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Springfield Science Museum Unveils State-of-the-Art Planetarium Projector

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new Zeiss projector
Features Special Coverage

The Sky’s the Limit

new Zeiss projector

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For a few minutes on April 28, if you were looking for a gaggle of local lawmakers and Springfield Museums board members, you’d have to look beyond earth, because they were traveling through space.

At least, they felt like they were.

That’s the idea, anyway, and it’s becoming reality thanks to the addition of a state-of-the-art Zeiss Velvet full-dome projector in the Seymour Planetarium, which will provide a fully immersive, 3D experience for visitors to the Springfield Science Museum. The planetarium opened to the public with the new system on April 29, the day after legislators and museum supporters got a tour.

“Our new projector creates an incredibly immersive experience,” said Jenny Powers, director of the Science Museum. “We hope that even more in-depth learning will happen when our visitors feel that they are traveling through part of our universe.”

The planetarium’s venerable Korkosz star ball — in continuous operation since 1937 — is not being replaced; in fact, it works in tandem with the Zeiss projector to create a more detailed, realistic virtual journey through the cosmos.

Meanwhile, just down the hall from the planetarium, a newly upgraded, interactive International Space Station exhibit will provide visitors with a better understanding of what it takes (and what it’s like) to fly among the stars, living and working in outer space for months on end. That improved exhibit also opened on April 29.

“In addition to the educational value of these improvements for schools and workforce development, the dynamic additions to the Science Museum will help drive tourism and generate critical economic development for the region.”

Taken together, these improvements — and others throughout the Science Museum — represent a $750,000 investment made possible through private donations as well as support from the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism and a partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under a federal earmark sponsored by U.S. Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren.

Kay Simpson, president and CEO of the Springfield Museums, said these projects are major steps toward the goal of making the museums the premier STEM learning center of the region.

“Today is historic,” she told the gathered guests the day before the new exhibits opened. “The story starts back in 1934 to 1937, when the Korkosz brothers of Chicopee made a star-ball projector by hand for the Seymour Planetarium. And they did this because it was the Depression and the museum could not afford a state-of-the-art Zeiss projection system. That being said, this star-ball projector was a marvel of innovation and invention. And it entertained such celebrities as movie star Clark Gable, who actually saw a live show in the planetarium in 1939.”

Fast-forward to 2022, and the museum was still using what had become the oldest operating star ball, not just in the country, but in the world, she added.

“So we’re very, very proud of our antique star ball, but we knew that we could do so much more to teach children and families about the wonders of the universe and really provide high-quality STEM learning experiences for students,” Simpson said. “So we’re fortunate that we were able to receive funding through federal and state earmarks so we could finally purchase the state-of-the-art Zeiss projector that we could not afford back in 1934. We have come full circle, and we are so excited about what is happening.”

 

The Final Frontier

In 2018, Simpson explained, the Springfield Museums launched its Evolution Campaign, which was designed to make the Science Museum a 21st-century, state-of-the-art attraction.

“In addition to the educational value of these improvements for schools and workforce development, the dynamic additions to the Science Museum will help drive tourism and generate critical economic development for the region,” she said.

Simpson emphasized the public and private support for the project, which has drawn on state and federal earmarks and leveraged funding from private foundations and individuals as well.

“So, needless to say, this is just an incredible moment for the Science Museum and a major investment in amplifying our importance as an educational resource for students and also a must-see tourist attraction. And I think we are really doing great work on both fronts.

opening of the upgraded planetarium

Kay Simpson celebrates the opening of the upgraded planetarium alongside (from left) state Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, state Sen. Jake Oliveira, and Darryl Williams from the office of state Rep. Bud Williams.

“We all know that the education for our children is essential for workforce development,” she added. “We hear a lot about educational equity. Museums are playing a role in all of that. And tourism, as we all know, is a major economic driver in Western Massachusetts.”

State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez agreed. “We know the importance of tourism; we know the importance of these destinations,” he said. “Having these locations to bring people from across the world to visit is so critical and important. But also, for the community and city of Springfield to come and embrace the educational opportunities that they have here is so great.”

State Sen. Jake Oliveira agreed. “Tourism is our third-largest industry, and it is so important for the Pioneer Valley, and the Springfield Museums have played such a critical role in that.”

He added that he was pleased to attend the legislative visit as someone who has always loved outer space. In fact, he recalled visiting the Springfield Museums as a child, taking in the space exhibits, and dreaming of one day being an astronaut.

“That dream ended very quickly when I realized I’m afraid of heights, small places, and fires. So that dream ended very quickly,” Oliveira said. “But I’m so glad that so many families can explore the opportunities of space that we have here at the Springfield Museums — and going into a planetarium that can actually project the images of the Webb Space Telescope, which are some of the most beautiful images of our galaxy and beyond that we can see.”

Powers emphasized the potential the Seymour Planetarium will have in creating customized programs for local teachers and students.

“There are two different ways that we’re going to be able to serve schools,” she said. “First of all, the planetarium shows have previews, and we’ve been able to embed them on our website so teachers can see them in advance and match the content of the show to what they need to teach their children. That’s really important.”

“The planetarium shows have previews, and we’ve been able to embed them on our website so teachers can see them in advance and match the content of the show to what they need to teach their children.”

In addition, Kevin Kopchynski, STEM curator for the Springfield Museums, can create custom shows for students, Powers explained.

“So if a teacher comes in from any level, from kindergarten up through college, and has a particular thing they need to focus on, Kevin can make them a show about that. It’s something that’s highly customizable.”

Also, for the first time ever, the planetarium will offer Spanish-language planetarium shows.

“We can do almost any kind of representation that we want to using this system,” Powers said. “The modern planetarium shows offer us such a greater diversity of people than the old ones do. That’s one way we can serve not only schools, but all of our visitors. We’re incredibly excited about that.

 

The Next Generation

Darryl Williams, district director for state Rep. Bud Williams, spoke at the legislative event and, like Oliveira, recalled fond early memories of the Science Museum.

“This is my favorite museum here in Springfield. I grew up going to this museum every summer; my parents made sure that we came here,” he said, noting that his parents also bought him a telescope to gaze at Mars and Venus and myriad constellations — and that he was inspired by learning about the accomplishments of scientists during his museum visits.

“I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to many, many more years,” he said, “and I look forward showing my grandkids this one day.”

That’s the kind of legacy the Springfield Science Museum and its Seymour Planetarium has cultivated for generations, and will continue to cultivate — only now, in much sharper detail.

Meyers Brothers Kalicka Celebrates 75 Years of Change — and What Hasn’t Changed

By
The five partners at Meyers Brothers Kalicka
Banking and Financial Services Special Coverage

Marking a Milestone

The five partners at Meyers Brothers Kalicka

The five partners at Meyers Brothers Kalicka: from left, Jim Krupienski, Kristi Reale, Howard Cheney, Rudy D’Agostino, and Kristina Drzal Houghton.

It’s called the ‘Founders Room.’

This is a small conference room at Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka featuring a table that can comfortably seat six or seven people, which makes it a popular spot for smaller meetings and an attractive alternative to the cavernous main conference room, which can host more than 40.

There are a few other gathering spots at this accounting firm, but this one is unique because it pays homage to those who were there at the beginning — and in the decades that followed — for both Meyers Brothers and Joseph Kalicka and Co., two accounting firms that started the same year, 1948, and came together in a consequential merger in 2004 that created the firm known to most by the letters MBK.

The Founders Room takes on a little more importance this year as the firm celebrates a milestone — its 75th anniversary. As it does so, it looks back at the important work of the three Meyers brothers who went into business together — Ben, Raymond, and Maurice (there’s a photo of them on the wall in the Founders Room) — and Joseph Kalicka, founder of the firm that took his name (there’s a photo of him with former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis).

But the present and the future are the dominant topics of conversation on this occasion, and there was much to discuss as we gathered thoughts from the five partners now setting a course for the firm — Howard Cheney, Rudy D’Agostino, Kristina Drzal Houghton, James Krupienski, and Kristi Reale — as well as David Kalicka, partner emeritus.

Collectively, they said the tenets put in place by the founders of both firms in 1948 — everything from a laser focus on customer service to a tradition of innovation and an emphasis on anticipating what the future might bring (and being ready for it) — are still serving MBK well as it copes with an onslaught of change coming from every direction.

“I’ve always felt that the strength of our firm is the people here. It’s a collaborative effort. People work really well together; we’ve got a lot of smart people who work hard. From the top down and the bottom up, everybody works as a team.”

This change involves everything from technology and how it is used to better serve both the company and its clients to creating a workplace that recognizes emerging needs and enables several generations of employees to work effectively — work that was in some ways impacted by, and accelerated by, the pandemic and the many ways in which it impacted the workplace.

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest talked with MBK’s partners about the past 75 years, but mostly about what will come next — for both the firm and the industry.

 

Addition by … Addition

It was in early 2003 that talks began about merging Meyers Brothers and Joseph Kalicka and Co., two firms that were in ‘friendly competition’ — a phrase heard early and often — for more than a half-century and had a lot of things in common.

Looking back on those days, Drzal Houghton, who joined Meyers Brothers in 1995, said that, while the firms were operating in many of the same spaces, or sectors of the business community, they had different niches. Also, Meyers Brothers had a benefits-consulting business as well as a wealth-management business. So a merger made sense on many levels.

“Both firms had a lot of clients in the medical field, but Meyers Brothers had a lot of clients in the nonprofit industry, so there was a lot of summer work,” she explained. “Whereas, Joseph Kalicka and Co. didn’t have as much summer work, so that was a good fit. Meanwhile, Joseph Kalicka and Co. had a lot of work in the construction and real-estate industries, so it was just clear that we would be stronger together.”

Kalicka agreed. “We decided that it had been 50 years since we’ve been competing against each other and we’d both do better if we merged,” he explained. “It’s worked great; it’s helped us to survive different challenges. We’ve been around for a long time and have been approached by several bigger firms to merge and have turned them down.”

D’Agostino, who joined the Kalicka firm in 1995, noted that there were several young partners with that firm at the time, a core of leadership that appealed to those at Meyers Brothers and made a merger even more attractive.

“The opportunity to make the firm stronger, work on some bigger accounts, and have a good nucleus of young partners — those were all driving forces in the merger,” he noted. “And the culture was very similar.”

The firm that emerged from that merger is now the largest accounting firm based in Western Mass., with more than 60 employees. And that size brings with it several advantages, said the partners, including the ability to attract young talent, a challenge that has only grown in size and scope in recent years as competition for talent grows and the need for young leaders to replace retiring Baby Boomers increases.

MBK serves individuals, privately held businesses, family and independent businesses, and not-for-profit organizations in Western Mass. and well beyond. Services include taxation, accounting, auditing, and business-advisory work. The client list is deep and diverse, and it reflects the many business sectors served and the niches the company has developed. That client list includes Peter Pan Bus Lines, the Springfield Thunderbirds, the construction firm Fontaine Bros., the nonprofit agencies Square One and Mental Health Assoc., and small to mid-sized businesses such as New England Dermatology and Tyler Equipment Corp.

Partners Kristi Reale and Jim Krupienski

Partners Kristi Reale and Jim Krupienski, seen here in MBK’s Founders Room, say the firm has priorities for the future, but especially the need to develop the next generation of leadership.

As they talked about what makes MBK different, and successful, the partners used different words and phrases, but essentially said it comes to down to people — those at all levels of the organization.

“I’ve always felt that the strength of our firm is the people here,” Cheney said. “It’s a collaborative effort. People work really well together; we’ve got a lot of smart people who work hard. From the top down and the bottom up, everybody works as a team.”

Drzal Houghton agreed. “We believe here that it’s family first,” she said. “Our clients think of us as family, and I think it’s just that whole feeling … the clients feel it, the employees feel it. And it really makes us different — we care about every member of our team and every client, like family.”

As they look ahead, the partners again spoke with one voice as they talked about the priorities moving forward and what will be needed for this firm to thrive for another 75 years.

Remaining an independent firm at a time when mergers remain the order of the day and the partners field calls from private-equity firms about acquisition on a regular basis is an important goal — and also a major challenge, said those we spoke with.

“We’d like to remain independent; it’s a tough fight to stay independent, but it’s worth it because it benefits the clients,” D’Agostino said. “We make the decisions here, the philosophy that the client comes first — we can keep that. We all have to follow the same regulations, but we like to make sure we are doing things responsibly and really know our clients.”

Drzal Houghton agreed. “We definitely want to stay independent,” she said. “In the industry, there have been a lot of mergers; a lot of private equity is trying to buy firms, but we have worked very hard to be independent, and we want to give that opportunity to our rising stars.”

 

Crunching the Numbers

MBK’s partners told BusinessWest that, years ago, the firm’s leadership team would conduct an annual two-day retreat to discuss matters and set in place a strategic plan for the future.

Now, they stage four- to five-hour strategy sessions every six to seven weeks. The shorter, more frequent sessions are ultimately more productive — people are tired and less effective at the end of the second day of a retreat, they noted — and follow-up and accountability are more manageable. Meanwhile, change is coming at such a constant and profound rate that more frequent strategy meetings with shorter agendas are certainly necessary.

“We’re maintaining the momentum and holding ourselves more accountable,” said Krupienski, adding that items for discussion include everything from staffing to succession planning; from IT conversions to client services and client development.

Staffing is certainly a common agenda item, and there are layers to this issue, said those we spoke with, adding that these include everything from attracting and retaining talent to creating policies for remote work.

“We definitely want to stay independent. In the industry, there have been a lot of mergers; a lot of private equity is trying to buy firms, but we have worked very hard to be independent, and we want to give that opportunity to our rising stars.”

“A major issue with all businesses, and especially accounting firms, over the past few years has been staffing — staff costs, recruiting staff, and maintaining staff have all been significant concerns within this industry,” said D’Agostino, adding that there are some issues unique to the accounting sector, such as the compression of work during tax season and a reluctance on the part of many younger workers to “want to work the kinds of hours the previous generations have.”

“So we need to adapt to that,” he said, adding quickly that this is one of the many reasons why firms need to embrace technology — especially the technology that can handle some of the more mundane accounting tasks and thus enable professionals in the industry to focus more on consulting and advising clients.

“A lot of the bigger firms are embracing artificial intelligence,” said Reale. “We’re not there yet, but we should look at it and determine if there is anything that AI can help us with.”

Elaborating, she said that, while there is concern in some sectors about AI and its potential for eliminating jobs by doing work that humans can do (see related story on page 32), forward-looking accounting firms need to focus on its potential to create efficiencies and free up professionals to serve clients in different ways.

