

 

Carlo Bonavita

Carlo Bonavita says tariffs will likely prompt some wine drinkers to switch to domestic products.

 

Clarity.

Ever since tariffs became a main thrust of the Trump administration’s economic policy — that would be day 1 — that’s what business owners and managers have been calling, if not begging, for.

They still don’t have as much as they want, but they now have a lot more than they did 60 or even 30 days ago.

That’s especially true in the auto industry, where trade deals inked with Japan, South Korea, and the EU lock in 15% tariffs on a large list of foreign imports. That translates into a roughly $2,000 increase on an average-priced vehicle, which is now in the mid-40s, said Ben Sullivan, chief operating officer for the Balise Auto Group.

And that number must be put into perspective, he went on, noting that, with the return of incentives such as 0% financing and attractive lease rates, the consumer’s monthly payment — which is what most focus on — may not rise much higher than it is now.

“At the same time as those price increases are coming, most manufacturers have increased production, and when they increase production, they want to sell a bunch of cars, and when they want to sell a bunch of cars, they put incentives on them.”

“At the same time as those price increases are coming, most manufacturers have increased production, and when they increase production, they want to sell a bunch of cars, and when they want to sell a bunch of cars, they put incentives on them,” said Sullivan, who cited the case of a co-worker with a truck coming off lease. She’s getting into a new one and shaving $100 off the monthly payment at the same time.

That’s an indication of how unattractive the incentives were in the years after COVID, and how much better they are now, said Sullivan, adding quickly that, while there’s still a good amount of dust to settle, especially with regard to tariffs imposed on Canada and Mexico and the cars and parts made in those countries, there is a sense of normalcy returning to this sector (more on that later).

Ben Sullivan

Ben Sullivan says that, while car prices are rising by $2,000 on average due to tariffs, with incentives, consumers may not see a rise in their monthly payment.

The same can generally be said for Carlo Bonavita’s business, Springfield Wine Exchange, where clarity is also a technical term.

Bonavita’s shelves are loaded with imported wines, many of which will now be subjected to at least 15% tariffs. This will add a few dollars to the average-priced bottle, which might be enough to sway some consumers to switch to domestic labels, something he’s been promoting for some time now, especially with the prices from some European wines rising even before tariffs were imposed, for reasons he can’t pinpoint.

“The reality is, I’d prefer to find domestic wine alternatives for our customers. It’s our job to go out there and find wines for our customers that are affordable, quality — and that’s easy to do,” he said, adding that he expects that some will shift more to domestic products. “Most people are loyal to the grape, and not necessarily the label,” he said, adding that consumers are likely to trade an Italian Pinot Grigio for one made in California.

There is less clarity in some other sectors, however, and with many different products, especially since a new, wide round of tariffs on individual countries went into effect earlier this month. The countries included Brazil (50%), Switzerland (39%), Vietnam (20%), and Taiwan (20%), and the tariffs are expected to generate price increases on everything from watches to shoes; computers to furniture; coffee to toys.

Construction is another sector where there are still some unknowns.

Dave Fontaine, CEO of Fontaine Bros. Inc., said tariffs will certainly impact the cost of projects large and small because tariffs on products, such as steel or copper, are applied not when they are ordered, but when they enter the country.

“I would equate it to walking into a store … the sales tax is 6.25%, and then, while you’re purchasing the item, the sales tax gets doubled or tripled,” he explained. “That’s going to impact at the register.”

To date, increases in prices from tariffs have been offset by decreases in the cost of some materials due to a general slowdown in the industry, allowing projects to stay on budget, he went on, but it remains to be seen if things will stay that way.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think that what our distributors did, as these tariff talks were going on, was bulk up their warehouses just to get people along for six or seven months in anticipation that the tariff talks would blow over and things would get settled.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with business owners and managers across several sectors to get some perspective on tariffs and what they mean for their businesses and their customers.

 

Grape Expectations

The announcement of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs on April 2 has been followed by four and half months of trade talks, new deals, deadlines made, deadlines extended, and seemingly never-ending speculation about the impact of tariffs on prices, individual businesses, and entire sectors.

In many respects, the speculation is giving way to increased clarity, though there are still plenty of question marks on everything from how much of the price increases will be passed on to consumers to how those same consumers will respond to the higher prices.

More will be known in the weeks and months to come, said those we spoke with, adding that much, but not all, of what’s for sale now — be it cars in showrooms or wines on shelves — were delivered before tariffs went into effect.

That’s true of the popular beers from Germany, Belgium, and other European countries sold at the Student Prince, said Nate Yee, director of Hospitality for the Bean Restaurant Group, which counts the downtown Springfield landmark among the many area eateries in its portfolio.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think that what our distributors did, as these tariff talks were going on, was bulk up their warehouses just to get people along for six or seven months in anticipation that the tariff talks would blow over and things would get settled,” he said, adding that prices have remained remarkably, and unexpectedly, stable. “That’s the only explanation I can think of for why our costs haven’t gone nuclear.”

The company has enough in its own warehouses to get through the Big E, where it will have several locations, said Yee, adding that what happens when the current warehouse stock is replaced with post-tariff products remains to be seen.

“Who knows what will happen?” he said, adding that, if costs rise, the Bean Group will have to think about adjusting its own prices. “But we want to be as price-sensitive as we can; we want to be affordable, and we want our guests to come back multiple times a week, and a big part of that is the value aspect of it.”

Bonavita said almost everything at his storefront in Tower Square, and everything shipped to customers elsewhere, including the eastern part of the state (a growing part of this business), arrived pre-tariffs. It will be September or October, he projects, before the nature of the inventory shifts and prices are adjusted.

And while he will continue to order wines from dozens of other countries (together, they make up roughly 35% of what he sells), he fully expects movement toward domestics as the inevitable price increases come. Meanwhile, like Yee, he said he will likely absorb some of the hit to minimize the impact on the consumer.

“We wouldn’t be here without our customers, so I’ll do whatever it takes to keep our customers,” he explained. “If that means we work on a lesser margin, we’ll work on a lesser margin.”

 

Driving Forces

Sullivan said many — but certainly not all — the cars on area lots were delivered pre-tariffs. That means consumers might find two almost identical cars at a dealership with different price tags.

And, as he mentioned earlier, while the price tag on the post-tariffs model might be higher, the monthly payment might — that’s might — not be. And that’s just one of the many intriguing dynamics within the auto industry as a once-fuzzy picture sharpens a bit.

“The tariff landscape is coming into clearer focus,” he told BusinessWest. “Now, it’s about what the scale and the impact of the tariffs will be and when it will all settle into something that’s predictable. We’re not home yet, knowing exactly where this whole thing shakes out, but we’re getting closer.”

Elaborating, Sullivan said there will be more clarity in the months and years to come on issues ranging from used car sales to how long consumers hang on to their cars as the cost of maintaining them rises because of tariffs on parts, many of which are made in China.

Meanwhile, with new car sales, as well as the proverbial big picture, there is more normalcy than a few months ago, when panicked consumers were running to dealerships to beat the tariffs.

“Now, things have calmed down,” he said. “People are aware that it’s not as bad as they feared; it’s still going to cost them more to buy a car, but not as much as they feared. So right now, we’re seeing a more normalized market than we’ve seen in a while.”

‘Normalized’ wouldn’t be a word to describe what’s happening in the construction sector, said Fontaine, noting that tariffs are impacting not only projects in progress — such as the new high schools his company is building in East Longmeadow and Agawam — but some initiatives on the drawing board.

“When the cost of materials is going up, that makes construction projects more difficult to to get financed — and more difficult to make sense,” he explained, adding that this is more prevalent on the private side of ledger than on the public side. “And a lot of people are in the wait-and-see phase because of the uncertainty with the economy.”

For construction firms, the challenge is to find ways to minimize the impact through use of more domestically produced materials and other strategies to keep projects on budget.

“We’re spending a lot of time trying to protect ourselves and our clients from the impact of them, and I think we’ve been generally successful with that,” Fontaine said. “We’ve pushed a lot of things to be imported from places that are not impacted by tariffs or made in America. We’re doing everything we can to mitigate costs, but it’s a hot issue in construction right now.”

And in many other sectors as well.

Westfield Finds Ways to Raise Its Profile

By
Mayor Michael McCabe
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Mayor Michael McCabe

Mayor Michael McCabe says it’s important to expand the tax rolls with both new businesses and housing growth.

Westfield Mayor Michael McCabe is a believer in business growth — specifically, bringing new businesses to the city to boost the tax base and general vibrancy. But for every opportunity, there’s a challenge.

For example, “how do we balance the environment with new growth? Our north side pretty much all sits above an aquifer system, which has caused us some angst because most of the land that we have for economic development and growth is on the north side.

“So if you’re trying to be respectful of your aquifer and at the same time trying to figure out how you get new growth, it’s an interesting scenario,” he went on. “As you know, new growth is one of the things that actually funds the city. It’s where you get new tax revenue from, so you don’t have to tax your residents more.”

“Elm Street Plaza has really worked out beyond our expectations.”

That said, while this city — the region’s fourth-most populous and one of the largest geographically in the state — has seen new businesses lay down roots, from several new restaurants downtown to industrial businesses on the north side, what’s been happening at the municipal level has made the biggest news lately, including:

• The completion of the five-year Cowles Bridge replacement project on Routes 10 and 202, which should be finished by Sept. 25;

• A planned reimagining and redesign of Mass Pike exit 41 — funded by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation — that aims create a more motorist- and resident-friendly traffic pattern involving three roundabouts;

• A coming new Police Department headquarters on Union Street, expected to be open by the end of 2027; and

• Elm Street Plaza, a gathering and performance space that has not only drawn both city residents and visitors to Westfield’s downtown for events, but opened up much-needed parking for retail shop and restaurant owners;

“Elm Street Plaza has really worked out beyond our expectations,” McCabe said, “with the amount of events and the amount of use it gets, and the amount of free parking it has, so merchants can have customers in and out who don’t have to worry about trying to find parking.”

That development has coincided with a number of new restaurants downtown, offering culinary diversity to the central district, he added.

“If you’re looking for something to eat and you don’t want traditional America cuisine, you have Spanish, you have Italian, you have Turkish, you have Ukrainian, you have Slavic, you have Polish, you have Vietnamese … I mean, you have a pretty eclectic mix, all within a tenth of a mile.”

Amanda Waterfield

Amanda Waterfield says events in Westfield, from Friday night concerts to Starfires games, have a multiplier effect when visitors stay in the city to eat and drink.

The downtown will also play host to a welcome-back party for Westfield State University students, one way the city is trying to connect the school to its downtown, McCabe added. “I think there’s a realization that vibrancy begins with people walking around downtown.”

Amanda Waterfield, who has been executive director of the Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce for just over two years, echoed the mayor’s focus on hospitality businesses, noting that the chamber is planning a Restaurant Week this Nov. 4-9, featuring menu specials, unique promos, and other activities aimed at raising the profile of participating eateries just before the start of the holiday retail season.

Noting about 70 restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, and other culinary businesses in Westfield and Southwick, Waterfield said she’d like to see at least a third of them participate, and then grow the event from there in subsequent years.

“And I really would like to reach out beyond Westfield,” she added. “I’d like everybody in the Valley to think of Westfield as a destination.”

 

On the Right Track

Westfield Gas & Electric (WG&E) adopts the same philosophy on the importance of growth, which partly explains its launch, a decade ago, of Whip City Fiber, which has now completed wiring the entire city for high-speed internet, and also serves 23 other communities, including the region’s hilltowns as well as East Longmeadow and, most recently, West Springfield, where it has begun to build out infrastructure.

That has brought in significant revenue, and the WG&E is using some of it — $15 million over 15 years, in fact — to pay the city’s bond (with interest) for an $11 million athletic complex at Westfield High School, which broke ground last month.

“My overall goal is to see downtown thrive. Restaurants are a wonderful draw, but we need more than just restaurants. We need more things for people to do when they come into town. I’d love there to be a little more retail to draw folks in and keep their dollars local.”

“It’s a stadium with a full collegiate track, lights, and turf fields,” said Tom Flaherty, general manager of WG&E, noting that the field will be used for football, men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse, field hockey, and more, while a second multi-purpose field, without lights, is being developed behind the school for overflow events; the softball field is being turfed as well.

“We’re really planning for the future with something all of Westfield can use — people of all ages, including senior citizens, who can walk on the track at night safely,” he noted. “I see that all the time in Southwick; a great deal of people use the track they put in about 10 years ago.”

In addition, Flaherty noted, “the fields are for everyone, from youth soccer and youth football all the way to potentially having a revenue stream for the school athletic department by leasing it out to private club teams.”

Westfield Gas & Electric

Westfield Gas & Electric hosted a groundbreaking last month for an $11 million athletic complex at Westfield High School.

McCabe agreed that the benefits of the project are many, and would include the potential of hosting regional tournaments on both the high school and collegiate levels, possibly working with Westfield State University — all of which would bring more visitors to the city, in the same way the Westfield Starfires, now winding down their seventh season of play in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, or the city’s 14 municipal pickleball courts, have done.

“The greater the exposure to Westfield, the greater commerce there is in the city,” the mayor added. “And it’s not all Westfield residents. People will stop by one of the cafés downtown, or have a drink with their friends afterward, and all of those things are very good, obviously, for the city. So that’s what we’re trying to embrace.”

Waterfield added that Elm Street Plaza has enhanced Westfield’s visibility as a cultural focal point; in fact, the city received a Massachusetts Cultural Council designation last fall.

That’s important, she said, because it brings in marketing dollars to organizations working collectively to raise the city’s profile. For example, an organization called Artworks Westfield puts on eight Friday nights concerts at the plaza during the summer, all free to the public.

Westfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1669
Population: 40,834
Area: 47.4 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $15.18
Commercial Tax Rate: $29.17
Median Household Income: $45,240
Median Family Income: $55,327
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Westfield State University, Baystate Noble Hospital, Mestek Inc., Savage Arms Inc., Advance Manufacturing Co.
* Latest information available

“Those seem to be drawing folks in,” she said. “It’s just a good time on a Friday night — bring your lawn chair, there’s food trucks, there’s beer trucks. It’s very family-friendly. I see people with their dogs.”

The prevailing theme with many of these efforts is to get people to notice Westfield — and come back.

“I think if you’re from Westfield, you know what we have to offer here. There’s a lot here,” Waterfield said. “But people might think, ‘I’m from Longmeadow; am I going to make the trek to Westfield?’ Well, yes, actually, you should. You know, come on Thursday to the farmers market and then stay for dinner. Come on Friday and have dinner beforehand and then go to a concert. Go see a baseball game.”

What visitors find, she added, is that Westfield has numerous important elements that contribute to a robust community, from Westfield State University to Baystate Noble Hospital to Barnes Municipal Airport (and the Air National Guard’s 104th Tactical Fighter Group, which recently procured new F-35 fighter jets) to a river and a rail trail.

In addition, “I’m encouraged by the lack of crime downtown, which is wonderful,” she said. “And I give the big businesses downtown credit for being here. The banks, the Gas & Electric, they don’t have to be downtown, but they choose to support the community by having a really visible, meaningful presence here.”

McCabe also praised the Police Department’s work, not only in crime prevention, but being visible to residents, just one more factor in why Westfield has a strong housing market.

“People want to live here,” the mayor said, but, like virtually every town in Western Mass., Westfield needs more housing stock. “We’ve looked at two spaces on the north side for multi-use housing, and we’re hopeful that we were going to see some help from the state in terms of grant funding from the Massachusetts Housing and Livable Communities office.”

 

Local Focus

Waterfield said she’s made progress in her goal to engage more businesses with the chamber; membership was under 200 when she came on board, but is at 258 now, and her goal is 275 by year’s end.

“That’s partly what I hope Restaurant Week will do, give community members an idea that the chamber is here to support the businesses and ultimately improve the state of living in the city.”

She and her team also updated the chamber’s strategic plan last year, and moving the chamber offices to a downtown storefront has been a plus as well.

“My overall goal is to see downtown thrive. Restaurants are a wonderful draw, but we need more than just restaurants. We need more things for people to do when they come into town. I’d love there to be a little more retail to draw folks in and keep their dollars local,” she told BusinessWest.

The mayor was quick to run down why people might want to move to Westfield, from the ones already mentioned — the university, the community hospital — to recreation opportunities.

“We have Stanley Park, which is 225 acres of preserve. And there are plenty of venues to go to now where the kids can play. The parks have been brought back up to speed to where they’re supposed to be. Our municipal parks have pickleball and tennis courts and baseball fields and softball fields.

“And we have good service organizations — the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Westfield do phenomenal work,” he added. “So I think we’re doing pretty well.”

Linda Dulye Envisions Harmony Between Technology, Human Connection

By
Features Special Coverage

The Blended Workplace

As companies grapple with the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and other disruptive technologies, the conversations tend to focus on productivity and efficiency.

Linda Dulye wants companies to think about something else: the human element.

“I’ve seen it in my clients; there’s this rush, this FOMO — ‘we’ve got to get this injection of AI,’” she told BusinessWest, using the popular acronym for ‘fear of missing out.’ “This reminds me a lot of when I was working with General Electric and also AlliedSignal — when Lean and Six Sigma were unfolding, we were on the front end of it; we were the pioneers. And there was this rush.”

And her current concern surrounding AI is the same concern she had then — and has expressed with clients over the years when discussing those efficiency models — which is whether the human element is being squeezed out of the discussion.

“You can come in with all the tools, all the technology that is going to improve processes, and we’re going to take what was 10 steps down to three steps, but that can be daunting and scary for many people. So you still have to have a degree of human connection, collaboration, and communication.

“A lot of my work has been centered on, how do we get people to understand the new technology that’s coming in? Automatically there’s a barrier — ‘we’ve been doing this for 10 years; what do you mean I have to change?’”

Dulye — who launched her management consultancy, Dulye & Co., in 1998 to help business leaders and their organizations cultivate cultures where people want to stay and grow — has turned her thoughts on the coming AI revolution into a concept called the Blended Workplace, which she calls a “human-centered approach that harmonizes the benefits of advanced technology with the in-the-moment power of digital minimalism.”

In short, she said a technology-first, people-second mindset is costing companies dearly and pulling leaders away from making critical investments in human connection and communication.

“You can come in with all the tools, all the technology that is going to improve processes, and we’re going to take what was 10 steps down to three steps, but that can be daunting and scary for many people.”

“AI is essential for business success — so is human interaction,” Dulye notes on her website. “The current AI surge feels eerily similar to the Lean and Six Sigma boom. Back then, companies realized that even the most powerful productivity tools couldn’t succeed without real, person-to-person communication. The same holds true today: when workplace connections erode, so do trust and teamwork.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with BusinessWest recently, she explained that people love new bells and whistles in, say, their cars, but not so much at work.

“That’s kind of scary for many people. So that’s why I developed this concept of the Blended Workplace — it’s helping organizations understand they’ve got to devote time with human beings, helping them understanding why we’re doing this, showing them how this augments their skills and doesn’t make them obsolete.”

Linda Dulye

Linda Dulye says any process improvement has to be accompanied by human connection, collaboration, and communication.

On the contrary, the goal is to show team members how to adapt to new technology and new models and make themselves even more valuable to the company.

“That’s ultimately what we’d love to have people do. But we all don’t operate the same,” Dulye went on. “It’s not like flicking a switch and saying, ‘OK, on Monday, we’re going to be utilizing this new AI technology,’ and you’re like, ‘wait, what? What’s going on?’ We want to help people understand why we’re doing it, what it means to them in their job, and how to get comfortable with it. You have to help people.”

 

Change Agent

The Blended Workplace fits well with the overarching philosophy of Dulye & Co., a concept (and movement) known as the Spectator-Free Workplace, which emphasizes investments in human connection and communication in the workplace — in short, being engaged at work and not just a spectator.

Dulye’s new message with the Blended Workforce concept is underscored by a few insights:

• Employee fatigue is real. Endless screen time and nonstop notifications are burning employees out. Her company’s research shows employee engagement is steadily declining, echoing Gallup’s report of a 10-year low in 2024. Making matters worse, only 56% of employees believe their leaders genuinely care about their well-being, according to a Deloitte survey.

• Gen Z, in particular, is unplugging. The rising generation of professionals values authenticity and meaningful relationships over algorithms. CNBC reports that Gen Z craves in-person interaction — especially new graduates, who’d rather learn company norms from colleagues than scroll TikTok.

• Connection drives performance. Whether in person or with cameras on, face-to-face interaction builds trust, ignites creativity, and strengthens accountability.

One Dulye & Co. client boosted engagement and productivity by more than 50% in less than a year simply by transforming team meetings with no-frills fixes like employees helping to set agendas, tackling tough issues head-on, and recognizing peer contributions, she noted.

“We want to help people understand why we’re doing it, what it means to them in their job, and how to get comfortable with it. You have to help people.”

Meanwhile, Dulye told BusinessWest, workers from different generations have different responses to — and tolerances of — major change, especially technological change, in the workplace.

“There’s always a new wave. Do you remember when computers happened? I’m old enough to remember the pink slip. I came in my office — I was a reporter then — and saw who called, and now I had to return a call. Well, the person who wrote that doesn’t exist anymore. And neither does the pink slip.”

The idea, she went on, is that change of any kind is constant in the workplace, and in the rush to apply new tools and technologies to be more efficient, companies aren’t spending enough time on the people side to help everyone navigate change — especially dramatic change like AI, which is much more disruptive than ditching written phone messages.

“These tools are only effective when people are working collaboratively, when they understand them together,” she explained. “We all are gaining efficiencies with these new tools that help us work better together collectively, not just individually. So you’ve got to spend time as a team really figuring out, how do we work these tools into our own practices? And that involves communication between team members.”

Moreover, Dulye added, “we’ve got to understand all the different nuances that affect learning it, applying it, and feeling comfortable enough that I want to advance this; you’re going to have different roadblocks than me, just because of our experiences. But that’s the kind of discussion a team needs to do together. Leaders need to spend time helping their organizations know why we are doing this.”

Dulye said there’s an opportunity to promote this kind of conversation with Gen Z, whom many people assume want to live behind screens — a stereotype she said isn’t true. “I feel bad for this generation because they actually want more connections than maybe Boomers do or or some of Gen X.”

But connections are harder in general during the new age of remote and (more commonly) hybrid schedules, which make it more of a challenge for leaders to promote communication in the office. But she said hybrid arrangements are a net positive in many ways.

“I think the flexibility factor is strong. Unless you do a lot of work in manufacturing, or have a job where you have to physically be there — like hospitality — I think you have to have a hybrid schedule. I see models where having an in-person requirement on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is very effective.

“It’s not just getting people to come in, but being very deliberate and intentional about what we are doing to create more team-based experiences.”

“But here’s the thing,” she went on. “Just because we’re coming in doesn’t mean we’re working more collaboratively together. Just coming in doesn’t mean you and I will cross paths. So it’s not just getting people to come in, but being very deliberate and intentional about what we are doing to create more team-based experiences.”

That goes back to Dulye’s original business concept, the Spectator-Free Workplace.

“People want experiences at work that make them feel, one, I’m valued; two, I really like the team I’m with; and three, I really do like the company I work for. But it takes an experience. If you’re still operating on routines that you’ve been doing the last five years, that’s building a spectator-filled workplace. And it’s not beneficial. It’s just people coming into work, showing their faces, and really not interacting. So I’m all for the hybrid workplace — with very intentional team experiences.”

 

Beyond Meetings

Dulye concedes, of course, that hybrid schedules create a more challenging environment for business leaders when it comes to in-office interaction, but that it’s still possible to create a healthy, connected workplace even if employees are at home part of the time.

One strategy are team meetings where everyone is expected to contribute.

“It’s not OK to have a team meeting where three people out of 20 are talking, and everyone else just sits there doing something else, and says, ‘yeah, pass, I have nothing going on.’ Really? If you’re paying me and one week has gone by and I have no new information to contribute to my team, there’s something wrong. That’s not acceptable,” she said.

“If you’re getting together as a team once a week for 30 minutes, everyone’s got to bring something they learned, maybe something they didn’t expect that happened, maybe even just a recognition of a team member, but everyone has to contribute. You don’t get a pass.”

Getting back to communication around AI, she said some employees are worried about the implications on job security, but those concerns existed when Lean and Six Sigma came into being as well.

“People were all concerned about, ‘well, if we take 10 steps and go to five, how many jobs is that?’ So this is not new. I think people need to understand this is not a new phenomenon. People have always been fearful that technology can reduce jobs when it makes work more efficient.

“Again, it’s how do you see yourself being able to utilize that technology in a role that you still want? Or, maybe you want to think about a new role that requires skill sets you have and want to grow, but maybe isn’t as affected by AI. I mean, AI won’t affect us all at the same rate. It affects us all, but by different degrees.”

Easthampton Grapples with Growing Pains

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Burns Maxey in the balcony of the second-floor performance space.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Burns Maxey in the balcony of the second-floor performance space.

Burns Maxey in the balcony of the second-floor performance space.

An architect’s rendering of the new entrance and elevator at Old Town Hall, home to CitySpace.

An architect’s rendering of the new entrance and elevator at Old Town Hall, home to CitySpace.

Salem Derby says he certainly didn’t see this coming.

Easthampton’s City Council President was at a meeting with Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, executive assistant Lindsi Sekula, and City Solicitor Mark Tanner, expecting conversation about municipal matters, when LaChapelle informed him that she would leaving to become the state’s Conservation and Recreation commissioner. And he would be serving as interim mayor.

“It was a complete surprise, and it was really quick — she said she’d be leaving in six days,” said Derby, an elementary school teacher, adding that he plans to be in City Hall something approaching full time this summer, but will maneuver around his classroom schedule once school starts, working afternoons, weekends, and in the morning if needed.

He’ll only be in the corner office until the November election (he won’t be a candidate for the job), and over the next four and a half months, he plans to provide stability, keep things running “as drama-free and interference-free as possible,” and, well, keep the ball rolling, if you will.

Indeed, Easthampton is a community in demand, and it has been this way for a while now, a pattern that brings with it some opportunities, but also stern challenges, as Derby, who has been on the council for more than 20 years, well knows.

“Housing is huge — the ability for people to find affordable housing is something I’ve been focused on the entire time I’ve been on the council,” he said, adding that the challenge extends across the housing spectrum, from potential homebuyers facing spiraling prices and limited inventory to renters in some of the bigger complexes — many of which have been sold to larger corporations — encountering increases that are pretty significant.

“There was a large group of renters and tenants outside of City Hall yesterday; they had a meeting and a little bit of a rally,” he explained. “There’s a push for the council to help the Legislature push for rent control.”

This housing crunch, and LaChapelle’s exit for the State House, are just two of the many converging story lines in Easthampton. Others include:

• Several projects in various stages of development to bring more housing on the market. These include, as we’ll see, everything from conversion of three closed elementary schools to the reimagining of more former mills;

• The start of redevelopment of the Tasty Top site on Route 10, a highly anticipated and somewhat controversial project that begins with a new Greenfield Savings Bank branch and also includes a gymnastics center, a daycare facility, retail, and a large residential component;

• The start of the second phase of redevelopment of the old Town Hall into CitySpace, what its leaders call a “thriving arts ecosystem.” This phase includes a new entranceway and elevator that will open the door, quite literally, to phase 3, renovations to the second-floor auditorium for concerts and other performances and events;

• New leadership at the Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce. Jon Kostek took the helm almost two months ago, and has established goals to continue growing membership; bring more users to WorkHub on Union, a co-working space at the chamber offices that opened roughly a year ago; and make more and better use of digital platforms to promote the chamber and its services, and, hopefully, engage more young business owners;

• Zoning changes to accommodate short-term rentals, a move that brings the community in line with what most other cities and towns have done and helps meet recognized need; and

• Plans for a new music performance venue at the site of a former massage school, an undertaking being spearheaded by the Heavy Culture Cooperative, a project that will, with the nearby CitySpace, create more vibrancy in the downtown area and serve to connect the downtown with the neighboring mills and the cultural activities taking place there.

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Easthampton and how it continues to be in demand and cope with its growing pains.

 

Supply and Demand

Allyson Manuel was drawn to Easthampton by its many selling points — a vibrant arts community, an increasingly eclectic downtown area, a small-city feel, recreation, and more.

Formerly town planner in West Springfield, she and her husband settled here five years ago after considering several potential landing spots, and she became the city’s director of Planning and Community Development last December.

She can attest to spiraling home prices and a shortage of inventory, and how this surge is creating challenges.

“There’s a lot of demand. A lot of people want to be here, which is wonderful; it’s clearly indicative of a good quality of life and quality of place,” she told BusinessWest. “But it does come with challenges. Affordability is an issue for anyone looking to buy a house anywhere right now, but especially in Easthampton and Hampshire County.

“So, we’re reckoning with that and also with making sure we’re not pricing out residents that have been here for many, many years,” she went on. “And for the rental market, there’s been quite a pinch.”

“There’s a lot of demand. A lot of people want to be here, which is wonderful; it’s clearly indicative of a good quality of life and quality of place. But it does come with challenges. Affordability is an issue for anyone looking to buy a house anywhere right now, but especially in Easthampton and Hampshire County.”

Indeed, the housing market in the community is exceedingly tight across the board, and both Manuel and Derby hope and expect that the many projects promising to bring a mix of housing will serve to loosen things up a little.

Projects in various stages of development include Growing Green, a rural project just off Main Street, an initiative slowed by an appeal filed by neighbors but still progressing, with the number of planned units reduced from 87 to the mid-60s, said Manuel, adding that another project involves development of more property within the massive Ferry Street complex, specifically Building 11, where 96 units of housing are planned.

An architect’s rendering of the residential component slated to be built on the site of the former Tasty Top on Route 10.