“AI is not going to be able to have meaningful discussions with a client and help grow its business,” she explained, adding that, increasingly, clients are looking for such consulting services — everything from contracts to mergers and acquisitions — from their accounting firm.

To provide these services effectively, firms need a pipeline of talent, said the partners we spoke with, adding that maintaining such a pipeline has become more difficult in recent years, and for a number of reasons, some of them amplified by the pandemic.

Indeed, Krupienski noted that, years ago, local and regional firms might have had a leg up when it came to the graduates of local colleges and their accounting programs, but now, those same individuals are fielding offers from firms on the other side of the country offering remote work opportunities at wages higher than those traditionally offered in Western Mass.

And that’s one of many challenges this firm and others in the region face as they try to recruit and maintain talent, said D’Agostino, adding that the firm generally likes to hire people with three to five years of experience, but there are simply fewer people with that background available to hire in this market.

Thus, the firm is hiring more individuals out of college, training them, and hoping to hang on to them when they have that three to five years of experience.

 

Then and Now

As they talked about what’s changed in the industry and for this firm, and what hasn’t, the partners we spoke with started with the later.

And Krupienski offered the obligatory “death and taxes.”

That was his way of saying that many of the services — basic and complex — have remained the same over the past 75 years. How they are provided, and sometimes when … well, that’s a different story.

This firm has been essentially paperless for years, said Reale, noting also that the phone has been replaced by email, which has, to a large degree, been replaced by the text, which can come at all hours of the day or night. And, for the most part, it needs to be answered soon after it’s received.

The midnight or 5 a.m. text comprises just one of the many changes that have taken place within the industry, said the partners, adding that many significant changes have also come in the workplace.

Elaborating, they said the younger generations now dominating workplaces like MBK have different needs and priorities than those that preceded them, and firms that want to be successful must acknowledge this and respond accordingly.

And flexible schedules are just part of the equation, said D’Agostino, adding that these generations place a premium on work-life balance and how to achieve that balance.

As an example, he recalled a few younger team members departing at 5:15 p.m. during the height of tax season to go to spinning class, something those in his generation wouldn’t think about doing.

But beyond a need to go to the gym when they need to go the gym, these generations want different things from their work, and they want them more quickly than previous generations, he went on.

“They want diversity in their work situation,” D’Agostino said. “They don’t want to just do a tax return; they want to do consulting work, they want to do something above and beyond that, they want to do things that are interesting to them, and they want challenges.

“In order for this firm to continue to survive, we have to be flexible and accommodate the next generation,” he went on. “That’s what every firm is dealing with; I’m resistant to change, but things have to change, because this is the next generation of leadership here, and this is how they operate.”

Meanwhile, another change that has taken place at MBK is a greater focus on giving back to the community and getting involved with its many nonprofits and causes, said Reale, who couldn’t speak to how things were 75 years ago, but can point to a dramatic change over the 23 years she has been with the firm.

“Twenty years ago, we would do one or two charity days,” she recalled. “And now, every other Friday, there’s a specific dress-down for charity, and some of our team members pick a special organization each month, and we do something for the community each month, whether it’s a service, or stuff the bus, or bringing in toys for the holidays, or providing needed items for the homeless … as a firm, we’re much more involved.”

As an example, she cited work involving an employee who was born in Ukraine and whose family was still in that country when the war with Russia started.

“When that war began, they needed certain things,” she recalled, adding that a local church put out a call for items, and the firm answered that call. Indeed, clothing and other items were donated by employees and clients alike over several days during tax season.

“You couldn’t walk in our lobby; they took three truckloads of items to that church,” she went on. “And that really hit home because it affected one of our team members.”

This heightened involvement in the community is important to the younger team members at MBK, said D’Agostino, and it’s one of the many cultural traits that will aid efforts to recruit and retain talent.

“They want to feel that the firm is behind certain community activities and certain charities because that’s important to them beyond the work environment,” he said. “Usually, it’s one of the staff people that takes the lead on these initiatives, and they really do enjoy it.”

 

Bottom Line

The photos along the walls in the Founders Room generally speak to another time. Indeed, most of those in the pictures have passed away, and the black-and-white images are stark reminders of just how much technology has advanced and the world has changed.

Still, the partners we spoke with said that, when it comes to the business of accounting and auditing, what truly matters most hasn’t changed since 1948, and it won’t change. This would be the matter of working closely with clients to handle their needs and help them set a course for success. And the ability to do this, as stated earlier, comes down to having people who care.

This has always been the main ingredient in the success formula, and as MBK looks forward to the next 75 years, it isn’t about to change that recipe.

Hayley Procon Takes the Route of a True Entrepreneur

By
Special Coverage Women in Businesss

From the Grounds Up

Hayley Procon

Hayley Procon entered college with the goal of one day getting into broadcast journalism.

In fact, her ambition was to be the “next Erin Andrews,” as she put it, referencing the well-known sideline reporter for FOX on its NFL broadcasts.

“I loved baseball, and I still love baseball; I just wanted to be on the sideline for the Red Sox,” she told BusinessWest, adding that it wasn’t long after arriving at Suffolk University in Boston that she realized that this wasn’t a realistic, or even desirable, goal.

And upon transferring to Springfield College, she would set a new goal — to be her own boss.

“I definitely didn’t want to work for someone else,” she explained, with a note of extreme confidence in her voice. “I didn’t want to put in the work and put in the effort and see someone else basically reap the benefits; I don’t want to work hard for someone else’s success.”

She kept pursuing that goal and made it reality in what would be called a joint venture with her mother, Kristen Procon. Together, they acquired an established business, Common Grounds, a coffee shop on busy Boston Road in Wilbraham, while she was still in college — a venture for which she would win the Spirit Award from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

“I definitely didn’t want to work for someone else. I didn’t want to put in the work and put in the effort and see someone else basically reap the benefits; I don’t want to work hard for someone else’s success.”

Together, the partners made a few subtle changes, building on an existing foundation, and have built on that success story. While doing so, though, they have taken things to a different level, becoming serial entrepreneurs with the opening of Aura Day Spa in Ludlow, a new venture they have taken from the ground up — as opposed to the grounds up with the coffee shop.

As she talked about these ventures, Procon used many of the words and phrases summoned by others profiled over the years in BusinessWest’s Women in Business sections. She said her work has been fun and rewarding, but also challenging and, at times, a little frightening.

In the end, though, she has no second thoughts about the entrepreneurial path she has chosen because she’s ultimately doing what she set out to do back in college — put her name over the door, figuratively if not literally, and sign the front of the paycheck, not the back.

“I really enjoy it,” she said of the entrepreneur’s life. “There are some days when I wish I did the 9-to-5 and went to work for someone else, but I don’t think I would have been happy in the long run.”

 

Bean Entrepreneurial

Procon told BusinessWest that she’d been coming to Common Grounds, a popular spot in the back of a large office and retail plaza on Boston Road, when she was in high school.

The business came onto the market in September 2020 — yes, the height of the pandemic — and, despite the many challenges facing all businesses at that time, but especially those in the broad hospitality sector, Hayley and her mother decided to take the plunge.

Haley Procon and her business partner and mother, Kristen Procon

Haley Procon and her business partner and mother, Kristen Procon, have become true serial entrepreneurs, starting with Common Grounds and then opening Aura Day Spa.

“It was COVID, and everything was still pretty weird,” she recalled, using that word to sum up a time when many consumers were still hunkering down, college students like herself (she was just starting her senior year) were mostly taking courses remotely, and those in hospitality were managing day to day. “We found out it was for sale, we walked in, we sat down with the owner, and we bought it a month later.”

As noted earlier, the two partners took the existing, and fairly successful, business and made some minor but important tweaks, including adjustments to the menu, changing some furniture, extending the hours of operation, and, perhaps most importantly, opening on Sundays.

“Sunday is a good coffee day, a good breakfast day,” Procon said. “But overall, this place has been running great, and we wanted to keep the same vibe; we have a lot of great regulars, and we have great work-of-mouth.”

She said the business draws heavily from the plaza it’s located in, as well as the massive Post Office Park, home to a YMCA and dozens of businesses large and small, just down the street.

While she’s managing her own business, this is certainly not what she was thinking about when she was in college and planning and plotting to work for herself one day — and soon.

“I never thought I’d own a coffee shop … I’ve never worked with coffee before, and I figured, ‘how hard can it be?’” Procon asked rhetorically, before answering the question by saying that every business, even an existing one with a core of loyal customers, comes with a complete set of challenges.

“I just loved the idea of having a spa and building from scratch. My hobby is building; I like taking things from the ground up and just expanding from there. Seeing it from start to finish is something I really wanted to do.”

She said the partners split up the duties of running the business, with her mother handling most of the accounting and bookkeeping responsibilities while she tackles marketing, social media, and many of the day-to-day operations.

It’s a juggling act that was taken to a much higher plane when the two decided to double down, if you will, and take entrepreneurial plunge, this time with a new business, a spa they opened in Ludlow last September called Aura Day Spa.

Unlike Common Grounds, this was something that she aspired to do and has been thinking about for some time now.

“A spa has always been a dream of mine,” she said. “And when we realized how well we did with this place [Common Grounds] and how well we worked together, we kind of looked at each other and said, ‘let’s try to open a spa.’

“Neither one of us is in the cosmetology industry; we don’t do any of the services,” she went on. “But I just loved the idea of having a spa and building from scratch. My hobby is building; I like taking things from the ground up and just expanding from there. Seeing it from start to finish is something I really wanted to do.”

Having a dream and making it a reality are two different things, she acknowledged, adding that she did extensive research into everything from where her spa concept might work (Ludlow was quickly identified as a community in need of such a facility) to what types of services should be offered.

“I was all over the internet looking at spas; I went around here looking at spas, and just pieced together how ours would run,” she told BusinessWest. “We have no experience in the industry, but we did our homework, and here we are.”

That due diligence led to a former dance studio on Holyoke Street that the partners gutted and converted to a facility offering everything from facials to massage; body contouring to a sauna.

The venture is off to a solid start that Procon credits to hiring the right people to provide those services, some aggressive efforts to get the word out about the facility, and continued work researching the industry with an eye toward best practices and the best avenues for achieving results.

“I’m always looking at other places — East Coast, West Coast, just seeing what other places are doing and how to stay up to date in the industry and what we can add,” she said. “I just like to stay on top of all that and find new ways to bring people and add more services.”

Procon dares to ponder where this venture might go next and perhaps the possibility of opening several Aura spas. For now, though, she and her mother have their hands more than full managing these two businesses, as well as the ups and downs and emotional swings that are part of parcel to being business owners.

“It’s a grind,” she said, borrowing another term, sort of, from her coffee-shop business. “I love the idea of being a business owner, and everything falls on you at that point; I just knew that this is exactly what I wanted.

“I realize that the more I put into it, the more I’ll get out of it,” she went on. “I’m excited to get to that point — I know it will take a few years, but we’ll get there.”

 

Skin in the Game

When asked about the path she’s chosen and what she likes about being an entrepreneur, Procon said this life offers her everything she wanted and expected. Well, sort of.

“I like the freedom that it offers,” she explained. “I have very little right now — I’m tied to both of these places for quite a long time, but just being able to show people what we did and what we started and what our goals are, it’s really rewarding, knowing that I’m in here most mornings at 5:30 and then go over to the spa. Some people call me crazy, but it’s very rewarding.”

It is certainly that, and the woman who wanted to be the next Erin Andrews found something much better.

 

Obligations Don’t Vanish Because Employees Are Working at Home

By Contributor
Law

Managing Hybrid or Remote Workers

By John S. Gannon, Esq.

 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely and other flexible work models like hybrid schedules were fairly uncommon. Now, allowing employees to work remotely at least a few days a week has become the norm for jobs that can be done from home.

One research summary suggested that 74% of U.S. companies are using, or plan to implement, a permanent hybrid work model in 2023, and 55% of employees want to work remotely at least three days a week. With remote work becoming more and more common, businesses need to be aware of employment-related legal issues that can bubble up when employees are working from home (and probably in their pajamas).

 

Wage and Hour Issues

One of the biggest challenges for businesses with teleworkers is compliance with wage and hour laws, which are laws that govern issues like payment of wages and meal breaks. Federal and state laws can differ considerably on these topics.

For example, federal law, and many state-law equivalents, do not require that an employer provide employees with meal breaks. Here in Massachusetts; however, state law requires employers to provide a 30-minute unpaid meal break to those who work more than six hours in a work day. In New Hampshire, workers are required to get a meal break after working five hours, unless it’s feasible to eat while working. Massachusetts does not have this ‘feasibility’ exception to its meal-break statute.

“With remote work becoming more and more common, businesses need to be aware of employment-related legal issues that can bubble up when employees are working from home.”

Similarly, some states (including Massachusetts) require the payout of accrued, unused vacation time upon separation from employment. Most states do not have this requirement. Other states require employers to reimburse employees for home-related business expenses, such as a laptop, upgrading home internet, or phone service.

Although this is type of reimbursement is technically not required in Massachusetts, the state attorney general’s office has suggested that employers should reimburse expenses that are “unavoidable and necessary” (whatever that means). Bottom line, businesses need to be familiar with the wage and hour laws of each state where employees live if remote work is allowed.

One wage and hour issue that does not vary from state to state is the requirement to pay non-exempt workers for all hours worked. This can be a problem with remote workers, regardless of where they live. Consider an hourly employee who answers a few emails from home during non-core working hours. This is working time, even if the employee has signed out for the day.

Employers need to have policies and practice in place to make sure all working time at home is recorded and paid for. Otherwise, they might be looking at a costly failure-to-pay-wages lawsuit.

 

Family and Medical Leave Laws

Similar to wage and hour laws, employee family and medical leave entitlements can vary considerably from state to state. As readers are likely aware, in Massachusetts, employees are allowed to take up to 20 weeks of paid leave per year to care for their own medical condition. Full-time employees also earn an additional 40 hours of sick time to use during the year. Employees working from home who live outside of Massachusetts may not be entitled to this leave. However, if they live in Connecticut or New York, they would be entitled to paid medical leave and sick time required by their home state’s laws. Because this issue can be confusing for employees, leave entitlements absolutely need to be addressed in your company handbook and/or policy and procedure manual.

 

Poster and Notice Requirements

Numerous labor and employment laws, including wage and hour laws and family and medical leave laws, require employers to put a poster up in the workplace and provide informational notices to employees in places like a handbook. This obligation does not vanish when employees are working from home. If employees rarely visit the office, the required postings need to be distributed via email or posted on an employee-accessible intranet.

 

Health and Safety Requirements

Even for remote employees, businesses must ensure a safe and secure working environment. This means identifying risks and hazards associated with working in the home and requiring employees to report any work-related injuries or incidents. Even employees working from home are entitled to workers’ compensation for job-related injuries.

 

Consider an Employment-practices Audit

An employment-practices audit is a complete risk-and-liability assessment of your human-resources and compliance operations. Audits are a cost-effective way for employers to confirm that they are meeting their legal requirements under federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Employers with a hybrid or remote workforce should consider engaging labor and employment counsel to conduct an employment-practices audit to detect and fix any of the problems identified in this article (and more).

 

John Gannon is a partner with the Springfield-based law firm Skoler, Abbott & Presser, specializing in employment law and regularly counseling employers on compliance with state and federal laws, including family and medical leave laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Occupational Health and Safety Act; (413) 737-4753; [email protected]

Decision Restricts on Non-Disparagement, Confidentiality Clauses

By Contributor
Law

Case in Point

By Mary Jo Kennedy and Briana Dawkins

 

A recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), McLaren Macomb, has employers in both union and non-union settings reviewing non-disparagement and confidentiality provisions used in their employee-separation agreements for possible legal challenges.

Mary Jo Kennedy

Brianna Dawkins

Brianna Dawkins

In February of this year, the NLRB held that the severance agreements at issue in McLaren Macomb violated the National Labor Relations Act. The employer, a hospital, offered severance agreements to union employees being furloughed that required them to waive certain rights under the act. The agreements included provisions that prohibited furloughed union employees from making statements that could disparage or harm the image of the hospital and prohibited employees from disclosing the terms of the agreement.

The NLRB found that those provisions were overly broad, unlawfully restrictive, and coercive on the employees’ ability to exercise their rights under Section 7 of the act. Section 7 protects the ability of employees and former employees to discuss terms and conditions of employment with co-workers. More broadly, Section 7 affords employees a wide range of protection, including communications with third parties “where the communication is related to an ongoing labor dispute and when the communication is not so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously untrue.”

The NLRB’s decision in McLaren Macomb makes clear that a severance agreement that has a reasonable tendency to interfere, restrain, or coerce the exercise of Section 7 rights by employees is unlawful. An employer that proffers a severance agreement with provisions that would restrict employees’ exercise of their rights under the act may be found in violation of the act. The decision states that it is immaterial whether an employee accepts the agreement. It remains uncertain whether any courts will uphold McLaren Macomb.

“The NLRB’s decision in McLaren Macomb makes clear that a severance agreement that has a reasonable tendency to interfere, restrain, or coerce the exercise of Section 7 rights by employees is unlawful.”

One month after issuance of the McLaren Macomb decision, the NLRB’s general counsel issued a guidance in response to inquiries about the McLaren Macomb decision, which responded to some inquiries regarding the decision’s impact. While not binding or controlling, some key points referenced in this guidance are:

• The McLaren Macomb decision applies to existing separation agreements. The general counsel suggests employers should proactively consider contacting those subject to severance agreements with overly board provisions in order to advise them that the provisions are null and void and that the employer will not seek to enforce the agreements or pursue any penalties;

• Because of the inequality of bargaining power between employees and their employers, it is the role of the NLRB to act “in a public capacity to protect public rights to effectuate the public policy of the act.” Even if the employees agree to broad confidentiality or non-disparagement provisions, the rights of the public may not be waived in a way that precludes the future exercise of Section 7 rights;

• Provisions in any employer communication to employees that tend to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees’ rights under Section 7, if not narrowly tailored, may also be prohibited under Section 7 of the act;

• Confidentiality provisions that are narrowly tailored to restrict the disclosure of proprietary or trade-secret information, and include a time frame on such a restriction, may be considered lawful; and

• Non-disparagement clauses that are narrowly tailored and limited to employee statements about the employer that meet the definition of defamation, as set forth in McLaren Macomb, may be lawful.

With regard to supervisors who are generally not protected under the act, the guidance notes that they would be covered in situations in which an employer retaliates against a supervisor for refusing to act on the employer’s behalf in committing an unfair labor practice under the act. Supervisors, as defined by the act, are individuals who have authority requiring independent judgment to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees in the interest of the employer, or to adjust their grievances, or to effectively recommend such action.

Accordingly, to ensure enforceability of its severance agreements, it is important for employers to classify its employees appropriately with respect to their responsibilities and not solely based on their job titles. Nonetheless, employers may continue to negotiate broader non-disparagement and confidentiality agreements in communications with supervisory employees, which remains unaffected by the McLaren Macomb decision.

Although McLaren Macomb involves union employees, the risk of non-compliance following this decision extends to all employers subject to the act, including non-union employers. Small businesses with non-union employees, while least likely at risk of a claim of unfair labor practices, are also subject to this decision. While employers may choose not to follow the proactive advice of the NLRB general counsel, employers should consider reviewing their current severance agreements and consider revising the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses to avoid possible non-compliance.

Employers with questions regarding the enforceability of their non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses may wish to seek advice from their legal counsel.

 

Mary Jo Kennedy is a partner, and Briana Dawkins is an associate, with the law firm Bulkley Richardson, which has offices locally in Springfield and Hadley.

Memory Screening Can Be an Important Early Step in Dementia

By Contributor
Healthcare News

Don’t Ignore the Signs

Like with any disease, Cheryl Moran said, early detection of Alzheimer’s can make a big difference.

That’s why the Atrium at Cardinal Drive in Agawam and Orchard Valley at Wilbraham, both Benchmark mind and memory-care communities, have been hosting a series of memory screenings at area senior centers.

“Over the past 25-plus years, we’ve seen that people and families affected by dementia often delay planning, which makes for a much more challenging situation later,” said Moran, executive director of the Atrium. “By offering this to the community, we want to help ease the burden.”

Alzheimer’s disease and dementia affects nearly 350,000 people in Massachusetts, and the numbers continue to grow.

Cheryl Moran

Cheryl Moran

“Over the past 25-plus years, we’ve seen that people and families affected by dementia often delay planning, which makes for a much more challenging situation later.”

Memory screenings, Moran noted, are appropriate for anyone concerned about memory loss or experiencing symptoms of dementia or who believes they are at risk due to family history. Screenings like the ones being offered at area senior center provide a safe, simple, face-to-face way to check a person’s memory, language, intellectual functions, and other thinking skills using a series of questions and tasks.

Screenings have already taken place at Wilbraham Senior Center and West Springfield Senior Center in April, and the next two are slated for Wednesday, May 17 from 10 a.m. to noon at Agawam Senior Center, 954 Main St.; and Wednesday, May 31 from noon to 2 p.m. at Palmer Senior Center, 1029 Central St. Attendees can register for either event by calling (413) 821-0605 for Agawam or (413) 283-2670 for Palmer.

A screening can indicate whether someone should consult with a medical provider in order to identify what is causing memory loss. If dementia is the cause, early diagnosis can help both individuals and their family members learn about the disease, set realistic expectations, and plan for their future together.

“If they are able to obtain a diagnosis for the cause of their dementia, it can help to better understand what the individual is struggling with and what to expect as the dementia progresses over time,” said Julie Waniewski, executive director of Armbrook Village in Westfield, which has a memory-care neighborhood called Compass. “There are also clinical drug trials that they can partake in to aid in research and hopefully find a cure one day.”

 

What to Look For

According to the Alzheimer’s Assoc., memory loss that disrupts daily life may be a symptom of Alzheimer’s or other dementia. The organization lists 10 signs in particular to keep an eye on:

1. Forgetting recently learned information. Similar signs include forgetting important dates or events, asking the same questions over and over, and increasingly needing to rely on memory aids (such as reminder notes or electronic devices) or family members for things they used to handle on their own.

Julie Waniewski

Julie Waniewski

“If they are able to obtain a diagnosis for the cause of their dementia, it can help to better understand what the individual is struggling with and what to expect as the dementia progresses over time.”

2. Challenges in planning or solving problems. Some people living with dementia may experience changes in their ability to develop and follow a plan or work with numbers. They may have trouble following a familiar recipe or keeping track of monthly bills. They may have difficulty concentrating and take much longer to do things than they did before.

3. Difficulty completing familiar tasks. People with Alzheimer’s often find it hard to complete daily tasks. Sometimes they may have trouble driving to a familiar location, organizing a grocery list, or remembering the rules of a favorite game.

4. Confusion with time or place. People living with Alzheimer’s can lose track of dates, seasons, and the passage of time. They may have trouble understanding something if it is not happening immediately. Sometimes they may forget where they are or how they got there.

5. Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships. For some people, having vision problems is a sign of Alzheimer’s. This may lead to difficulty with balance or trouble reading. They may also have problems judging distance and determining color or contrast, causing issues with driving.

6. New problems with words in speaking or writing. People living with Alzheimer’s may have trouble following or joining a conversation. They may stop in the middle of a conversation and have no idea how to continue, or they may repeat themselves. They may also struggle with vocabulary, have trouble naming a familiar object, or use the wrong name.

7. Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps. A person living with Alzheimer’s disease may put things in unusual places. They may lose things and be unable to go back over their steps to find them again. He or she may accuse others of stealing, especially as the disease progresses.

8. Decreased or poor judgment. Individuals may experience changes in judgment or decision making. For example, they may use poor judgment when dealing with money or pay less attention to grooming or keeping themselves clean.

9. Withdrawal from work or social activities. A person living with Alzheimer’s disease may experience changes in the ability to hold or follow a conversation. As a result, he or she may withdraw from hobbies, social activities, or other engagements. They may have trouble keeping up with a favorite team or activity.

10. Changes in mood and personality. Individuals living with Alzheimer’s may experience mood and personality changes. They can become confused, suspicious, depressed, fearful, or anxious. They may be easily upset at home, with friends, or when out of their comfort zone.

“There are many warning signs of memory issues or early-stage dementia,” Waniewski said. “Sometimes a person is struggling to prepare meals, which leads to improper nutrition, or they are not taking their medications correctly, the house is unkept, appliances may not be working, or their personal hygiene is not what it used to be. They may also ask the same question repeatedly, which is a sign of short-term memory loss. They may lack interest in previously enjoyed activities or group gatherings, which is usually because they are afraid that others will start to notice that they are struggling cognitively.”

Other warning signs may include piles of unopened mail or shutoff notices, indicating that their executive functioning is declining and finances are becoming difficult to handle on their own, Waniewski added. “Also, their car may have new signs of damage, or they may have gotten lost driving, and the yard may be overgrown and not tended to.”

 

Next Steps

While not every symptom is a sign of dementia, the Alzheimer’s Assoc. stresses the importance of getting screened, as early detection matters.

“If you notice one or more signs in yourself or another person, it can be difficult to know what to do,” the organization notes. “It’s natural to feel uncertain or nervous about discussing these changes with others. Voicing worries about your own health might make them seem more ‘real.’ Or you may fear upsetting someone by sharing observations about changes in his or her abilities or behavior. However, these are significant health concerns that should be evaluated by a doctor, and it’s important to take action to figure out what’s going on.”

Early detection may also open doors to treatments that may provide some relief of symptoms and help maintain independence longer, as well as increase one’s chances of participating in clinical drug trials that help advance research. Waniewski noted that Armbrook Village and its parent company, Senior Living Residences, are affiliated with Boston University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, which offers clinical trials in which people can participate.

New Alzheimer’s Drug Awaits Approval, Spurs Hope

By Contributor
Healthcare News

Making Progress

 

In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Leqembi (lecanemab-irmb) via the Accelerated Approval pathway for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Leqembi is the second of a new category of medications approved for Alzheimer’s disease that target the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease. According to the FDA, these medications represent an important advancement in the ongoing fight to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease.

“Alzheimer’s disease immeasurably incapacitates the lives of those who suffer from it and has devastating effects on their loved ones,” said Dr. Billy Dunn, director of the Office of Neuroscience in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “This treatment option is the latest therapy to target and affect the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s, instead of only treating the symptoms of the disease.”

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder affecting more than 6.5 million Americans that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out simple tasks. While the specific causes of Alzheimer’s are not fully known, it is characterized by changes in the brain — including amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles — that result in loss of neurons and their connections. These changes affect a person’s ability to remember and think.

Leqembi was approved using the Accelerated Approval pathway, under which the FDA may approve drugs for serious conditions where there is an unmet medical need and a drug is shown to have an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients.

Researchers evaluated Leqembi’s efficacy in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 856 patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Treatment was initiated in patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia and confirmed presence of amyloid beta pathology. Patients receiving the treatment had significant dose- and time-dependent reduction of amyloid beta plaque, with patients receiving the approved dose of lecanemab every two weeks having a statistically significant reduction in brain amyloid plaque from baseline to week 79 compared to the placebo arm, which had no reduction of amyloid beta plaque.

These results support the accelerated approval of Leqembi, which is based on the observed reduction of amyloid beta plaque, a marker of Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid beta plaque was quantified using positron emission tomography imaging to estimate the brain levels of amyloid beta plaque in a composite of brain regions expected to be widely affected by Alzheimer’s disease pathology compared to a brain region expected to be spared of such pathology.

According to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, neurologists in the U.S. have a strong interest in prescribing the Leqembi, with the majority of 73 specialists surveyed saying they would prescribe the treatment if the government fully approves it.

The March 2023 survey, from Spherix Global Insights, found that a healthy proportion of neurologists had already begun prescribing Leqembi within a month of commercial availability, while most have chosen to wait for the FDA’s decision when it reviews the request by Eisai, the drug’s manufacturer, for traditional approval on July 6. If traditional FDA approval is granted, nearly all of the surveyed specialists said they planned to prescribe the treatment, mostly within the year following the greenlight, Spherix reported.

The prescribing information for Leqembi includes a warning for amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), which are known to occur with antibodies of this class. ARIA usually does not have symptoms, although serious and life-threatening events rarely may occur. ARIA most commonly presents as temporary swelling in areas of the brain that usually resolves over time and may be accompanied by small spots of bleeding in or on the surface of the brain, though some people may have symptoms such as headache, confusion, dizziness, vision changes, nausea, and seizure.

Another warning for Leqembi is for a risk of infusion-related reactions, with symptoms such as flu-like symptoms, nausea, vomiting, and changes in blood pressure. The most common side effects of Leqembi were infusion-related reactions, headache, and ARIA.