An architect’s rendering of the residential component slated to be built on the site of the former Tasty Top on Route 10.

Another initiative involves redevelopment of the former Notre Dame Church and surrounding properties on Pleasant Street into approximately 42 ‘townhouse’ units, said Manuel, adding that several of these units will be in the church itself.

“I think those will be really cool units when they’re done,” she said, adding that other structures on the property will be razed to make way for new construction.

At the 34-acre Tasty Top site, housing (more than 200 planned apartments, a mix of market rate and affordable) is one of many components to a project being undertaken by developer Frank DeMarinis, said Derby, adding that more than 100 units are expected to be created through redevelopment of the three shuttered elementary schools.

These projects and other smaller initiatives are expected to make a real dent in overall need, he went on, and relieve pressure on existing inventory.

“Once all these are completed, I think the amount of housing in Easthampton will increase so significantly that I’m hoping it will make a real impact on affordability and access to quality housing,” the interim mayor said. “I’m hoping this can potentially be a catalyst for people who need affordable housing and maybe take a little pressure of some of the other units in Easthampton.”

Manuel agreed. “We have some challenges ahead of us, absolutely, but we also have a strong foundation that not all communities have to work from,” she said. “We have a lot of social capital — people that live in the city are very involved, they care about their neighbors, they care about the well-being of the city at large. And that goes a long way toward solving these types of problems. I don’t think it will happen overnight, but the fact that people care enough is a really valuable tool to have in the toolbox.”

 

Art and Soul

As she walked with BusinessWest up to the balcony of the auditorium in the old Town Hall, Burns Maxey gestured with her hand to the space below.

“You can imagine the possibilities,” she said of this space, which has sat idle for the better part of a decade and a half now.

The key to unlocking its full potential as a resource for the community is accessibility, said Maxey, who was honored by BusinessWest with its Difference Makers award in 2023 for her efforts to transform the landmark, opened in 1869, into CitySpace, adding that such access is at the heart of phase 2 of the ongoing project.

Designed by Amherst-based Kuhn Riddle Architects and construction work being handled by West Springfield-based Keiter, the $3.9 million project to build a new entrance and elevator is expected to take about 18 months, said Maxey, adding that, as this initiative is undertaken, a capital campaign continues to raise funds for the third phase.

Jon Kostek

Jon Kostek says one of his goals for the Greater Easthampton Chamber is growth of its WorkHub on Union.

Backing up a little, she said phase 1 included infrastructure work and conversion of the ground floor into an arts hub, with performance space (an area called the Blue Room) and several tenants, including Big Red Frame, a gallery, and Easthampton City Arts, the arts organization within the city’s Planning Department.

Phase 2 has been in the planning stages for several years and was delayed somewhat by bids for construction that came in higher than originally anticipated. With additional support in the form of an underutilized properties grant from MassDevelopment, the agency went out to bid again, with Keiter prevailing.

Easthampton at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1785
Population: 16,211
Area: 13.6 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $13.67
Commercial Tax Rate: $13.67
Median Household Income: $45,185
Median Family Income: $54,312
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Berry Plastics Corp., INSA, Williston Northampton School, National Nonwovens Co.

The new entranceway and elevator have been designed to provide access, but also preserve the architectural and historic integrity of the building, said Maxey, including the staircases at the front of the structure, which is similar in many ways to Chicopee’s City Hall and designed by the same architect, Charles Parker.

As for phase 3, the projected cost is expected to approach $7 million, said Maxey, adding that work covers a wide spectrum, including the ceiling, lighting, sound baffling, asbestos remediation, sprinkler and fire suppression systems, bathroom renovations, creation of a green room and offices, and more.

Fundraising continues, and the stated goal is certainly a challenge, but Maxey is confident that the community will continue to support the initiative.

“We have a ways to go — we’re about halfway there,” she conceded, adding that the overall price tag for the project has soared from roughly $6 million to more than $11 million, mostly due to inflation and rising construction costs.

Once funding is secured, she believes phase 3 can be completed in perhaps 18 months, ushering in the next chapter in the story of CitySpace.

 

Making Connections

As for next chapters, the Easthampton chamber is writing itself, with Kostek taking the helm after long-time executive director Moe Belliveau stepped down earlier this year.

Kostek said he was looking for a new challenge after his position with the United States Tennis Assoc. New England was eliminated.

He said his work at the USTA, much of it focused program development for young people, is similar to his new role at the chamber in that they both involve relationship building.

“One of the things I liked most about my work with USTA was meeting people and developing relationships, and I think a lot of these same things apply here, at the chamber … meeting with members and discussing with them what the chamber offers and what we can do moving forward.”

Kostek said he’s spent much of the time since his arrival getting to know the community, meeting with his members, and gauging what they like, dislike, and want more of.

In that last category are face-to-face networking opportunities, he said, adding that he plans to add such events, including After-5s and more Coffee and Connections events at the WorkHub, to the calendar.

Also on his to-do list is growing overall membership and especially membership for WorkHub on Union. The facility has attracted only a few regular users to date, he said, adding that he plans to more aggressively market it across multiple platforms to get the word out.

“It’s a great space, and I think there is a real need for facilities like this,” he said, noting that there are several workstations, as well as a shared conference room, kitchen, and other facilities. “And it’s open 24/7.”

Valet Park of America Marks 35 Years of Steady Growth

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Angela and Ted Chagnon (front, second and third from left) and the leadership team at Valet Park of America
Features

Lots to Celebrate

Angela and Ted Chagnon (front, second and third from left) and the leadership team at Valet Park of America

Angela and Ted Chagnon (front, second and third from left) and the leadership team at Valet Park of America

 

When Ted Chagnon started his own business in 1990, he had big goals, but there were times, early on, when operating in seven states — from New England to Florida — and employing more than 1,250 people may have seemed like a dream too far.

But that’s precisely the growth trajectory Valet Park of America celebrated when it marked 35 years in business last month.

“It was kind of slow growth at first,” Chagnon said, recalling that his first two valet clients were Yankee Pedlar restaurant in Holyoke and Hotel Northampton, and other small businesses followed. It took two years before the company landed its first major client, Baystate Medical Center, and over the next several years, other large clients followed, particularly in the medical realm, from UMass Medical Center to MetroWest Medical Center in Natick and Framingham.

“Around 2005, we started adding ski resorts, locations in Albany, some locations in Connecticut, and we started to build some momentum. It was tough because we didn’t have any resources in the beginning.”

Initially focused on valet parking only, the business later expanded into parking management, operating lots and garages, and then other transportation services.

“That was simply because a lot of our clients, whether it’s a medical facility, a college, a casino, or a ski resort, sometimes need more than just valet; they need parking management services or transportation for guests, patients, or even transporting employees off site,” Chagnon explained. “Sometimes you’re moving the employees to off-site parking garages and parking lots when you run out of space.”

The company operates in a wide geographic footprint, from Buffalo, N.Y. to Boston, as well as in Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Florida. “We’re in Virginia as of last year, and we’ve been in Florida for five years now, and we’ve really grown tremendously there.”

Many employees have been with Valet Park of America for decades, some more than 30 years. Some of those are family, and Chagnon called this a family business; his wife, Angela, is senior vice president, with responsibilities in client relations, human resources, payroll, auditing, and marketing, and other relatives work in leadership positions as well.

“It’s so important to remember what those frontline people are doing out there, with the weather, and the circumstances, and the vehicles, and the hectic days. It can be stressful at times, and to have somebody in here who understands that and appreciates that is huge.”

“My sister was one of the founders. My niece runs our payroll department. My brother runs our fleet management and quality control department. So we are very much a family-run and owned and operated business,” he said.

But he also attributes this employee loyalty to a culture of opportunity, where someone can start by parking cars and eventually move up as other opportunities arise.

“As we grow, we have to hire more people, more regional managers, and it’s nice that we can promote from within. Many worked for us during college and came on board full-time right after college. I don’t think many of them thought they were going to have a career in parking, but then they stayed with the company. In fact, some of their kids are in college now and working for us.”

 

Getting Behind the Wheel

The Chagnons initially operated the company from home, then moved into an office at 191 Chestnut St. in Springfield, where Valet Park of America is still headquartered today.

“Then we kind of grew,” he said, but it was very gradual growth until about 20 years in, when both the roster of clients and the company’s geographic reach started to create more noticeable momentum. “Then you start becoming a bigger company, with different challenges. But one of the biggest, I think, has been keeping the mentality of a family-run and owned business and maintaining that culture.”

Angela agreed. “I think that just came naturally to Ted and me. I love seeing somebody that starts off as an entry-level valet attendant, and now they’re in the payroll department, or they’re helping me in the accounting department. It’s very rewarding to know that we can do that for them. Anytime we have an opening in the office, we post internally. I love to bring somebody up who knows us, who knows the business, who knows our culture, who appreciates what those frontline employees do.

“That’s the biggest factor for me,” she added. “I’m more internal; we’re more support staff on the back end, and it’s so important to remember what those frontline people are doing out there, with the weather, and the circumstances, and the vehicles, and the hectic days. It can be stressful at times, and to have somebody in here who understands that and appreciates that is huge. It makes a difference, I think, to the frontline employees when they see that. I’ve parked cars. I know what’s happening.”

With the company’s growth, Ted said he’s competing with a number of national firms, and dealing with the sorts of economic shifts that any industry faces — and, like many of them, he relies on a diverse client mix to weather those trends.

Angela and Ted Chagnon launched their enterprise 35 years ago last month

Angela and Ted Chagnon launched their enterprise 35 years ago last month

“During COVID, which was unusual, colleges got shut down; they’re doing well now, but they’re finding some fiscal restraints. Hospitals right now are finding some fiscal restraints as well; there have been some cuts there. And restaurants, in some cases, with inflation, have had to cut back, and valet services might be something that’s cut,” he explained.

“But we’ve expanded to ski resorts and casinos and still have medical facilities, colleges, and independent parking lots. So we have a wide range of industries that we service,” he added. “So we do well; one industry might be seeing some cuts or finding some fiscal restraints, and something else might be flourishing. And some states might be doing better than others. It’s never completely smooth sailing.”

The pandemic, as Chagnon noted, was indeed unusual, and particularly challenging, as colleges, casinos, and ski resorts shut down and hospitals cut way back on visitor traffic.

“We had to evolve and adapt, and we had to lay a lot of people off, but here’s what we did: we went back to our hospital clients especially and said, ‘is there anything you need us to do? You don’t need us to transport anyone. You don’t need any parking services, but what can we do for you?’

“And as things progressed, we ended up staffing a lot of COVID testing sites. We were greeting people, lining up the parking, queuing them up, checking them in. That rolled into screener services at a lot of facilities where you would come in and we’d check your temperature, and we’d ask you an array of questions pertaining to travel and things like that before you could enter the hospital. We’d register you. Because the hospitals were short-staffed, and we had a lot of people that had been working with us for a long time, and we wanted to retain them.”

Two scenes from last month’s 35th anniversary celebration, a family-friendly event that drew about 500 people.

Two scenes from last month’s 35th anniversary celebration, a family-friendly event that drew about 500 people.

It was a time of pivoting and resilience for most businesses, he noted.

“Everyone just said, ‘what do we need to do to keep the lights on?’ Because we still had bills to pay, mortgages and insurance and leases on vehicles. You still had to charge through that and make it happen. So we were fortunate that we had a decent number of people that were willing to do that,” he continued. “I was here at work every day just fighting through those challenges. It was a difficult time.”

 

Shifting into the Next Gear

With the pandemic well in the rear view — literally and figuratively — Valet Park of America continues to grow its services and footprint while maintaining that culture the Chagnons value. Last month, the company marked 35 years with a family-oriented celebration in its expansive parking lot, featuring inflatables, rock climbing, cornhole, face painting, and other activities.

“That brought about 500 people here — about 200 employees and all their kids and their spouses — and it was a very much a family environment for everyone to celebrate,” Ted said.

The event also individually recognized employees who had been with the company for 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35 years. “We wanted to start with the fifth year, but we had over 150 employees that were here more than five years and a large number of employees over 10 years, and would have been here for two days celebrating each one of them individually,” he said.

“We take pride in our employees’ tenure and the environment that we provide for them,” he added. “It’s a company that can’t run on its own. You can’t have just one person or two people running it. You need a large, supportive team behind you.”

The company also invests in plenty of training for its employees, he told BusinessWest. “We do a lot of training year-round for all our staff because we feel it’s important to make sure that they’re educated, that they know the business, and it gives them opportunity to advance.

“And it helps maintain our culture, too, because we’re in the people business, any way you look at it. We might be in the parking business, we might be in transportation, but it takes people to provide those services, and our employees are really our greatest asset.”

That culture extends to community involvement in many ways as well, supporting organizations like the USO, Jenna’s Blessing Bags, and the various foundations of the company’s medical clients — not to mention encouraging employee volunteerism with nonprofits and charitable events, like the annual UMass Cancer Walk. And those efforts are multiplied across the company’s seven states.

Looking ahead, Chagnon said Valet Park of America will continue to grow smartly and innovate in a number of ways — like its adoption some years ago of automation in the parking process at many sites.

“It’s a company that can’t run on its own. You can’t have just one person or two people running it. You need a large, supportive team behind you.”

“We distribute magnetic parking gates and started building our own entrance and exit payment kiosks for parking garages and parking lots. We kind of branched off into that a little bit to try to be a multi-faceted service provider for our clients.

“We try to control costs for them, provide a very good service, evolve, and adapt to their needs as a vendor or partner. And I think we do that well,” he continued. “Every year we see growth, and it’s primarily because of the services that we provide and the quality that we provide and a lot of good referrals.”

Angela agreed. “Our culture is so important to us, and it always has been. It’s something we focus on every year when we talk about our goals. We make sure to maintain, as best we can, communication and relationships with all the employees as we continue to grow,” she told BusinessWest. “And we have seen that nice, steady growth … obviously minus the COVID years.”

“We’re just looking forward to the next number of years,” Ted added. “Hopefully we have quite a few ahead of us.”

Springfield Features Many Developing Stories

By
Ray Berry at Pridelands on Mane Street, what he calls a spinoff of a winning concept from the days before COVID.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Ray Berry at Pridelands on Mane Street, what he calls a spinoff of a winning concept from the days before COVID.

Ray Berry at Pridelands on Mane Street, what he calls a spinoff of a winning concept from the days before COVID.

Diana Szynal took the job as president of the Springfield Regional Chamber — and an office overlooking Tower Square Park — three years ago.

Back then, the city was still trying to shake off the effects of COVID, she said, with many workers at downtown businesses still spending considerable time working remotely.

They’re not all back five days a week, she stressed, but there is far more vibrancy in the downtown than when she started — and on many levels.

“More people are in their offices more days of the week, and this has helped create a lot of vitality downtown … I’m seeing a lot of energy there,” she said. “There are some new restaurants opening and new businesses coming in. There are a lot of people walking around and enjoying being downtown.”

And that sentiment certainly includes what Szynal can see out her window in Tower Square Park, which is home to a popular farmers market and, more recently, an attention-grabbing art installation called Odyssey — one of the Springfield Business Improvement District’s more creative (literally and figuratively) efforts to promote the downtown and bring people to it  — and a new outdoor event destination created by White Lion Brewing called Pridelands on Mane Street, which kicked off July 9.

Diana Szynal

Diana Szynal

“More people are in their offices more days of the week, and this has helped create a lot of vitality downtown … I’m seeing a lot of energy there. There are some new restaurants opening and new businesses coming in. There are a lot of people walking around and enjoying being downtown.”

Ray Berry, owner of White Lion, said the destination, created from three custom-designed shipping containers, offers a unique backdrop for planned weekly entertainment on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, but also for company outings, team socials, or casual get-togethers with friends and family.

“There are so many positive moving parts to engage and enjoy downtown,” he said. “We see Pridelands as another piece of the mosaic.”

This broad activation of Tower Square Park is just one of many storylines converging in the City of Homes. Others include:

• Progress to create more housing of all kinds, from market-rate apartments in the downtown to higher-end homes in different areas of the city (more on this later);

• The high-profile project to redevelop the Clocktower Building, Colonial Block, and two other adjoining properties into roughly 100 units of market-rate housing, as well as infrastructure improvements in that area, including a new parking garage;

• The transformation of the former CityStage into the Hope Center for the Arts, a state-of-the-art facility to designed to educate young people and perhaps inspire careers in the arts ;

• Ambitious work to revitalize the entertainment district through redevelopment of a block of buildings on Worthington Street, a project led by Raipher and Joseph Pellegrino in partnership with the city, detailed in the July 7 issue of BusinessWest;

• Continued discussion, and some anxiety, about the future of some downtown office buildings, which continue to struggle in this post-COVID era;

• Plans to replace the troubled Roderick L. Ireland Courthouse — the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance has issued a request for proposals for a new site, preferably in the downtown; they’re due back in October — and speculation about what will done with the existing structure as well as adjacent properties in that area off State Street, including the former First Church;

An architect’s rendering of the planned improvements, including a new parking garage, in the South End, between State Street and Union Street.

An architect’s rendering of the planned improvements, including a new parking garage, in the South End, between State Street and Union Street.

• The continued success of the Springfield Thunderbirds, which will soon enter their 10th season and continue to set the bar higher with everything from ticket sales to marketing and social media content (see below

• Movement toward creation of a master plan for redevelopment of the Mason Square neighborhood and adjoining areas;

• Visible signs of progress in a massive project to reimagine the former Eastfield Mall as a retail center with a large residential component; and

• Future redevelopment of the former Massachusetts Career Development Institute property on Wilbraham Avenue. The site was demolished four years ago, and speculation continues about what will come next in an area that has seen strong residential growth.

Overall, housing remains one of the main focal points, said Tim Sheehan, the city’s chief Development officer, noting that that there is both urgent need for more housing and several ongoing initiatives to address that need. These include everything from the aforementioned South End project to redevelopment of the former Springfield School Department headquarters on State Street to plans to build high-end homes on the pre-tornado campus of Cathedral High School.

This residential growth reflects both strong need for more housing as well as greater interest in the city overall as a place to live and work, he went on, adding that work is taking place on many fronts to meet the needs of new (and old) residents, and make Springfield a true destination.

 

All That Jazz

Evan Plotkin, president and CEO of NAI Plotkin, has long been a cheerleader for Springfield and a prime mover when it comes to projects to promote the city and especially its downtown and cast them in a positive light. These include everything from mural projects to the Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival, which took place last week and was in its final planning stages as he talked with BusinessWest.

Plotkin said he sees a number of positive developments taking place in the city, including several in the office tower he co-owns, 1350 Main St., where a high school now resides on the top two floors. But it’s what he’s not seeing that has him concerned.

Springfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1852
Population: 155,929
Area: 33.1 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential tax rate: $15.68
Commercial tax rate: $35.22
Median Household Income: $35,236
Median Family Income: $51,110
Type of government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Baystate Health, MassMutual Financial Group, Big Y Foods, MGM Springfield, Mercy Medical Center, Center for Human Development
* Latest information available

That list includes new businesses coming to the city and its downtown; instead, he said, there’s much more movement of existing businesses and restaurants, a game of musical chairs that doesn’t result in real growth, just a shift of vacancies from one building to another.

Something else he’s not seeing is consistent effort from the city to maintain landmarks like Stearns Square, which was revitalized several years ago, but sees its ornate fountain not in use the majority of the time.

“They invested in the hardscape and the landscape, and then they walked away,” he said of the city and its efforts at the park. “And this is a pattern; we put up plaques saying ‘we did this’ and ‘we did that’ and ‘here’s this brand new park,’ but the next year, they don’t mow the lawn and let the weeds grow back.”

Overall, more work is needed to maintain and preserve such treasures and to make the city a more desirable place to visit — and work in and live in, he went on, adding that he would like to see the city create a permanent stage downtown near Stearns Square (a temporary one was set up for the Jazz Fest) and make live music a prominent piece of the puzzle, as it was years ago.

Live music is just one of the components of Pridelands on Mane Street, a play on words that also represents what Berry called a “spinoff of a proven concept, pre-COVID.”

Elaborating, he said that, before the pandemic, White Lion created pop-up beer gardens at several sites around downtown. The last few years, though, it has concentrated these efforts in Tower Square Park, making use of retrofitted shipping containers.

Fast-forwarding, he explained that, with an ARPA grant from the city, White Lion was essentially tasked with reactivating the park, and it’s doing so in colorful styles, as in a shipping container wrapped (by East Longmeadow-based Go Graphix) with the White Lion logo.

“We knew, by way of our partnership with the Business Improvement District and other stakeholders, that the beer garden concept worked in years past, and pre-COVID showed that a container park concept resonates with our customer base,” Berry explained. “So we thought, why not bring the concept back, look to make it more permanent, and have it be a true destination right in the middle of the business district and the emerging arts district?”

Approaching 10th Season, T-Birds Have Matured as a Business

Nate Costa says that, when it comes to the Springfield Thunderbirds and prospects for continued growth, there isn’t room for much more.

Well … at least when it comes to ticket sales.

Indeed, capacity at the team’s home, the MassMutual Center, a.k.a. the Thunderdome, is 6,700. For the 2024-25 season, the T-Birds, an affiliate of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues, averaged 6,369 per game, up from 6,321 the prior season. So, there’s still room for improvement, and the team will doggedly pursue it. But, again, not much.

Nate Costa

Nate Costa

“We’re going to eventually, hopefully, run out of tickets to sell,” Costa, the team’s president, said with a laugh, noting that this is both a good problem to have — one many other teams in the American Hockey League would love to have — and one of many solid indicators of how far this team has come.

As it readies for its 10th season of operation, with various plans to mark that milestone, the Thunderbirds have established themselves as a solid franchise with an increasingly loyal fan base, as evidenced by those numbers above … and the fact that they were achieved with the parking garage next door to the arena unavailable for the past three seasons.

Which means that, while there’s not much room for growth in ticket sales, there’s still plenty of room when it comes to growing revenue through increases in ticket prices — the team still charges well below the league average — as well as merchandise sales and other avenues.

“Over the past five years, we’ve continued to see the maturation of our business,” Costa explained. “We’re continuing to fill the building, and now it’s looking at our margins; we’re 30th in the league out of 32 teams in ticket price. It’s been really good to get the bodies in the building and show the value, but now it’s up to us to start walking that ticket price up effectively and generating revenue on the margins.”

Looking back, Costa said 2024-25 was another solid season for the T-Birds. There was a playoff run, albeit not a deep one (the team lost in the first round), with 20 sellouts, and, as noted, continued improvement in ticket sales and other measures of success.

“Every Saturday in the second half of the season, we sold out,” he noted, adding that many other games approached capacity over the final three months.

Meanwhile, off the ice, the team earned several awards from the league, which is becoming an annual tradition.

Indeed, in addition to benchmark awards for ticket sales and corporate sales, the team was recognized as having the AHL Marketing Department of the Year and the Most Unique Social Media Content. (More awards were expected at the annual league meetings in South Carolina, which were taking place as this story went to press.)

The marketing and social media content awards help explain the continued improvement in group sales and overall ticket sales, said Costa, adding that, with the shorter playoff run, the team is already “well ahead and well out in front of next season” in terms of season ticket renewals, group sales, and other initiatives.

Indeed, the team continues to set the bar higher, he went on, adding that, with the parking garage now open, the space adjacent to it being activated — the team, working with the state, which controls the property, will look to create a Yawkey Way-like atmosphere on game nights — and an already stable fan base, there are expectations for continued growth.

As for ticket sales, the team’s success on the ice and with creating a fun, always changing fan experience, coupled with the relatively small capacity of 6,700, has created both demand and urgency, said Costa, adding that the team has grown season ticket sales past 1,600 and looks to surpass 1,700 for next season.

“When you have a base like that coming in for every game, and we had a really great year for groups — we did more than $1 million in group revenue for the first time ever in Springfield hockey history — that gives you a really good base to work from to fill the rest of the building,” he explained, adding that the full (and nearly full) houses create a raucous atmosphere not seen in some other buildings.

“In Hartford, the XL Center [now PeoplesBank Arena] seats 16,000 people; when you bring 6,000 out, it just doesn’t have that same feeling,” he said. “If you get 5,000 in our building, the place is rocking; it feels like it’s full. That’s an advantage for us.”

As for ticket revenues, the T-Birds’ average price is just over $20, with the league average north of $28, said Costa, adding that there is some leeway for increases, given those statistics, the value the team delivers, and the growing demand for the product.

“Since we started here, the big thing was just trying to show as much value as possible, with the promotions and themes we do on game nights … that’s really added to why people want to buy tickets,” he explained. “Now, with the scarcity of tickets, the ticket packages are much more valuable because people are trying to lock in their seats, knowing that they’re not going to get them waiting until a week before a game.

“It’s been really good to change that mentality, and we’ve re-educated the community as to how to get tickets and the best way to get them,” he went on. “Coming out of the gates, we focused on building the base and going after large numbers; then, once you get the large numbers in the building and you start to create some emergency with sellouts, you can start to walk up your ticket price. I think we’re there.”

Heading into their 10th year, the T-Birds are ‘there’ in many respects and looking to soar still higher in 2025-26.

—George O’Brien

Pridelands is one of many sources of greater vibrancy Szynal is seeing downtown, and at the chamber as well, which is based in Springfield but boasts members from across the region. She said membership is up — 419 was the latest count — amid efforts to both grow and diversify the membership through initiatives such as a revamped, more member-focused website and television commercials.

“We’re really trying to diversify our membership in every possible way, from diversification of the people that are part of the chamber to the businesses and types of businesses that join the chamber,” she explained. “We’re really trying to cast a wide net; the chamber is most effective if there’s a lot of different types of people and businesses that are part of it.”

Elaborating, she said the chamber has been working in many ways to “be more out there,” through those TV commercials, social media content, the new website, a deeper event schedule, and more.

 

Progress Report

While there are several visible signs of momentum in the city, perhaps the most notable is what would be considered the ‘housing market,’ Sheehan said.

That’s a broad term that covers everything from still-rising home prices — the city has seen one of the more dramatic such increases in the state — to development of new housing of all kinds, including new market-rate apartments downtown, but also upscale homes in several sections of the city, including East Forest Park, the Bicentennial Highway area, and perhaps the site of the former Sears at the Eastfield Mall, acquired by one residential developer.

“The demand is for new product,” he said, referring to both homes and rental units. “And that’s why we’re seeing so much new housing development coming in that includes homes at the higher end of the market.”

Meanwhile, interior demolition has commenced at the South End properties — the Colonial Block, the Clocktower Building, and others, said Sheehan, noting that McCaffery, the Chicago-based development company leading the project, is finalizing financing, which is expected to cost roughly $50 million. Transfer of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority properties to McCaffery is expected to take place early next year, with construction expected to begin soon thereafter.

As that project progresses, so too has a $30 million infrastructure improvement initiative, including a new parking garage at the corner of Stockbridge and Willow streets, for the area from State Street to Union Street, one designed to make it more responsive to the residential growth taking place there.

“There’s significant housing development that’s back there now, with Stockbridge Court being the largest one, but there’s also the Lofts on Park Street,” he explained, adding that the work includes new sidewalks, lighting, road repair, and improvements to the surface parking in that area, and will create stronger connections to Main Street. “This will lift up that entire area, not just for the new housing, but the housing that’s historically been there for quite some time.”

While Sheehan sees progress on many fronts, from housing to the Eastfield Mall to the county courthouse, there are areas of concern.

These include the property at 101 State St., owned by MGM Springfield. There is still scaffolding on the structure nearly seven years after the casino opened, he said, adding that redevelopment of the property is a key bullet point in the host community agreement, and lack of progress there has become a point of contention between the city and the casino operator.

“We have concerns about that not moving forward in a timely way,” he said, adding that another pain point is the lack of any apparent progress at the former Vibra Hospital site on State Street, now vacant for several years, a campus that includes the so-called ‘Isolation Hospital,’ which preservationists want to save from the wrecking ball.

Another concern is the property known as the Mardi Gras building because it was home to a now-closed gentleman’s club. The restaurant known as 350 Grill will be moving from that building to the site of the former Jackalope on Worthington Street, becoming a key part of the revitalization efforts there. And while that location will likely work out well for the restaurant, it leaves the Mardi Gras building vacant and with little talk of redevelopment.

“There hasn’t been much dialogue, but there has been discussion of doing housing there,” said Sheehan, adding that the upper floors hold the potential to house dozens of units. “And it would be an ideal site for housing because there’s plenty of parking at the site, and you’re close to Union Station.”

Meanwhile, several other properties downtown are largely vacant — he listed Harrison Place and adjoining structures along Main Street, but there are others scattered across the central business district — and with little movement toward redevelopment and the properties in serious need of investment in new infrastructure.

“These owners have held and held and held and not kept up with the requisite investments they should be making in these properties,” said Sheehan, adding that speculation that some properties might become part of the MGM complex, such as those now being converted to housing in the South End, kept those owners from investing in their holdings.

Sheehan said one possible reuse for some of these properties is housing, although conversion would likely be an expensive undertaking. The state has launched a new initiative called the Momentum Fund, a first-in-the-nation state revolving fund to support mixed-income housing production, and it recently announced its first financing commitment from the fund, $5 million for the Residences of East Milton, which will create 92 new mixed-income rental units in an underutilized commercial property in the town of Milton.

He noted that Springfield has several buildings that meet that description, and hopes projects will materialize that can take advantage of the Momentum Fund, adding that housing might be the best option for many commercial properties in and around the downtown.

“We’d like to have a little more momentum in Western Mass.,” he said, “a part of the state that needs more help with housing.”

Pittsfield Builds Awareness of All It Has to Offer

By
Laurie Tierney, seen in front of Hotel on North
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Laurie Tierney, seen in front of Hotel on North

Laurie Tierney, seen in front of Hotel on North, describes Pittsfield as the “Brooklyn of the Berkshires,” which is meant as a compliment.