According to Fierce Pharma, while there is another new drug on the market for Alzheimer’s — Aduhelm, which Eisai helped create with Biogen — that drug is commercially non-viable at the moment.

Specifically, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services refused to cover payments of Aduhelm, which was also damaged by the controversial way the FDA approved the drug in 2021. The drug passed the regulatory hurdle despite serious safety and efficacy questions, including from the FDA’s own drug-review experts, who denied its approval at the drug’s advisory committee and were overruled by the FDA itself several months later.

UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy Looks Back on His Accomplished Tenure

By
UMass Amherst
Features Special Coverage

Moving Beyond a ‘Safety School’

chancellor in recent history at UMass Amherst

As the longest-serving chancellor in recent history at UMass Amherst, Kumble Subbaswamy has posed for more than a few photos during his tenure.

Kumble Subbaswamy recalls that, when he arrived at the UMass Amherst campus a dozen years ago, his first priority was to bring some needed stability to a school that had seen a number of leadership changes over the previous decade.

After that, he said, his main goals were to bring the school to a higher level in terms of national rankings, prestige, and reputation — locally, nationally, and internationally.

As he prepares to step aside in a few months and move on to next challenges and opportunities in his career, Subbaswamy, the longest-serving chancellor in the modern era at the school, talked with BusinessWest about how he believes those broad goals have been accomplished — and the manner in which they’ve been accomplished.

In a wide-ranging interview, he talked about everything from the school’s climb in the rankings, and what it means, to the challenges facing UMass and all colleges and universities today and tomorrow, to the pandemic — what it was like to lead the school through that tumultuous time, and how that period changed higher education.

He said he has a rather unique way of measuring how he fared with all that and his legacy, if you will, on the campus — the number of students, and others, who want to stop and take a selfie with him.

It’s an official measuring stick, to be sure, but one that indicates just how far this campus has come during his tenure, and how his leadership helped generate and sustain the very palpable sense of momentum at the school.

 

BusinessWest: Turn the clock back 12 years, if you will, and talk about the goals you set and how you fared with achieving those goals.

Subbaswamy: “One of the first goals was simply to create some stability. There had been a lot of turnover in a short period of time; there was instability, insecurity, and a lot of drama coming out of Whitmore [the school’s administration building]. So there was a strong desire to stabilize that situation so the campus could then go about its business of achieving its mission of teaching, research, and outreach. And there was no guarantee this would happen — it’s a complex job where you have multiple audiences. You have the system office; you have to keep them happy. You have to keep the campus happy, you have to keep the unions happy, you have to keep the local legislative group happy, and so on. So none of that was a given.

“But when we were able to focus on improving the campus … one important focus that became self-evident as I was looking at the data was that, while we claimed to be the best public university in New England, the data didn’t really show that, especially student-success data. We were much further behind UConn, for example.

“That was the beginning of what I’ll call installing a planning culture — always being data-driven and doing plan assessment and improvement on a continuous basis. That was not necessarily the culture on the campus, at least not in a systematic way. So when I look back and identify one important thing that helped turn the campus around, I would say it was creating a culture of strategic planning, being data-driven, and always thinking about improving those aspects in which we could be doing better or where we’re not doing as well as our competition.”

UMass Amherst

During Kumble Subbaswamy’s tenure, the UMass Amherst campus became much more of a destination for top students.

BusinessWest: What was the biggest step forward taken by the university during your tenure?

Subbaswamy: “Improvement in graduation rates would be one example, but there are other measures, such as people doing internships, job placement, and more, and all this showed up in U.S. News & World Report rankings, because there is strong weight given to graduation rates, and without being overly selective, when you achieve high graduation rates, you get lots of points.

“It’s not that we’re pursuing rankings, but those metrics that we care about, and achieving progress with them, really does help. And when we went from number 52 in national public university rankings to number 26 — we’re hovering right around 25 or 26 — that made people take notice of Massachusetts.

“That rise in the rankings gave everyone associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started taking notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice. It started a positive cycle where more and more highly qualified students started applying, our classes got better, and our results got even better.”

 

BusinessWest: Talk more about how that rise in the rankings was achieved.

Subbaswamy: “Back in 2013, based on what was going on, as well as part of our requirement for re-accreditation, we developed a strategic plan; we declared that our goal was to make UMass Amherst a destination of choice. We had been thought of as a safety school in previous decades, and we were essentially saying, ‘no, that’s not who we are — we’re the flagship of the Massachusetts system, we’re the flagship of the Commonwealth.’ In fact, that became our tagline.

“This was a strategic plan that sought ways to make improvements across the board, with a particular emphasis on undergraduate education, where we really did need to catch up with some of the neighboring states. It then became a rallying cry for the entire campus; every department, every college focused on what they needed to be doing better in order to retain our students, make sure they graduate on time, placement, bringing in more internships and other experiences that help students get jobs, improving student experiences, and improving student outcomes. And that culture is now part and parcel to who we are at UMass.”

Seen here with former Gov. Charlie Baker, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy says managing the school through COVID was an intense challenge marked by decisions involving “life and death.”

BusinessWest: What has this experience of leading UMass at this critical time in its history been like for you, personally and professionally?

Subbaswamy: “It’s been exhilarating. It’s been the pinnacle of my career in terms of the personal satisfaction I’ve had in being able to rally the campus — all sectors of the campus — to a single goal of being better, serving our students better, serving the Commonwealth better.

“We’re trying to make people feel like they belong. In fact, belonging is a major theme in our equity and diversity efforts — we want people to feel that they belong here, and if they don’t, then we want to know why and see how we can improve that. It’s been very rewarding to see the campus feel like an entity with a purpose and with a vision.”

“That rise in the rankings gave everyone associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started taking notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice.”

BusinessWest: Is there an area where there is some significant work still to do on the Amherst campus?

Subbaswamy: “One issue that has come up recently, and one that has been partly exacerbated by the pandemic as well, has been housing in general. Housing, in Amherst and the surrounding communities where our students, faculty, and staff live, is becoming considerably more expensive and harder to find, especially in the past few years. We’re faced with not just a shortage of housing, but a shortage of affordable housing, because that’s a significant component of the cost of education for anyone who comes to Amherst.

“Some serious joint planning with the surrounding communities is needed to try to address the need for more affordable housing so that this university doesn’t become a university that can only serve the affluent.”

 

BusinessWest: We’re seeing some demographic shifts, especially with regard to the numbers of high-school graduates, as well as other trends involving enrollment. What do these mean for the university, and higher education in general?

Subbaswamy: “There has been a lot written about the fact that the number of 18-year-olds, across the country, but in the New England area especially, will drop significantly starting in 2025 for 10 years. But we’re already seeing a lot of changes taking place here. There are some smaller colleges that are really financially stressed, to the point where they may close or merge — we’ve seen both closures and mergers recently. We’ve also seen regional universities, and some of the state colleges, see some decline in enrollment, and we’ve seen community colleges see a similar decline in enrollment.

“What we’ve seen is that more and more students are beginning to apply to the large flagships, and so, nationwide, schools like UMass and others in our class have seen higher numbers of applications, and so we haven’t seen that pinch of demographic decline. I think that’s because of that shift in thinking; some people who used to apply to small colleges are now asking, ‘will that school be there in four years?’ and thinking they’re better off applying to the state university, especially one that’s robust in terms of enrollment and support from the state. There’s definitely some of that going on.

“Also, there was a time when state boundaries mattered, but now they don’t for education. The University of Pittsburgh and the University of Alabama actively recruit in Massachusetts, and we actively recruit in Texas and places like that. It’s a national — in fact, international — marketplace, so quality matters; education matters. So to keep focusing on those things is very important.”

 

BusinessWest: Beyond these demographic changes, what are the other significant challenges facing higher education today?

Subbaswamy: “Affordability is certainly a challenge … even when it comes to public options. For in-state residents, we’re now $31,000 to $32,000 a year, and for a middle-class family, this is a really big hit. So we have to ask, ‘is this model sustainable, and if it is not, how do we bring it under control?’

“What role does online education play in this? Does residency become more a luxury? Do we reduce it so there’s two years online and two years residency? There are many large questions to be answered, and I think this is going to become more and more of an issue moving forward.

“And this is for all public universities in all segments; this is not a UMass Amherst problem, and it’s not a UMass system problem. Affordability looms large for higher education in general, and what that implies for society.”

 

BusinessWest: Your tenure obviously included the pandemic years, a difficult and intense time for all those in higher education. What was it like to lead the school through that crisis?

Subbaswamy: “Toward the latter half of March 2020, we were just breaking for spring break, and just before then, we got the news that the virus was spreading, so we should shut down and send people home. We thought we were sending people home for one extra week; little did we know that was going to be a more-than-two-year deal before we returned to normalcy, whatever that means.

“Like everyone else in the country, we had the enormous task of adjusting to remote learning and remote work in a matter of two weeks … and, along the way, there were decisions for which there was no rulebook; in fact, whatever rules or guidelines were there were changing on a daily basis.

“There were decisions we had to make — like, in the middle of the semester, do we send everyone home? Or at the beginning of the semester, do we bring everyone back, or only a small percentage of the students? If so, how many, and who? And the town was worried: ‘you’re going to bring back 10,000 students? You’re going to bring back 30,000 students? Do you know what that’s going to do to our community?’ At that time, the business community was really struggling and wanted to see the students come back.

“The uncertainties and the competing factors that had to be considered, and the speed with which decisions had to be made, was nothing like what we were ever used to or learned or how any management book would tell you how to do it. We had to make decisions on a rapid basis with a lot of uncertainty, and it was unusual in that you could say that, literally, lives were at stake.

“You were making life-and-death decisions; I don’t ever want to go through that again, and I’m thankful that we got it right, and there weren’t any campus-related COVID deaths that I’m aware of.”

UMass

UMass Amherst made dramatic leaps in the national rankings during Subbaswamy’s tenure.

BusinessWest: Talk some more about some of the hard decisions that had to be made and what it was like for you, as chancellor, to be the one ultimately making them. What was it like day-to-day and week-to week?

Subbaswamy: “By not bringing the students back in the fall of 2020, were ended up having to furlough, for a long period of time, more than 800 employees. That hurts — these are members of our community, and we did our best to make sure that they kept their health insurance and so forth. But nonetheless, lives were disrupted because of that.

“These were difficult and consequential decisions that affected people’s lives and livelihoods, and I don’t wish this upon my successor. It was tense; from morning till evening, you were getting constant reports about what’s going on, how many people were in isolation, how many people are in quarantine, what’s going on in the town. — you were getting daily reports on cases, hospitalizations, if there were any, and much more. And in the middle of all that, we were having internal discussions about how to manage the budget because, between the two fiscal years, we had a $200 million revenue loss. How do you recover from that?

“It was a situation where we couldn’t govern by consensus, even within the leadership team, because there were members who felt very strongly, in one direction or the other, that they were right. But two factions can’t both be right, and I had to make decisions based on my best judgment rather than arriving at a consensus, which is what we usually do. It was very tense, and you just hoped that you made the right decision.”

 

BusinessWest: What did you learn about yourself as a manager and a leader through that time?

Subbaswamy: “I couldn’t show my own frustrations and my own self-doubt in terms of whether I’m making the right call. You have to provide confidence to everyone that we know what we’re doing. As a leader, you always have to put on a strong front, show composure, and show resolve, and that takes its toll, especially when you go back home and start reflecting on the decisions you’ve made.

“By listening and using what experience has taught you over the years, you tend to make the right calls. It was a very stressful time. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of people, even younger people, leave jobs, leave presidencies, because those were very stressful times. No one was happy, everyone wanted something different, and they took out their frustrations on the university.”

 

BusinessWest: How did higher education change because of the pandemic, and what has changed forever?

Subbaswamy: ‘Fundamentally, online education came to be accepted as a result of the pandemic. Until then, there was sort of a significant prejudice that online wasn’t good enough. Residential universities thought of it as second-class education. But once everyone was forced to go online, you saw two things: you can’t suddenly say, ‘we’re giving you a second-class education and charging you first-class rates,’ so people started taking notice of the fact that you can, and must, do just as well. And secondly, everyone was really surprised by how much technology had improved in recent times — and even in real time.

“Zoom became the coin of the realm, and its improvements became accelerated because they had the investment money to do so. In classes and in business, everyone started being connected online in very effective ways. The advantages of remote work, the efficacy and the ability to conduct business, including learning and teaching online, has fundamentally changed to the point where you’re seeing what we call UMass Flex — where flexible work is the way of the future. We will get to a state where UMass Amherst can be experienced almost just as well, in ways that matter, from wherever you are.”

 

BusinessWest: Finally, do you have any advice for your successor?

Subbaswamy: “I would first advise him to learn the local culture and work within those cultural norms in order to bring about change. You can’t bring about change unless you’re willing to understand and work inside that culture.

“Ours is a very consultative and participatory campus, where students have their say, and our faculty and staff have their say, both through normal governance but also unions. So someone who builds trust and is accessible and available, and works through our established procedures and consultative process, will succeed.”

 

Suit Shows That Employers Must Engage in Interactive Dialogue

By Contributor
Law Special Coverage

Return-to-office Mandates and Related Woes

By Trevor Brice

As pressure increases on companies to have an in-person presence post-pandemic, many companies have issued return-to-office mandates. Some of these, if they are not heeded by employees currently working remotely, can result in severe penalties, including loss of compensation, bonuses, even termination.

While these companies can impose these penalties on their wayward employees, it is now the time to remember one of the reasons why employees request to work from home: as a disability- or age-related accommodation.

On March 28, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced suit against an employer who disciplined an employee in relation to one of these policies. This serves as a reminder of what employers’ responsibilities are to employees with age- or disability-related accommodation requests, despite being able to pressure employees to come back to the office.

 

COVID-19 Policies and Protected Class

In general, employers can impose any sort of discipline or policy on their employees. However, there are exceptions to this general rule, specifically that employers cannot discipline or impose policy that is either directly or indirectly based on the employee’s protected class (e.g., race, color, disability, age, sex, or ancestry).

“When an employee requests a reasonable accommodation, the employer has a duty to engage in an interactive dialogue with the employee and attempt to come up with a reasonable accommodation that does not impose an undue hardship on the employer.”

As we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, most employers are setting up policies mandating that employees come back to the office, some of them with penalties attached if employees do not comply. For example, Apple recently threatened disciplinary action for employees that are not coming into the office at least three days per week. Policies like these are facially neutral and non-discriminatory in their purpose. Every employer has a legitimate business interest in enforcing attendance, and policies like these have become more commonplace.