 

Laurie Tierney likes to refer to Pittsfield as the “Brooklyn of the Berkshires.”

By that, Tierney — co-owner, with her husband, David, of Hotel on North (as in North Street, downtown’s main drag) — implies there’s some grit when it comes to that region’s largest community. “We’re gritty, not necessarily pretty,” she said with a laugh.

But if one were to look closer and beyond the grit, they would see much more — in this case, culture, restaurants, some retail, and outdoor recreation, for starters, she told BusinessWest.

“I think Pittsfield is doing a great job of reinventing itself,” she said of the ongoing transformation from the days when its economy and overall vibrancy were dominated by one large employer, GE. “Barrington Stage and the Colonial Theatre have been a big part of that; we have a great arts community … we just need more people to get to know us.”

Rebecca Brien, managing director of Downtown Pittsfield Inc. (DPI), agreed, adding that a multi-faceted marketing campaign is being launched in an effort to prompt more people — especially locals, but also those from other area codes — to give Pittsfield a closer look.

It includes Hey Neighbor, a program awarding marketing grants to 10 businesses in downtown Pittsfield, with grantees receiving custom video ads before films at the Beacon Cinema and radio advertisements on WUPE/WEBC during that same time period.

In addition, the city’s two major theaters, Barrington Stage Company and the Colonial Theatre, have received what she calls “dinner-and-a-show” radio spots on NPR.

“This initiative aims to drive foot traffic, build community awareness, and showcase the diverse stories of Pittsfield’s small business community,” Brien said of Hey Neighbor, adding that the theater spots are designed to remind neighbors that the city offers world-class theater and attractive dinner options just a short drive away (more on this later).

“If it isn’t daily workforce that’s occupying the restaurants and coffee shops and visiting the businesses, then it needs to be residents that are doing it in the morning and the evening after work, or while working remotely.”

These promotional initiatives and broader efforts to bring people to the city comprise just one of many developing stories in this community of roughly 44,000 people. Others include:

• Ongoing efforts to create more housing of all kinds, but especially market-rate and affordable units. Several projects in various stages of progress will add more than 100 units, but 200 to 300 will be needed, Mayor Pete Marchetti said;

• The demolition and rebuild of historic Wahconah Park, with the goal of bringing collegiate league baseball back to Pittsfield;

• Early-stage work to gauge interest in forming a business improvement district in the downtown;

• Late feasibility-stage work to build a new elementary school, one that would merge two existing schools into one; and

• Several infrastructure projects, including work on North Street.

Housing remains a critical issue in the community, said those we spoke with — both to meet an urgent need for more options among workers, the elderly, and other constituencies, and to bring more vibrancy to a downtown still suffering from the side effects of COVID, especially the transition to remote work and hybrid schedules, which has reduced the level of business activity in the neighborhood.

Jonathan Butler, president and CEO of the regional economic development agency 1Berkshire, said there is no turning back the clock in this regard, leaving housing as the best option for commercial space in the downtown — and for providing the critical mass of people needed to support the wide range of hospitality-related businesses.

The Hey Neighbor campaign

The Hey Neighbor campaign is part of a broad effort to bring more attention to Pittsfield, its cultural attractions, and its eclectic mix of small businesses.

“If it isn’t daily workforce that’s occupying the restaurants and coffee shops and visiting the businesses, then it needs to be residents that are doing it in the morning and the evening after work, or while working remotely,” he explained. “They’re replacing those people who were formerly working in commercial spaces and buying their morning coffee and lunch.”

“In the spirit of post-pandemic urban planning, downtown Pittsfield, like a lot of other urban centers, has seen a shift away of commercial activity — we’re seeing employers shifting to more work-life balance models with remote working and hybrid office models,” he explained. “So we’re seeing some investments in housing, to meet the city’s needs and a much larger regional need.”

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns its lens on the Brooklyn of the Berkshires and the many ongoing efforts to inspire people to look beyond the grit.

 

Staying Power

Hotel on North is marking its 10th anniversary this year, Tierney said, and there is much to commemorate.

Indeed, the boutique 45-room hotel — created out of buildings more than a century old that were once home to the menswear and sporting goods emporium Besse-Clarke — has become a cornerstone of an ongoing transformation of downtown Pittsfield, from the retail-heavy and business-focused days when GE’s transformer division was employing more than 10,000 people, into a more hospitality- and arts-dominated district where more people live than in decades past.

The hotel and the guests it draws from across the Northeast and beyond have inspired several new businesses, she said, listing Methuselah Bar & Lounge and an expansion of Steven Valenti’s men’s clothing store among them.

As for the hotel itself … well, Tierney said it shares its personality with the Berkshires (and Pittsfield itself), meaning an intriguing blend of the past and present, heritage and innovation.

She and David have traveled all around the world, and they’ve incorporated their experiences into Hotel on North, such as its revolving door, a concept borrowed from a hotel in Nashville.

Over the past decade, the hotel has become a big part of the changing scene in Pittsfield, a tight-knit community of hospitality, arts-related, and service businesses that support one another and, together, have become more of a destination in recent years rather than a place to drive through on the way to somewhere else.

Mayor Pete Marchetti

Mayor Pete Marchetti says that, while new housing units are coming online, there is more work to do to meet enormous need in the city.

But in many ways, it is still an unknown, or at least underappreciated, commodity, said Tierney, adding that there is a need for the city to understand and appreciate all that it has become — “it’s been the ugly stepsister for the surrounding towns for so long that I think that sometimes it doesn’t see itself as the engine that can and will” — and do more to put its best foot forward.

Brien said this need to promote all Pittsfield has to offer is at the heart of DPI’s Hey Neighbor campaign, funded through MassDevelopment’s Transformative Development Initiative, as well as the spots promoting not only the shows at Barrington Stage and the Colonial Theatre, but nearby restaurants in Pittsfield.

With the latter, the goal, through the spots on NPR, is to introduce (or reintroduce) Pittsfield to a broad audience across Western Mass.

“We have great tourism that obviously goes on in the Berkshires, but Pittsfield is kind of that forgotten space,” she explained, adding that, while most area residents will go Northampton for dinner and a show, most don’t fully appreciate that they can do the same in Pittsfield.

“Why aren’t those same individuals coming here?” she asked rhetorically, adding that the answer may well be a simple lack of awareness.

Meanwhile, Hey Neighbor will spotlight 10 downtown businesses through those aforementioned cinema and radio spots, said Brien, adding that the eclectic mix includes Hot Plate Brewing Co., Thistle ’n Thorn Floral, WANDER Berkshires, Otto’s Kitchen & Comfort, Methuselah, and Berkshire Nautilus.

“Together, they say, ‘come back downtown and see what’s new,’” she told BusinessWest, adding that a third piece to the broad marketing campaign involves $1,000 grants to three summer event series to promote their offerings:

• The Pitt, a Friday summer music series being spearheaded by Hot Plate Brewing Co.;

• Rhythmscape, which offers weekly dance lessons on Sundays. (like the Pitt, these take place in Dunham Mall, a public pedestrian walkway that has seen several aesthetic improvements over this past year); and

• Depot After Dark, which pairs Tito’s Mexican Bar & Grill and WANDER Berkshires, a new gathering space, adding late-night dance parties to the alleyway just outside their businesses. 

 

Developing Stories

Such efforts are expected to bring more momentum to a downtown that has seen healthy doses of that commodity in recent years, even as it continues to build back from the many types of disruption resulting from the pandemic.

Perhaps the biggest of these is the change in how and where work is done, said Butler, adding that, like all downtowns in the region, Pittsfield’s suffers from having fewer people going to work there everyday.

This trend, coupled with critical need, is fueling investments in housing downtown, he went on, adding that several projects are in various stages of development.

Pittsfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1761
Population: 43,927
Area: 42.5 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: $17.94
Commercial Tax Rate: $37.96
Median Household Income: $35,655
Median family Income: $46,228
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Berkshire Health Systems; General Dynamics; Petricca Industries Inc.; SABIC Innovative Plastics; Berkshire Bank
* Latest information available

These include renovation of the Wright Building, just a few doors down from Hotel on North, which represents an example of the shift from commercial to residential uses for downtown real estate. Butler said there are maybe a few hundred more people living downtown than a decade or more ago, and this growing population has helped support existing businesses and inspire new ones.

Meanwhile, this new housing is helping to meet soaring need across the city and the region, said Marchetti, a former Pittsfield Cooperative Bank executive and city councilor, who was elected mayor in November 2023.

He said the city is ready to cut the ribbon on some projects, including Terrace 592, redevelopment of the Wright Terrace apartments, which will bring online 41 units, most of them affordable, while others are in earlier stages.

Overall, there are perhaps another 150 to 200 units in early stage or predevelopment, Marchetti said, including redevelopment of the former Hibbard Elementary School, while Mill Town Capital has several projects in different locations across the city. These initiatives will make a dent in overall need, but more will be needed, he added.

“There’s a lot more work that we need to do, mostly because ours is an aging population,” he noted, adding that affordable options are needed if empty nesters want to continue living in the city.

Beyond housing, there are other issues facing the city, he went on, including the demolition and rebuilding of Wahconah Park, the city-owned landmark built in 1919, with work slated to begin next year.

The wooden grandstand, one of the few remaining in the U.S., was deemed unsafe, Marchetti said, and the park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been closed for two years. Plans call for replacement of that grandstand but retention of other elements of the park, as well as creation of a historic walkway that will highlight the history of the park, which had a diamond oriented due west (it was constructed well before the advent of field lighting permitted night games), which resulted in brief suspensions of play at sunset so that the setting sun would not interfere with the batters’ view of the pitch.

The Pittsfield Suns, part of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, played at the park before it was deemed unsafe, Marchetti noted, adding that the team could possibly return to Pittsfield — which would be yet another development blending past and future in this city in flux.

Elizabeth Staples Keeps Evolving the Good Dog Spot

By
Elizabeth Staples today
Where Are They Now?

Where Are They Now?

Elizabeth Staples today

Elizabeth Staples today

Elizabeth Staples was honored in the 40 Under Forty class of 2016

Elizabeth Staples was honored in the 40 Under Forty class of 2016

When Elizabeth Staples was named to BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty class of 2016, she had been running her business, the Good Dog Spot, for almost a decade, based on one foundational idea: that canine daycare should be more than stowing dogs in kennels.

“On the East Coast, you mostly saw the warehouse style of boarding — put the dog in a cage and go away, which is kind of sad,” she explained back then. “But nationally, the trend was toward an off-leash play center, where people could feel good about leaving their dog and not feel guilty about it. That’s what we wanted to bring to this area.”

Fast-forward nine more years, and Staples is still evolving the idea of how best to serve dogs and their families.

“There’s been a shift in the industry that recognizes that dogs are parts of our family, and people want more than even just a place for them to go play all day,” she told BusinessWest during a visit earlier this month. “They want to make sure that their lives are full of enrichment, and every dog is a little different, so their needs might be a little bit different. So it’s not quite the same as throwing all the dogs into a big group for playtime anymore.”

She’s talking about the Enhanced Dog Daycare program, which goes beyond playtime and aims to create a balanced day that leaves a dog fulfilled, but not exhausted, through carefully tailored activities, personalized attention, and thoughtful socialization — all individualized for each guest.

From a single location in Chicopee starting in 2007, the Good Dog Spot expanded to a second site in Northampton in late 2016, and both locations offer daycare, boarding, grooming, and services like Spot’s Tots, which is a puppy socialization program that gets pups ready for the daycare environment.

“Every dog is a little different, so their needs might be a little bit different. So it’s not quite the same as throwing all the dogs into a big group for playtime anymore.”

“That young puppy period is a really influential time where you can set them up for some very positive experiences,” Staples noted.

In its first nine years, leading up to her 40 Under Forty recognition, the Good Dog Spot grew from one employee to 18, and boasts close to 40 now. In 2016, the business served about 30 dogs a day; now, on a busy day, each site may see 50 dogs checking in for daycare, 20 for boarding, and another 20 for grooming.

“We’re growing organically with the two locations. I guess the big-picture dream is that there would be a third location,” she said. “We currently rent both of our locations, and we’ve got great relationships with our landlords, but eventually owning a property we’re in would be a future goal for us as well.”

The COVID years posed challenges on multiple levels, starting with how to serve the public under strict state regulations.

“Daycare was still on the essential list, so we could open for daycare and grooming, but we couldn’t do boarding. And then it shifted, but the shifts were not necessarily communicated clearly,” Staples said.

“But we realized that grooming was the essential service. You’ve got elderly people that can’t take care of their dogs. You’ve got hygiene, fleas, ticks, and things like that that you want to make sure you’re taking care of,” she noted. “Then, when that got taken off of the essential list, we could only do one at a time. And you’re making clients unhappy because they’re like, ‘my dog’s there; can’t you just groom him anyway? But we couldn’t because we could get fined. So it really was complicated.”

The other change coming out of COVID was that workforce issues across a broad spectrum of industries were forcing wages up, and with a growing staff, the Good Dog Spot has had to respond in order to attract the best talent, hiring staff at $18 per hour and paying managers in the mid-20s.

“We had to stay ultra-competitive,” Staples said. “Minimum wage was going up anyway, but to get ahead of that curve was challenging because we needed to bring in quality people to take care of these pets. The increase in wages allows us to take good care of our staff and keep them happy, content, and safe. But it also allows us to do what’s great for the dogs, so it’s just been a win-win all around.”

Since their children were born, Staples’s husband, Cory, has handled much of the day-to-day operations of the Good Dog Spot. “Cory’s focused on the numbers, and I focus more on what’s really great for the dogs. And when the two mesh together well, that’s really great to see,” she said.

She is also proud of the business’ focus on continuing education and safety. Both Elizabeth and Cory are certified through the Professional Animal Care Certification Council, and they’ve been involved with an organization called Fear Free Pets, which offers training to help the staff recognize stress signals and other signs in an effort to work with animals in a positive way. Employees are also certified in first aid and CPR.

As for the continued growth over the past 18 years, Staples said having to keep up with demand — in terms of both staffing and evolving client offerings — has been challenging, but gratifying when she looks back at her humble beginnings. “It really does blow my mind sometimes.”

In Monson, Things Are Percolating

By
Amanda Roy, center, with several staff members at the Better Bean coffee shop on Main Street in Monson.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Amanda Roy, center, with several staff members at the Better Bean coffee shop on Main Street in Monson.

Amanda Roy, center, with several staff members at the Better Bean coffee shop on Main Street in Monson.

 

Amanda Roy likes to say the devastating ankle injury she suffered in 2021 when she missed the last step at her house didn’t happen to her; it happened for her.

That mishap left her in a wheelchair and facing a lengthy recovery period, which she chose to spend with her parents, in the Monson home where she grew up. And while recovering, she spent a lot of time thinking about what the next chapter in her life would look like and where it would play out.

She ultimately decided it would look somewhat like a previous chapter, when she spent 10 years operating a coffee shop in Plymouth, but with some real changes (more on those later). As for the place … she chose downtown Monson with the thought that this would be a short-term gig.

But things changed, and quickly.

“I thought, ‘I’m going to open a coffee shop, and when I get better, I’m going to sell it, move back to Plymouth, and get on with my life,’” said Roy, who opened the Better Bean in the summer of 2023, when she thought she was recovering from that ankle injury. Instead, she was told she would need a replacement. And while getting it and some subsequent surgeries, she made the decision to get on with her life in her hometown. She’s making the Better Bean one of the more intriguing business stories in this community, while she and her boyfriend build a house there.

These developing stories are just a few of many in this town of just over 8,000 people. Others include:

• Progress with the redevelopment of the sprawling Monson Developmental Center (MDC) site. The board of Westmass Area Development Corp. is expected to vote soon on a proposal to acquire a 100-acre portion of the site with the intention of redeveloping it for housing and related purposes;

• Renovation and expansion of the town’s fire station;

• A town meeting vote to move from three selectmen to five;

• Continued growth of what would be called agritourism, with businesses such as Silver Bell Farms, Echo Hill Orchard, Westview Farms Creamery, and others, which grow and sell everything from apples to Christmas trees to wine to ice cream, and draw people from across the region and beyond; and

• Anticipation and excitement concerning the planned east-west rail station in Palmer, which has the potential to make Monson a more popular place to live for those who work in Greater Boston but can’t afford home prices in the capital area.

“It’s still costs a lot to build a house, but from a value standpoint, this is an opportunity to bring people here, and when individuals move in, now you have an opportunity for another restaurant or two, and then businesses will look at Monson as a vibrant place to move to.”

Westmass President and CEO Jeff Daley said the board is expected to vote by the end of this month on a proposal to acquire a section of the MDC property, on which he envisions a ‘village concept’ for the parcel, which represents a new and intriguing opportunity for the agency.

“What we’ve done in the past has been mostly commercial and industrial-type projects,” he said, noting industrial park projects in cities like Westfield, Agawam, and Chicopee, as well as redevelopment of the massive Ludlow Mills complex in Ludlow, which includes large housing components. “We’ve worked with partners on housing in the past, and housing is definitely a need, and the demographics of Monson have been changing; housing would be a good fit at that location.”

The MDC was among many state-owned properties featured in a recent showcase of parcels available for housing development that hosted the Healey administration, said Jenn Wolowicz, Monson’s town administrator, noting that, while there are several potential future uses, housing, especially affordable and 55-and-over housing, are critical needs.

One of the long-shuttered buildings at the Monson Developmental Center, which is moving closer to redevelopment, with housing as one of the likely new uses.

One of the long-shuttered buildings at the Monson Developmental Center, which is moving closer to redevelopment, with housing as one of the likely new uses.

“As of April 30, our population of seniors is 33% of our overall population,” she explained. “We have a lot of people living in single-family homes, their children are grown, and they’d love to be able to downsize to a townhouse-type unit, and we’ve made sure that this is something that’s being heard by Westmass.”

As for east-west rail, Jim Przypek, CEO of the Quaboag Hills Chamber of Commerce, which serves 15 communities, including Monson, said that service will benefit many of the communities in the Quaboag region simply by making them more accessible.

“The trend of people moving out of Eastern Mass. and migrating farther and farther west will continue and be accelerated by east-west rail,” he said, adding that rail service will make it easier to live in those towns but still work in Boston or Hartford.

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns its lens on Monson, the picturesque town roughly halfway between Springfield and Worcester that has established its own identity.

 

Developing Stories

Mike Rouette grew up in Monson, and it has remained his home. He described it as the “perfect place to raise a family,” and a community where people team up to get things done, right down to planning and executing the Fourth of July parade and fireworks.

“Everyone pitches in and does what needs to be done to keep the town vibrant,” said Rouette, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Monson Savings Bank, who, as he surveys the landscape, sees both challenges and opportunities for the town.

The challenges are similar to those facing other rural communities in that area, including the loss of manufacturing jobs — plants once made everything from hats to toilet seats here — as well as retaining existing businesses and grappling with declining enrollment in local schools stemming from school choice and other contributing factors.

“It’s not easy to access Monson,” he explained. “Sometimes, people tend to look at Monson, from a Springfield standpoint, as if Wilbraham Mountain is almost like a Great Wall of China — it’s ‘over there.’”

As for opportunities, they mostly involve abundant land (although much of it is on hillsides) and still-affordable buildings lots, at least when compared to towns to the west (like Wilbraham, Hampden, and East Longmeadow) and to the east (Sturbridge and Auburn).

“There’s an opportunity there that the town should take advantage of,” Rouette said of lot prices. “It’s still costs a lot to build a house, but from a value standpoint, this is an opportunity to bring people here, and when individuals move in, now you have an opportunity for another restaurant or two, and then businesses will look at Monson as a vibrant place to move to.”

Meanwhile, the MDC site provides a wealth of opportunities — much like the site of the former Belchertown State School has — for creative reuse, everything from housing to commercial sites to Rouette’s vision of a regional high school that would serve Monson and Palmer and help keep students in those communities.

The MDC, which closed in 2012, was spread over more than 650 acres. A large portion of the property will be transferred to the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game to become a wildlife management area, said Wolowicz, adding that Westmass could become the developer of the remaining 100-acre parcel, where the hospital buildings and other facilities still stand.

“We would be demoing the hospital buildings and doing a mixed-use development with quite a bit of housing,” said Daley of plans that are still being formalized and, of course, contingent on the upcoming vote of the board. “We’re proposing that it would be affordable, market-rate, and workforce, to make sure that people can come into town if they want, or upsize or downsize in the town of Monson, as well as potentially some retail and commercial use to create a village atmosphere, as opposed to just coming in and putting some buildings up.

“We really want to respect the town of Monson and the surrounding communities, and that’s why we’re proposing something with more of a village feel rather than just putting up ranch homes or duplexes,” he went on. “This would be more strategically thought out … a village concept where people could still enjoy that rural farm life, if you will, in Monson, while also creating a new development for housing upgrades for people who want to get out of their homes, as well as workforce housing. This could be a game changer for Monson, Palmer, and the surrounding communities.”

 

Bean Optimistic

The staff at the Better Bean likes to get creative and theme its specialty drinks and other fare.

Such was the case last fall, with a two-month salute to Gilmore Girls and the small, fictional Connecticut town called Stars Hollow, where the show takes place.

“Stars Hollow looks a lot like Monson,” said Roy, referencing both her coffee shop and Dan Grieve Park, across the street from the shop, and its gazebo, which is very similar to the one in the show.

Monson at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1775
Population: 8,150
Area: 44.8 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $14.87
Commercial Tax Rate: $14.87
Median Household Income: $52,030
Median Family Income: $58,607
Type of Government: Select Board, Open Town Meeting
Latest information available

The park, complete with several Adirondack chairs and benches, is quite popular with Better Bean clients, most of them regulars, said Roy, who chose a grab-and-go format rather than seating, one of many lessons she took from her time in Plymouth, which was split between two locations.

The first was a kiosk inside a Registry of Motor Vehicles office, and the second was a much larger space in the same industrial park, “with seats and a public bathroom and a big menu … and I burned myself right out,” she said, adding that she sold that enterprise six months before COVID arrived.

“Someone was looking out for me big time, because I can’t imagine being that burned out and having to deal with COVID,” she said, adding that her ankle injury brought her back to Monson and, eventually, to a storefront — the same one her father operated a realty office out of when she was young — on Main Street.

Learning her lesson from Plymouth, she created a place that’s not too big or too small, although it’s been cramped since she opened, so she will soon take over the space next door (the former Petal and Wren flower shop, which relocated) and will use the back for storage and the front for a small gift shop, something she said the town needs.

Overall, Roy told BusinessWest, the downtown has lost some storefronts — a cannabis shop closed recently, for example — but it remains an emerging destination.

Wolowicz agreed, but noted that the town’s business community is diverse, with many ventures existing in the agritourism and hospitality spaces.

“We have quite a few people who are being very creative when it comes to what their land is used for, be it what they’re growing or their animals,” she said, adding that one of the priorities for town officials has been to promote the preservation of farmland and, overall, a healthy rural community.

The Monson Agricultural Commission goes about this work in many ways, she said, listing everything from Right to Farm bylaws, which protect farms from noise, odor, and other complaints, to a farmers market event with live music and more than a dozen local vendors, including farms, bakeries, and artisans; the next such event is slated for Sept. 13.

“The town of Monson supports its commercial farms,” Wolowicz said, “and wishes to ensure their continued existence and positive impact on the town economically, ecologically, and socially.”

Przypek, who came to the chamber after a lengthy stint with the Basketball Hall of Fame in marketing and sponsorships, and then several years as general manager of the Three County Fairgrounds, agreed, noting that agritourism has become a large part of Monson’s identity as it transitions away from its manufacturing heritage.

“Businesses like Silver Bell Farms and Echo Hill and Westview Farms Creamery are thriving, and they bring people from all over to Monson,” he said, adding that new businesses downtown, like the Better Bean, do the same.

 

New DNA Director Prioritizes Collaboration

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Forbes Library in downtown Northampton will soon feature a small outdoor stage, as seen in this rendering from HAI Architecture.
Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight

Forbes Library in downtown Northampton will soon feature a small outdoor stage, as seen in this rendering from HAI Architecture.

Forbes Library in downtown Northampton will soon feature a small outdoor stage, as seen in this rendering from HAI Architecture.

Andrea Monson came to her new role as executive director of the Northampton Downtown Assoc. (DNA) in a roundabout way, but found it to be an intriguing fit during an uncertain time for the city and its downtown, which will soon undergo a major — and not universally loved — redevelopment project.

After spending five and a half years at MassDevelopment as its Tranformative Development Initiative fellow for Chicopee, she then moved into the position of creative content officer for a few years; prior to that, she had been in marketing research at companies like Aetna and CVS. She’s also co-owner of Monson Roastery and founded the Urban Food Brood collaborative in Springfield.

“I found out about the Main Street redevelopment project from a friend of mine who lives in Northampton and was connected to a lot of folks there, and said they could really use a fellow to get through the project,” she said, adding that she wound up volunteering with Pardon Our Progress (POP), an entity created to streamline communication and mitigate obstacles around the Main Street redevelopment project, dubbed Picture Main Street by municipal leaders.

Then, when Jillian Duclos, the previous executive director of DNA, stepped down, Monson applied and won the job earlier this year. She explained that a major DNA focus is downtown advocacy, and it has been active in communicating project updates to businesses there.

“The bulk of construction is happening in 2027,” she said. “There will be some preliminary construction in the fall of 2026, but the city is very mindful of the retail experience of Northampton for the holiday season, so no construction then.”

Monson recognizes business owners are a divided camp on the project, and said the city has been trying to level up the way it communicates regarding the issue, while the DNA works directly with business owners, keeping them informed.

“We’re always thinking about how construction will affect traffic, incentives for foot traffic, creative ways to get around the work on Main Street. We don’t want anything to catch us by surprise.”

“We launched a survey to get all the businesses to share their experiences and feelings. A lot of them they’re frustrated because there hasn’t always been clear communication in the past, though we’re actively trying to remedy that,” she explained, adding that businesses emerging from the difficult pandemic years feel stressed on multiple fronts today, worried about tariffs, recession talk, and what they see as a major Main Street upheaval that could keep foot traffic away.

“They’re looking at the project as the end of the world, but that’s not the case,” Monson went on. “A lot of redevelopment projects end up increasing foot traffic; they end up being really profitable when they’re finished. And with POP, and my job at DNA, we’re listening to business owners and acting on their concerns, looking for grant funding and other funding to support them through the project. We’re also launching an RFP for marketing, to market Northampton in general and market the downtown, and keep them in the loop with everything that’s happening, scheduling changes, all of that.”

Judy Herrell, owner of Herrell’s Ice Cream, is one of several business owners who have taken the city to task over its downtown plans for a number of reasons, including an increase in traffic, concerns over bike safety, and a lack of public meetings on the project.

“I’ve talked to a few people that wanted to open businesses Northampton but didn’t for lack of being assured they would be fine during Picture Main Street. They’re worried that, for three years, Main Street will will be torn up, even though the city says it’ll be done in sequences and not tear up the whole street at once,” Herrell told BusinessWest. “That’s still a lot of stress on businesses in the city.”

 

Meeting of the Minds

Monson said the city is working with Emily Innes from Innes Associates, which specializes in municipal planning, on a grant-funded consultancy.

“She’s seen cities through a lot of these projects, and they’ve told us that we’re ahead of the game just by POP existing. We’re always thinking about how construction will affect traffic, incentives for foot traffic, creative ways to get around the work on Main Street. We don’t want anything to catch us by surprise.”

Monson is also in the process of bringing Jeff Speck to the city for a public talk. A noted city planner who wrote Walkable City: How Downtown Saves America, One Step at a Time, he will tailor his presentation to Picture Main Street and why it’s important, she said, adding that she’s also trying to put together a panel of mayors who have seen these types of projects through in their own cities.

But for locals looking for activities beyond road construction talk, there’s plenty to look forward to in town, including the return of the Taste of Northampton, now as a two-day event on Sept. 13-14.

“I love seeing all the businesses rally around these ideas. They’re all putting in their time and energy to create these collaborations. What I love about Northampton is how businesses help each other thrive.”

“It was a lot of work and a lot of money for just one day,” Monson noted, explaining the expansion to a two-day affair. “Again, this is being led by the restaurants; a lot of food and beverage establishments downtown are co-creating this with us. They know what’s best for them. They’ve been part of the Taste of Northampton for many years, and they’re excited to bring it back.”

The following month, Mischa Roy, owner of Spill the Tea Sis, is spearheading, alongside Isaac Weiner, co-owner of Familiars Coffee & Tea, a month-long October event called the Great Northampton Haunt, which celebrates the city’s haunted history.

“You know, we have as many hauntings here as anywhere else. We had witch trials before Salem. We just don’t brag about it,” Monson said. “So we’re trying to lean into it. They have plans to have something going on every single day in October, which coincides with a dip in retail business. So it’s strategic and intentional.

“I love seeing all the businesses rally around these ideas. They’re all putting in their time and energy to create these collaborations,” she added. “What I love about Northampton is how businesses help each other thrive.”

Meanwhile, a project to construct an outdoor performance stage beside Forbes Library promises to be another activation point for the downtown. HAI Architecture, based in Northampton, designed the accessible, open-air, covered stage to support a wide variety of programs, including concerts, children’s programming, and outdoor movies.

Northampton at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1883
Population: 29,571
Area: 35.8 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential tax rate: $13.93
Commercial tax rate: $13.93
Median Household Income: $56,999
Median Family Income: $80,179
Type of government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Cooley Dickinson Hospital; ServiceNet Inc.; Smith College; L-3 KEO
* Latest information available

The Northampton Jazz Fest also returns to downtown — at numerous venues, as usual — on Sept. 26-27, headlined by New York Voices, a world-renowned vocal jazz quartet.

And speaking of music, the Iron Horse Music Hall recently celebrated one year since its much-anticipated reopening following a major renovation on Center Street, while other venues in town, from the Academy of Music to the Parlor Room to Bombyx, continue to thrive. But Monson said the still-shuttered Calvin Theater in the heart of downtown remains troublesome.

“When music venues are shut down, that’s big. That’s a big piece of what makes Northampton vibrant. If the Calvin doesn’t come back, that’s going keep Northampton from growing.”

 

Strength in Numbers

Northampton’s success is personal to Monson, who visited the city plenty during her youth and lived there during her college years. “I always felt it’s home. I want to come back and retire in Northampton. So I need it to stay vibrant, selfishly.”

To accomplish that vibrancy, she said, collaboration is key — between businesses, organizations like the chamber and the DNA, and even agencies across the region and state. So is a continued focus on the needs of businesses in a downtown that, aside from CVS, is comprised exclusively of small, local enterprises.

“How can we elevate Northampton? How can we address issues and creatively bring more traffic, more events, more people, so that people want to come back, stay over, go shopping?” Monson asked. “I get to work with some incredibly talented people, which benefits me in my understanding and learning about local economic development. And I think the DNA has been working really hard to build better relationships in Northampton.”

Cities that are struggling, she said, tend to have people working in silos that don’t collaborate with each other, and that’s the opposite of her vision for Paradise City, including that still-controversial reconstruction of Main Street.

“As Northampton forges on with this project, what I see is the potential of so many people working together and collaborating, and that’s ultimately going to be the great success of Northampton.”

A Picture of Progress Is Taking Shape on Worthington Street

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Raipher Pellegrino stands near the huge curved window on the second floor of the property at 280-302 Worthington St., known as the Underwood Building.
Features Special Coverage

Filling in the Canvas

Raipher Pellegrino stands near the huge curved window on the second floor of the property at 280-302 Worthington St., known as the Underwood Building.

Raipher Pellegrino stands near the huge curved window on the second floor of the property at 280-302 Worthington St., known as the Underwood Building.

 

Raipher Pellegrino paused at the huge, curved second-floor window facing the corner of Worthington and Dwight streets.

“How’s that for a view?” he asked rhetorically, noting that it’s been quite some time since anyone — other than those he’s had out for tours — has looked out that window, some recent history he intends to change.

Indeed, he envisions a Pilates studio, a gym, or something similar on the second-floor space at 280-302 Worthington St., a property known as the Underwood Building, which has been vacant or mostly vacant for more than decade. And that space is just part of a much larger canvas that Pellegrino, the noted personal injury lawyer and real estate developer, working in partnership with his brother, Joseph, and the city of Springfield, is intent on filling in.

While doing so, he’s writing the intriguing next chapter in the history of what has been called (and is still called, even though it hasn’t lived up to the title) Springfield’s ‘entertainment district.’

This is the Worthington Street corridor, specifically the blocks just west of Dwight Street. It has been growing increasingly quiet over the past decade or so as restaurants, clubs, other businesses, and even a nonprofit (Suit Up Springfield) have shuttered or moved. The closing of Dewey’s Jazz Lounge last month was just the latest blow for the area.

It was with the intent of reinvigorating that corridor that Pellegrino and his brother acquired the three buildings east of Duryea Way at auction in 2021. With support from the city in the form of a $2.5 million grant and infrastructure improvements, Pellegrino is filling in his canvas.

Some of the spaces have been filled, like Petra Hookah Lounge, which features Mediterranean food and reopened last fall in extensively renovated space. Others are nearing completion, such as the new restaurant called Mamou, to be owned and operated by the chef at the former Chef Wayne’s Big Mamou, set to open this summer. And still others, including three more restaurants, a music venue to host between 250 and 400 people, and other businesses, like that projected Pilates studio, are still weeks or months away. Meanwhile, several residential units have been renovated, and more will be added to the mix.

“I think it’s vitally important to bring this area back — it raises the quality of living for those living downtown, and it provides places for people to go and eat. That was my desire with this, and it’s a much more difficult project than I think anyone envisioned, but I think we’re starting to see it evolve, and we’re seeing a lot of momentum.”

“The pieces are coming into place,” said Pellegrino, who envisions five restaurants in all, most with doors opening out onto Worthington Street and outdoor dining, in addition to a club and other businesses that will support one another and bring people — and energy — back to the Worthington Street corridor.

“I think it’s vitally important to bring this area back — it raises the quality of living for those living downtown, and it provides places for people to go and eat,” he said. “That was my desire with this, and it’s a much more difficult project than I think anyone envisioned, but I think we’re starting to see it evolve, and we’re seeing a lot of momentum.”

Tim Sheehan, Springfield’s chief Economic Development officer, agreed, noting that the city has invested more than $3.2 million in the entertainment corridor for everything from outdoor dining facilities to small-business assistance to interior buildout for commercial tenants.

This ground-floor space in the Underwood Building is being renovated for use as a music venue, what Raipher Pellegrino describes as an “Iron Horse-like” facility.

This ground-floor space in the Underwood Building is being renovated for use as a music venue, what Raipher Pellegrino describes as an “Iron Horse-like” facility.

“The city’s investment continues in the corridor, and with what’s coming forward, people will see a lot of different options relative to dining in the dining district,” he said, adding that the goal is to bring both new businesses and a degree of long-term stability to a region that has not seen much of the latter.

Indeed, Brian Connors, deputy Development officer for the city, used understatement when he said the entertainment district has had “ebbs and flows.”

By that, he meant some good times, but also controversy with several late-night/early-morning incidents, and, from a business perspective, a high degree of turnover when it comes to restaurants and other businesses, problems compounded by the natural-gas explosion a block away in 2012.

For this issue, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look behind the plywood and brown paper over the doors and windows along that stretch of Worthington and into the future of the city’s entertainment district.

 

Work in Progress

It was raining intermittently as BusinessWest took its visit to the properties being redeveloped along that block on Worthington Street. The showers quickened the pace of the walks between the buildings, but they could hardly dampen the enthusiasm Pellegrino brought to his work as erstwhile tour guide, something he’s been doing often.

“This is a labor of love,” he said of the project, which is now approaching roughly $6 million in cost and represents perhaps the most extensive undertaking in a growing portfolio of real estate projects in Pellegrino’s portfolio.

That list includes the property at 265 State St. in Springfield — the large home later populated by commercial tenants but vacant in the ’90s and then restored by Pellegrino as a home to his offices — and its adjoining carriage house.

But it also includes a diverse mix of other properties, from charter schools in Springfield and Lowell, where Pellegrino went to college as an undergrad, to Springfield Country Club, which he acquired in partnership with the Hannoush brothers; from the property at 401 Liberty St. in Springfield, a former wire-manufacturing complex, now home to Behavioral Health Network, to the former Lunt Silversmith property in Greenfield, now home to a substance abuse center and mental health offices.

“The tenancy that we have needs to be established tenancy. In terms of going into the restaurant business as a startup business, it’s very, very difficult, and if the business model isn’t spot on, you have a tendency to have what we’ve had — businesses come in, businesses go out, businesses come in.”

Often, the projects involve properties that are historic in nature that require considerable renovations and modernization. Such is the case with the Worthington Street properties, which comprise a new challenge and a tremendous opportunity to reshape and reinvigorate the entertainment district, said Pellegrino, who started his tour at Petra Hookah Lounge, which opened its doors last fall, with the intent of showing what will be happening at the other properties along the street.

The block-long string of properties includes three buildings: 250-270 Worthington St., 272-280 Worthington, and 280-302 Worthington. The first two were built in the 1880s, and the third dates to the early 1930s.

Moving west to east, the properties were in progressively worse condition, he told BusinessWest, adding that 250-270 Worthington, most recently home to Jackalope Restaurant and now Petra (next door), was in decent shape, although both the residential units and restaurant spaces needed upgrades, including new HVAC systems. The property at 272-280, formerly home to several different restaurants, was in worse shape, he said, while 280-302 was “horrendous … uninhabitable.”

Efforts to make it habitable are among the many going on concurrently along that block, a project that came, as Pellegrino noted, with plenty of challenges — everything from renovating historic but badly deteriorated structures to securing established tenants — which became clear as he walked and talked about each of the buildings and the progress being made.

“With historic buildings like these, including one that hadn’t been occupied in 15 years, there are a lot of challenges,” he said, listing everything from floors one could see through to roofs that needed replacing to staircases that no longer meet code and need to be replaced. “This is a project that you can only figure out as you do it; we’ve systematically started at one end, 250-270 Worthington Street, and are working our way to the other.”

Starting with 250-270, he said Petra is now an established tenant, and there will be a new restaurant moving into the former Jackalope space by August or September. He declined to say what the entity will be but noted that it is an already established Springfield restaurant.

Raipher Pellegrino projects that five new restaurants, a music venue, other businesses, and new residential units will take shape along Worthington Street, reinvigorating the city’s entertainment district.

Raipher Pellegrino projects that five new restaurants, a music venue, other businesses, and new residential units will take shape along Worthington Street, reinvigorating the city’s entertainment district.

At 272-280, another new restaurant, Mamou, is expected to open later this month, and another new restaurant, a “bar-like” establishment with light fare, will be opening in the fall, he went on, adding that 280-302 Worthington will have a music venue, a breakfast/lunch restaurant, and other commercial spaces, six units in all, with tenants yet to be identified.

The music venue he’s envisioning will not compete with but rather complement existing venues such as the MassMutual Center, Symphony Hall, and the former CityStage, now being renovated into an arts center for youth, and be an “Iron Horse-like” venue, he said, a reference to the Northampton landmark that reopened last spring.

“The concept is to offer people live entertainment, but also support the restaurants,” Pellegrino said. “If you have an act and sell 250 to 400 tickets, people will want to eat before that.”

 

Building Momentum

As he stopped at that massive, curved window in the second-floor space above what will be the music venue, Pellegrino pointed to all the parking in the surrounding area, one of the many keys to the success of this project and the entertainment district overall.

Others include everything from improving the perception of public safety to creating stability with the business mix, as well as that supportive element that he mentioned.

Indeed, as the canvas gets filled in, the entertainment district will have a core of new restaurants and businesses, as well as some established eateries — Theodores’ and Del Rey Taqueria on Worthington Street, Osteria on Bridge Street, the nearby Student Prince, and other restaurants and taverns that will support one another, said Pellegrino, adding that the critical mass in his block of buildings should become a draw.

“All of the tenants understand the synergy — there’s discussion about that, and they work well with one another,” he noted. “The idea is that maybe someone can have dinner in one place tonight and have a drink in your place the next night; it feeds off one another. The more people we pull down into the region, the better the restaurants will do. The idea is to create the entertainment district, and the more the merrier.”

Sheehan agreed, noting there are several other keys to the success of this iteration, if you will, of the entertainment district.

These include everything from bringing experienced restaurateurs with proven concepts into the area to infrastructure upgrades.

“The tenancy that we have needs to be established tenancy,” he noted. “In terms of going into the restaurant business as a startup business, it’s very, very difficult, and if the business model isn’t spot on, you have a tendency to have what we’ve had — businesses come in, businesses go out, businesses come in.

“Our objective is to get more stabilized entrepreneurs into the spaces, and I do believe the tenancy that [Pellegrino] is putting forward reflects that stability,” he went on, adding that infrastructure improvements continue in the area, including additional upgrades, including more uplighting and plantings, to Stearns Square, capitalizing on work previously undertaken at that landmark.

Overall, the city has made a large commitment — in funding but also other forms of support — to the stability and growth of the entertainment district, said Connors, noting that public sector support, in the form of loans and grants for initiatives like outdoor dining, interior renovations, and relocation costs, are critical at a time when banks are often reluctant to lend for restaurant and brewery initiatives.

Pellegrino agreed, adding that the investments being made in the three properties along that block of Worthington Street and the individual spaces for restaurants and other businesses are another factor in the success quotient.

“These are major facelifts … these are beautiful, state-of-the-art restaurants. They’re coming into beautifully renovated spaces,” he told BusinessWest. “There’s no guarantee that any restaurant is going to succeed, but this gives them the best opportunity to succeed.

“Everyone has to do their part,” he went on. “The restaurateur has to put out good food and atmosphere; we collectively, with the city, have to provide a safe atmosphere and parking, so it’s inviting, and people feel comfortable coming downtown.”

Whether this picture will come together as Pellegrino and city officials anticipate remains to be seen. But there is great anticipation about what’s behind all that plywood and brown paper.

It’s the next big chapter in the life and times of Springfield’s entertainment district.

North Star Technology Leadership Demystifies IT for Clients

By
Michael Weber says he eases anxiety around AI while giving businesses real tools and strategies to use it.
Features

A Whole New World

 

Michael Weber says he eases anxiety around AI while giving businesses real tools and strategies to use it.

Michael Weber says he eases anxiety around AI while giving businesses real tools and strategies to use it.

 

After 20 years building a successful commercial printing business, Michael Weber stopped the presses and took a step into his future — both his own and that of the changing role of business IT.

The printing story begins around 2004, when Weber and his wife, Lindsey, who were living in Boston at the time, had the opportunity to buy Minuteman Press in Enfield, Conn. So they moved to this region and began to grow that business, eventually expanding it to two more locations in Springfield and Brattleboro, Vt., with numerous employees at all three sites.

When Weber received an offer to sell the company in late 2023, he was intrigued.

“The business had changed a lot over 20 years, and I thought it was an interesting opportunity and an interesting time to do something new. So that’s what we did,” he told BusinessWest. “We accepted the offer and took some time off. We traveled with the kids and tried to enjoy life the best we could for a little while — knowing that I needed to get back to work at some point.”

Before his two decades in the printing world, Weber earned a degree in management information systems at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and built a career as a middleware engineer, and had kept his finger on the pulse of IT since. His idea for a second career was to become a fractional chief technology officer (CTO), someone who offers technology leadership and expertise to client companies on a contract basis.

That’s how his current enterprise, North Star Technology Leadership, was born.

“I have a unique skill set in the sense that I understand technology, but I also understand business. So I can talk to business owners about their technology in a way that’s very different than most technology people can,” he explained. “Most technology people are so focused on the bits and the bytes and those kinds of things, but the business people just want the technology to work right. As somebody who’s been on both sides, I feel like I can bring that to the table more clearly than so many other technology companies.”

He chose the name of his firm purposefully. “I wanted to make it clear that I’m not competing with those other technology companies, those managed service providers that come in to fix your computer. I don’t want to do that. I could fix your computer if that’s what I needed to do, but I’m trying to provide leadership and an understanding of technology.

“I have a unique skill set in the sense that I understand technology, but I also understand business. So I can talk to business owners about their technology in a way that’s very different than most technology people can.”

“I felt like part of doing that meant I had to be sitting next to the CEO of the company and not across the table, and the only way I can do that is if I don’t sell anything other than myself,” he went on. “So I don’t sell any products, and I don’t accept commissions. I’m not competing with that MSP who’s already selling hardware and software to the client.”

But the needs Weber does meet are significant, particularly for companies that don’t have a CTO. North Star’s services fall into a few broad buckets, including technology leadership and management; technology roadmap and alignment with business objectives; technology staff and vendor management; and risk, security, and compliance management.

One example of a specific service is a technology stack review. “That’s just understanding what do they have, and is it working, or is it not working? Often, they’ve been doing a process for 15 or 20 years because that’s how they’ve always done it, and nobody’s ever looked at it and said, ‘this is not the efficient way to do it.’

“One of my clients was doing a payroll export from their payroll software into Microsoft Excel and then manipulating that data file for about two hours every payroll period to get it into a format they needed. I was able to automate that task and turn it into, like, 25 seconds. That’s a huge savings,” he explained. “That’s not uncommon, and it’s not his fault that he didn’t know how to make those changes because he’s not a technology person.”

 

Mindset Shift

One major focus with clients lately — and for the foreseeable future — is the role of artificial intelligence in myriad businesses and industries.

“The biggest concern seems to be understanding the data policy and what is happening with their data. You have employees who are scared of AI as a concept. You have a lot of business owners who don’t understand it, but want to understand it, and they don’t know who to turn to. So I’m providing that level of knowledge and guidance for them,” Weber explained.

“In terms of using AI, the easy ways are using it to rewrite your email to make it more clear and concise, or using it to build your PowerPoint presentation deck that you need to pass off to a client, or using it for data analytics. All those things are really low-hanging fruit, and we can show their staff how to actually engage and use these things in a productive manner that doesn’t have gigantic bills behind it, and is just there to make their day easier and more efficient.”

“You have employees who are scared of AI as a concept. You have a lot of business owners who don’t understand it, but want to understand it, and they don’t know who to turn to. So I’m providing that level of knowledge and guidance for them.”

After he conducts presentations on current uses of AI in the workplace, he noted, “they’re understanding it better, and they’re saying, ‘oh that’s not so scary,’ or ‘yes I can do that better.’ Because it is an amazing technology, and it’s a whole mindset shift in how you’re using it because it’s not just a Google search window. There’s so much more to it and so much more feedback it can provide to you — if you understand the right questions to ask and how to use it.”

Whatever the issue, Weber says he has found a niche in a landscape where many mid-sized businesses — he typically works with firms between $5 million and $50 million in annual revenue, in a wide range of sectors — don’t have this expertise in-house.

“It has to be companies that are interested in growth because you’re not going to bring in somebody as a fractional CTO if you’re just kind of plodding along and doing OK. You’re interested in growing your company, and now you’re looking for those efficiencies to make everything work better. That’s the space I’m filling.”

Since opening North Star last September, Weber has seen a steady influx of clients. He noted that the field isn’t as competitive as one might think.

“There are a lot of fractional CFOs,” he said, referring to the financial side of a business. “Companies will go, ‘accounting is important, and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, and I need a guy.’ So they bring in a person to fill that role. So a fractional CFO is a very common thing.

“A fractional CTO is very uncommon,” he went on. “I don’t think I’ve met another one in this area. Again, I think I’m unique by bringing the technology and the business sense together, which creates a unique situation.”

 

Change Agent

Weber also appreciates that he’s able to lessen anxiety — for both business owners and employees — around the changing face of IT, and especially AI.

“Obviously, people get scared whenever there’s change, and that is understandable,” he said, while noting that today’s students may be preparing for high-tech jobs that don’t exist yet, while other careers will fade away. “People need to be aware of both those sides. I mean, if I was a young person today and I was graduating high school or college, I would want to know what’s not going to exist and what is still going to exist in a period of years.

“I was doing an AI presentation the other day, and a woman was talking, and she has a son who’s in high school, and he wants to be a plumber. His job is safe for now. That’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” he noted. “For somebody like him, AI is just an asset because it can help answer questions and provide guidance, but the actual work of a plumber is still going to be done by a human. It’s not being replaced by AI anytime soon.”

For many other jobs and industries, the outlook is less certain, but Weber is optimistic that he can steer clients toward growth and opportunity as they grapple with all the coming changes.

“I owned a small business for a long time, with employees and multiple locations. And now I have the opportunity to help businesses in different manner,” he said. “I’m having a lot of fun, and my clients seem to be really enjoying engaging with me and having this conversation. So it’s working out really well.”

At the end of the day, Weber added, he loves helping and teaching people, demystifying the role of IT, and seeing the impact he can make on a growing pool of clients.

“It’s like I was saying before — I’m kind of a unicorn in the sense that I can talk about technology in a way that regular people understand. And that is rare. You find a lot of really smart IT people that you wouldn’t want to have a coffee with because you couldn’t understand them. And you find a lot of amazing business people that don’t know anything about their technology, but they need to. So I can bridge that gap for them, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Ted Hebert Reflects on 50 Years of Teddy Bear Pools & Spas

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Ted Hebert says his story has been one of being knocked down and always getting back up.
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Ted Hebert says his story has been one of being knocked down and always getting back up.

Ted Hebert says his story has been one of being knocked down and always getting back up.

 

As Teddy Bear Pools & Spas marks its 50th anniversary this year, it’s safe to say most in the business community have read — in this publication and others over the years — Ted Hebert’s story of humble beginnings, perseverance through severe challenges, and current status as not only one of the region’s venerable business owners, but a strong supporter of area nonprofits.

But ask him what the milestone means, and he says, “I don’t see the significance of 50 years.”

That’s not because he lacks gratitude or perspective on his career — he certainly has both — but for him, when he thinks about the work itself, he’s actually been doing it for closer to 60 years, starting as a gofer at a pool store at age 14.

“That developed over about three years. I started to become a pool installer. The above-ground pool would be dropped off at someone’s house, and my late friend Kenny and I would go and build a pool. Back then, we used to hand-dig the above-ground pool. We used to wheelbarrow the dirt into the backyard. We’d even do two pools a day. We’d work from maybe 6, 7 in the morning to 8, 9, 10 at night. I remember working on pools in the dark.”

His own work is, obviously, much less physically strenuous now, but those early years gave Hebert an appreciation for his employees that he’s quick to express.

“I guess I don’t realize the reality of 50 years because I don’t have a job. This isn’t work for me. I mean it sincerely. My employees are my extended family,” he said, noting that some have been with him for decades, and some are second-generation team members.

“Many times, people will say to me, ‘I can’t wait to retire.’ But I do not work — I love what I do. I’m not here for the money. Teddy Bear Pools is my home away from home. I get enough free time, but in May and June, I try to be here almost seven days a week because I want to see my customers.

“I’ve achieved every goal that I could ever think of. I’ve achieved fantasies. I’ve been on top of the mountain. But I’ve also been on the very bottom, with betrayal by close friends, people that I trusted, people in my wedding party. I’ve had a lot of really low points in my life.”

“I built someone’s pool 30, 40, 50 years ago, and now their kids are coming in,” he added. “I call every customer that buys an above ground-pool, a spa, or even a liner, and I call to thank them personally.”

That gratitude extends to his own journey, which has seen both highs and lows (more on that later), but has also been marked by hard work, dogged persistence, and faith.

“I’m a survivor,” he said. “I think, being in business, you need to be a survivor. A lot of people can’t. It’s a challenge, but if you’re up to the challenge, it’s going to be very exciting.”

 

Into the Deep End

Hebert has told the story of how he wanted to become a doctor, but didn’t have the money for medical school, so he eventually started his own pool company from the carport of his parents’ home. Although the original name he chose for his business was Custom Pools by Ted, his mother suggested he use his childhood nickname of ‘Teddy Bear,’ a play on the French pronunciation of Ted Hebert.

By 1976, Teddy Bear had grown enough to allow Hebert to rent a former car-wash bay on Memorial Drive in Chicopee and turn it into a storefront. When the property was foreclosed upon three years later, he purchased a run-down former car dealership in a dilapidated building on East Street in Chicopee, which remains his address today.

The East Street store wasn’t always surrounded by display pools, as this photo from around 1980 shows.

The East Street store wasn’t always surrounded by display pools, as this photo from around 1980 shows.

In the early years, the business grew steadily, but he suffered two major setbacks during the 1980s in the form of employee betrayal and mismanagement. The first event occurred in 1986 when an audit undercovered $1.2 million of money and goods not accounted for, and the second took place while he was on his honeymoon in 1987. When he returned, he found an additional $200,000 of money and goods missing.

“I’ve been embezzled twice, but I never went bankrupt,” he recalled. “I went back to church, and I prayed to God to help me through this. I worked seven days a week, living at home with my mom. I was like 35. It took me a few years, but I paid off everybody.”

Those times have instilled in him an appreciation for the success that followed.

“I’ve achieved every goal that I could ever think of. I’ve achieved fantasies. I’ve been on top of the mountain. But I’ve also been on the very bottom, with betrayal by close friends, people that I trusted, people in my wedding party. I’ve had a lot of really low points in my life.”

And with that appreciation of his journey, Hebert was even more determined to redirect his own success back on his community. In 2022, he was honored by BusinessWest as a Difference Maker, for his many years of giving back to the community, not just by writing checks to nonprofits (though he does a lot of that), but by sitting on boards and volunteering at fundraising events.

He and his wife, Barbara — who, it should be noted, is an equal partner in all this community service — give time and money to many different types of organizations, but have a special place in their hearts for animal welfare. For example, as a longtime supporter of Second Chance Animal Services (whose CEO, Sheryl Blancato, was also named a Difference Maker this year), Teddy Bear hosts two rabies and parvo vaccination clinics each year for the nonprofit, helping hundreds of pet owners access free or very low-cost services.

Barbara Hebert said some of their civic work hits close to home, as with their support of Camp Words Unspoken, a program for kids who stutter — an issue Ted overcame in his youth, and that Barbara still sometimes struggles with.

“We’re not saying that you have to do as much as us, but if everybody gave a little bit, it would make the world a better place.”

“Between the company and our personal ability, it’s nice to just give back,” she said. “We’re not saying that you have to do as much as us, but if everybody gave a little bit, it would make the world a better place. There are people we know that don’t take the time. They say they’re too busy. We are too, but we make time.”

Ted said his mother, who grew up humbly in the Great Depression, instilled in him a love for identifying needs and meeting them.

“It feels great to give. Whether it be money or time. I can’t explain it. I just love giving to people. So we have the opportunity to sponsor teams, sponsor golf tournaments, be involved in local charities, award scholarships for different programs.”

In recent years, the couple established Ted and Barbara Hebert Charitable Ventures, a 501(c)(3) entity, through which they also give to charity.

“We want to give away our money to help others — furry friends and people young and old — while we’re alive,” Ted said. “It’s not like we have millions of dollars, but we have more money than the average person. So we’re very blessed and very humbled to give some of that money away while we’re alive. We love it.”

 

A Story Worth Telling

Hebert has also done plenty of motivational speaking over the years — again, quite the accomplishment for someone who once fought a stutter — though he likes to use the term ‘inspirational speaking’ instead.

“I cannot motivate you. In my opinion, motivation is from within,” he said. “But I want to inspire you. If I can inspire you, that motivation may come awake. When I used to do speaking, people would say, ‘you’re an inspirational speaker. You inspired me to do things.’

“And that’s my goal in life: to inspire people to do better for all people, all living creatures, to make this a better world — starting with your family, then in your community, your country, and the world. Because time is infinite. I don’t know when it started or when it’s going to end. My life on this earth is a speck of time. And I’m hoping to make it a better place. Because I will die, and I hope I have more pluses than minuses.”

Teddy Bear Pools & Spas has certainly experienced more of the former, despite challenges ranging from the aforementioned employee betrayals to a number of economic downturns that tend to dampen the sales outlook for luxury items, including pools.

“If you’re going to be in business, you’d better have thick skin, you’ve got to have perseverance, and you’ve got to plan ahead,” Hebert said. “I’ve always put money away for rainy days in the business.

“But I’ve been very blessed and lucky,” he added. “It’s like a boxer getting knocked down. I won a lot of championships. But I’ve been knocked down many times, and instead of quitting or throwing in the towel, I got back up.”

These days, he still shows up in the ring — er, the store — most days, simply because he enjoys running this business that has defined his life, and he enjoys helping customers and supporting employees.

“I’m only as good as my employees; they’re your greatest asset or your greatest liability,” he said. “I know it sounds common, but I try to treat people like I want to be treated. And I’ve been blessed.”

Great Barrington Is a True Destination

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The Daniel Arts Center is one of many individual pieces on the Bard College of Simon’s Rock campus that have caught the attention of developers.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

 

The Daniel Arts Center is one of many individual pieces on the Bard College of Simon’s Rock campus that have caught the attention of developers.

The Daniel Arts Center is one of many individual pieces on the Bard College of Simon’s Rock campus that have caught the attention of developers.

John Weinstein said the phones started ringing seemingly within hours after the news broke last November.

This was the official announcement that Bard College at Simon’s Rock, an institution in Great Barrington for 60 years, would be closing its campus there and relocating programs to Bard College’s main campus in New York for the start of fall classes.

The phone calls were — and are (they’re still coming at a good clip) — from those interested in acquiring and developing all or a piece of the 280-acre campus, with a wide range of specific intentions, including housing.

“The inquiries have ranged from totality to the very granular,” said Weinstein, the school’s vice president and provost, meaning everything from the entire campus to individual buildings to specific pieces of equipment.

Interest in those pieces picked up in intensity with passage of an overlay zone at the recent town meeting, one that will permit many different uses beyond education, said Weinstein, adding that some uses — cannabis facilities and an amusement park, for example — are still not allowed.

The fate of the Bard campus and the prospect of losing such a large contributor to the Great Barrington economy are at the top of a long list of storylines involving this picturesque Southern Berkshires community and its mostly tourism-driven business community.

“The inquiries have ranged from totality to the very granular.”

“This will have an impact on the town in multiple ways,” said Betsy Andrus, executive director of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce, based in Great Barrington. “We won’t have the influx of students coming into the town for shopping and eating, and you also have teachers and staff, an athletic center, and the Daniel Arts Center; it’s certainly a loss for this area.”

A loss that is in many ways balanced by anticipation about what might come next.

As for other storylines, they include everything from new ownership for several downtown properties — and reshaping of those properties for retail and office use (including a new home for the chamber) as well as residential units — to lingering housing concerns, especially a shortage of affordable, or ‘workforce,’ units, putting a burden on both business owners and their employees.

“This whole area needs more workforce housing; our employees can find places to live, but often at a fairly substantial commute,” said Janis Martinson, executive director of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. “It’s a real challenge; people are coming a long way to get to work because they don’t have a choice.”

Janis Martinson says the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center will open a second facility later this year, one of many efforts to connect the community to the arts.

Janis Martinson says the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center will open a second facility later this year, one of many efforts to connect the community to the arts.