However, these policies run the risk of disability or even age discrimination. Some employers might ask why this is the case if they are enforcing a neutral policy. The usual issue will be that a policy like this will be imposed on an employee who is older or has disabilities that make them more at risk of contracting COVID-19. As such, when a policy like this is imposed, the employee will ask, due to their disability or age, to continue to work from home as a reasonable accommodation. If and when this happens, employers have a duty to engage in an interactive dialogue with the requesting employee and try to fashion an accommodation that will allow the worker to continue their work without undue hardship to the employer.

As long as this conversation, the interactive dialogue, is had with the requesting employee, it will be difficult for the employee to say that they have been subject to discrimination or that the employer failed to provide a reasonable accommodation. However, the problem arises when the employer does not initiate this conversation.

 

The EEOC Lawsuit

On March 28, the EEOC sued a company for allegedly denying repeated requests by an employee for remote work as a reasonable accommodation due to the increased risk of COVID-19 and further was alleged to violate the law by retaliating against the employee for taking medical leave to avoid exposure.

The facts in the case, EEOC v. Total Systems Services Inc., involve a customer-service representative who repeatedly requested to work remotely as a reasonable accommodation starting at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 to decrease the risk of her exposure to COVID-19. The employer, in response, without engaging in an interactive dialogue with the disabled employee, repeatedly denied the requests despite granting remote-work requests to other employees.

While there has not been a ruling in this case yet, it is clear why the EEOC sued the company in question. As a reminder, when an employee requests a reasonable accommodation, the employer has a duty to engage in an interactive dialogue with the employee and attempt to come up with a reasonable accommodation that does not impose an undue hardship on the employer. Here, the employer did not attempt to engage in an interactive dialogue, denying the request (in this case, repeatedly) outright.

Further, even if the company had attempted to engage in an interactive dialogue with the disabled employee (which it did not), the employer would still potentially be liable because it would be more than likely that the employer could not show that the accommodation request was an undue hardship.

As the EEOC’s lawsuit notes, most of the employee’s department was allowed to work remotely, despite denying the employee’s request to also work remotely. The company could have possibly shown that the employee’s request was an undue hardship if other employees in the employee’s department were not allowed to work remotely or if a compelling reason was given why the employee and other employees in her department needed to be on site. However, this was not the case here.

 

Conclusion

As it becomes more and more commonplace for employers to require their employees to come into the office post-pandemic, there will increasingly be more litigation from employees who suffer from disabilities or are older, who ask to be given accommodation to work from home in order to avoid COVID-19 exposure.

As shown above, employers, once a reasonable accommodation has been made, must engage in an interactive dialogue with the employee to see if there is a reasonable accommodation that can be granted without undue hardship. It is possible to show that the employee’s request is an undue hardship, but there needs to be an interactive dialogue with the employee first.

If your company is imposing these return-to-work policies and it is questionable whether there is an undue hardship with an employee’s request for a reasonable-accommodation request, it is prudent to seek out representation from employment counsel.

 

Trevor Brice is an attorney who specializes in labor and employment-law matters at the Royal Law Firm LLP, a woman-owned, women-managed corporate law firm that is certified as a women’s business enterprise with the Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office, the National Assoc. of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms, and the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.

For Those Caring for Those with Dementia, Education, Understanding Are Keys

By
Healthcare News Special Coverage

Living in Their World

Beth Cardillo calls them ‘fiblets.’

These are things that are said to someone with dementia that … well, do not represent the whole truth, or even a portion of it, at least to the person making that statement.

But to that person suffering from Alzheimer’s or one of the many other forms of dementia, it is the truth as they see it in their world. “It’s not a lie,” she said of these fiblets. “It’s an OK thing to tell people with memory issues.”

She offered up an example.

“Let’s say someone’s husband has been dead for 20 years; she might say, ‘I’m not going out shopping, I’m waiting for my husband to get home,’” noted Cardillo. “A fiblet would be … ‘oh, he just called; his tooth is hurting him and he’s going to see a dentist. Why don’t you and I go out for a ride and go to the grocery store?’”

“You’re going to tell someone that their husband died over and over again, every day?” she went on, asking that question rhetorically before answering it poignantly. “I mean, why would I want to do that? It’s cruel.”

Indeed, and fiblets are a good example of how those caring for and simply around individuals with dementia regularly should try to live in their world, rather than constantly try to pull them into the ‘real’ world. It’s also an example of the kind of work that Cardillo has made into a career, or at the least the latter stages of one.

Beth Cardillo

Beth Cardillo

Her latest move comes as a part-time social worker for a unique program called Baystate House Calls. As that name suggests, it’s a program operated by Baystate Health that involves healthcare professionals making house calls to older adults. It includes a physician, nurse practitioner, nurse, social worker, and community health worker, team members who will visit individuals in their home to assess their needs and provide recommendations.

The initiative concentrates on what administrators call the 4Ms — ‘mobility,’ ‘what matters,’ ‘medication,’ and ‘mind.’

It focuses not only on those in need of help and services, but caregivers as well, said Cardillo, adding that her work, and that of her colleagues, takes them to every corner of Springfield. And while she is helping seniors and caregivers with a wide variety of issues from substance abuse to falls to depression, much of her work involves those with memory issues.

And, increasingly, it involves what is known as habilitation therapy (HT), a holistic approach to dementia care that focuses on the abilities that the person still has, rather than what they have lost, and can reduce difficult symptoms.

“It focuses on everything positive — it focuses on people’s strengths, not their weaknesses,” she said of HT, adding that it brings caregivers and patients closer together as they work on daily tasks, makes those suffering from dementia feel respected and valued, reduces stress among caregivers, and creates positive emotional experiences that bring comfort and happiness.

“The reality therapy is for us to learn to live in their reality, not for them to live in our reality of our world. That’s probably the biggest lesson there is.”

Cardillo was recognized by BusinessWest and its sister publication, HCN, with a Healthcare Heroes Award in 2021 in the category of Community Health for her work during her years as executive director at Armbrook Village in Westfield to create ‘dementia-friendly’ communities and help others better understand — and communicate with — those suffering from memory loss.

For this HCN Monthly Feature and its focus on Memory Care, we talked with her at length about the importance of understanding what is reality that for those with dementia — and enabling them to thrive, as much as possible, in that reality.

 

Reality Check

Cardillo told BusinessWest that, years ago, she and others involved with providing memory-care services would offer to those with dementia what was called, by some at least, ‘reality therapy.’

“We would say, ‘no, no, no, you’re wrong — today’s Thursday, or today’s this, and tomorrow is that,’ she said, correcting wrong statements and answers to questions whenever the need arose. “But what we’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter. The reality therapy is for us to learn to live in their reality, not for them to live in our reality of our world. That’s probably the biggest lesson there is.”

Helping others live in the reality of those with dementia is a big part of the work Cardillo has been involved with over the years, especially at Armbrook, but also now as a social worker. She said that to make this leap — and it is a leap for most — it begins with education and an understanding of the disease and how it impacts people.

It robs them of short-term memory and the ability to do certain things — from driving to cooking to reading. But it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take from them the things that are important to them, and have been important throughout their lives, be it what they did for a living, or travel, music, pets, or a love of the movies.

Cardillo recalled the case of a long-retired college professor who had (and still has) a passion for the New York Times and carries it with her daily.

“Some days, it’s upside-down,” said Cardillo. “But it doesn’t matter; that was her identity. Those are they types of things you don’t want to change; you don’t want to correct people.”

Overall, she said it’s important to treat those with dementia with respect and to not embarrass them with ‘reality’ questions or constant corrections concerning what day it is and what members of the family are no longer alive.

“It doesn’t matter if they say it’s Tuesday and it’s really Sunday. It just doesn’t matter. So, we don’t want to correct people. Does it matter if Mr. Smith thinks it’s a different day? Is that going to change the world? No. If he thinks it’s Christmas tomorrow, that’s OK. Why take that joy away?”

“Just because you have Alzheimer’s doesn’t mean you’re stupid,” she explained. “It doesn’t mean you can’t read people’s emotions. “I know people who will say to family members, ‘what’s my name? What’s my name?’ Why are you saying that to them? It embarrasses them. They know you have a connection. Is it because you think that if they know your name, they’re having a good day and that makes you feel good?

“Because it doesn’t matter if they know your name,” she went on. “It doesn’t matter if they say it’s Tuesday and it’s really Sunday. It just doesn’t matter. So, we don’t want to correct people. Does it matter if Mr. Smith thinks it’s a different day? Is that going to change the world? No. If he thinks it’s Christmas tomorrow, that’s OK. Why take that joy away?”

She recalled the case of a woman who told her that she was pregnant at 66. Instead of correcting her, Cardillo said she simply told her, ‘if that’s true, you’re going to make history.’

“You laugh about it with her, because she tells me these wacky stories,” she went on. “Her parents have been dead, but she’ll say, ‘oh, my mother wants you to come over for dinner.’ “I’ll say, ‘oh, how is your mother? I like your mother; tell her I said hello.’

“Her husband, on the other hand, keeps saying, ‘your mother is dead!’” she continued. “We need to stop that because it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t remember and she doesn’t care, and in in her head, her mother is alive. That’s fine. Who does it hurt?”

Overall, she said it’s important to try to communicate with a positive spin, rather than a negative one.

Indeed, instead of telling someone with dementia that they are not supposed to be going outside, when they suggest that they want to do so, one should instead stay positive and suggest that this person can sit outside when the weather is better.

As she talked about those suffering from dementia and how those caring for them should approach daily conversation and activities, Cardillo said it is important to keep them engaged and to focus “on what they can do, not what they can’t do.”

This brings her back to the concept of habilitation therapy, which, she believes, has benefits, and many of them, for those living with memory loss, their caregivers, family, and friends.

“It’s important to keep people meaningfully busy and not just silly busy,” she told BusinessWest, adding there is a big difference between the two.

Elaborating, she said that television is not a good option.

“We don’t want to put people in front of a TV all day, because it’s … not good,” she said. “It doesn’t make them happy campers. It doesn’t mean that TV is bad, just not as a babysitter all day.”

Instead, such individuals should be involved in activities that speak to who they are, who they were professionally, and what interests them.

“It’s really important to know what people did in their work,” she explained, “because they still retain some of those skills, and it’s still a part of who they are as an identity. For those who were teachers, give them papers to correct; you come up with things that they can do.

“I had someone whose father was a retired electrician,” she went on. “He had a manual of electrical … something; it was bigger than the New York City phonebook. He looked through those pages every day. I don’t know if he knew what was in it — I sure didn’t — but that gave him comfort.”

And some form of comfort is what those caring for people with dementia should be trying to provide each day, she said, adding that this can be done through HT, emphasizing the positive, and, yes, focusing on what those with dementia can do, not what they can’t.

 

 

Bottom Line

Summing up what she tells those caring for people with dementia, Cardillo said it is simply that reality is in the eyes — and mind — of the beholder.

And if we really want to help those with this disease, we have to at least try to live in their world, rather than make them live in ours. It’s not an easy assignment, especially when one is asked the same questions over and over, day after day, but it’s the key to those on both sides of the equation being able to thrive.

Renewed Energy Makes Amherst Busy Again

By Contributor
David Bourgeois
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

By Mark Morris

David Bourgeois

David Bourgeois says Amherst Burger focuses on fun food sourced locally.

By all indications, from bustling sidewalks to traffic congestion, Amherst is most definitely back.

As the home of UMass Amherst, Hampshire College, and Amherst College, the town had always benefited from the presence of all those students, faculty, staff, and visitors, both economically and with the energy they brought. When the pandemic hit, all those constituencies at all three campuses left town while people everywhere dealt with COVID-19.

Slowly but surely, the students returned as everyone learned how to work their way through the pandemic. Now, after persevering through a few very difficult years, there’s new energy and excitement in and about Amherst.

“When the colleges came back and started to re-engage with the community, it really set the tone for everyone else,” said Claudia Pazmany, executive director of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce. “The outpouring of students returning to downtown was huge.”

Currently, downtown Amherst enjoys a 4% vacancy rate for its commercial properties. Gabrielle Gould, executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District (BID), said seven new restaurants have either recently opened or will do so by the end of the year, including a new White Lion brewery.

“At the Drake, the average age of our audience is in the 40s, and 70% of them live outside Amherst. It’s making our downtown destination-worthy, and as a result, we’re bringing in bigger bands and touring groups.”

“A staple of a successful downtown center is a brewery,” Gould said. “It’s something we’ve been trying to get for several years.”

Gould and the BID played an important role in establishing the Drake, an arts and entertainment venue downtown. Averaging 200 guests a night with four shows a week, the Drake is achieving the BID’s goal of bringing people, vibrancy, and a tricke-down effect to downtown.

While the return of the students is worth celebrating, older adults have also become essential in Amherst’s comeback.

“At the Drake, the average age of our audience is in the 40s, and 70% of them live outside Amherst,” Gould said, adding that audience polling shows they are eating at Amherst restaurants and going out for drinks after attending performances at the club. “It’s making our downtown destination-worthy, and as a result, we’re bringing in bigger bands and touring groups.”

Gould also credits Amherst’s revival to building owners downtown and in the Mill District who have helped entrepreneurs enter the restaurant or retail business, or open ventures themselves, rather than let their properties sit idle.

Alysia Bryant’s Carefree Cakery

Where the wheelbarrow of scrap wood sits is where the main counter of Alysia Bryant’s Carefree Cakery will be located when she opens in June.

“Landlords understand that opening a new business is hard, so they want to help people get started,” she said. “It’s an exciting shift that’s been happening.”

Barry Roberts owns several properties in Amherst and decided to create a burger restaurant when his previous tenant, Shanghai Gourmet, closed.

“We have lots of wonderful places to eat in Amherst,” said Roberts, who is also president of the BID. “But I thought there was a need for a moderately priced place where you can get burgers, beer, and ice cream.”

After brightening up the wall colors and repurposing booths, the Amherst Burger Company was launched. At press time, the restaurant was scheduled to open its doors by late April.

To manage the new restaurant, Roberts hired David Bourgeois, who has experience running other Amherst restaurants. The emphasis at Amherst Burger is on fun food sourced locally.

“We get our beef from Echodale Farm in Easthampton, our ice cream from Cook Farm in Hadley, and our milk from Mapleline Farm in Hadley,” Bourgeois said. “We are looking to build relationships with additional local farms as their crops come into season.”

 

Schools of Thought

While downtown has become home to many new businesses, the Mill District in North Amherst is emerging as another hotspot.