On another note (pun intended), this is shaping up to be a big year for the Mahaiwe, built in 1905, which has a full slate of performances on tap — from classic movies like Casablanca, shown on Valentine’s Day, and Sabrina, which aired May 23, to a Brian Cox tribute to opera, comedy, and a wide variety of musical performances — and is set to open an accessory venue in the town’s former fire station.

“A group of businesspeople have restored the firehouse, and they’re leasing us a portion of the first floor,” said Martinson, adding that the building is roughly the same age as the Mahaiwe. “We’re using that as an intimate, flexible performance venue and a concession space.”

The Mahaiwe is one of many key contribitors to a vibrant downtown that has made a near-complete recovery from COVID and extensive infrastructure work in the central business district, said Martinson, adding that, while Great Barrington once had slow times of the year — most of September, for example — it is now vibrant year-round.

“I think the town has grown a little younger,” she said. “And while there used to be some times when it would be pretty sleepy, it’s not like that anymore; this is a 12-month-a-year busy town.”

Andrus agreed, noting that the investments made in several downtown properties will bring more people, and more vibrancy, to the area, with some new businesses and several existing ones with new mailing addresses.

“I think the town has grown a little younger. And while there used to be some times when it would be pretty sleepy, it’s not like that anymore; this is a 12-month-a-year busy town.”

“Change is always a positive thing,” she said, noting that several existing businesses have or will find new and better spots. Meanwhile, new housing units equate to more people living in the central business district — and more opportunities for some workers to shorten their commute.

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Great Barrington and the many developing stories in this destination community.

 

A Loss — and an Opportunity

Weinstein said the decision to close Bard College’s Great Barrington campus and relocate its various programs — early college and some high-school offerings — came down to numbers.

Getting more specific, he said it was the number of students that would make sustaining that campus feasible. That number is at least 450 and preferably much higher, he noted, adding that the school hasn’t been able to reach that threshold, and with current demographic shifts — specifically fewer high-school-age people — it wasn’t going to get there anytime soon.

So the decision was made to move the school and its programs to the main Bard campus, where economies of scale will make this operation much more sustainable, said Weinstein, adding quickly that, while this move represents a loss for the community, the campus as a whole and its individual parts present a unique development opportunity.

And the zoning overlay district certainly helps in this redevelopment, said Weinstein and others we spoke with, noting that it will permit operation of an athletic center and performing-arts center — those are just two examples — without a school being attached.

“Those most interested in the future of the property did that shift,” said Weinstein, noting that the redevelopment of the campus will afford the town an opportunity to address some of its pressing needs and challenges, a list that certainly includes housing.

Great Barrington at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1761
Population: 7,172
Area: 45.8 square miles
County: Berkshire
Residential Tax Rate: $13.79
Commercial Tax Rate: $13.79
Median Household Income: $95,490
Median Family Income: $103,135
Type of Government: Open Town Meeting
Largest Employers: Fairview Hospital; Iredale Mineral Cosmetics; Prairie Whale
* Latest information available

Andrus agreed, noting, as Martinson did, that businesses and their employees are impacted by the current lack of affordable housing.

Many of these businesses are in the broad tourism, hospitality, and retail sectors, said Andrus, noting that Great Barrington draws visitors from nearby New York, other communities within the Berkshires, and well beyond. Meanwhile, its population increases threefold in the summer, from 7,000 to 21,000, as snowbirds and those with second homes in the area return.

“With that influx of people, even going to the grocery store can be chaotic,” she noted, adding that the town’s character changes as its population swells, especially the central business district.

Residents and visitors alike enjoy a very walkable downtown that features attractions like the Mahaiwe, a diverse lineup of restaurants, and unique arts-related programs such as Berkshire Busk — organized street entertainment (everything from singers and flamenco dancers to poets and aerialists) that runs on Railroad Street and other parts of the downtown on Friday and Saturday nights from early July to Labor Day.

There have been some changes within this downtown, and more are on the way, as some aging properties have changed hands, said Andrus, adding that this list includes the so-called Mahaiwe Block, the Marble Block, and other properties.

“All these buildings have changed hands to younger, probably more energetic people,” she said, adding that these landmarks are being renovated and, in some cases, reimagined, with mixes of retail, office, and much-needed housing.

The chamber’s new home at 343 Main St., across from Town Hall, is a good example. The property there, acquired and redeveloped by the Alander Group, will house the chamber’s offices as well as an enlarged visitors’ center, as well as other retail, 15 apartments, and a wine bar, said Andrus, noting that, prior to its move, the chamber was in two locations, a small visitors’ booth in front of CVS and a business office on Railroad Street, a situation that was less than ideal.

“It was like working in a cave — it was hard to find; it wasn’t easily accessible,” she said of the Railroad Street location. “Now, we’ve combined the business office and visitors center, and it’s a real improvement.”

The Alander Group also owns the Mahaiwe Block, which houses the performing arts center, she said, adding that it also features retail and housing units.

Meanwhile, at the Marble Block on Main Street, the former Gorham & Norton grocery store, a fixture for generations, is being remade into Robbie’s Community Market, said Andrus, adding that the property will soon feature several apartments as well. As for the market, it will be a collective, including a coffee bar, pizza oven, sandwich shop, and more, combining the past — this was a soda counter decades ago — with the present.

 

Taking Center Stage

These investments, as well as the new or relocated businesses and residents they bring to the area, will create more vibrancy in the downtown, said Andrus, adding that, overall, the downtown continues to thrive and build on its status as a destination.

Martinson agreed. She took the reins as executive director of the Mahaiwe in January 2020, just two months before COVID arrived and essentially shut down its scheduled season.

But the facility survived that challenge by getting creative, she recalled, adding that one of first initiatives that year was to partner with Bard College at Simon’s Rock to create a drive-in movie theater in one of its parking lots.

“They had a parking lot outside their performing arts center that happened to be tiered down a hillside, so we could have all the cars facing in one direction and put the screen at the bottom of the hill,” she recalled, adding that the schedule included a few of the Star Wars movies, American Graffiti, The Princess Bride, and other family stalwarts.

“That’s how we got through summer,” she went on, adding that the Mahaiwe partnered with other performing arts nonprofits in the area to record concerts from its stage in efforts that were more about the arts than revenues. “We managed to stay in touch with our community throughout the pandemic, and that’s really the point — to bring people together, and bring them together around the performing arts.”

This creative spirit continues today, she said, adding that the facility hosted more than 125 individual events last year and will grow that number this year, especially with the opening of the new space in the renovated former fire station.

“We’ll be able to do much more intimate performances there — things that are a little more niche and involving emerging artists and more local artists,” Martinson told BusinessWest. “And we’ll be able to rent that space out to local performing arts organizations.

“We’re really excited about that coming online,” she went on, adding that there have been some ‘sneak previews,’ with a planned opening for later in the year, probably the fall.

The auxiliary theater is part of a broader five-year strategic plan now in year two, said Martinson, adding that, in simple terms, the plan calls for bringing more performing arts than it already brings to its main stage and “reaching further into our community.”

That community includes Great Barrington residents, but also visitors from a wide radius, she said, adding that this town is a true destination, one that has made its way all the way back from the dark days of COVID.

And one that is looking to turn the loss of Bard College at Simon’s Rock into new opportunities.

In Southwick, There’s Plenty to See, Do, and Eat 

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Kettlebread Deli is just one of the intriguing business storylines in Southwick.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Kettlebread Deli is just one of the intriguing business storylines in Southwick.

Kettlebread Deli is just one of the intriguing business storylines in Southwick.

  

Ed Grimaldi pointed to the small table for two by the door, under the large-screen television. 

“I was sitting right there,” he recalled. “I had my head in my hands, thinking, ‘what have I done? What have I gotten myself into?’” 

It was April of 2020, a month after COVID-19 officially arrived in the region. Grimaldi had, in keeping with a mandate from the state, shut down Samuel’s, the pub-style restaurant at the Basketball Hall of Fame that he co-owned. And he had already invested, along with partners Melissa Veino and Joe Rondoletto, in a new endeavor on College Highway in Southwick called Kettlebread Deli, that was slated to open in a few weeks. 

Which explains why Grimaldi had his head in his hands. 

“We muddled through, somehow,” he said, noting that Kettlebread — more on that name and that concept later — pushed on through curbside service and was able to establish a beachhead, if you will. Fast-forwarding a little, the new business survived, has expanded to a second location and central bakery in Westfield, and Grimaldi and his partners are exploring franchising opportunities. 

“There’s nothing new about doing things home-made — lots of places do that now; we’re trying to do it in a way that’s duplicatable and scalable,” he said, hitting at the heart of this operation, adding that he believes he has an easily identifiable brand, a name that resonates within the industry, and “food that’s really, really good.” 

Kettlebread is one of many intriguing businesses and storylines in Southwick, a recreational community known for its Congamond Lakes, motocross, including the highly anticipated Southwick National in late June, the Ranch golf course, rail trails, a wide range of outdoor experiences, and more. 

“Our bread is very good because a portion of each batch is folded into the next day’s batch, allowing for an exponentially small portion of every batch that has ever been to be in every other batch.”

It’s also known for its hospitality and food-related businesses, including one that has risen to the ranks of institution. That would be Mrs. Murphy’s Donuts, another College Highway establishment that will soon — as in next year — be celebrating a half century of serving up a wide variety of offerings, including its signature raised, glazed honey dip. 

A family business to the core, Mrs. Murphy’s now has members of three generations working behind the big glass display case, or behind the scenes, said Shane Smith, noting that things really started with her grandparents — and especially her grandmother, Shirley, “the original Mrs. Murphy” — who opened a donut shop in Florida. 

“They taught my dad, Earl Murphy, how to make the donuts,” said Smith, adding that her father and mother, Rose, opened the shop in Southwick in 1976. 

Today, Rose is mostly retired, with Smith assuming more management responsibilities over the years and sharing duties with her husband, Zack, as well as her daughter, Bryce, and her husband, Jeff, and other team members. 

Building on this strong existing base of businesses, while maintaining the community’s rural, recreational character is among the main responsibilities of the community’s government, said Town Manager Nicole Parker, who came to Southwick not quite a year ago after serving in a similar post in the Central Mass. community of Hardwick. 

Shane Smith shows off the display case at Mrs. Murphy’s Donuts, a Southwick institution approaching its 50th birthday.

Shane Smith shows off the display case at Mrs. Murphy’s Donuts, a Southwick institution approaching its 50th birthday.

She was attracted by the town’s many attributes, including that rural quality, and has made it one of her priorities to build on that foundation. 

“As a recreational community, it’s important to have these kinds of opportunities,” she said, adding there have been some additions in that broad category with others in the planning stages, including a spray park at Whalley Park now under construction, a pickleball court at town hall, and perhaps more pickleball at Whalley Park — there’s an item on the town meeting warrant to that effect. 

Meanwhile, the community is in the process of hiring a new town planner, undertaking what Parker called a “major zoning revision” to update bylaws that have not been overhauled for decades, and voting on a proposal for new high-speed internet service through WhipCity Fiber. On the business side, the community’s first cannabis dispensaries will be opening shortly, and a Dollar General will soon join the ranks of the establishments on busy College Highway. 

Overall, said Parker, there is a need to achieve balance — between the businesses needed to serve residents and reduce the tax burden on those who call the town home, and maintaining those qualities that make this community so attractive to residents and visitors alike. 

“On College Highway … there’s a house, a business, a house, a house, a business, a business, a house — there’s no cohesion. Having strategic zones will really help the town grow the way it needs to grow, the way the residents want to see it grow.”

For this the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns its lens on Southwick, where there is plenty to do, plenty to see, and plenty to eat. 

 

Doughs and Don’ts 

There’s a treatment on one wall inside Kettlebread that tells the story of this venture, or at least a big part of it. 

It features a dictionary-like definition of the noun Kettlebread — actually, two of them: 

1. ‘Our family’s secret all-natural artisan bread recipe involving a 3-day process, baked daily in round kettle pans, butter-salted crust’; 

2. ‘Suspiciously awesome sandwiches.’ 

The latter is a tagline of sorts for the business. Grimaldi was thinking about using ‘curiously awesome,’ but was reminded that the slogan for Altoids is ‘curiously strong mints,’ and he didn’t want to go there.  

As for the former … well, the bread is what defines this venture — along with what’s put inside it, especially the makings of a Philly cheesesteak sandwich, the most popular item on the menu. Grimaldi talked in generally vague terms about the bread and how it’s made, stressing repeatedly that it is, indeed, a process. 

“All bread has very simple ingredients, it’s just a matter of ratios,” he explained. “Everyone has their own formula; ask 100 people how to make bread, you get 100 recipes. I think our bread is very good because a portion of each batch is folded into the next day’s batch, allowing for an exponentially small portion of every batch that has ever been to be in every other batch.”

Grimaldi was visiting the Midwest several years ago, and became so impressed by a sandwich he had on that trip — a variation of the muffaletta, a New Orleans-style sandwich featuring a round loaf of Sicilian bread — that he became inspired to try to replicate it in the 413. 

“They had a very unique bread, and I tried for years to duplicate their bread, and I came nowhere near it,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he came up with something else, something he believes is even better — Kettlebread. 

As noted earlier, he and small group of partners introduced the concept near the height of the pandemic in a long vacant former karate studio on College Highway. Using mostly curbside service, the new deli and its offerings built a following, and today, the location is thriving, especially at lunch time. 

Southwick at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1770
Population: 9,232
Area: 31.7 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $15.57
Commercial Tax Rate: $15.57
Median Household Income: $52,296
Family Household Income: $64,456
Type of Government: Open Town Meeting; Select Board
Largest Employers: Big Y; Whalley Computer Associates; Southwick Regional School District
*Latest information available

Grimaldi and his partners expanded with a second location in Westfield, which also serves as the bakery. And the long-term plan is to create franchises, said Grimaldi, adding that the first step in that process was to create that central bakery. 

“Franchising is still the ultimate goal, but right now, I want to stabilize my own operation,” he said. “So much has changed over the past couple of years — labor costs, food costs … it’s a more challenging environment in many ways.” 

As for the Southwick deli, Grimaldi said he fell in love with that location early on, noting that it is close to where Routes 10-202 and Route 57 form a ‘T.’ There are several other eateries and gathering spots in that general location including Tucker’s restaurant, the Summer House, the Southwick Inn, another institution, and Mrs. Murphy’s, which also found a way to persevere through the pandemic. 

That was with a drive-through, which remained how business was done until January of 2024, when the front doors were once again opened to a large and thoroughly loyal customer base that includes Southwick residents, of course, but also many from neighboring communities on both sides of the border with Connecticut. 

This customer base is treated to hand-cut donuts (a rarity in this business; most are now cut by machine) as well as pastries, breakfast sandwiches, and coffee. But it’s the donuts that make this an institution. 

They come in dozens of varieties, including many classics, but also several ‘specialty’ offerings including ‘maple bacon,’ ‘thin mint,’ ‘chocolate crème crumble,’ and ‘strawberry shortcake.’ 

When asked what the business has planned for its 50th anniversary, Smith said she hadn’t given that much thought — she and her family are busy enough with the day-to-day — but would in the months to come. 

“We’re just going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” she said, adding that this is one Southwick tradition that will endure. 

 

Work and Play 

Parker told BusinessWest that she wasn’t exactly searching for a new career opportunity when a friend recommended that she take a hard look at Southwick, which was advertising for a successor to long-time chief administrative officer Karl Steinhart. 

“I was like, ‘no, I’m happy here,’” she recalled, adding that her friend was persistent and again encouraged her to apply, noting that the town was bigger than Hardwick and presented more opportunities to grow professionally. She listened, did apply, and eventually triumphed in a lengthy search. 

“It’s been an amazing 10 months,” she said, hinting that it’s not exactly easy to succeed someone who had been in the job for 35 years. 

But the transition has gone smoothly, she said, adding that she was working on the warrant for her first town meeting, set for May 20, when she spoke with BusinessWest.  

Among the priorities she’s established is a revision of zoning bylaws, said Parker, noting that the current bylaws haven’t been overhauled “ever.” 

And this reality has contributed in many ways to the hodge podge that exists on College Highway today, said Parker, noting that the street is a mix of commercial, residential, municipal, and more. 

“On College Highway … there’s a house, a business, a house, a house, a business, a business, a house — there’s no cohesion,” she said. “Having strategic zones will really help the town grow the way it needs to grow, the way the residents want to see it grow.” 

Elaborating, she said planning officials can look at current zoning codes and see essentially whatever they want to see whether it comes to including a proposed use or excluding one, and something far more definitive is needed moving forward. 

And town residents will have a large say in how the bylaws are overhauled. 

“We’ll have a lot of public meetings to let residents let us know what they want to see for their town,” said Parker. “You live in a town because this is where you want to be, and you should make the decisions on how your town should modernize or move forward or really grow; it needs to be the residents who make those decisions, so I’m looking forward to having those meetings so we can gauge what the community wants for a business zone, where they want to see industrial zones, and where they want to see strictly residential zones.” 

Meanwhile, another issue confronting this community, like all others in the region, is housing, said Parker, adding that while few developments in the ‘affordable’ category are in the pipeline, there is a 200-unit condo project slated for Depot Street that has received Planning Board approval. 

As for the cannabis dispensaries, Pioneer Valley Trading and Haven will be opening in storefronts just a few blocks from each other on College Highway. 

“They can’t be within 500 feet each other, but I think they’re maybe 501 feet from each other,” joked Parker, adding that these additions will bring even more variety, and vibrancy to the town’s main business throughfare. 

And they provide even more to do and see in a community where there is already plenty in both categories.

At the Hitchcock Center, Environmental Education Comes Naturally

By
Billy Spitzer and a friend in the visitors center at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst.
Features Special Coverage

A World of Good

Billy Spitzer and a friend in the visitors center at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst.

Billy Spitzer and a friend in the visitors center at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst.

 

It’s called Japanese knotweed.

This is an invasive plant species of plant that, as the name suggests, comes from Asia. It is said to be one of the resilient organisms on Earth and is very difficult to eradicate once it gains a foothold.

“If you cut it down, little bits of it will stick to your mower or your cutter, and when you go to cut something else, you’ve transported it to a new home,” said Bill Spitzer, executive director of the Hitchcock Center for the Environment.

When the center staged an informational program on Japanese knotweed, the room was full of attendees from across the region, with thousands more joining virtually from around the world.

Such programming is one of myriad ways the Amherst-based center carries out a unique mission encapsulated in its tagline, “education for a healthy planet.”

Other ways include field trips for area students, after-school programs, summer camps, and trips to local schools, where students receive lessons in design, engineering, and problem solving.

“We give them these design and engineering challenges to work with, and then, when they come here, they can see how we’ve solved some of those problems at our facility,” said Spitzer, adding that the center is one of only a few dozen ‘certified living buildings’ in the world, and is a classroom unto itself.

“It’s not only about net-zero in terms of energy use, but also water conservation, using non-toxic materials, being rooted in your place and conserving the land around you, and thinking about aesthetics as well as the functional aspects of your building.”

Among other things, the Hitchcock Center achieves net-zero energy through highly efficient building strategies and a 60-kilowatt rooftop solar array; achieves net-zero water through composting toilets (which never fail to fascinate young visitors), rainwater collection storage, treatment for drinking water, and grey-water filtration through a constructed wetland; uses only chemical-free and non-toxic materials; creates landscapes that use native species to promote greater biodiversity; and uses locally sourced, salvaged, recycled, and substantially harvested materials.

The center, funded by fees for its programs, grants, and a number of corporate sponsors, including several area banks, also carries out that mission through studies and programs within the community, such as an environmental-justice project studying the connections between air quality, climate, and health.

The Hitchcock Center provides a number of learning opportunities for young people.

The Hitchcock Center provides a number of learning opportunities for young people.

Funding for that study, a $500,000 grant, was recently terminated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, making the Hitchcock Center one of countless nonprofits to see grants and other forms of funding cut by the Trump administration.

Spitzer said the EPA sent a letter stating that the grant was cut “on the grounds that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities; the objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

The center will appeal that decision, he said, adding that roughly 400 other grants for projects across the country were terminated for the same stated reason.

“This is money that has been congressionally approved and appropriated, signed into law, and turned into grants and contracts signed between organizations like us and the federal government,” he said, adding that several other grants awarded to the agency are hanging in the balance. “It’s unprecedented to be doing anything like this — to stop all these projects already in motion.”

In the meantime, he said he’s rather proud that the agency is doing work that is in opposition to the priorities of the administration.

“This building, as a living building, is unique in that it’s really designed as a teaching building.”

“This is the kind of work we need to be doing — we need to be educating people about the environment, we need to be educating people who are disproportionately impacted, whether in its cities or in small towns, rural communities … this is the kind of work that a place like the Hitchcock Center should be doing and that the federal government should be supporting,” he said, adding that, while fighting to keep this grant and others that are imperiled, the agency will look for other sources of funding, including the state, foundations, and businesses.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Spitzer about the Hitchcock Center, its evolution over the past 60 years, and the many different ways its mission is carried out.

 

From the Ground Up

Chronicling the history of the Hitchcock Center, Spitzer said it can trace its roots to 1962 and a woman named Ethel Dubois, who brought children to her farm in Leverett to experience more of nature.

Seeking to formalize and perpetuate what she was doing, she created a nonprofit, called the Hitchcock Center, which, for a while, operated out of the trunk of its executive director’s car, said Spitzer, adding that the agency eventually moved to a physical site, an old carriage house owned by the town of Amherst.

A certified living building, the Hitchcock Center is visited by grade-schoolers and college architecture students alike.

A certified living building, the Hitchcock Center is visited by grade-schoolers and college architecture students alike.

By the early 2000s, that building was showing its age, and the agency had also outgrown it, so the center’s director and board commenced a search for a new site and found one on the campus of Hampshire College. The site search coincided with the determination that, if the agency was going to build a new home, it should be a sustainable building.

“They decided to go for creating the highest level of sustainability that you could,” he said, referencing the Living Building Challenge and the fact that only three dozen structures in the world have met that challenge, with a handful in the 413, including the nearby Curran Center at Hampshire College. “It’s not only about net-zero in terms of energy use, but also water conservation, using non-toxic materials, being rooted in your place and conserving the land around you, and thinking about aesthetics as well as the functional aspects of your building.”

Overall, there are seven different domains — energy, water, materials, beauty, health and happiness, place, and equity — in which a building must achieve excellence to achieve Living Building status, Spitzer noted, adding that $7 million was raised through a capital campaign, and the center opened in 2016.

The standards are rigorous. For example, the ‘materials’ domain — focused on creating a materials economy that is local, non-toxic, and ecologically restorative — requires, among other things, that 75% of materials be sourced within 1,000 kilometers of the site. The center achieved this with salvaged insulation from Framingham, white cedar wood from Quebec, PolyWhey wood finish from Hardwick, Vt., and planting-bed soil from Agawam.

“This building, as a living building, is unique in that it’s really designed as a teaching building — all of the aspects of infrastructure and features that make it a Living Building are on display; we interpret them and give tours about them,” he noted, adding that it is visited by grade-schoolers and college architecture students alike.

This and the many other forms of education provided at the center fit nicely into his own career goals, if you will, said Spitzer, who brings a diverse background to his role. Indeed, while earning a PhD in Oceanography from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he concluded that he was interested in science education as much as he was interested in science.

“Instead of following a research career, I started learning about science education, and made my way to working at the New England Aquarium in Boston,” he said, adding that he worked there for more than 20 years, handing education programs and developing exhibits.

Drawn to the problem of climate change, Spitzer worked with others to develop a training program for educators and communicators in aquariums, zoos, science centers, and museums across the country, efforts that are ongoing.

Billy Spitzer says environmental education is the kind of work organizations should be doing — and the government should be supporting.

Billy Spitzer says environmental education is the kind of work organizations should be doing — and the government should be supporting.

“I realized at some point that I wanted to spend the rest of my career working on climate education,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this realization — coupled with the Hitchcock Center’s work to develop programs consistent with the creation of a Living Building — drew him to the agency when it was searching for a new director.

 

Hands-on Education

He arrived in the late summer of 2021, an intriguing time for the center, which had made its way through the challenging first waves of COVID by essentially moving most of its programming outdoors, a trend that continues today.

And there are many constituencies that find their way to the property, from families to dog walkers to students from dozens of area schools.

“We provide semi-structured and sometimes unstructured outdoor-experience time, giving them a chance to do the things kids are meant to do, but often don’t get the opportunity to do as much as people did years ago,” he explained. “But we have also have kids doing joint projects, like building an igloo and imaginative play using mud and sticks and sand.”

There are lessons to be learned inside and out, said Spitzer, noting that a number of native species are planted on the grounds and tended to by a team of volunteer master gardeners. Meanwhile, the center’s staff works with young people to grow vegetables and herbs that are used in summer camp programs, making pesto, pizza, and more.

“One of the things that we focus on a lot in this building is ‘how can we be inspired by nature to build better things?’” he said. “And that’s something we also do with kids — help them understand how problems are solved in nature and how we can use some of those same principles to solve some of the problems we face.”

As an example, he cited the solar panels on the Hitchcock Center’s roof.

“One of the things this center does is capture sunlight to provide power, in the same way that trees capture sunlight on their leaves, and that’s how they power themselves,” he explained. “We have kids doing experiments with solar panels.”

Meanwhile, the center encourages outside groups to use its spaces, and many do, he said. “This is an inspiring place to work and also an inspiring place to visit, and we find that people want to do workshops here, retreats, meetings — we have groups from most of the Five Colleges come and do things here, other nonprofit groups, and more.”

The center is in the process of working on its next strategic plan, he said, adding that such planning is difficult at any time, but especially these times.

“The idea of a five-year plan doesn’t quite make as much sense as perhaps it used to, but it is really helpful,” he told BusinessWest. “If you’re on a ship, you want to have a destination, you want to have a course, a heading. But you also realize that you’re going to be affected by weather and the seas, and sometimes you have to tack this way and that way.”

This talk of tacking brings Spitzer back to that project funded by the grant cut by the EPA.

He said it’s an example of how the center moves beyond its physical building and the field trips and lectures on Japanese knotweed in efforts to improve quality of life in this region and beyond.

The project was undertaken with several other agencies, including the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, which had initiated a healthy-air network in response to high asthma rates in Springfield, Holyoke, and other area communities.

“We’d been working with them to expand an educational component of this project, which gets communities monitoring air quality, understanding what the problems are, and advocating for solutions,” he explained, adding that this is a three-year project that is about one year in, with 25% of the funding spent.

“It’s hard to imagine how a grant that’s focused on clean air is not consistent with EPA’s priorities,” he said. “And even in a fairly rural place like the Connecticut River Valley, we have air-pollution problems, whether they’re from vehicle emissions or industry or from local brush fires like we had last summer, or more distant sources like the Canadian wildfires.”

The ultimate goal of the project was (and still is) “getting young people involved in understanding the issues around air quality, what we can do to protect ourselves, what we can to improve conditions and make them better, and partnering with people in community organizations up and down the Valley, whether it’s libraries or public health departments or schools, to really get the word out about air quality, why it matters, and how it’s connected to climate and what can we do about it.”

In other words, education for a healthy planet. That work will go on, no matter the fate of this grant.

In Greenfield, Puzzle Pieces Are Coming Together

By
Angela and Isaac Mass, owners of the Greenfield Garden Cinemas, one of many intriguing storylines in the city’s downtown.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Angela and Isaac Mass, owners of the Greenfield Garden Cinemas, one of many intriguing storylines in the city’s downtown.

Angela and Isaac Mass, owners of the Greenfield Garden Cinemas, one of many intriguing storylines in the city’s downtown.

 

Isaac Mass was in law school, looking for a job that would allow him to not only earn a little money but get in some studying for the bar exam as well.

He had experience working at movie theaters and remembered that life in the projection room (these were the days before everything went digital) would provide him what he was looking for.

“Once you started the movie, you had nothing to do for a couple of hours,” he said, adding that he called George Gohl, co-owner of the Greenfield Garden Cinemas, and before long, he had a job. And he wasn’t in it long before he started setting his sights higher when it came to that downtown landmark, opened in 1929.

Indeed, when Gohl and his partner, Bill Goebielle, were facing the high cost of converting to that digital technology, Mass, who by then had set up a law office in downtown Greenfield, came through with financing for that project — a deal that came with an option to acquire the theater should it come up for sale.

Which it did, in 2019.

Fast-forwarding our story a little, Mass and his wife, Angela (both are BusinessWest 40 Under Forty alumni) are now the owners of the theater, the only cinema in Franklin County. The pandemic hit just a few months after they took ownership, and that was a long and difficult storm to ride out. But they’ve done it, their operation is in the black, and they’re looking forward to a big summer, with a new Superman movie and other projected blockbusters.

“What we’re seeing right now is a kind of renaissance — a dynamic fusion of entrepreneurship, creative energy, and community investment that is strengthened by deep collaborations between business and municipal support organizations.”

Greenfield Garden Cinemas is just one of many intriguing storylines in Greenfield — others involve everything from a new Starbucks to some new housing initiatives to the anticipated start of work to reimagine the former Wilson’s department store — and just one reason why many see a surge in energy and optimism in the community.

“What we’re seeing right now is a kind of renaissance — a dynamic fusion of entrepreneurship, creative energy, and community investment that is strengthened by deep collaborations between business and municipal support organizations,” said Jessye Deane, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce. “The city’s evolution is not just happening — it’s being shaped intentionally. Greenfield isn’t growing by accident; it’s growing because people believe in it. They’re investing here. They’re creating jobs, art, and experiences that can only happen in a place like this — where rural ingenuity meets downtown opportunity.”

Hannah Rechtschaffen, director of the Greenfield Business Assoc. (GBA), which recently moved into its own space on Main Street, agreed.