When BusinessWest visited Alysia Bryant, owner of Carefree Cakery, the walls in her store were still two-by-four studs. Slated for a June opening, the venture will feature fair-trade ingredients in all its baked goods.

Amherst Burger Company

Amherst Burger Company is just one of many new additions to the downtown landscape.

Bryant started college with the intent of becoming a doctor, but soon realized she didn’t have the passion for it and shifted gears to a business curriculum. At that time, she also began making brownies for friends in her dorm room. When her friends became bored with plain brownies, Bryant added different ingredients, such as peanut-butter swirl and cheesecake swirl, and discovered how much she enjoyed the process of modifying recipes to create new treats.

“I realized that I had a passion for helping people and that my skill was baking,” she said. “So I asked, ‘how on earth could I do both at the same time?’”

While the idea for her own place incubated, Bryant spent five years managing the Sherwin-Williams paint store in Hadley, where she refined her skills before running her own business. Additionally, she researched how to source fair-trade ingredients such as vanilla extract, chocolate, and other essential baking items.

“I knew fair-trade products would be more expensive,” she said. “And my biggest concern was, would people be willing to pay for them?”

To get the answer, Bryant teamed up with the Holyoke chapter of EforAll, a national nonprofit entrepreneurial organization, to conduct surveys on pricing and flavors. She was surprised at the positive feedback. “After the survey results, I felt less trepidation and more excitement about Carefree Cakery.”

The owners of Futura Café, located next door, are planning their opening in June at the same time Bryant opens her doors. They will join nearly a dozen other businesses featuring, among other things, vintage clothing, a general store, and an art gallery.

Amherst at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1759
Population: 39,263
Area: 27.7 square miles
County: Hampshire
Residential Tax Rate: $20.10
Commercial Tax Rate: $20.10
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

“I enjoy being in the Mill District because there’s real collaboration among the businesses,” Bryant said. “They’ve put an emphasis on building community here.”

Pazmany concurred, noting that the Mill District has created many new community events, including a recent Easter egg hunt that sold out. “It’s a family-friendly place that keeps growing as more people experience the shops there.”

And family-friendly locations are needed because the Amherst area is, well, attracting more families.

Indeed, over the past few years, Massachusetts has seen a slight decline in its population — less than 1%. But in that same time, Hampshire County has seen an increase in its population of roughly 11%, with Amherst on the leading edge of that growth.

“Private development of housing is a major economic driver at this time,” Town Manager Paul Bockelman said. “There’s a demand for housing because so many people want to live in Amherst.”

Realtors are noting trends of growing numbers of families looking to move back to their hometowns, and Amherst is no exception.

“I’ve talked with people who were unleashed from their offices and could live anywhere, and they chose to live in Amherst because of the schools, open space, and cultural attractions downtown,” Bockelman said. “Our town has become a real magnet for people who work remote most of the time.”

 

Signs of Progress

A key municipal project in the works is the renovation of the North Common, a project Bockelman said will transform the center of Amherst. The area is technically a green space, though most of it is currently covered in wood chips. He said the new design will be a great space for everyone.

“During the pandemic, we learned that people like to get takeout food but then want to linger downtown, and, of course, we want people to linger downtown,” he said. “With the new design, they will be able to get takeout from one of our restaurants and sit at a picnic table or park bench in the middle of a bucolic lawn.”

As the project goes out to bid, several contractors have already told Bockelman they hope to win the contract because the North Common will be such a high-profile job. Construction is scheduled to start in late fall, with completion slated for spring 2024.

“It will be a great civic space where we will have flag raisings, celebrations of different cultures, and, because it’s Amherst, we’ve even created a special space to stage protests,” he said.

Gould said more evidence that Amherst is back can be seen in the restaurants that are busier today than they were before the pandemic. “Restaurant owners are telling me that they’ve never had numbers like this. Many are looking at opening second restaurants.”

Meanwhile, the student population continues to increase as Hampshire College plans to add 200 additional students in the fall.

And downtown will get another boost, with Amherst Cinema being chosen as one of only 12 film houses in the U.S. to show entries into the Sundance Film Festival when it takes place next year. The popular cinema will be the only place in the Northeast to view the Sundance entries.

“That means, during the festival, people will be coming here from Manhattan and Boston because Amherst Cinemas is the closest place in this region to see those films,” Gould said.

Even longtime attractions like the Emily Dickinson Museum are benefiting from the new energy in Amherst. After closing for renovations for part of last year, the museum is busier than ever and draws visitors from all over the world. Many new visitors are young people who discovered the Belle of Amherst through the Apple TV+ series Dickinson.

In the office Pazmany and Gould share, the phone has been ringing much more of late with people complaining they can’t find a hotel room in the area. As much as Pazmany wants to accommodate all visitors to the area, she also recognizes one of those proverbial ‘good problems to have.’

There are actually several of them, she said, noting that people are also complaining about traffic and a need for more places to park.

“Well, the complaint desk is active again, and that’s certainly a sign that we’re busy again,” she said, adding that, after the COVID years, such complaints are more than welcome.

Palmer’s Development Is All Part of the Plan

By Contributor
Ryan McNutt
Community Spotlight

Community Spotlight

By Mark Morris

Ryan McNutt

Ryan McNutt says the ‘hill’ off Palmer’s Mass Pike exit is a challenging site.

You might say Ryan McNutt is a man with a plan. The Palmer town manager keeps a copy of the town’s master plan on his desk for anyone who wants to know the projects and priorities for the community in the years ahead.

McNutt sees a real benefit in a formal plan because it reduces what can be an overwhelming world of choices.

“When you have a document that we’ve all agreed on, it allows us to work toward the different benchmarks that are laid out for us,” he said. “Having a plan just makes it easier to get things done.”

And there are a lot of initiatives that developers, the town, and the state are trying to get done in Palmer — everything from a hotel and water park on the site once proposed for a casino to a stop on the planned, and highly anticipated, east-west rail line; from new cannabis businesses and a brewery to some infrastructure projects, and much more.

Overall, it’s an intriguing tome for this town roughly halfway between Springfield and Worcester, one that could change the landscape in all kinds of ways.

One key benchmark involves developing the land near Exit 63 on the Massachusetts Turnpike, commonly known as the Palmer exit.

With several empty land parcels near the exit ramp, McNutt and others see this as a significant economic opportunity. He was prepared to have the town purchase one of the parcels, clean up the lot, and advertise it for development with the hope it would be a catalyst for others.

“When you have a document that we’ve all agreed on, it allows us to work toward the different benchmarks that are laid out for us. Having a plan just makes it easier to get things done.”

While planning that move, a developer bought the parcel from the current owner and signed on to build the Liberty Plaza, scheduled to open late next year. Committed retail stores include a Chipotle restaurant, Starbucks, Jersey Mike’s Subs, and two other retail spaces not yet finalized.

“This is a great success for the town because it turns an empty lot into the kind of plaza you would expect to see close to a turnpike exit,” McNutt said. “Best of all, we achieved the result we wanted without having to buy anything.”

But this project pales in comparison to another proposed project, one that involves development of an area known as the ‘hill.’ Located directly at the end of the turnpike exit, the parcel represents nearly 200 acres of land. It was this area that was the proposed site for a casino complex.

According to Quabog Hills Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Andrew Surprise, Kalahari Resorts is in discussion with the town about a potential 400- to 500-room hotel with an indoor water park. Kalahari Resorts currently has hotel complexes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Texas. Themed around African adventure, the hotels emphasize family vacations by featuring large indoor water parks, and business gatherings by offering large conference centers.

Andrew Surprise

Andrew Surprise says the Quaboag Hills Chamber has rebounded following a loss of members and direction during the pandemic.

“If Kalahari eventually locates here, it would be a huge economic benefit to Palmer and the entire region,” Surprise said.

At the town level, McNutt said Palmer is working with the company to address bringing public utilities and access roads to the hill parcel.

“It’s a challenging site,” he noted. “While nothing is a sure thing, I’m glad to see this company feels optimistic enough to keep exploring the opportunity.”

Meanwhile, those in — or looking to enter — the cannabis industry are also finding opportunities in Palmer.

Indeed, while there are no cannabis retailers currently operating in town, that will soon change. Kali Cannabis has begun building a retail operation on Shearer Street, close to the turnpike exit. Cannabis retailer Silver Therapeutics has also broken ground on its facility, and two additional companies, Green Gold Group and Green Adventure, are planning retail operations in Palmer. The latter companies are still completing the permitting process with the Cannabis Control Commission.

In short order, the town could see four cannabis establishments open their doors.

“We will have to see what the market does to determine the right number of cannabis retailers,” McNutt said. “We’re going to let capitalism solve that one.”

As for the chamber, in the middle of the pandemic, it faced a shrinking membership base and a loss of direction. During that time, Surprise became the executive director, with a mandate to turn things around. After nearly three years, he is happy to report the chamber is back.

“We’ve added dozens of new members in the last two years, with more businesses signing on every day,” he said, adding that, in the past year, the chamber has brought $364,000 in economic-development money to its members.

 

Tracking Progress

Another engine of economic development involves a train stop in Palmer as part of the east-west rail project currently under consideration. In the budget that Gov. Maura Healey will present to the legislature for approval, she has identified funding for train stops in Pittsfield and Palmer.

“While the budget hasn’t yet passed, it’s a promising sign because it shows the Commonwealth believes in the rail project and supports Palmer,” McNutt said.

If approved, a rail stop in Palmer offers residents the possibility of direct access to Boston without driving. But Surprise looks at that potential from a different angle. “I’m more focused on bringing people from Boston and Eastern Mass. here, so they can visit the region, spend money in this area, and help our economy.”

It’s an economy that’s growing and becoming increasingly diverse, with many new additions, including cannabis-based businesses as well as the town’s first brewery, created by Rachel Rosenbloom and her husband, Michael Bedrosian, who saw opportunity in Palmer and are seizing it.

“We knew town officials were looking to revitalize downtown, and we thought it would be a good idea to add something to the community that would encourage people to go downtown,” Rosenbloom said.

While the couple have been home brewers for 10 years, Rosenbloom is a professional brewer, working at Fort Hill Brewery in Easthampton for the past five years. Palmer is known as the Town of Seven Railroads because the rail industry was an important part of the town’s early industrial development. That knowledge inspired the couple to name their business Seven Railroads Brewery.

“We didn’t want to go with an obvious name like Palmer Brewing Company,” Rosenbloom said. “We wanted to choose a name that really meant something to the community and to the area.”

Once they receive the proper construction permits for their Park Street location, the couple will start installing their brewing equipment. They have secured a license to brew and are still waiting for approval of their license to pour, which will determine how soon they can open the taproom and start serving the public.

“We’re going to concentrate on being a brewery, and while we won’t be serving food, we will invite local food trucks and let patrons know they can bring in food,” Rosenbloom said.

Palmer at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1775
Population: 12,448
Area: 32 square miles
County: Hampden
Tax Rate, residential and commercial: Palmer, $21.40; Three Rivers, $21.82; Bondsville, $22.54; Thorndike, $22.25
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

She is hopeful the taproom can open this spring or early summer, and she’s not the only one looking forward to it.

“Everyone we talk to is super excited and can’t wait for us to open,” she said. “The response we’ve gotten from the community has been so positive, with several local businesses reaching out to help and to discuss working with us in the future.”

Last spring, Surprise resumed publishing the chamber’s recreation guide and business directory after not producing it during the pandemic years. Published in time to distribute at the Brimfield Antique and Flea Market (which brings more than 250,000 people to the region every year), the guide’s return proved a big success.

“We distributed half our print run at the flea market as well as to more than 60 locations in the region, with many asking for more copies,” Surprise said. “People really liked the pocket-guide format, and, of course, it’s available online, too.”

With the 2023 edition, Surprise is looking to create different trails for antique shops, breweries and wineries, boutique shops, and more. He hopes the increased activity will increase the tourism dollars spent in the region. “Right now, our efforts are all about planting seeds and seeing what grows.”

Meanwhile, Palmer continues to seek a new use for the 100-year-old Converse Middle School. McNutt said the town looked into the costs to modernize it for municipal use, but the price tag was too high. Now he’s looking to see if housing developers, specifically those building for residents age 55 and over, can propose an effective use for the site.

As part of its master plan, Palmer is also working on replacing two main bridges in town, on Church Street and Main Street. After minor repairs, the Main Street bridge has been deemed safe for now, while the Church Street bridge was closed. A truss bridge is in use until a new Church Street bridge gets built.

“It’s a complicated construction project, but we are still on schedule with our benchmarks,” McNutt said. “It is still a goal that I will drive my car across the new bridge this year.”

A boat ramp for Forest Lake is one project that is now complete. As a small, quiet spot, McNutt explained that the lake is a popular place for parents to teach children how to fish.

In the past, boat owners would launch from a sandy area along the lake and park their vehicles on the adjacent road. That would often lead to two safety issues of launching during muddy times and then parking vehicles on a fairly busy road. The Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game and Department of Conservation corrected those issues with a dedicated boat launch and an adjoining parking lot.

“From a safety, convenience, and aesthetic point of view, the boat launch was a great project all around that will benefit people for years to come,” McNutt said.

 

Bottom Line

In order to keep town projects on the path to completion, Palmer has a master-plan implementation committee consisting of citizens and town officials to make sure the actions that occur are aligned with the goals the town has identified.

“As we succeed and complete these projects, it serves as a catalyst and allows us to get even more done for the town,” McNutt said.

After all, it’s part of the plan.

Senate Legislation Authorizing Chapter 90 Funding Should Benefit Rural Towns

By Contributor
Construction

Claiming Mileage

 

On March 30, the Massachusetts State Senate passed a bill that includes $350 million in bond authorizations for transportation needs across the state, including $200 million for the state’s Chapter 90 program, which provides municipalities with a reliable funding source for transportation-related improvements, including road and bridge repairs.

“This legislation will maintain and improve our state’s infrastructure, ensure that residents have safe and reliable transportation options, and support sustainable, regionally equitable economic development in communities across the Commonwealth,” Senate President Karen Spilka said.

The legislation also authorizes $150 million in programs that will assist municipalities with various transportation-related projects. This includes $25 million each for the municipal small-bridge program, the Complete Streets program, a bus-transit infrastructure program, grants to increase access to mass transit and commuter rail stations, grants for municipalities and regional transit authorities to purchase electric vehicles and the infrastructure needed to support them, and new funding dedicated to additional transportation support based on road mileage, which is particularly helpful for rural communities.

“Rural towns do not have large municipal budgets like some Commonwealth cities; yet, with much smaller municipal budgets, they have been expected to maintain many hundreds more miles of roads than their urban counterparts.”