“Greenfield is in a lovely moment of revitalization,” she told BusinessWest. “A lot of pieces of the puzzle were here when I got here two years ago; they just needed a push behind the visibility, the story we’re telling, the partnerships we’re building, and getting Greenfield more visibility Valley-wide.”

While there is progress, many challenges remain, especially when it comes to the loss of manufacturing jobs, ongoing struggles to replace them, county-wide population loss, and the housing front, where some new units are in the pipeline (more on that later), but the issue of affordability is causing some concern.

Hannah Rechtschaffen shows off the new Greenfield Business Assoc. space on Main Street.

Hannah Rechtschaffen shows off the new Greenfield Business Assoc. space on Main Street.

“Housing is becoming a particular issue, both in the lack of inventory and the cost,” said Tony Worden, president and CEO of Greenfield Cooperative Bank. “Rents have increased, but even more troubling to me is the cost of single-family homes. Greenfield has always been the affordable alternative here in Western Mass. People who were priced out of other areas — particularly Hampshire County — could find reasonably priced homes here in Greenfield, but that is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.”

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns its lens on Greenfield, a community where many pieces of the puzzle are coming together to make an intriguing picture — not unlike the ones shown in the cinemas.

 

Strong Arguments

It’s called the Strongest Towns Contest. This is a nomination-driven competition staged by strongtowns.org, with 16 communities competing in a bracket-style format similar to the recent March Madness.

Greenfield was one of those 16 towns, which are being measured essentially on how they’re faring against the complex problems facing cities and towns today. And it advanced to the Final Four, beating out Manchester, N.H. and then Silverton, Ore. to get there, with voters determining who will advance.

The city eventually lost to Harrisburg, Va., which went on to finals against Marion, Ohio, with the latter prevailing. Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher was disappointed not to advance further, but buoyed by what the strong showing indicated — especially, in her view, unity and a sense of everyone pulling in the same direction when it comes to the city’s opportunities and challenges.

“People are working together,” she said, referring to everything from downtown cleanups and crosswalk-painting efforts to long-term economic-development initiatives. “So many things are citizen-led.”

Deane agreed. “Sometimes, rural communities fall into a scarcity mindset when it comes to economic development, but I’m seeing a fundamental shift in that mindset at the leadership level,” she noted. “We’re building bridges, not silos, which is critical in a county of 70,000 residents with a tax base that’s 75% residential.

“A business like ours relies upon a smart, educated workforce, and this cost of housing is worrying me for the future. Where are our employees going to live? Will there be a pool of qualified workers able to live in this area?”

“There is a palpable sense of alignment now,” she went on, adding that, last year, Greenfield secured a Massachusetts Downtown Initiative grant, which enabled the city, the GBA, the chamber, and the Crossroads Cultural District to explore opportunities for collaborative marketing and capacity building to enhance Greenfield’s regional profile.

Meanwhile, the GBA has initiated a roundtable series, which has effectively opened lines of communication between Greenfield stakeholders and re-engaged business owners and nonprofit leaders as local advocates, said Rechtschaffen, adding that these events have covered a wide range of topics, such as the return of a police substation to downtown.

“We recently started a property owners’ group to bring property owners together and get on the same page with them about new development that they’re looking to do, development that’s coming to Greenfield, best practices, lines of communication … we have a very active property-owners contingent.”

Along with this palpable sense of alignment comes several visible signs of progress, said Deane, noting, as one example, the expansion of Ja’Duke onto Main Street.

The Turners Falls-based provider of childcare services, performing-arts education (singing, dancing, and acting), and even driver education needed to expand, said owner Kim Williams, and chose a 25,000-square-foot space on Main Street in Greenfield, formerly occupied by Greenfield Community College.

Tony Worden says Greenfield has long been an affordable alternative in Western Mass., but times are changing, and it is becoming far less so.

Tony Worden says Greenfield has long been an affordable alternative in Western Mass., but times are changing, and it is becoming far less so.

“We’re excited … we believe this will be a catalyst downtown,” she said, adding that the facility, which will bring people of all ages to downtown Greenfield, is expected to increase vibrancy and stimulate economic growth. “Childcare is such a driver of economic development; if people have childcare, they can enter the workforce. Meanwhile, the arts center and drivers ed will bring more foot traffic, more vibrancy, more arts.”

 

Progress Report

There are other things happening in and around downtown, said Desorgher, including the reimagining of the former Wilson’s department store into a mix of street-level retail and housing on the upper floors, as well as new life for the historic Leavitt-Hovey House, the former home of the Greenfield Public Library.

The landmark, built in 1797 and vacant since the new library next door opened in the summer of 2023, was acquired by Greenfield Savings Bank, whose main office abuts the library, with the intention of housing its residential-lending program and wealth-management offices.

Meanwhile, there are some additional housing initiatives, said Desorgher, including units at the Wilson’s site and another 30 to 40 units at another site on Main Street. Meanwhile, the city is issuing an RFP for redevelopment of the Hope Street parking lot into additional housing.

That RFP has yet to be issued, but several developers have already expressed interest in the project, said Desorgher, adding that this is another indicator of positive energy in town and growing sentiment that Greenfield is a good place to land — for families, small businesses, and, increasingly, regional and national chains.

The arrival of Starbucks at the rotary off the I-91 exit — as well as the Aldi’s discount supermarket chain in that same area — provide more evidence, the mayor said.

“All this is indicative of what the future holds, and I can feel it in the fact that we haven’t even put out an RFP for the Hope Street parking lot for housing, but people have already reached out, indicating they’re interested. That’s a really good sign.”

As for the larger housing picture, she said studies indicate a need for several hundred additional units, and the projects in the pipeline will make only a small dent in overall need. But there is progress, especially downtown, which should provide a boost to existing businesses and also spark additional investment.

Greenfield at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1753
Population: 17,768
Area: 21.9 square miles
County: Franklin
Residential Tax Rate: $19.56
Commercial Tax Rate: $19.56
Median Household Income: $33,110
Median Family Income: $46,412
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Baystate Franklin Medical Center, Greenfield Community College, Sandri
* Latest information available

Still, there is general concern over the way home prices are rising and changing the equation in what has historically been an affordable community.

“My wife and I live in a neighborhood just off the Federal Street corridor — in close proximity to the Greenfield High School and Four Corners Elementary School — that has historically been known for its mid-sized homes and its affordability,” Worden told BusinessWest. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a handful of homes on our street and adjacent streets sell for amounts that we used to expect from the Northampton and Amherst market.

“A business like ours relies upon a smart, educated workforce, and this cost of housing is worrying me for the future,” he went on. “Where are our employees going to live? Will there be a pool of qualified workers able to live in this area?”

Deane concurred.

“Like many communities across the Commonwealth, our growth is hindered by a shortage of available housing — and this is further exacerbated by aging infrastructure that requires significant investment,” she said. “At the same time, we’re seeing a real uptick in businesses and families looking to relocate here because the quality of life is exceptional, and at a glance, the cost of living is more manageable than in more urban markets. That growing interest is energizing, but we know we can’t grow sustainably unless we also address those foundational needs.”

 

Coming Attractions

As he talked about Greenfield, Bob Provost spoke with more than 75 years of experience. Sort of.

He’s the third-generation co-owner (with his sister, Robyn) of the general-contracting firm Mowry & Schmidt, which is handling the renovations of the Leavitt-Hovey House. He knows firsthand how the city has changed, and he has stories from those who managed the company before him.

“Greenfield was once a manufacturing hub back in the ’40s and ’50s, even up to the ’70s, but most all of those places have closed,” he said, adding that this has changed not only the employment equation, but the jobs mix for his company.

Indeed, Mowry & Schmidt did a good deal of work in many of the former mills — from exterior work to office renovations to millwright work, said Provost, adding that the portfolio has since shifted and now includes residential projects and more work for institutions such as the many banks in town, Greenfield Community College, Baystate Franklin Medical Center, and area private schools.

Overall, the city’s economy has largely shifted from manufacturing to service and the tourism and hospitality sector, with the latter becoming an ever-stronger force, said Deane, noting that Greenfield and Franklin County are growing as a destination, with Greenfield alone generating 6.7 million visits in 2024.

There are specific destinations and attractions, but also popular events such as the upcoming Bee Festival, during which the town celebrates its designation as the place where the beehive was invented, as well as the Green River Festival, a three-day celebration of music.

“Our marketing focus has shifted from generic outreach to specific, interest-driven storytelling — targeting Boomers who want to stay active, Millennials chasing Insta-worthy landscapes, and Gen Z looking for positivity and purpose,” Deane said. “We’ve also partnered with local event coordinators to promote bigger-ticket cultural and sporting events like Franklin County Pride, the Greenfield Winter Carnival, the Greenfield Triathlon, the Franklin County Fairgrounds, and the Green River Festival, with its great lineup of bands, coming in late June.

“Last April, the Franklin County Chamber launched an aggressive digital ad campaign promoting the Green River Festival and virtually introduced the fairgrounds and Greenfield to more than 2 million people,” she went on. “In large part to the success of this campaign, this year’s Green River Festival ticket sales saw a 13% increase over last year, with 25% of ticket buyers attending the festival for the first time.”

At Greenfield Garden Cinemas, Mass said people are going to the movies again — not quite as much as they did pre-pandemic, but the numbers are steady and even improving slightly.

And there is optimism for this summer — one of two busy times for movie theaters, with Christmas being the other — and later this spring as well. Indeed, in addition to a new Superman movie, there’s a live action Lilo & Stitch production, another Jurassic World offering, and a new Avengers movie, said Mass, adding that the cinemas cater mostly to seniors and families, so action movies don’t play particularly well.

But, overall, business is good at the cinemas, and across downtown Greenfield, where the coming attractions are, indeed, quite compelling.

Regional Better Business Bureau Affiliate Hones Its Dual Mission

By
Features

Matters of Trust

Recently, Megan MacBride, director of Marketing and Communications for the Better Business Bureau of Central New England, paid a visit to our BusinessTalk podcast, talking with BusinessWest Editor Joseph Bednar about the role of the BBB. Here are some abridged highlights of that conversation.

 

BusinessWest: Can you give us a basic idea of some of the programs and services of the BBB and how they benefit both business owners and customers?

MacBride: We have the business side, and we have the consumer side. We have a consumer foundation that offers support to consumers. For example, we put on a lot of scam presentations and seminars. It’s really helpful for people who are getting older because there are a lot of elder scams out there. So we’re continuously trying to educate those people.

We also have a complaint service. For example, if you went and bought a hot dog at a hot-dog stand and you were charged $2 and the person behind you was charged $1, and you were mad about that $1, you could call the BBB, and we’ll open up a complaint, whether the business is accredited with us or not, and we’ll be a neutral third party that will bring the unhappy customer and the business together to find a positive resolution that works for both.

Megan MacBride

Megan MacBride

“Don’t let these scammers bully you with threats and rush tactics like, ‘you need to pay now, or otherwise you’re going to get a fine, or you’re going to get arrested.’ The IRS will send you a letter in the mail. It’ll never be a threatening phone call.”

What the business wouldn’t want, whether they’re accredited with us or not, is a bad rating on our website because we document all of this stuff, and we vet all of our businesses before they can become accredited with us. Even if they’re not accredited with us and there are complaints, we’ll still fully investigate it, and we’ll make those complaints public so people are aware of what’s going on.

 

BusinessWest: What does it mean to be a BBB-accredited business?

MacBride: We have to go through your entire business and make sure that you fit our standards of trust. Our BBB standards of trust are to advertise honestly, tell the truth, be transparent, honor promises, be responsive, safeguard privacy, and embody integrity. We want to have businesses that follow our standards of trust to be accredited.

And there are a lot of benefits. We had about 220 million viewers in 2024 on bbb.org. As an accredited business, you can list your business with us. We also do advertising for businesses, so they can buy ad spots as well. There are tons of other opportunities to work with the BBB beyond just getting the seal.

We’re always here as a resource for anyone on the business or consumer side if they ever need anything. I think it just fosters trust in the community. We all want to do business with good businesses, and we want to avoid scams and frustration. So when we’re all in this together and we have these accreditations to back it up, it makes you feel just a little bit better.

Another part of being a BBB-accredited business is that you have opportunities for e-learning seminars, so you can learn different things about various business topics. It’s an additional resource for lifelong learning. Even as a business owner, you’re still learning every day.

 

BusinessWest: You mentioned consumer scams. What are some examples of scams that are common right now?

MacBride: One that’s been ongoing recently is an EZ Pass scam. I don’t know if you’ve ever received an unsolicited text message claiming to be from an EZ Pass service. They make you follow this weird link, and then, next thing you know, your information is stolen. There have been over 800 reports in our region alone, and I know that other regions have also been targets of this.

I want to continue to remind people, do not respond to that text. It is absolutely fake news. EZ Pass would never send a text to you saying that you have an outstanding balance. It’s important to delete those, and it’s also important not to respond back. That’s a big thing. Even if you’re trying to respond just to say stop or unsubscribe, don’t even do that. Immediately block the number, report it, don’t even engage with it.

Another big scam that’s been going around recently is the wrong-number scam. You’ll get a random text and somebody says, ‘hi, I’m trying to reach so-and-so; this is my new number.’ And you might respond back and say, ‘hey, sorry, I think you might have the wrong number. I am not so-and-so.’ And then the scammer will respond, ‘oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know. How are you today? My name is X. I’d like to start talking to you now.’

And it just gets a little weird, right? So again, don’t respond to these. If you ever get an unsolicited text or phone call, review the number with caution, and if it’s a call, they can always leave a voicemail.

The other one relates to tax season. Everyone’s preparing for that April 15 date, so I’ve been trying to warn people about the IRS impersonation scams, when you receive a phone call from the IRS and they’re demanding money from you. The IRS does not do that, so don’t let these scammers bully you with threats and rush tactics like, ‘you need to pay now, or otherwise you’re going to get a fine, or you’re going to get arrested.’ The IRS will send you a letter in the mail. It’ll never be a threatening phone call.

 

BusinessWest: It would seem to me there is more awareness of scams, but I imagine you’re seeing the complaints at ground level, and there’s probably still a lot of need for education and to keep reinforcing these messages, right?

MacBride: Absolutely. Like I said, we have some of these vulnerable populations, older people, and with the rise of AI and the ability to manipulate photos and videos, it’s so important for us to continue to trying to get get ahead of it, making sure we’re on top of the curve, so we can continue to warn people of these things.

 

BusinessWest: There are a lot of organizations out there that advocate for the business community or for the consumer community. You really do both. How gratifying is it to be involved in that sort of work, to help consumers find what they need and also help businesses succeed?

MacBride: Honestly, it’s great. We are a nonprofit advocacy group for not only businesses, but also consumers, and it feels really good to get all the good businesses to come together and work together. I think our values are important. And I think having resources for consumers is amazing too, because sometimes people don’t know where to turn when things happen. So we want to always be there for both sides of it.

 

Anthony Gulluni Strikes Balance Between Fighting Crime, Building Community

By
Anthony Gulluni
Features

Law and Order

Anthony Gulluni

Anthony Gulluni

The ‘young jokes’ have stopped.

Well … there are fewer of them, anyway.

Indeed, Anthony Gulluni is still the youngest person in the room — by maybe 15 years, by his estimate — when the Massachusetts District Attorneys Assoc. gathers for its monthly meetings and an annual conference to discuss “whatever the crisis of the day is,” such as Rule 14, which puts greater burden on prosecutors and police departments to furnish discovery more quickly.

“It’s no fun; it’s not a good thing,” said Gulluni, 44, Hampden County’s DA, who has been the youngest person in that room for a full decade now, a milestone — there’s a handmade sign in his office congratulating him on that anniversary — that presents a time to pause and reflect on his tenure and what he calls its primary, overarching goal, then and now: “to build a safer community in Hampden County.”

This represents work in progress, noted Gulluni, who told BusinessWest that it’s difficult to quantify just how much safer area cities and towns are a decade after he took office. But he can qualify progress on several levels, everything from the ongoing fight against drugs to efforts to solve cold cases, while also stressing a need to continually improve.

“Ten years provides an opportunity to look back, look forward, and say, ‘what can we do better?’” he said. “And that’s a daily pursuit for this office because the work is so important. We’re serving the public, not unlike other public officials, but we’re working with people who have been victimized, people who have experienced some of the worst things imaginable and things they never expected.”

Overall, building a safer community involves a broad spectrum of programs, initiatives, and simply getting tough on crime and criminals, said Gulluni, adding that efforts at education, prevention, and providing second chances — everything from flag football to 3-on-3 basketball; from Stop the Swerve safe-driving events to the Emerging Adult Court of Hope — and imposing harsh sentences on offenders are not mutually exclusive.

“It’s not ‘lock them up and throw away the key,’ or ‘we want to be progressive and rehabilitate everybody.’ We can combine the two, we can be moderate, and we can be in the middle, and we’ve achieved that.”

“What I’ve tried to do is operate on the principle that we can do progressive things in this law-enforcement space and criminal-justice space,” he noted. “And it doesn’t prevent us from also upholding the law and understanding that there are violent people and repeat offenders who hurt people and need to be incarcerated.

“We can do both things,” he said, adding this has been his goal since he first campaigned for the office. “It’s not ‘lock them up and throw away the key,’ or ‘we want to be progressive and rehabilitate everybody.’ We can combine the two, we can be moderate, and we can be in the middle, and we’ve achieved that.”

Elaborating, he said his office has not “run from the enforcement stuff — taking drugs off the street and locking the person up for as long as possible because this person is killing people.”

Anthony Gulluni speaks at a ceremony marking the five-year anniversary of EACH, the Emerging Adult Court of Hope.

Anthony Gulluni speaks at a ceremony marking the five-year anniversary of EACH, the Emerging Adult Court of Hope.

But it has also broken new ground with programs like the Commonwealth’s only Emerging Adult Court of Hope (EACH) — a name he came up with — which provides second chances to young offenders and brings graduates into careers, not merely entry-level jobs that most often fail to prevent recidivism.

“Each person matters; each person should have hope,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the program is designed to break the cycle whereby young people become repeat offenders essentially because there is no real alternative. EACH was designed to help such individuals earn a viable alternative.

There are many other initiatives as well, involving everything from preventing dating violence to internet safety to FLOS (Future Lawyers of Springfield), which seeks to identify young students who aspire to be lawyers and guide them into a career in the legal system. In short, his first decade has been guided by a desire to be tough on crime and creative with ways to build community.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Gulluni, who has been honored by the magazine as a 40 Under Forty honoree and Alumni Achievement Award winner, about what has been accomplished over the past 10 years, and the hard work that remains.

Coming to Terms

As he talked with BusinessWest on the last day of March, Gulluni was coming off a hard week.

Indeed, he was just a few days away from press conferences announcing charges related to a motor-vehicle accident on an I-91 off-ramp in West Springfield that killed three construction workers, and a hit-and-run incident in Springfield where a motorist struck and killed a pedestrian walking his bike across an intersection.

“This was tragic stuff, but this is what we do — it’s really about public safety, helping people be safe, and helping people make good decisions,” he said, adding that incidents like these help emphasize all aspects of his office’s work, from prosecuting offenders to helping to prevent such tragedies in the future.

“One of the points of frustration over my 10 years, and it’s become more acute and frequent, is the results in court.”

Such press conferences are one of the more visible aspects of a job where far more goes on behind the scenes, in offices spaced across four floors of Tower Square — after Gulluni ordered his staff out of the Roderick L. Ireland Courthouse amid growing health concerns — but in many different settings as well.

That move to Tower Square is one of many bold steps taken over the past 10 years, all aimed, in one way or another, at achieving that broad goal of making communities safer.

Others include everything from adding prosecutors (bringing the number from 61 to 90 over the past decade) and staff to bring the Hampden County DA’s office, among the busiest in the state, more in line with others in the Commonwealth, to ‘specializing’ those prosecutors.

“We’ve taken many of our most experienced and most talented prosecutors to work on cases involving children in our special-victims unit, domestic-violence cases, and homicide cases,” he said, adding that this region has led the state in homicides per capita, reflecting the demographics of a region with four gateway cities.

Overall, there have been several important initiatives undertaken over the past decade, said Gulluni, including a focus on cold cases that has brought charges — and, in some cases, resolution — to crimes committed decades ago.

“That was one of my initial focal points and something we talked about during the campaign, something we acted on immediately, and over the past 10 years we’ve had a great deal of success,” he said, citing the recent instance of an arrest involving a double murder on Route 5 in West Springfield 47 years ago.

Elaborating, he said cold cases require time and resources, factors that make it difficult to address them. But he has made such cases a priority.

“It’s all about focus,” he explained. “We’ve tried to, and we have, dedicated people to work on unresolved cases. I created a unit, I have a coordinator, I have an advocate, I have a prosecutor, and I have two, soon to be three, investigators working exclusively on these cases. You can’t throw a 30-year-old case at a prosecutor who has 50 other cases and expect her or him to really dive into that case.”

Court of Opinion

Meanwhile, some initiatives fall more into the category of prevention, community building, promoting healthy lifestyles, and even inspiring young people to join the legal profession.

“We’ve approached our work with a preventive lens — how can we get in front of issues; how can we identify things that metastasize and become worse?” he said, adding that his office devotes considerable time and resources to what it calls its Community Safety and Outreach Program.

Anthony Gulluni speaks with an attendee at the recent Stop the Swerve event at the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Anthony Gulluni speaks at 94.7 WMAS for its Radiothon for Baystate Children’s Hospital.

It includes more than a dozen initiatives, such as Stop the Swerve, a presentation (the latest staged last month) that addresses the dangers of impaired and distracted driving; Hoop Up Springfield, a 3-on-3 basketball tournament; a Youth Advisory Board consisting of student representatives from high schools across the county who identify issues facing youth today and provide recommendations on how best to address them; and a recent addition, a youth flag-football tournament, staged in partnership with Excel Sports Academy of New England.

The first such tournament was staged last June, and it will return this summer, said Gulluni, adding that, in addition to competition on the gridiron, it features several nutrition and wellness sessions.

Then there’s FLOS. Undertaken in partnership with Western New England University School of Law, it’s designed to inspire young people to enter the legal profession and bring more diversity to the legal community.

“Diversity is important, for our office and for the bar here in Hampden County,” he told BusinessWest. “We thought about how we can encourage and support young people, especially young people of color, to go down the road toward law school and become lawyers.”

As for the Emerging Adult Court of Hope, it is perhaps the most unique and ambitious initiative of Gulluni’s tenure.

Designed for those between ages 18 and 24, it gives individuals a chance to turn an arrest into a positive step forward, he said, adding that participants are carefully screened and, if chosen, assigned a team that includes a judge, service providers, assistant DAs, probation officers, case managers, and case coordinators.

“They come to the court, and it’s entirely different than any other court session anywhere,” he said, noting that the judge, probation department, and ROCA provide resources to make sure participants get needed support.

“Because a lot of these young people started their lives off in a very disadvantaged position — they started their lives off with horrible examples around them, no support, poor parenting, traumatic situations — and they set them adrift, it set them on a bad path.

“Look at the parole hearings … just over the past six months or year, the Parole Board is letting everybody out. There’s a pendulum that swings back and forth, and the pendulum is swinging, and has swung, a little too far, in my view, in the wrong direction.”

“And this is an opportunity for them to accept a hand up, not a handout,” he continued. “It’s not a slap on the wrist, and it’s not a gift; it’s an opportunity to change their lives with their own hard work and their own commitment to themselves.

“I talk to these young people extensively, and on the front end, I’m saying, ‘this court is about you. It’s about giving you an opportunity, but you have to work for it; it comes with a lot of small failures, ups and downs,’” he went on, adding that there have been seven graduates of the program, and another 15 individuals are working their way through it.

Full Sentences

While creating and expanding progressive initiatives in the broad realm of education, prevention, and rehabilitation, Gulluni said he and his staff have also been focused on the other half of that equation he mentioned earlier — upholding the law and punishing those who break it.

And as the discussion entered this area, he didn’t attempt to hide his dissatisfaction with current trends and patterns when it comes to how judges and parole officers are carrying out their work.

“One of the points of frustration over my 10 years, and it’s become more acute and frequent, is the results in court,” he said. “There’s been two or three rounds of criminal-justice reform over my tenure going back to [former Gov.] Deval Patrick early on and recently, over the past few years. The Supreme Judicial Court and other courts have continued to orient toward ‘how is the system wrong, and how can we provide more opportunities for defendants?’

“You look at the parole system, you look at medical parole … systemically, there’s a movement toward defendants’ rights, and that’s extraordinarily important; don’t get me wrong,” he went on. “The system operates rightly on the axiom that it’s better to let 100 guilty men go free than imprison one innocent man — that is the essence of our system, and that’s how it should be.

“But our sentencing practices across our courts, how we’re treating violent offenses, how we’re treating serious drug-trafficking and drug-dealing cases that have poisoned our communities and killed thousands of people through addiction, how we’re treating those who commit crimes against children, domestic-violence abusers, the worst of the worst, has really changed, even in the spectrum I’ve had over the past 10 years.”

The result, he went on, is that violent offenders and repeat offenders are not being held to account.

“That’s a point of great of frustration. Look at the parole hearings … just over the past six months or year, the Parole Board is letting everybody out,” he said, adding that he can’t pinpoint why, but conjectures that it could be everything from overall philosophy to appointments to the board. “There’s a pendulum that swings back and forth, and the pendulum is swinging, and has swung, a little too far, in my view, in the wrong direction.”

Elaborating, he said there are some cases in which those in his office will agree that someone should be granted parole. “But for most of these cases, we’re saying, ‘this person killed someone, took someone away from his or her family, and the sentence is a life sentence, and that’s what it should be.”

Work to help that pendulum swing back the other way is one of many focal points for Gulluni and his team. With this issue and others, it is difficult to measure success, he said, but added that he’s seeing progress on several fronts — and more momentum in the many efforts to build a safer community in Hampden County.

Marty’s Local Boosts the Region’s Food Economy

By
CEO Nick Martinelli
Features Special Coverage

Produce and Promise

CEO Nick Martinelli

CEO Nick Martinelli

 

As he gave BusinessWest a tour of his 12,500-square-foot warehouse in Deerfield, winding past long, high racks of boxes and bags of fresh produce and other food and beverages, as well as a brightly lit cold-storage area, Nick Martinelli eventually came to a three-bay loading dock which he called perhaps the most important part of the decade-old operation known as Marty’s Local.

“We have eight trucks, and they’re going six days a week. They’re going out to the farms in the area, and then to the restaurants and colleges and grocers,” he explained. “Everything comes in and out of here.”

Indeed, food that arrives at the facility from farms doesn’t stay long; it heads right back out to its final destination, wherever that may be. The operation has about 115 different partners, counting both the farms and food producers on one end and those purchasing food on the other.

“They’re primarily in Western Mass., but also elsewhere in New England and New York,” Martinelli said. “There are instances where food will be picked up and delivered the same day. But the great majority of our business is having trucks on the road, making deliveries, and then ideally picking up from our farm partners on the way back to the facility, to be packed that night and go out the next day. That’s the ideal.”

Martinelli, founder and CEO of Marty’s Local, began this career in 2015, completing a farming program in Orange called the Farm School, knowing he wanted to work in agriculture, but not sure exactly how.

“I was looking to figure out a place in the local agriculture economy,” he recalled. “I was going to work on a farm, but then I started to talk to a bunch of farmers and realized that there was a real need for distribution. I was seeing some of the growers that I knew driving their own product around, and I knew the demand was strong for these these foods that are really good. So maybe there’s a business opportunity to play that role and just focus on distribution, marketing, trucking.”

So Martinelli started doing just that, first in his car and then with a rented truck. “Then folks would say, ‘what else can you bring us?’ So it started to grow organically that way.”

That was the birth of Marty’s Local, whose network of partners are based not only in Western Mass., but also Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, and New York’s Hudson Valley.

Produce and grains were the first focus of the operation, but it soon expanded to dairy, including butter and cheese, as well as eggs, honey, maple syrup, and even products like sriracha and salsa.

“Almost every week, another farm or maker would reach out and say, ‘we heard you have this distribution service; could we work with you?’ So that’s how we built our roster of partners.”

In 2019, Marty’s Local acquired Squash Inc., a similarly minded local food distributor that had been around since 1973.

“We’d started to do some work with them, and then their owners were looking to retire, so we acquired that business. They had a lot of relationships with growers in the area, and a great customer base, and that was a nice merging of the two businesses that’s worked well,” Martinelli said. “With Squash, we added non-locals. They were sending a truck to the New England Produce Center in Chelsea, outside of Boston, three times a week to get non-local produce — avocados, limes, things you can’t get around here. We continued that, and it’s been a helpful component of the business.”

About 50% of the operation’s food purchasers are retailers, meaning everything from farm stores to independent grocers to chain stores. On the food-service side, which is most of the other half, are colleges, K-12 schools, caterers, restaurants, and wellness and retreat centers.

“There are a ton of farms, and we’re just scratching the surface with the ones that we’re working with.”

Martinelli said one plus for this business is that schools and colleges — not all, but many — have become more diligent about serving healthy options, while restaurants, everywhere but especially in Western Mass., have increasingly seen the farm-to-table concept as a selling point.

To supply those end users, farms have several options, he explained. “Farms are still doing self-distribution. They’ll either have a refrigerated truck that they use, or they’ll have a pickup truck or their personal vehicle, depending on the scale they’re operating at. Some of the farms we work with have multiple trucks, depending on how many customers they have. Some of them are working with distributors that are much larger than us, or some of them work with regional distributors like us. It really depends on the scale of the grower and maker.”

 

What’s in a Local Name?

Grateful for the farms that choose to partner with him, Martinelli takes a broad view of the operation’s impact on the region.

“On a personal level, all of us are motivated and compelled by the trust we have in food when we know where it came from. And when I say all of us, I mean on our team, although I think, in the market, too, there’s some truth to that for sure.”