“By dedicating a $25 million fund to rural communities for road and culvert work, the Senate has once again demonstrated a commitment to regional equity,” state Sen. Jo Comerford said. “Rural towns do not have large municipal budgets like some Commonwealth cities; yet, with much smaller municipal budgets, they have been expected to maintain many hundreds more miles of roads than their urban counterparts. They have culverts in need of repair and a significant number of gravel and dirt roads. This rural program recognizes and begins to address these pressing, inequitable realities for rural communities, and I’m deeply grateful.”

In arguing for the bill’s passing, Comerford made a passionate appeal for relief for communities in her district, which includes parts of Hampshire, Franklin, and Worcester counties.

“I know Boston didn’t have a lot of snow this winter. That was not the case in my district. Just over two weeks ago, a number of towns in my district received over 24 inches of snow, some getting as much as 38 inches just in one storm,” she said. “The Hatfield DPW director wrote that, ‘due to the late storms, we have a lot of roads that have fallen apart and a lot of tree damage. With the costs of asphalt rising and the Chapter 90 funding staying the same, we will never catch up.’ The Greenfield DPW director told us, ‘due to many freezes and thaw cycles, our roads have shown accelerated deterioration, and our pavement-management program is really in shambles.’

She said the base amount being provided to communities has been static for many years, while costs are constantly rising. “Weather events are getting more extreme, putting more stress on roads and bridges and cleanup, and rural municipalities have many dirt and gravel roads, making up more than 30% of a municipality’s road network, in some instances, in my district. And this, of course, is exacerbated by climate change, the erosion and the disrepair of these roads.”

She noted that the existing Chapter 90 formula used to distribute funds — established more than 50 years ago — takes into account road mileage, but also population and employment. “But this doesn’t work for the places that don’t have the people, but do have the miles and miles of roads. Adjusting the base Chapter 90 formula to put more emphasis on road mileage is something that I respectfully urge us to consider.”

State Sen. Paul Mark, who represents all of Berkshire County among some communities in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties, agreed that the mileage-based calculation will greatly benefit smaller towns.

“In a district of 57 cities and towns, 54 of which have populations of fewer than 10,000 people, and in some cases communities as small as 120 residents, we live first-hand every day how difficult it can be to undertake road repairs, invest in new equipment, or have our voice heard in Boston,” he said.

Legislators outside Western Mass. also praised the bill’s passage.

“Our transportation system is the backbone of our Commonwealth, connecting us to our jobs, families, and communities,” said state Sen. Brendan Crighton, chair of the Senate Committee on Transportation. “This investment is not just an investment in infrastructure, but an investment in the future of our Commonwealth, enabling our cities and towns to make the necessary improvements to promote efficient and safe travel for all.”

State Sen. Edward Kennedy, chair of the Senate Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures, and State Assets, added that “I’m pleased to see this crucial investment in the Commonwealth’s roads and bridges move toward fruition. The cities and towns of Massachusetts depend on this necessary funding to maintain their transportation infrastructure.”

A different version of the bill having previously been passed in the House of Representatives, the two chambers will now reconcile differences before sending the bill to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.

What Employers Need to Know About Workers’ Compensation

By Contributor
Insurance

Avoiding a World of Hurt

By Encharter Insurance

 

If you are an employer in Massachusetts with one or more employees, workers’ compensation is a mandatory business-insurance coverage. An employer may be an individual, a partnership, a corporation, or any other form of ownership that has employees. Failure to carry workers’ compensation coverage can result in an immediate stop work order and fines for every day that no coverage was available.

Besides being the law, here’s why you need it: workers’ compensation is essentially a no-fault system designed to protect both employers and employees should a workplace injury or illness occur. Your workers’ comp insurance policy would cover payment for medical care related to the employee’s injury, and would pay wage-replacement benefits, also called indemnity payments. In exchange for these benefits, workers’ comp, rather than the courtroom, becomes the employee’s exclusive remedy.

Individual states have jurisdiction over their own systems, so specific regulations and benefits vary by state. In Massachusetts, the Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA) manages the workers’ compensation system, adjudicating any disputes or appeals that arise. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Workers Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau sets rates.

 

How Is Coverage Obtained?

Most employers secure their workers’ compensation from an insurance agent. Large employers sometimes self-insure but must pass several regulatory gating issues to qualify for self-insurance.

If two or more insurance companies decline to insure your organization, you may have to seek coverage in the Massachusetts residual market, also known as an assigned risk pool.

Workers’ compensation insurance can be canceled by the insurance company, but only for the reasons of non-payment of premium, fraud or material misrepresentation, or a substantial increase in the hazard being insured. Your insurance company would need to notify you of cancellation with 10 days written notice.

 

How Are Rates Set?

The cost of the insurance is based on anticipated loss experience and is comprised of two basic components.

Under manual premium, the cost for your workers’ compensation policy is determined by your payroll and the classification of the work your employees do. The riskier the work, the higher the rate for the class code. There are thousands of class codes set by the Workers Compensation Rating & Inspection Bureau (WCRIB) in Massachusetts.

Under modified premium, once you have purchased workers’ compensation for two years, if the sum of the premiums for two years is $11,000 or more, your policy will be subject to experience rating. Manual premium is multiplied by an experience rating factor (or ‘e-mod’) reflecting your specific organization’s loss history. Much like the experience rating system used by many states to develop auto insurance rates, a bad year will impact an employer for years to come, as three prior years’ experience are used to develop a workers’ compensation e-mod.

 

What Benefits Does Workers’ Comp Provide to an Injured Worker?

Workers’ compensation coverage provides unlimited medical expenses, lost wages (also referred to as wage replacement or indemnity), rehabilitation expenses, and dependent and funeral expenses up to a state’s limits

The amount and duration of wage replacement and medical benefits varies based on each state’s law. Generally, the injured worker faces no out-of-pocket medical costs.

 

What Are Your Responsibilities as an Employer?

• Obtain workers’ compensation insurance coverage. Failure to carry coverage can result in stop-work orders and daily fines for the uncovered duration.

• Show proof of that coverage by posting notice in a public and visible place that all employees use.

• Provide a safe workplace, as required by OSHA.

• If an employee is injured, send them for medical care. In Massachusetts, you have the option to choose the physician for the first appointment.

• Report a medical-only injury (one with no anticipated lost time) to your insurer.

• Report a workplace injury with five or more days of absence, or a death, to the Massachusetts Division of Insurance.

 

What Are Some Best Practices to
Minimize Costs?

You can lower your workers’ comp costs by working to the lowest possible e-mod. There are two variables that you should work to control: the frequency of injuries, or how many work-related incidents occur; and the severity of workplace injuries, or the duration of time away from work. Here are best practices to help control both and to help you attain the lowest possible experience e-mod:

• Maintain a safe and healthy workplace. The least costly injuries are the ones that never happen. Control frequency by setting the expectation for an injury-free workplace, training employees to work safely, requiring personal protective equipment, and conducting periodic walk-through audits. Your insurance company can often provide safety resources.

• Have a plan for point-of-injury response. A quick, caring, non-judgmental response to a work injury will help to set the trajectory for a positive outcome for all. Ensure that employees and managers know what to do if an injury occurs. Escort the injured worker to medical treatment.

• Partner with a nearby occupational doctor or medical clinic. Massachusetts allows employers to choose the first medical contact. Choose a top-quality physician or a clinic experienced in workplace injuries. Your insurance company may have a good network.

• Report injuries to your insurer in a timely manner. Early reporting is extremely important — numerous studies have demonstrated that the sooner injuries are reported, the better the outcome. Aim for same-day reporting.

• Prepare for return to work. It’s important to get employees back to work and on the team as soon as possible to help prevent disability syndrome. Plan for a transitional or modified job duties to help the employ re-acclimate and work-harden to their regular job.

Report: No Medical Cannabis Markets Fully Meet Patients’ Needs

By Contributor
Cannabis

Improvement Needed

 

In its annual “State of the States” report, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) gave 13 state medical cannabis programs failing grades.

In the report, the ASA gave failing grades to Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Idaho and Nebraska, the last two states without medical cannabis access, both got a zero.

No state earned an A, but Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, and Rhode Island got the highest grade on the ASA report card, a B+.

Massachusetts earned a C+. According to the report, “medical cannabis sales in Massachusetts have reached almost $1 billion since the medical cannabis program was approved in 2018. Despite this promising sales number, Massachusetts did not make any noticeable improvements to the medical cannabis program in the past year.

“In 2023, ASA recommends that legislators in the state expand protections provided under the law for patients. As it stands, employment protections only exist through case law and should be formalized by the state Legislature. The Legislature should also seek to protect patients rights within housing, education, and family court as well.”

The ASA did commend Massachusetts for not requiring a fee with patient registrations and encourages policymakers to extend patient registrations to cover multi-year periods in order to cut down on administrative paperwork for patients.

According to patient feedback gathered for the Massachusetts report, “patients surveyed expressed concern regarding inflated pricing, a concentration on potential harm rather than potential benefits, and that the adult use/recreational market is undermining the medical market. They also reported a lack of pediatric access.”

While states continue to slowly adapt their laws to meet the needs of patients, the ASA noted, “we have noticed a big shift in states prioritizing adult use. Recreational adult-use programs and medical cannabis programs are not the same and should not be treated as such. A state may have both recreational, adult-use laws and medical cannabis laws, but those programs must remain separate in order to serve the distinct needs of the population. Cannabis patients rely on medical cannabis products for their health and well-being and should be treated as patients by the state — not as recreational consumers.”

This includes protections that may not exist in the recreational market, the report explained, such as excise and sales tax breaks on medical cannabis products, continued access to medical cannabis for minor patients, civil-rights protections for employment, housing, parental rights, and even alternative accessibility methods.

“Medical cannabis programs are essential to patient health and well-being and should be maintained and improved upon regardless of the legality of recreational adult use in the state,” the ASA argued. “While adult-use models can expand access to a larger population of people and may even increase the number of legal cannabis retailers, these systems and associated businesses are often not held to the same standards as authorized medical cannabis businesses.

“For example, laboratory testing of adult-use products may not have to undergo screening for the full array of heavy metals and contaminants that medical products require. It is also uncommon that states ask adult-use retailers to maintain staff competent about medical cannabis products or their applications to ensure patients have a trained advisor to consult with when they purchase medicine. It is critical to patient health that states maintain focus on addressing medical cannabis program challenges and patient needs before, during, and after developing adult-use programs.”

The ASA also gave grades to the medical cannabis programs of U.S. territories, such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (D+), Guam (C-), Puerto Rico (D), and the Virgin Islands (D+).

According to a report by Ganjapreneur, “even in states with full medical cannabis programs, each state differs greatly in how patients can access their medicine, where they can access it, or even what types of products they can access.” Because medical cannabis remains prohibited federally, it added, “most state programs leave out millions of potential patients due to issues with affordability, patient rights, and civil protections, or product-safety standardization.”

The ASA gave no state a grade higher than a B+ because none of them “include the entire range of protections and rights that should be afforded to patients under the law, with some lagging far behind others.”

The ASA believes there are more than 6 million medical cannabis users in the U.S., which is about 1 million more than in its report from 2021.

Landscapers Look Ahead to Opportunities but Also Some Challenges

By Contributor
Sean Corrigan
Construction Special Coverage

Yard Markers

By Mark Morris

Sean Corrigan

Sean Corrigan says landscapers have to deal with the challenge of longer lead times for delivery of many supplies.

Mark Lacombe likes good head start.

And like others in the landscaping industry, he’s grateful for one of the mildest winters in many years — from one perspective, at least.

“A mild winter helps us because there’s no frost in the ground, which allows us to start working on sites now rather than waiting for the frost to thaw and the mud season that would typically follow the thaw,” said Lacombe, general manager of Commercial Grounds Maintenance for Mountain View Landscapes in Chicopee.

However, the downside of a mild winter affects snowplowing, the other business many landscapers run in winter months. Lacombe said a normal winter allows the company to start the year off with revenue, even though he can’t count on it every year.

“During a normal winter, we’ll do about a million dollars in snow removal,” he said. “This winter was only about 65% to 70% of our normal business. That’s where a mild winter really hurts.”

Still, area landscapers say they are staying busy as spring takes hold in New England, and 2023 holds promise as well as some continuing challenges.

Brian Campedelli, owner of Pioneer Landscapes in Easthampton, said his crews are already busy finishing several jobs that carried over from last year due to the unprecedented growth his company experienced in 2022. This year is off to a strong start, too.

“During a normal winter, we’ll do about a million dollars in snow removal. This winter was only about 65% to 70% of our normal business. That’s where a mild winter really hurts.”

“We had a good turnout at the home show,” Campedelli said of last month’s annual event put on by the Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. of Western Mass. “Many people we spoke with are interested in new projects.”

Greg Omasta also begins the year with several carryover projects. The owner of Omasta Landscaping in Hadley believes he will have a busy year, but he’s also concerned that increases in basic necessities like food and fuel may cause some homeowners to delay their yard improvements.

“We’re still getting calls every day, so I guess I’m optimistic and pessimistic all at the same time,” Omasta said.

Greg Omasta (right, with son Chris Omasta)

Greg Omasta (right, with son Chris Omasta) says inflation in basic necessities may cause some families to delay yard improvements this year.

At the height of the pandemic, the residential side of landscaping exploded as homeowners who would have normally scheduled out-of-town vacations had to stay put. Many decided to convert their yards to outdoor entertainment areas. From elaborate projects like swimming pools and outdoor kitchens to simple landscape upgrades and firepits, every contractor had more business than they could handle.

However, while COVID-19 boosted the staycation phenomenon, it also created unusually high demand for all the products used in hardscaping and landscaping at a time when supply chains around the world faced sporadic delays due to the pandemic.

Landscapers now report that many of the supply-chain issues have subsided, but there are still delays for some products, and everything costs more.

“As we order for this season, plant prices are up, and the freight charges to ship them to us are really high,” Lacombe said, noting that this is a particular challenge when bidding for commercial landscaping projects that won’t start for 12 to 18 months. “We have to estimate the costs for a job that will happen a year from now, while our material prices are only guaranteed for 30 days.”

“Since COVID, municipalities are paying more attention to outdoor spaces and upgrading them, particularly with more climbing structures.”

Omasta pointed to one pleasant surprise, as grass-seed prices have seen a slight decrease. “Also, fertilizer prices have stabilized. I don’t expect them to come down, but at least they are more stable than they’ve been.”