That idea has driven growth in the local food economy over the past couple decades, he added.

“The sector has grown so much. And I think the reason is that trust, in terms of what food you’re putting in your body, but also who you’re supporting. Are you supporting somebody that’s down the road that you might run into, a business that you’re familiar with, whether you know those people personally or just drive by their business regularly? That’s meaningful to me personally, and I think that’s meaningful to a lot of people, and it’s an opportunity to put your money where your values are.

“So that’s certainly a driver for us — facilitating that, making it easier for people to see more products they recognize on the shelves,” he went on. “On a lot of shelves, it will say, ‘product from X country.’ OK, that’s not really that helpful, right? But if it says it’s from such-and-such farm in Northampton, Massachusetts, well, that’s different.

Eight trucks, both box trucks like this one and larger trailers, move food six days a week for Marty’s Local.

Eight trucks, both box trucks like this one and larger trailers, move food six days a week for Marty’s Local.

“Then you know what you’re getting,” he went on. “And you’re not only supporting the person or the business that’s down the road and putting food in your body that you can trust, you’re also supporting your regional economy, and maybe you’re preserving farmland. There are all sorts of ancillary benefits that come with it.”

Then there’s the matter of healthier eating.

“It’s more nutritious if it’s local,” Martinelli said. “I mean, there are studies showing that the nutrients are stronger after fewer days. So, if it’s coming in a truck five days across the country, it starts to leach out flavor — not in every single product, but there can be meaningful differences in the flavor and nutrition.”

Fortunately, he sees potential to grow this operation and continue to influence food freshness and nutrition while stimulating the local food economy.

“Are you supporting somebody that’s down the road that you might run into, a business that you’re familiar with, whether you know those people personally or just drive by their business regularly? That’s meaningful to me personally, and I think that’s meaningful to a lot of people, and it’s an opportunity to put your money where your values are.”

“There are a ton of farms, and we’re just scratching the surface with the ones that we’re working with,” he noted. “And not only farmers, but entrepreneurs who are one- or two-person businesses saying, ‘I have this great new product’ or ‘I make this great jerky.’ We’re talking about sauerkraut, yogurt, any number of different things where someone is eager to take their craft and get it out to the world, and that’s the role that we want to play.”

Recognizing that impact, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) named Marty’s Local one of its Local Hero honorees in 2024.

“Marty’s functions in a part of our local food system that is absolutely essential but largely invisible to the general public (except inasmuch as we might see a truck making deliveries),” CISA noted. “We’re lucky to have thriving farmers’ markets, farmstands, and CSAs in our region, but the reality is that direct sales from farm to consumer make up only about 10% of Massachusetts farm sales. That means that 90% of the food grown by Massachusetts farms is winding its way through more complex channels from farm to table — and Marty’s Local smooths that complexity out, bridging the gaps and getting more local food onto more local peoples’ plates.”

 

Special Delivery

Martinelli said his operation’s continued growth is a testament to untapped demand in what is, after all, an agriculture-heavy region.

“That’s also a testament to the number of people growing great food or making great food. So you have people who want it and people who are providing it, and we get to do it really well in the middle,” he told BusinessWest. “We take pride in doing that and paying real attention to good relationships with our vendor partners and with our customers, and all three parties valuing one another.”

And he enjoys making the connections that drive that growth.

“It’s exciting to be able to say to another customer, ‘you know, I just talked to a guy recently who didn’t know there was a service like this, saw our catalog, and said, ‘these are exactly the kinds of foods that I want to have in my store.’ And we make it easy for them to get those foods in there, and do it in a way that’s just as professional as any very large distributor, but with a special focus on local and regional high-quality foods.”

Again, Martinelli added, “we feel like we’re scratching the surface, 10 years in, with the amount of suppliers that have food to go out into the world and the amount of people out there who want that good food.”

 

Amherst Is College Town with ‘Metropolitan Vibe’

By
John Page describes Amherst as a “cultural college town.”
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

John Page describes Amherst as a “cultural college town.”

John Page describes Amherst as a “cultural college town.”

John Page calls it a ‘retail incubator.’

That’s the unofficial name given to a facility — still very much in the planning stages — designed to bolster retail in downtown Amherst and bring more balance (and more reasons to visit) to an area more known for its arts, culture, and restaurants.

“It’s a small location for retailers — people who are online, they’re artists, they do things at farmers markets — who are not quite ready to make the jump to a brick-and-mortar store, which is high-risk and quite complicated, said Page, executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District (BID). “We’re hoping to make a half-step, where folks can start to test their concept out and learn more about being a brick-and-mortar retailer.”

The retail incubator (more details to come later this year, he said) is one of myriad initiatives in various stages of development in Amherst — a town where there is almost always a lot happening — that cross a wide spectrum, from housing to education; from new restaurants to new retail. That long list includes:

• A new elementary school that will be 100% carbon-neutral and ready for occupancy in the fall of 2026;

• Several new housing projects that include everything from market-rate apartments to home-ownership opportunities (much more on these later);

• An extensive, $46 million renovation and expansion of the Jones Library;

• A new restaurant, the Amherst Oyster Bar, which will bring much-needed new life to an historically vibrant spot, site of the former Judie’s restaurant on North Pleasant Street;

• An enhanced presence for both UMass Amherst and Amherst College downtown, with UMass Amherst recently opening UMass Downtown, a multi-purpose retail, event, and meeting space on North Pleasant Street, and Amherst College having opened a campus store on South Pleasant Street;

• Conversion of a former VFW post into a homeless shelter and supportive housing for veterans;

• The continued success story that is the Drake, a live-performance venue in the heart of downtown;

• The planned arrival of another cultural attraction downtown — Ancestral Bridges, an organization that celebrates the history of contributions of Black and Afro-Indigenous families in Amherst; and

• A reimagining of the space called North Common, a former a parking area that has become a popular gathering place downtown.

City officials and business leaders alike are enthusiastic not only about these individual developments, but how they will — and, in many respects, already are — working together to create more foot traffic and vibrancy in the downtown area.

“We’re between Boston and New York, and in such an academically driven area, you get a lot of people from those areas, and they’re looking for something they expect from a city vibe. That’s certainly new to Amherst, but that’s the direction we want to push things in.”

Indeed, the new housing units are bringing more residents to support the full spectrum of businesses downtown, said Page, adding that cultural attractions like the Drake and Amherst Cinema are bringing people to restaurants and bars before and after shows. Meanwhile, new retail, like Aster & Pine Market and the two college stores, are broadening the mix of things to do and reasons to come to the downtown.

“We have a lot of housing in our downtown, and that’s been very helpful to us because we have more people; those people go out to lunch and for coffee, and they spend money,” said Page, who referred to Amherst as a “cultural college town.”

Alden Peotter shows off the recently opened Amherst Oyster Bar.

Alden Peotter shows off the recently opened Amherst Oyster Bar.

“Meanwhile, with Amherst Cinema and the Drake, we encourage people to enjoy a meal before or after, or maybe a cocktail, so that there is that stickiness — people linger and enjoy the downtown.”

Paul Bockelman, Amherst’s long-time town manager, agreed.

“The Drake, along with the Amherst Cinema, has made a huge impact in bringing people downtown to live events,” he said. “And once they’re there, they stay and they support other businesses.”

As for the Oyster Bar, it has been a long time coming. Its grand opening had been pushed back so many times that the eventual date, April 1, was taken by some as an April Fools joke, said Alden Peotter, operations manager for Amherst Innovative Hospitality, which also operates the nearby Protocol bar and restaurant.

He spoke with BusinessWest the day after a soft opening late last month, and said that both the Oyster Bar and Protocol, which opened as a bar but has evolved into a popular restaurant drawing people of all ages, provide what he called a “metropolitan vibe,” something he believes young people, and some not so young, are looking for.

“We’re between Boston and New York, and in such an academically driven area, you get a lot of people from those areas, and they’re looking for something they expect from a city vibe,” he said. “That’s certainly new to Amherst, but that’s the direction we want to push things in.”

For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest looks at the many forms of development and progress in Amherst, a college town that is so much more.

 

Building Momentum

For Page, who took the helm at the BID last October, his new job is a return to downtown Amherst.

Indeed, he worked at the Amherst Regional Chamber of Commerce, which shares space with the BID in an office on South Pleasant Street, handing marketing and membership, before taking a job at UMass Amherst working on large events like commencement.

“I wanted to get back involved with the town of Amherst and all that was happening downtown,” he said, adding that he was inspired to seek the BID job after doing consulting work for the agency on its summer concert series.

“It reignited my passion for that economic-development work,” he said, adding that, since arriving, he’s continued the BID’s work in tandem with the chamber to promote the downtown and generate more vibrancy in the central business district, which has made a nice recovery after being devastated by COVID — but with changes.

Indeed, while food and beverage taxes are exceeding 2019 levels, there are still fewer people going out, overall, with restaurants still doing strong takeout business. One goal — at the BID, the chamber, and with new destinations like the Oyster Bar and Protocol — is to get them back out.

Amherst at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1759
Population: 39,263
Area: 27.7 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $17.82
Commercial Tax Rate: $17.82
Median Household Income: $48,059
Median Family Income: $96,005
Type of Government: Town Council, Town Manager
Largest Employers: UMass Amherst; Amherst College; Hampshire College
* Latest information available

“Our real view on downtown Amherst is promoting not just nightlife, but getting people out of their house, getting people to form these communities that have really been missing due to COVID and what came after; we want to give them that location,” said Peotter, who described both establishments as “that third place.” By that, he meant it’s not home, and it’s not work — “it’s another place to be.”

Page said one of his focal points is what would be considered traditional, brick-and-mortar retail. The downtown has some, he said, and the goal is attract more, while also retaining what exists, through initiatives like the planned retail incubator, a site for which has yet to be determined.

“It’s a difficult industry,” he said, adding that Amherst is not known as a retail destination, but could become one. “You need critical mass — you need other retailers so that people view you as a shopping destination.”

Jacob Robinson, executive director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, agreed.

“Fortunately, downtown Amherst isn’t experiencing a significant vacancy issue, but there’s strong interest in attracting more retail to diversify the mix of businesses and further enhance the pedestrian experience,” he said.

“Of course, retail-space turnover is a normal and expected part of any dynamic downtown. As business owners retire, pivot, or evolve their offerings, it naturally creates opportunities for new entrepreneurs to bring fresh ideas and energy into the community. We’re seeing that play out in Amherst, with some beloved businesses closing for personal or planned reasons — often after years or decades of serving the community — and new ventures preparing to take their place. It’s a sign of a living, breathing local economy that continues to adapt and grow.”

Among the relatively new retail offerings are the Amherst College Store, which opened a year ago in the former A.J. Hastings space at 45 South Pleasant St., and UMass Downtown, which opened its doors in February at 108 North Pleasant St., in space most recently occupied by Greenfield Savings Bank.

The latter is a multi-purpose retail, event, and meeting space, said Nancy Buffone, associate vice chancellor of University Relations, who spoke with BusinessWest at the facility.

She said a downtown presence for the university has been talked about for many years, and it became a priority for Chancellor Javier Reyes when he arrived in 2023.

“This is truly about bringing UMass and the community together,” she said, adding that the facility will host both UMass events, such as lectures slated for this spring, and community events, such as registration for the Big Brothers Big Sisters Daffodil Run.

UMass Downtown has seen steady volumes of foot traffic, said Buffone, adding the numbers are expected to move higher as the weather improves and especially for commencement week and ‘destination days,’ when those students who have been accepted to the university, and their parents, are invited to take in the school and the town.

 

Developing Stories

Bockelman calls it the “mixing middle.”

He was referring to the broad segment of housing involving homeownership opportunities for segments of the population that might otherwise not break that barrier. This middle area is being addressed in a project on Ball Lane, undertaken by Valley Community Development Corp.

“We’re seeing a lot of apartments being built, but what has been largely missing has been homeownership opportunities, which is why the Ball Lane project is so exciting,” he told BusinessWest, adding that plans call for 30 units on an eight-acre tract.

The project is one of many housing initiatives, public and private, in various stages of development in town, and they address a critical need for new housing.

Other projects include two public projects totaling 78 apartments, 31 at the former East Street School and 47 at 70 Belchertown Road, said Bockelman, noting that these will be a mix, with varying levels of affordability. The developer, Way Finders, expects to have both sites developed and occupied by 2028.

On the private side, developer Barry Roberts is forwarding two projects, a large (but scaled-down) initiative at the corner of Amity Street and University Drive that will involve retail on the ground floor and apartments above, and the other at the former Hastings site. Meanwhile, Archipelago Investments LLC is set to break ground on a five-story, 68-unit project at Olympia Drive, a dorm-like building that will rise on the site of the former Iota Beta chapter of the Chi Omega sorority, which Archipelago acquired several years ago.

Archipelago has also been named designated developer for a project to create 140 residential units on a large tract of land owned by Hampshire College, adjacent to Atkins Farms.

These projects and others in different stages of development will make a large dent in the overall need for housing across the spectrum, said Bockelman, adding that such projects are needed to help seniors stay in town, young professionals to move there, and employees at many types of businesses, especially the hospitality sector, to afford to live in town.

Robinson agreed. “Housing remains a key issue,” he told BusinessWest. “While Amherst is actively exploring strategies to create more diverse and affordable housing options, it’s clear that housing supply directly affects workforce retention, talent attraction, and the overall economic vibrancy of the region. Our businesses need access to a stable workforce, and that depends in part on people being able to afford to live and thrive here.”

 

Annual Conference Brings Region’s HR Professionals Together

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Features

Rolling with the Changes

 

The landscape of human resources and the pace of change in the workplace are never static, but some times are more … well, dynamic than others. And 2025 seems to be one of those times.

Which makes the annual Tri-State SHRM Conference — which will convene hundreds of regional HR professionals at Mohegan Sun on April 28-30 — a bit more interesting this year.

“It’s great networking with your peers when you’re at the event because things are drastically changing,” said Dave O’Brien, state director for the Massachusetts State Council of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

“Look at the DEI landscape. Some companies are changing their DEI efforts, and other companies are standing firm, and you can talk to your peers and have an honest conversation with them and say, ‘hey, what’s going on? What are you doing? How are you handling this? What have you encountered?’ Because it does change so drastically and so fast.

Dave O’Brien

Dave O’Brien

“You can talk to your peers and have an honest conversation with them and say, ‘hey, what’s going on? What are you doing? How are you handling this? What have you encountered?’ Because it does change so drastically and so fast.”

“And it’s good because an HR person can’t really talk to anybody but another HR person about these things. They really kind of get it. And there is some concern.”

That’s just one of many reasons O’Brien is looking forward to this year’s conference, hosted by the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island affiliate councils of SHRM. The three councils began collaborating on a biennial conference around 2000, which later became an annual event and has steadily grown over the years.

Lori McCombs, the Tri-State SHRM Conference manager, remembers the first conference she was hired to run: in 2020, which quickly had to pivot to a virtual event when the world shut down a few weeks before. But after a second virtual event in 2021, the conference has returned to an in-person model and grown significantly: while 242 people attended the 2020 event virtually, 385 showed up in person in 2024.

“The conference is definitely growing in popularity,” McCombs told BusinessWest. “We’ve had to close exhibitor registration due to the large volume of interest from exhibitors and sponsors. That’s a good problem to have. We’re experiencing a lot of positive growth.”

Most attendees are HR professionals, with 69% being HR manager or director level or above. “That means we have a lot of decision makers from these three states that attend this conference,” she said, adding that 32% of attendees represent companies with more than 1,000 employees, and half are from companies of at least 500. “And the type of people that exhibit are companies that provide goods or services to HR professionals — so, a lot of payroll companies, HR data companies, colleges and universities that have advanced HR degree programs, HR consulting firms, talent acquisition firms, recruiting firms, benefit brokers.”

Beth Groccia, a Tri-State SHRM planning committee member who has been involved with the conference for more than 20 years, noted that it used to rotate between venues in the three states, but between that and being held every other year, it was difficult to brand the event and build momentum.

Now a yearly event at Mohegan Sun, it’s much easier to promote, she said. “It’s a destination, people enjoy going there, and they know it’s around the same time of year, so they look forward to it.”

 

Big Ideas for Changing Times

This year’s keynote speaker is Paul Long, a motivational speaker who brings humor, energy, and tactical tips for workplace performance, McCombs said. In addition, a panel of speakers will share creative ideas for recruiting untapped talent, including individuals with disabilities, veterans returning to the workplace, previously incarcerated professionals, and other individuals facing challenges getting back into the workplace.

Lori McCombs

Lori McCombs

“If they’re unable to attend a session, they’re able to go back and watch that, which is very beneficial to those who want as much education as they can possibly get. That’s a great benefit that you don’t see at most other conferences.”

“So, it’s just looking at talent that maybe you’re not thinking of on a daily basis,” she said, adding that another popular panel is called the Stump the Employment Lawyers. “We end the conference with that session. It’s an opportunity for attendees to ask tough legal questions to a panel of employment lawyers from varying backgrounds. People look forward to that.”

Smaller sessions are conducted throughout the conference, three topics per time block, on issues ranging from employment law to professional development; from leadership integrity to combating HR burnout.

“People have the opportunity to attend whatever is of interest to them,” McCombs said. “We also livestream these sessions — we do have a small virtual audience — but we also record all the sessions so that attendees have full access to those recordings for 90 days on demand post-conference. So if they’re unable to attend a session, they’re able to go back and watch that, which is very beneficial to those who want as much education as they can possibly get. That’s a great benefit that you don’t see at most other conferences.”

Another benefit is continuing-education credits, Groccia noted. “A lot of the individuals that come to this conference are certified, and we need to get CEUs to maintain that certification. Plus, as we’ve said, things are changing so quickly. So, what else do we need to know about in our profession to stay up to date with these changing laws?”

O’Brien said the national Society of Human Resource Management provides plenty of general guidance. “But with the way things happen, we just have to stay true to our course and what our companies believe and what we believe.”

Having those discussions with other HR professionals in the field — and, really, just networking in general — is a real positive of the conference, McCombs added. “They’re practicing this every single day, but I would say that the attendees definitely come here to network and get support from each other, in these trying times in particular.”

The conference will also include a fundraiser for the SHRM Foundation, which supports scholarships and research for educational opportunities, O’Brien noted.

 

No Bull (Well, Maybe a Little Bull)

This year’s Tri-State SHRM Conference has a western theme and is titled “HR Rodeo: Saddle Up for Success,” and registration is available at tristateshrm.com. An event party will be held at Comix Roadhouse in Uncasville, “and we’ll be encouraging people to ride the bull and do line dancing and fun things like that,” McCombs said.

During the day, of course, the topics being dealt with are often serious. “The conference has a theme, but we try to stay relevant to what’s happening at the moment and offer best-practice ideas,” O’Brien said. But he quickly added that spending time with fellow HR professionals at a lively venue is, well, enjoyable.

“It’s always good to have more HR professionals join us and have fun,” he told BusinessWest. “You take the job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. That’s the best part of this.”

Jessica Roncarati-Howe Grateful to Uplift Women

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Jessica Roncarati-Howe in the Dress for Success boutique today.
Where Are They Now?

Where Are the Now?

Jessica Roncarati-Howe in her 2012 40 Under Forty portrait

Jessica Roncarati-Howe in her 2012 40 Under Forty portrait

Jessica Roncarati-Howe in the Dress for Success boutique today.

Jessica Roncarati-Howe in the Dress for Success boutique today.

 

When Jessica Roncarati-Howe was honored as a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2012, she was executive director of the AIDS Foundation of Western Massachusetts — a job with many hats, all of which she wore proudly.

As the foundation’s only paid staff member, she was in charge of marketing and development, administering the grant program, co-chairing most events, and overseeing a cadre of volunteers and interns.

The AIDS Foundation had three missions: providing financial assistance to about 100 patients a year for expenses like rent, utilities, and medications; educational components, including the training of young peer educators to bring awareness into high schools and colleges; and referral services to help people with the disease access healthcare and other resources.

And those efforts made a difference, and even saved lives, considering Greater Springfield had the highest rate of infection in the state at the time.

“It was so gratifying to help them, not just get the services and supports they needed, but build their level of dignity and quality of life,” Roncarati-Howe recalled. “That work really was my heart for the longest time. It taught me a lot about this community, its diversity, how it feels to meet somebody where they are in their lives, as opposed to holding expectations of where people think they should be, and then helping them from that point. It was a remarkable bit of education for me. And that’s something that I wanted to carry into my career going forward.”

Eventually, the heavy workload of that job wasn’t meshing with her home life as well as she would have liked, and she didn’t want either to suffer. “I left the AIDS Foundation because I had a responsibility to both the people who relied on the foundation and my daughter, and I couldn’t juggle both without doing a disservice to one or the other.”

So she moved on to other jobs (and had “surprise twins” along the way), but nothing felt like the right fit — until she became involved with Dress for Success of Western Massachusetts, which she serves as executive director today.

“A friend of mine who was president of the board at the time met with me and asked if I might be interested in a position as program coordinator, but she couldn’t promise me anything except complete uncertainty and lousy pay,” she laughed.

Yet, the executive director at the time felt the organization was on the cusp of rapid growth, and she was right — eventually. Roncarati-Howe’s initial experience was something different, as she came on board in January 2020, just before the world shut down.

“My job went from defining existing programs and building more programs to figuring out what our participants actually needed in that moment and building from there,” she recalled. “And that meant scaling back and scrapping some things, going in different directions that we never expected that we would go. And, lo and behold, we ended up not only successfully delivering programs and services through the pandemic, but also growing.”

From program coordinator, she quickly advanced to director of programs and operations, and began to feel the same sense of ‘right place, right time’ that she had with the AIDS Foundation.

“The more things changed in the world, the more important it became to me to do meaningful work again. And now, I can’t see myself contentedly doing anything else.”

In January 2024, when the executive director position opened up, Roncarati-Howe was named to that role in an interim fashion, and the job became official two months later.

“We’ve all been in a position where we’ve needed help, we’ve needed support, and we haven’t known what the next steps are. To be able to provide that for women is an honor. That’s why I do this.”

It’s impactful work, with services that include the well-known boutique where women can get professional attire for interviews and after landing jobs, and also the Foot in the Door program that focuses on work readiness, from résumé writing and interview skills to networking, workplace etiquette, professional attire, and how to navigate difficult situations on the job.

Dress for Success also partners with a number of organizations, including hiring agencies, employers, and community colleges, to make sure as many people as possible graduate and move right into further training, higher education, or a job within three months of graduating.

“Instead of having siloed programming, we’ve developed a model that we call the continuum of support,” Roncarati-Howe said. “We help a woman from the moment they walk in the door, wherever they are in their life and whatever their needs might be, to whenever they feel that they don’t need us anymore. In some cases, that’s eight to 10 years.”

The program also provides basic computer literacy and a laptop, courtesy of Tech Foundry; basic financial wellness with Liberty Bank; and preparation for the National Career Readiness Certificate exam, not to mention the Margaret Fitzgerald Mentorship Program, a year-long, one-on-one mentorship with a professional or retired professional woman in the community.

The work of Dress for Success of Western Massachusetts is being amplified and expanded with the recent opening of its new Women’s Career Center, which will make the nonprofit’s workforce-development programming available to hundreds more individuals each year, both on a drop-in basis and through regularly scheduled workshops.

The organization will celebrate all of this, and its impact, at its 25th-anniverary Common Threads gala coming up on Thursday, April 17.

“We really try to ensure that, no matter who’s coming to us, the answer is never ‘no,’” Roncarati-Howe said. “It’s just so heartwarming and inspirational and gratifying. It’s also humbling because our perspective is that we’re serving. We are grateful to be able to do this work and do good for people who need us because we’ve all been in a position where we’ve needed help, we’ve needed support, and we haven’t known what the next steps are. To be able to provide that for women is an honor. That’s why I do this.”

Is the Commonwealth Losing Its Competitive Edge?

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Features Special Coverage

State of the Bay State

 

“The success of Massachusetts’ economy has historically been driven by a number of key strengths: a strong quality of life, an educated and engaged workforce, and economic sectors that adapt to changing conditions and are at the vanguard of innovation. However, these strengths are no longer as unique to Massachusetts, nor are they guaranteed to continue in perpetuity, and in recent years, national demographic shifts and increased mobility for people and employers have threatened to degrade Massachusetts’ competitive edge when attracting residents, businesses, and investment.”

 

That’s the introductory, summary paragraph in a note from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Assoc. (MTF) as it introduced something it calls its Competitive Index, which was first released last fall and will now be conducted annually. And it effectively sets the tone for the document, which compiled 26 different metrics — from grade-8 math test scores to energy costs; from international migration to commute time — that clearly and concisely measure how the Bay State is stacking up. (The full report can be found at masstaxpayers.org.)

The bottom line is that is that, while the state still has several strong attributes, it is not as competitive as it has been historically. Or, put another way, other states, such as California, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, have become more competitive. And now, thanks to the pandemic and the advent of remote work, it has more competitors, including other New England states.

“Massachusetts has a number of real strengths; the fact that we are the most highly educated state in the nation and have been for a long time, the fact that we have the best K-12 school system, at least on average, and higher education is such a strength, bodes well for us,” MTF President Doug Howgate told BusinessWest. “But at the same time, there are lot of things that we can and do need to do better — we’re either lagging behind the standards we’ve set for ourselves, or we’re lagging behind other states.”

“One of the reasons why we wanted to look into some of these issues within the competitive index is that, during the pandemic, we started to see that location choices became a little more flexible — not for everyone, but for some people,” he went on. “And that has real impacts for the long-standing proposition that Massachusetts has for its residents in terms of what you gain from living here and what the costs are.

“There are lot of things that we can and do need to do better — we’re either lagging behind the standards we’ve set for ourselves, or we’re lagging behind other states.”

“If people became a little less sticky and had a little more ability to move around — the same with employers — was that going to be a competitive advantage or disadvantage for Massachusetts?” he continued. “And at least in the very short term, it appeared to be a net competitive disadvantage as we saw these big surges in domestic outmigration — not everywhere, but certainly in higher-cost areas.”

Since the release of the report, compiled with researchers at the UMass Donohue Institute and with the support of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, it has been the subject of discussion and debate — about what the state has lost when it comes to its historic competitive edge, to whom it has lost that edge, and, perhaps most importantly, how it might get that edge back.

Howgate has spoken at several forums about the Competitive Index and the issues related to it, including the Outlook lunch staged by the Springfield Regional Chamber earlier this month.

Doug Howgate

Doug Howgate

“If people became a little less sticky and had a little more ability to move around — the same with employers — was that going to be a competitive advantage or disadvantage for Massachusetts?”

At those forums, and in a wide-ranging interview with BusinessWest, he stressed that the Commonwealth can no longer take its historic advantages — and, again, there are several, from educational attainment to its ability to attract international immigrants — for granted, because other states are gaining ground in those realms.

In the meantime, several factors, such as the rising cost of everything from housing to energy to childcare, as well as the so-called ‘millionaire’s tax’ and the rise of remote work, have contributed to the state losing population — and talent — to other states, although some, if not most, of these losses have been made up through international immigration.

As he talked about the index and what the numbers mean, Howgate said it suggests at least five key areas for policy focus: creating a competitive roadmap, stemming outmigration, growing the labor force, incorporating cost considerations into policy conversations, and fostering and supporting the relationship between the state’s education system and the economy.

We’ll get into each in more detail as we examine the Competitive Index and how it serves as a call to action as the state, which is still very competitive when it comes to businesses, jobs, and talent, faces the hard reality that it must take steps to remain that way.

Moving Targets

As he sliced through the numbers in the index, Howgate reiterated that the Commonwealth still has several competitive strengths.

Indeed, it is ranked at or near the top in such areas as population age 25 and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher, average weekly wage, research and development funding as a share of gross state product, and even life expectancy at birth.

But these strengths are counter-balanced by many weaknesses, with the state ranked at or near the bottom nationally in income inequality, energy costs, overall cost of living, commute time, childcare costs, housing cost burden, and even average unemployment insurance tax amount per covered employee.

In many ways, these weaknesses are now taking their toll, and this is showing up in domestic migration, with the state losing workers to regional competitors such as Maine and New Hampshire, and especially Florida, California, and New York.

This disconcerting trend is what prompted MTF to “look under the hood,” as Howgate put it, and determine if and where the state was losing some of its edge.

“We started looking at questions related to where are we a leader or a laggard, and a lot of the places where we’re a laggard are places where the costs are borne by wealthy folks,” he said, referring to the millionaire’s tax but also other factors. “But also, a lot of the costs make it a challenging place to live for working families, which is another huge challenge for the Commonwealth moving forward.

“What we talk about in the report is that people are more sensitive to cost than they used to be,” he went on. “So that heightens some of our long-standing competitive disadvantages. The fact that childcare costs are higher, housing costs are higher, unemployment insurance taxes … we continue to fare very poorly in those areas, and they’re at the core of where people can afford to live.”

Statistics show that, while outmigration is occurring most in the higher income brackets, especially $250,000 in annual income and above, it is also happening with other groups, such as those in the $75,000-$100,000 range, said Howgate, adding that this speaks to, respectively, people who can afford to relocate and those who can’t afford to stay. And in both cases, the trends started before the pandemic.

“And the factor that’s kind of marbled throughout that is that we’re seeing increasing evidence that it’s our younger professionals who are leaving,” he said, adding that this reality has deep ramifications for the Commonwealth and its businesses, large and small.

Meanwhile, he acknowledged that this challenge does in some ways present opportunities for this part of the state, where some of these costs, especially housing and childcare, are not as burdensome.

Indeed, opportunities exist to convince people, and even businesses, to move to different parts of the Commonwealth rather than to another state, he said, adding that, due in large part to remote work possibilities, some areas, such as the Cape and the Berkshires, are gaining population.

 

Behind the Numbers

Howgate noted that one of the many lessons from the pandemic, a once-in-a-lifetime happening that altered many aspects of life, is that things can change quickly.

“Just like you don’t want to assume that things are going to go right back to the way they were before the pandemic in a couple of months or a couple of years, you also don’t want to assume that the way things looked in June of 2023 is what they’re going to look like forever,” he told BusinessWest. “One of the points with the competitiveness index is to say that, as we find a new normal — and what ‘normal’ is is always changing — how do we start to create these baselines for ourselves about what we’re doing well and not doing well?”

And with this baseline, Massachusetts can continue to track how it’s faring, he said, adding that overall competitiveness is something that the state and its leaders should continually gauge — and work to improve.

It hasn’t been this way historically, he went on, and this is perhaps one of the reasons why some of its edge has been lost.

“You don’t want to overreact as a policy maker, but at the same time, we have some compelling data that something has altered how people are making location decisions,” he said. “So we need to be more mindful of the fact that people aren’t going to just stay because this is where they’ve always been; there has to be more to our argument than that.”

This brings him back to some of those suggested key areas of policy focus and the overall need to emphasize competitiveness as an economic-development priority for the state.

Action, and change, is needed on several fronts, Howgate said, especially housing and what he called the “nexus between transportation and housing.”

“If people can’t afford to live in a place that gets them to where they want to go conveniently, you have a big problem on your hands,” he told BusinessWest. “And that is something Massachusetts has a real crunch on — both accessible and efficient transportation options and affordable housing.

“While there are other things that absolutely matter as well, such as childcare costs,” he went on, “I think that we started to focus more and more, as others have as well, on what are some of the smart things we can do on transportation and housing to get people more quickly to places with inexpensive housing, like Central Mass. and Western Mass., and then also, what can we do on the production side to boost housing so people are able to afford where they want to live?”

The Commonwealth is certainly not alone with these challenges — many other states and urban areas are dealing with sky-high housing costs and transportation issues, he said, adding that some are being more proactive, and effective, in dealing with them and issues such as zoning and land use.

When asked to project ahead five or 10 years to where the Commonwealth might be from a competitiveness standpoint, Howgate said this is difficult because of the profound pace of change. But he did say the state cannot afford to leave anything to chance.

“We know what our demography is, that we’re an aging population, like other Northeast states, and we know that we’re a high-cost area,” he said. “At the end of the day, irrespective of where you are ideologically, it’s in all of our best interests to incentivize people to stay in Massachusetts, and move to Massachusetts, because we’re not going to have that level of growth if we just sit here and do nothing.”

Town of Palmer Has Progress in Its Sites

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The former Thorndike School will be converted into 12 to 18 units of market-rate housing.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

The former Thorndike School will be converted into 12 to 18 units of market-rate housing.

The former Thorndike School will be converted into 12 to 18 units of market-rate housing.

 

When it comes to Palmer’s much-anticipated new train station and the return of passenger rail service after a half-century absence, there is no timetable in place yet.

There are several hurdles still be cleared, from design to the huge matter of funding — for this train station and the state’s much larger east-west rail project. Town officials can only speculate that it will be a few years, and likely more than a few — one said it will be at least 2029 — before the facility is up and trains are stopping there.

But this lack of a go date isn’t tamping speculation, both positive and negative — especially since the state has now chosen a site for the station, an open field at 1099 South Main St., south of Palmer Yard, land owned by wire brush manufacturer Sanderson MacLeod (more on that company later) and adjacent to its plant.

To the disappointment of many in the community, this site is not downtown — and, more specifically, not the site of the former, historic train station, now home to the popular Steaming Tender restaurant.

In fact, a group calling itself the Central Rail Passenger Coalition is not entirely ready to give up on the downtown site, even though the state Department of Transportation has deemed it inadequate for several reasons, and town officials are accepting the state’s decision.

“It’s a chance for the town to assess current land use in the area and begin laying some groundwork to really encourage and enable transit-oriented development in that area.”

Scarlet Lamothe, general manager of the Steaming Tender and member of the Central Rail Passenger Coalition, has been outspoken — at public meetings and other forums — about how the South Yard location, known as ‘Site B,’ will not bring real economic benefits to the downtown or the community as a whole, pointing to the example of Windsor Locks, Conn., which built a new train station outside of the central business district, didn’t see much economic development, and is now moving its station downtown.

“Site B is not located in the downtown district, and it will show no benefit to the town,” she said, adding that she, other members of the coalition, and other Palmer residents are trying to gather support for an ordinance that would require that a passenger rail depot and related facilities need to be zoned in the downtown district.

“Also, you won’t see as much ridership at Site B because you won’t have that north-south connection,” she went on, adding that behind the historic station is a diamond junction, permitting rail service in all four directions; Site B would only accommodate east-west service.

Town Planner Heidi Mannarino acknowledged some disappointment concerning the state’s choice of location, but said the site is only a half-mile from downtown, and, overall, it could benefit existing businesses and prompt additional development.

“There is potential to unlock more development in that area,” she said, adding that, while the next steps in this process play out, the town should be looking to maximize the development opportunities from this potentially groundbreaking development, one that could return the community known as the Town of Seven Railroads to its roots.

“It’s a chance for the town to assess current land use in the area and begin laying some groundwork to really encourage and enable transit-oriented development in that area,” Mannarino said, adding that this includes everything from new housing opportunities to businesses catering to those getting on and off trains to creating safer alternatives for multi-modal transportation.

The state’s selection of a site for the new rail station tops the list of developing stories in this community, but there are several others, including plans to convert the former Thorndike School, built in 1910, into 12 to 18 units of market-rate housing, $1.6 million in infrastructure work (from sidewalks to fire hydrants), a new strip mall on Route 32 near the turnpike exit that is nearing the finish line, and a spike in interest in Palmer in the wake of remote work and hybrid schedules.

The Liberty Plaza project on Thorndike Street is nearing completion.

The Liberty Plaza project on Thorndike Street is nearing completion.

Indeed, this dramatic change in how people work has made the commute from Palmer to Springfield, Worcester, and points east of Worcester far more attractive than when people were going to the office five days a week, said John Latour, Palmer’s director of Community Development, adding that there are other incentives.

“There’s quality of life, there’s a grocery store and other amenities, but the housing here is more affordable than going further east,” he explained. “You can get a really nice house here for considerably less than you would, say, in the Shrewsbury area, so you’re seeing more people driving into Worcester and the Boston area from Palmer.”

For this latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest turns its lens on Palmer, where many forms of progress are, well … on track.

 

Train of Thought

Latour noted that, while there is, indeed, some disappointment concerning the state’s choice of a location for the new train station, there is still a buzz surrounding the east-west rail project and how it could change the fortunes of a community that is roughly halfway between Springfield and Worcester, but often (and until recently) considered too far from either for a commute or any economic benefit.

Remote work and hybrid schedules have changed some attitudes about Palmer, he said, noting that this is reflected in growing interest in housing within the community and rising prices, with the median price now exceeding $300,000.

And east-west rail could change the equation further by making the commute easier and thus more palatable, he said, adding that there are many examples of communities that have benefited, in many ways, from being a rail stop.

Mannarino agreed, noting that, in addition to spurring residential growth, a rail stop can benefit existing businesses in the broad hospitality sector and foster new ventures as well. And the chosen site for the station can do both, she added.

“Currently, on the other side of the track from the site, there’s already Seven Roads Brewery and other existing businesses that will shine. It’s going to be a matter of making sure that the rail stop is connected to those businesses in a safe way while also laying the groundwork so that it can be attractive for other business opportunities on the south side of the tracks as well.”

Overall, she said rail service will make Palmer’s location, already attractive because of its turnpike exit and close proximity to the state’s second- and third-largest cities, even more appealing to the development community.

While anticipating — and preparing for — a future with passenger rail service, Palmer is also coping with the present and developments on several fronts.

At the top of that list is housing, which is key to any residential growth and the benefits to be derived from it, said Latour, adding that, at present, there is little in the way of new construction of homes or subdivisions.

But the Thorndike School project is a small step forward, he added, noting that the new units will make a small dent in overall need. Conversion of the former Converse Middle School into 55-and-over housing, a project the town has been pursuing, will make another dent.

Other developments include Liberty Plaza, a strip mall taking shape just a few hundred yards from the Big Y on Thorndike Street (Route 32). The plaza will be home to a Starbucks and a Jersey Mike’s, as well as additional tenants, said Latour, adding that this project will hopefully inspire additional commercial development in that area just off the pike exit.

Palmer at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1775
Population: 12,448
Area: 32 square miles
County: Hampden
Tax Rate, residential and commercial: Palmer, $18.15; Three Rivers, $18.23; Bondsville, $18.98; Thorndike, $18.28
Median Household Income: $41,443
Median Family Income: $49,358
Type of government: Town Manager; Town Council
Largest Employers: Baystate Wing Hospital; Sanderson MacLeod Inc., Camp Ramah of New England; Big Y World Class Market
*Latest information available

Meanwhile, the town has been awarded a $430,000 grant to design a new sewer infrastructure for a stretch of Thorndike Street, a project intended to alleviate a “ticking time bomb,” Mannarino said, and one that could unlock new development, both commercial and residential, in that area.

The overall price tag for that project will be $4 million to $6 million, she noted, adding that the town will be pursuing other grants to cover that cost, and there is no timeline for the initiative.

 

Making It Happen

Mark Borsari, president and CEO of Sanderson MacLeod, or SanMac, as it’s known colloquially, sidestepped questions about the rail station and east-west rail, noting that both are matters well beyond his control.

He preferred to talk about what is in his control, meaning his company, and its focus, which, technically speaking, is on making twisted wire brushes, but is really on creating an environment where people want to work and can thrive, and also on creating a model for other manufacturers, most of them facing the stern challenges of coping with retiring Baby Boomers and attracting and retaining young talent.

“We can’t control the weather, but we might as well see if we can be as creative as possible internally — we’re having a good time, we really are,” he said, adding that the company is firmly focused on making investments in the next generation of workers and, at the same time, “making it cool,” with ‘it’ being the overall experience.

It does this through everything from food trucks making regular stops at the plant to a cornhole tournament; from one of the company’s operating slogans — “you’ve got to be a little twisted to work here” — to an elaborate employee-appreciation day called Brushes, Blues, and Barbecue, which tells the whole story.

Such initiatives are part of a two-pronged approach at SanMac, said Borsari, adding that the first is to work with area schools to educate young people about the many attractive benefits to careers in manufacturing, while the second is to implement programs that demonstrate how valued employees are and encourage them to grow with the company, be part of the growth process, and encourage leadership.

“You do have to make it cool — I’ve always said that you have to look at through the eyes of someone who’s 18 or 19 years old and create an organizational place that they find cool to be in,” he explained.

“And that means you have to be creative. You make it cool by making the cafeteria a ’50s diner, you make it cool by putting bus wrap around the inside of the factory so you can put colorful graphics up, you make it cool by bringing in food trucks, you make it cool by having fun with the different ways that we work together, by focusing on people and rewarding them.”

Overall, it comes down to treating people as individuals where one size does not fit all, and “pointing out what the big picture is,” he added.

“When young people go out into the real world, they enter the workplace with an enthusiasm that’s a little naive, but it’s potent because they want to prove themselves,” Borsari said. “If they’re not handled properly by an organization, or they just get cast away after putting out 100%, it cuts the knees out from under them. You can only do that so many times to someone, especially if they’re young, before they say, ‘this is ridiculous — I’m just going to find a place where I can make as much as I can by doing as little as I possibly can,’ and that’s leadership’s fault.”

Through leadership that doesn’t take this approach, that truly values employees, SanMac has become not only a standout in the twisted wire brush industry, but a true leader in a changing manufacturing sector — and an economic driver in a changing Palmer, where even more promise may be chugging down the tracks.

Bus Tour Revives Tradition, Puts Libraries in Spotlight

By
From left, Rachel Gravel, Marilyn Sutin, Jeanne Fontaine, and Erica Swallow at the bust of Andrew Carnegie inside Springfield Central Library.
Features

Pages of the Past

The original Springfield Library

The original Springfield Library has been lost to history, but the planned bus tour is designed to generate appreciation for the libraries still standing.

 

Kate Benson says she doesn’t know why the original Springfield Library, opened in 1871, was eventually torn down.

The impressive, Gothic-style structure was only 40 years old when its replacement, the central library that still stands on State Street today, was opened, she said, adding that it was moved a few hundred yards to make way for the new library and serve the city while it was being built. And, in theory, it could have been moved again to another location

“We don’t really know why it came down — and there’s no real record of why,” said Benson, a special-education team chair in Chicopee by day, and also a member of the Springfield Preservation Trust (SPT) and self-described “history addict,” adding that it doesn’t really matter why the landmark was demolished. What does matter is that a piece of the city’s past and an architectural treasure can now be seen only in grainy photos and color postcards, which were very popular in the day.

It is a desire to enable the public to fully appreciate similar structures — and to perhaps ensure that they don’t suffer the same fate as the original library — that has prompted the SPT and several partnering organizations to come together to create a bus tour (set for Saturday, April 12, with Benson as the tour guide) of the central library and several branches, including four structures known simply as the Carnegie libraries.

These are the central library, the Forest Park branch, the Indian Orchard branch, and the former Memorial Square branch, now the Greek Cultural Center — four of the 2,509 libraries built between 1883 and 1929 with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

Built in the early 1900s, those four libraries, and the others on the tour, are blasts from the past that can still be enjoyed today. And so, in many respects, is this bus tour, called “Pages of the Past,” said Erica Swallow, president of the SPT.

“The library went from being a membership-only establishment to being open to the public, open to the community. To have four of those buildings in Springfield that really symbolized access to knowledge, and access to betterment, is really special.”

Indeed, the once-annual Bus Tour of Historic Springfield, a partnership between the SPT and Peter Pan Bus Lines, is back after a nearly 30-year hiatus, and with many goals in mind, said Swallow, adding that this endeavor is a collaboration between several groups, including the SPT, the Springfield Museums, the Springfield City Library, and Peter Pan.

As for goals, she listed everything from showcasing those libraries to cultivating the next generation of preservationists in Springfield.

“The trust has been trying to bring in the next generation of preservationists,” Swallow explained, adding that new programs like the libraries tour, as well as existing initiatives such as house tours and walking tours (more on them later), are effective ways to bring people into Springfield’s past, while also celebrating the present and getting them involved.

Danielle Veronesi, senior director of Marketing at Peter Pan Bus Lines, who was approached by Swallow about resurrecting the bus tour, agreed, noting that Peter Pan, which has a lengthy history in Springfield and this region, is enthusiastic about its role in the partnership presenting the tour.

Springfield’s Central Library will be among the highlights of the bus tour.

Springfield’s Central Library will be among the highlights of the bus tour.

“We’re proud to be part of Springfield history, and also proud of the role we’ve played in enabling others to learn that history and better appreciate the city and many of its architectural landmarks,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s why we wanted Peter Pan to be a partner in this initiative.”

 

Chapter and Verse

Rachel Gravel, manager of Adult & Youth Information for the Springfield Libraries, said the building of the Carnegie libraries represented a major shift in how libraries were perceived — and used by the public.

“The library went from being a membership-only establishment to being open to the public, open to the community,” she said, noting that, until that time, most libraries, including Springfield’s, were private. “To have four of those buildings in Springfield that really symbolized access to knowledge, and access to betterment, is really special.”

This shift will be among the many talking points on the tour, said Swallow, adding that the program is designed to provide insight into Springfield’s most historically and architecturally significant libraries, offering a glimpse into their storied pasts and lasting impact on the city’s cultural and educational landscape.

Benson agreed, noting that her research into the libraries that will be showcased on tour — seven in all, including the four Carnegie libraries — has been an intriguing and rewarding experience.

“I was unaware that we had Carnegie libraries, and I have a minor obsession with Carnegie libraries in New York City because they had hidden apartments, which, unfortunately, the Springfield ones don’t, because they were not 24-hour libraries, like New York’s,” she explained. “It was interesting to do the research to figure out how they made the decisions to create branch libraries, who got one first, and how they funded it — and also how they took the original Springfield Library, which was a private library, and made it something that was open to the public; it’s an incredibly interesting history.”

Jeanne Fontaine, travel coordinator for Springfield Museums, a partner on many SPT initiatives, agreed, noting that the upcoming bus tour dovetails effectively with the Springfield Museums’ own program of monthly day trips to other museums and destinations, such as the Newport Flower Show and the Metropolitan Opera.

From left, Rachel Gravel, Marilyn Sutin, Jeanne Fontaine, and Erica Swallow at the bust of Andrew Carnegie inside Springfield Central Library.

From left, Rachel Gravel, Marilyn Sutin, Jeanne Fontaine, and Erica Swallow at the bust of Andrew Carnegie inside Springfield Central Library.

The most recent such trip was to the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, where visitors can explore the nation’s conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to today.

Swallow said the bus tour is another initiative undertaken by the SPT to bring attention to city landmarks and encourage preservation of sites with historic or architectural significance, or both.

Others include its popular Second Saturday Walking Tours, which originate at the Museums and focus on the downtown area, an annual walking tour of Springfield Cemetery, and a winter lecture series.

There’s also the annual Historic Homes Tour. Previously a bus tour that took participants to different corners of the city, it is now a walking tour focused annually on a specific neighborhood; this year it will be McKnight, said Swallow, adding that the homes tour is how many long-time SPT members first became engaged with the organization.

 

History Lessons

That was the case with Marilyn Sutin, who first went on the tour in 1979, became heavily involved with the Springfield Preservation Trust, and is still volunteering for the group 45 years later.

Like Swallow, she said the libraries tour is another way to bring Springfield’s past into the present and encourage others to get involved in preservation efforts.

Tickets for the bus tour can be purchased on Eventbrite; the cost is $20 for SPT and Springfield Museums members, and $25 for non-members. All proceeds go toward the trust’s mission of historic preservation in Springfield.

Holyoke Continues to Ride a Green Wave

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Hagop Toghramadjian stands outside phase one of the Residences on Appleton, which features 88 units of mixed-income housing.
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

Hagop Toghramadjian stands outside phase one of the Residences on Appleton, which features 88 units of mixed-income housing.

Hagop Toghramadjian stands outside phase one of the Residences on Appleton, which features 88 units of mixed-income housing.

Aaron Vega calls them ‘meet and greets.’

And they are, well … just what that name suggests. They’re meetings between city officials and small-business owners, many of them representing ventures in the emerging ‘climate tech’ sector who have heard about Holyoke and the companies that now call it home, and want to hear more with an eye toward following them.

“They’re hearing about Clean Crop, they’re hearing about Sublime Systems, they’re hearing about Simple Pack, and they want to know what’s going on,” said Vega, director of the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development, referring to three cutting-edge businesses we’ll get to back to later that are either already in Holyoke or advancing plans to locate there.

As city leaders listen to these business owners, a common thread — and a real challenge for the community — emerges.

“The biggest challenge for these companies that want to come to Holyoke as they move from their startup space is that there’s no built, ready space for them,” Vega noted. “There’s no white-box office space to move into. These guys don’t want to get involved in a rehab project; they want to be able to move in and get to work.”

“The biggest challenge for these companies that want to come to Holyoke as they move from their startup space is that there’s no built, ready space for them. There’s no white-box office space to move into. These guys don’t want to get involved in a rehab project; they want to be able to move in and get to work.”

Holyoke’s meet and greets and other aspects of its efforts to bring more small businesses to this former manufacturing hub — and early-stage efforts to create more spaces for them to move into — are just a few of the many converging storylines in Holyoke.

Others include:

• New housing projects, including a WinnDevelopment initiative at the former Farr Alpaca Co. complex — a $60 million endeavor that will create 88 units of mixed-income housing for adults 55 and over in phase 1 and another 70 in phase 2, while preserving a huge piece of the city’s past — and another project at Open Square that will create 80 units of market-rate housing;

• A cannabis cluster in flux: Holyoke welcomed the cannabis industry with open arms, and for a time, it looked like a large cluster of different businesses, from growers to dispensaries, would settle there. Some have, but as the sector faces growing pains and overall contraction, the city faces challenges, including businesses that are fighting to survive and one large grow facility, Trulieve, that has closed, with its huge plant sitting idle;

• New businesses and greater energy downtown. The city continues to ride a wave of entrepreneurship that has generated several new restaurants and storefronts in and around High Street, Vega said, adding that the new housing units coming online should generate more new-business activity;

• Those aforementioned companies in the green-energy and climate-tech sectors, headlined by Sublime Systems, which will manufacture environmentally friendly concrete at a plant on Water Street;

• A sports complex that is still in its early stages, with a site identified on Whiting Farms Road and other properties being assembled, as well as new ownership of Wyckoff Country Club (see related story on page 31).

• A reinvigorated Holyoke Community College, which has received a huge boost from MassEducate, the state’s free community-college program, and is making adjustments in the wake of a 24% rise in enrollment over the past two years;

• A new strategic plan for the city now being prepared, which is expected to help create a road map for continued progress in a city that has seen momentum on several fronts in recent years; and

• Existing businesses and traditions, especially the upcoming Holyoke St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Road Race.

Slicing through all that, Mayor Joshua Garcia, the Holyoke native now in his fourth year in the corner office, said the city is achieving progress with many goals and on several fronts, but there is still considerable work to do and projects to bring to the goal line.

These include everything from the sports complex to renovation of the historic Victory Theatre, a project now 40 years in the making. Those behind the effort are still struggling to close a significant gap between the funding that’s been raised and what will be needed to revitalize the landmark.

Mayor Joshua Garcia, left, and Aaron Vega

Mayor Joshua Garcia, left, and Aaron Vega say Holyoke continues to pursue — and add — new businesses in the broad realm of climate tech.

Garcia described economic development in the city as an ecosystem, one including manufacturing, small — and often very small — businesses, hospitality, the arts, food, and sports.

“The question is, how can we get all the boats to rise together so we’re establishing sustainability in our city?” he asked, adding that the answer to that question is the ongoing priority of his administration.

 

Not Your Run-of-the-mill Project

“Daunting.”

That’s the word Hagop Toghramadjian, a project director and development counsel with Boston-based WinnDevelopment, settled on as he was asked to describe the ongoing work at Appleton Street at the former Farr Alpaca complex.

Elaborating, he said he considers the project, called the Residences on Appleton, now far more than a decade in the making, to be the most challenging building-conversion initiative that WinnDevelopment has undertaken. And that’s saying something.

Indeed, the company has taken on many complex projects locally, including 31 Elm St. (Court Square) in Springfield and several buildings in the Ludlow Mills complex, and in numerous other communities as well.

But this conversion of the 125-year-old former mill complex into housing is on another level, said Toghramadjian as he talked with BusinessWest in the kitchen of one of the nearly finished units. He noted that there are several reasons why — from the extremely poor condition of the mill to the need to assemble property for parking and a three-story amenities building, to simply securing access to a building bordered on one side by a canal and the other by the Pioneer Valley Railroad.

As with all projects of this nature, there was also the challenge of pulling together the requisite pots of money, which, in this case, included everything from state and federal historic tax credits to state and federal low-income housing funds.

“We want to keep these small businesses local; we want to keep them here and give them an opportunity to grow their business.”

“Where we’re standing now … there was thin air, the floor had rotted through, the roof had rotted through — only the brick walls were still standing,” he said. “It was very dark, the air quality was bad … you would never dream that this could become comfortable, beautiful housing.”

But the various groups involved have persevered because this project is as important as it is difficult, he noted.

“Given its location and given how blighted it was, it cast a shadow on the whole downtown — it was a top priority for the city,” said Toghramadjian, noting that the site sits between Main and High streets, the city’s two main commercial districts, and directly across from Holyoke Heritage State Park and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center. “Because of that, they’ve been really good partners, and that’s why Winn came to Holyoke and made this investment here — it’s because the city knew what it took to make this kind of project happen.”

Jim Lavelle

Jim Lavelle

“We’ve been trying to promote not only the lower utility rates here, but the clean energy that customers can promote with their products and hopefully help with sales.”

As phase 1 continues, with leasing to commence and tenants due to start moving in this fall, Toghramadjian and others we talked with said that, while these 88 units will make a welcome addition to the landscape and help spur economic development in the area, they represent a drop in the bucket when it comes to the city’s overall housing needs.

Indeed, Garcia said a recent report put that need at roughly 1,600 units of new housing over the next 20 years across the broad spectrum of income levels, which is another key element in the equation because different types of housing, including market-rate and homeownership, enables residents to stay in the city as their financial situation improves.

“The Appleton Street project doesn’t address the magnitude of the problem, but we’re chipping away at it,” said the mayor, noting that there may be as many as 600 units already in the pipeline.

That includes phase 2 of the Appleton Street initiative, he said, noting that WinnDevelopment is currently assembling the required pots of money for that initiative, as well as the market-rate units planned for Open Square and other ongoing housing initiatives.

There are several smaller housing initiatives taking place, said Vega, including many involving the upper floors of properties along High Street, projects that provide a few or a few dozen units, all of which help meet growing need.

The problem, he went on, is the immense competition for limited state and federal support for such initiatives, with seemingly every community in the Commonwealth in need of housing.

“All the developers are going for the same pots of money, whether they’re in Holyoke, Springfield, Chicopee, or West Springfield,” he said, adding that, in this environment, having a solid mix of projects, large and small, in the pipeline is a must.

 

Current Events

As noted earlier, there are several projects in various stages of development in Hoyoke, and many converging storylines.

One of the most intriguing involves new-business development, especially in green energy and related sectors, where a cluster is emerging as companies eye Holyoke for location, available and relatively inexpensive real estate, and, especially, its lower-cost, clean electricity, said Jim Lavelle, general manager of Holyoke Gas & Electric (HG&E), which provides that energy.

“We’ve been trying to promote not only the lower utility rates here, but the clean energy that customers can promote with their products and hopefully help with sales,” said Lavelle, adding that Sublime Systems is just one of many businesses, large and small, that have chosen Holyoke for that reason, among others.

As an example, he cited Simple Pack, a company now located in Open Square that manufactures green food packaging to restaurants, schools, hospital cafeterias, and food distributors. Being able to say such products are produced with clean energy, in this case hydropower, is important to the company’s mission and a strong selling point with its clients, he said.

There are several similar examples, said Lavelle, who will gain a different title in a few days — grand marshal of Holyoke’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

While his father served in that role decades ago, Lavelle never expected to wear that hat himself because, while he’s long been somewhat involved in the parade, he has never served on its committee.

He considers the honor a nod to HG&E’s important role in the city, and is enthusiastic about fulfilling the many duties of grand marshal, including attendance at myriad events and, in accordance with tradition, responsibility for parade-day weather.

“I have a much greater appreciation for the effort that goes into all these different events that the parade committee puts on,” he said. “And I have a much greater appreciation for how strong a regional collaboration exists between the different communities’ parade committees and other civic organizations and the sponsors; they really work hand-in-hand on all these different events that happen across Western Mass.”

Putting his HG&E hat back on, figuratively if not literally, Lavelle said Sublime Systems, which he believes should be ready to starting building its facility later this year or early next, will soon become the utility’s largest customer, with 10 to 12 megawatts of demand. That’s a huge draw, but one it can easily absorb thanks to transmission-system upgrades, he went on, adding that the HG&E has the capacity to attract several more large users and dozens of smaller ones.

Attracting these businesses is one of many priorities for the city, said Vega, noting that there have been a steady volume of meet-and-greets in recent years, and more are on the schedule.

Many of these sessions involve early-stage companies, many of them in green-energy or green-manufacturing ventures, he said, adding that, in addition to city officials, the leaders of companies like Clean Crop, which uses electricity to revolutionize food safety, are often in the room to discuss Holyoke and its many selling points.

“If they’re a little further along and they have specific questions, we’ll bring in Holyoke Gas & Electric to talk about the energy portfolio they can provide,” the mayor went on. “We’re on people’s radar — we just need to put the package together to bring them in.”

Holyoke at a Glance

Year Incorporated: 1786
Population: 38,247
Area: 22.8 square miles
County: Hampden
Residential Tax Rate: $17.46
Commercial Tax Rate: $38.54
Median Household Income: $37,954
Median Family Income: $46,940
Type of Government: Mayor, City Council
Largest Employers: Holyoke Medical Center, Holyoke Community College, ISO New England Inc., PeoplesBank, Universal Plastics, Marox Corp.
* Latest information available

Which brings him back to that ongoing challenge of offering them spaces that are ready to move into. There aren’t many of them in the city, but he’s in discussions with some building owners about possibly partnering with the city to develop co-work, start-up, or innovation space.

“That’s a direction we want to go in,” he told BusinessWest. “We want to keep these small businesses local; we want to keep them here and give them an opportunity to grow their business.”

 

Bottom Line

As for businesses already growing in Holyoke, there are many in the cannabis sector, which, while it is experiencing strong growing pains, remains a force in Holyoke, Garcia said.

He noted that social consumption, or so-called cannabis cafés, constitutes the next frontier for this industry — the Cannabis Control Commission is taking up regulatory reforms on such facilities — and for some establishments in Holyoke, it could be a real lifeline in this time of growing challenge.

“In Holyoke, we want to be among the first communities to adapt and implement that opportunity for on-site consumption,” he said, likening these establishments to bars and restaurants in the sense of attracting people to the community. “If we can bring people into our city to spend money, that’s a plus.”

With cannabis, as with many of the other storylines unfolding in Holyoke, Garcia said he remains a “glass-full leader.”

That means he’s optimistic, but also realistic. It means he understands that, while much has been accomplished, there’s still much to do, and on many fronts.

It means he’s more bullish on his hometown than ever.