 

Places to Play

Public parks and playgrounds are an area of commercial business both Omasta and Mountain View have seen as growth opportunities.

Sean Corrigan, vice president of Landscape Construction for Mountain View, said his company has a full schedule of reconstruction work on parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields, with most of the work happening in Connecticut and the Boston area.

“Since COVID, municipalities are paying more attention to outdoor spaces and upgrading them, particularly with more climbing structures,” he said. “They are interesting structures, and many have unique designs. The kids love them.”

Playground equipment and drainage piping are among the products that still have long lead times for delivery, Corrigan noted. “It’s getting better, but we still have to factor in extra time for these items.”

Finding enough workers is another challenge that still exists, but the situation has started to improve. Campedelli said this year has been easier to hire laborers as better-quality applicants are looking for work.

“Some of the more specialized jobs, like hardscape installers, are still hard to fill,” he said. “We recently hired a new general manager and a new office manager, who are both fantastic.”

Dave Graziano

Dave Graziano says the industry is being challenged to cultivate the next generation of workers.

While Omasta hires extra workers for spring and fall cleanups, he depends on a core group of employees who have worked with the company for years. “We provide them with benefits, holiday and vacation pay, as well as other perks to keep them with us.”

Lacombe said more people are looking for work this year than in the past, but finding workers with experience remains difficult.

“We’re hiring on attitude more than anything else,” he said. “I can teach someone what they need to know, but they need to be willing to come to work every day and put in the effort.”

Dave Graziano, project manager in the Landscape division of Graziano Gardens in East Longmeadow, sees a larger industry problem finding the next generation of landscape workers who want to put in the effort to be successful.

“Anything you can do outside to enhance the entertaining possibilities in your yard is generally what remains popular with people.”

“It’s not for everyone, but it can be rewarding work,” he said. “You see the fruits of your labor from the design of a project through completion, and you make the customer happy. It’s very satisfying.”

Graziano proudly noted that he and his brothers, Mark and Chris, work closely with all their customers. “One of the reasons people call us is because they know they will get a Graziano, and our customers like that.”

Along with landscaping services, Graziano Gardens also runs a retail location, he added. “In addition to people who hire us for landscaping projects, our clients are also do-it-yourselfers who are looking for good ideas and advice.”

As the world continues to move past COVID and more people leave home for vacation, landscapers say there are still plenty of homeowners who want to improve their yards.

“It seems that people are traveling by car more than plane, yet they are still spending money on their yards,” Omasta said.

“It’s not for everyone, but it can be rewarding work. You see the fruits of your labor from the design of a project through completion, and you make the customer happy. It’s very satisfying.”

Campedelli added that he’s hearing from plenty of homeowners who still want stone patios, new lawns, firepits, and other projects. “Anything you can do outside to enhance the entertaining possibilities in your yard is generally what remains popular with people.”

 

Long-term Value

In addition to the entertainment factor, Omasta noted one compelling reason to invest in a landscape project is the value it can add to a home when it goes up for sale.

According to Better Home and Gardens, attractive landscape projects can add 5% to 12% to a home’s resale value, while a professional hardscape project can add 15% to 20% to the resale value.

For many consumers, thoughts about landscape improvements don’t occur until the weather reaches 70 degrees and stays there. Campedelli’s advice for homeowners planning large backyard projects? Book soon if you want to get your job done this year.

“For special projects, we are scheduled into June and maybe a little later,” he said. “We can bring on new yard-maintenance clients without waiting, but big projects are booking further out.”

While traveling for vacations is on the rise, many people are still staying close to home and investing in their backyards. During the winter months, Campedelli attended seminars from hardscape block manufacturers who said they are in full production this year with lots of new product selections.

“They said the availability is much better this year, and we’ll have no problem getting what we need,” he said. “I hope they are right.”

A Number of Factors Have Converged to Send Insurance Premiums Higher

By
Insurance Special Coverage

Perfect Storm

Inflation ebbs and flows in unpredictable ways. The insurance world is certainly finding that out — and so are customers seeing their auto-insurance bills.

“Auto insurance hasn’t kept up with inflation over the past three to four years, and it’s finally catching up to it,” said Michael Long, CEO of Axia Insurance Services in Springfield, partly explaining why the average premium nationwide rose more than $240 in the past year, according to Bankrate.

There are plenty of other parts to the equation, of course, including the ongoing supply shortages that are generating inflation on everything that goes into cars, from materials to computer chips to labor.

In fact, used-car values in 2022 were 37% higher than they were previously, Long said, meaning insurance carriers that had been paying, say, $20,000 for a totaled car were now paying $30,000. Eventually, that was going to be passed to customers.

Bill Grinnell, managing partner of Webber & Grinnell Insurance, agreed. “A few things are driving automobile prices; one is supply-chain issues and a lack of supply of replacement vehicles and parts, and the increased costs of all that.”

As a result, he went on, “your collision claim that might have cost a couple thousand dollars pre-pandemic is now $3,800. It’s significantly more, and the insurance has kind of trailed that inflation. First the cost of the replacement vehicles and parts go up, and that’s reflected in the financial statement of the insurance company, and they need to react and bring rates up. It’s not a leading edge, but a trailing edge, but there’s an inflationary factor there.”

And it’s not just auto insurance. On the home-insurance side, the cost of building materials has risen sharply over the past few years, and supply shortages and lag times still beset the construction industry. Meanwhile, contractors dealing with those issues and also a workforce crunch aren’t able to take on as many jobs as they’d like.

Bill Grinnell

Bill Grinnell

“The cost to build a home three years ago might have been $175 per square foot, and now it’s $275 per square foot. If you’re insuring a home that was worth 300,000, now it’s $400,000.”

“The combination of those two factors have driven up the cost of repairs, and that’s reflected in increased claim payments. So insurance companies need to adjust their rates to afford these claim payments.”

The other huge factor is the dramatic rise in home values over the past two years, another supply-and-demand metric. “You’re required to insure your house to an educated, calculated measurement of its true replacement value,” Grinnell said. “And the cost to build a home three years ago might have been $175 per square foot, and now it’s $275 per square foot. If you’re insuring a home that was worth 300,000, now it’s $400,000.”

Whatever the reason — and, obviously, there are many — insurance customers are experiencing more pain than usual in their monthly premiums. While there are ways to reduce the hit, the key economic factors influencing those increases will continue to linger, at least in the short term.

 

Up, Up, and Away

Plymouth Rock Assurance recently created an infographic that showed customers why home and auto rates are rising.

On the home side, it listed a worker shortage (the construction industry is down 200,000 trade workers); supply-chain shortages and delays with everything from asphalt shingles and piping to copper wire and drywall; lumber and other material costs up more than 50%; and increased operating expenses for energy, transportation, storage, and more.

On the auto side, higher costs are related to chip shortages; a technician shortage driving labor costs up about 6%; a shortage of parts in repair shops causing delays, higher demand, and higher repair prices; and a still-low vehicle inventory on many lots, inflating the sticker price of cars — and their replacement value.

Michael Long

Michael Long

“Not all insurance companies are created equally. Whether it’s the way they handle claims, the way they handle billing, the way they handle cancellations after a loss or two losses, all those things need to be discussed with an agent because not all contracts are the same.”

“It’s a challenging time for all of us,” Long said. “When we talk to clients, last year’s rates were up about 15% on the auto side, and we’re expecting another 8.4% this year.”

Some of the cost factors are unexpected — for example, glass replacement. “With glass claims, it used to be a couple hundred to replace a windshield. I’ve seen them as high as $2,400 because of all the information you get from the sensors in the windshield.”

Then there’s driver behavior. Long noted that accidents were up 7% in 2022, and insurance companies have never seen the volume of lawsuits they’re dealing with.

Grinnell agreed. “The results are worse for insurance companies. The severity of accidents is up, and that’s driving up the cost of the insurance, too.”

There are only so many ways for customers to reduce insurance costs, and some of them are common-sense.

“First, don’t have a claim. Drive carefully,” he said. “Claims really impact your premium quickly, so drive safely and don’t have motor-vehicle violations; don’t get a speeding ticket.”

Paying bills on time helps as well, he said. “There are so many hidden factors that none of us understand, even at the agency level, that go into ratemaking these days, but late payments and being consistently behind and getting cancellation notices is a sure way of having your premiums go up. So pay your bill on time and even enroll in automatic bill payment.”

While it’s important to have adequate coverage, Grinnell said people with older cars they might not be driving for much longer may opt out of collision coverage. He did just that with a 12-year-old car he owns but doesn’t drive that much, and it saves him about $450 per year.

Long said he talks to clients all the time about raising their deductibles. “If you currently have a $500 deductible, maybe look at a $1,000 deductible. If its $1,000, maybe $2,500. We’re regularly quoting $2,500 deductibles,” he noted. Meanwhile, “if a tree comes down, and it’s a $500 loss, absorb it, and pay it in full.”

Carriers also offer any number of discounts, from safe-driver and good-student benefits to discounts related to involvement in organizations ranging from the Pan Mass Challenge to the Massachusetts Golf Assoc. “There’s a Red Cross discount; if you contribute $25 to the Red Cross, you get 5% off your insurance. So you’re helping the community and saving money on insurance. Everyone wins with that deal.”

 

Weather or Not

The home-insurance market has been buffeted by a series of costly weather events, from hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas to tornadoes in the Midwest to fires in California. Insured losses from natural disasters routinely top $100 billion per year these days, and Long said $20 billion of that in 2022 was in auto claims alone.

As noted earlier, the cost of lumber and other building materials (up 33.9% in 2022) and labor (up 27%) are already causing insurance companies to play catch-up, and weather and climate events are just another challenge to deal with.

“It’s been a funny year for homeowners,” Grinnell said. “Property rates were certainly affected across the country due to some of these climate changes and weather patterns, the big windstorm losses.”

He noted one “big freeze” day last year that wound up affecting the region’s home-insurance carriers. “It was one of the biggest lost days on record. Pipes burst, and those are expensive claims. Generally, that’s not helping our region at all.”

Long advises people to be careful when switching carriers due to rising rates because the new carrier might not have made the same inflationary adjustments, and the customer will just have to face that all over again — while possibly losing benefits like accident forgiveness.

“Not all insurance companies are created equally. Whether it’s the way they handle claims, the way they handle billing, the way they handle cancellations after a loss or two losses, all those things need to be discussed with an agent because not all contracts are the same.”

On the other hand, Long said customers should absolutely stay in touch with their agent. “How often do you review insurance with them? Every year is not realistic, but every two to three years, you should be getting a call from your agent: ‘hey, let’s talk about what’s going on, and any new coverages out there.’”

After all, people still need to have enough coverage in case the worst does happen. And with home values what they are now, a total loss could be extra catastrophic if the coverage is not in line with that.

“The biggest investment people have is their dwelling. So, young people may have the time to make up for a disaster, to build equity in their house if they lose it,” Long said. For older homeowners, inadequate coverage for a loss could be a real problem.

The bottom line? Insurance costs money, and even more so this year, as customers should expect premiums to rise another 8% to 10% for both home and auto, Long said.

But when disaster strikes — even a small disaster, like a burst pipe or a sideswiped car — it beats not being covered.

With Expansion on the Horizon, Enlite Continues to Thrive

By
Enlite co-owner Matt Yee
Cannabis Special Coverage

Growth Pattern

Enlite co-owner Matt Yee

Enlite co-owner Matt Yee

From the start of cannabis legalization in Massachusetts, Northampton was one of the most receptive communities, streamlining the municipal regulatory process and initially setting no caps on licenses. Meanwhile, Springfield posed a more onerous process and set strict limits.

Enlite has experienced both, having opened its first dispensary in Northampton in late 2021 and is getting ready to open a second shop in Indian Orchard this year, Springfield’s fourth dispensary in all.

Matt Yee, one of Enlite’s owners, sees value for business owners in both models.

“Springfield was a longer process getting through special-use permit hearings. Northampton, in comparison, was very, very open and friendly to cannabis businesses, which created the amount of licenses we see here,” he explained. “So in some ways, [Springfield] has been difficult, but that difficulty also creates a bit of a barrier for competition to come in; there’s only a handful of active licenses in Springfield.”

The fact that Enlite is expanding at all is an accomplishment in an increasingly competitive marketplace, one that has exploded with new businesses to the point where the industry is starting to weather its first closures, including the Source in Northampton and Pleasantrees in Easthampton.

And Yee and his fellow owners — who include Matt Cutting, Peter Picknelly, and Nick Yee — aren’t done, with plans to apply for a third license, the maximum allowed by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).

“Most customers are shopping with their phone prior to coming in with us, seeing what our menu looks like, seeing what our price points look like, and if they can’t find the specific product that they’re looking for, then they’re going to go somewhere else.”

“We’re still hunting for that third location,” Matt said. “That makes for a more profitable and healthy business model. It’s hard to exist with just one unit. And we chose Springfield because the location fills a niche of demand.”

Specifically, Indian Orchard borders two towns, Wilbraham and Ludlow, with moratoriums on dispensaries, he explained. “We’re very close to both of those. So we saw that location in Indian Orchard as a prime spot.”

Northampton shop’s location right off I-91

Enlite’s owners say the Northampton shop’s location right off I-91, rather than in the congested downtown, has been a plus.

When Enlite opened in Northampton a year and a half ago, Yee and his team saw potential, not only in the state’s legalization of cannabis, but Northampton’s embrace of it. It was the city’s eighth adult-use dispensary, a number which quickly bloomed to 11 and now sits at 10.

“So competition has definitely gone up. But competition is good, especially in this industry. Just like in my former industry, restaurants, competition benefits the customer at the end of the day.”

Considering the experience of the Yee family and Picknelly in that other challenging industry, and Cutting’s business background, the Enlite leadership team felt it had a good chance of success in cannabis, and so far they’ve been proven right. That’s not to say there haven’t been obstacles to overcome, but so far, Enlite is not only staying the course, but setting their sights … well, higher.

 

Rolling Along

Soon after Enlite opened, Yee told BusinessWest that the sheer number of cannabis businesses in Massachusetts — which now tops 265 retailers, in addition to cultivation, manufacturing, and wholesaling businesses — actually makes it easier for the best-equipped players to succeed, because of the cross-pollination. It’s why Enlite has adopted the model of many area dispensaries of partnering with boutique makers of cannabis products.

“We work with about 65 wholesalers right now,” he explained during BusinessWest’s recent visit. “We try to give priority to those who are producing local here in the Pioneer Valley, and also give priority to minority-owned, woman-owned, and veteran-owned companies, and participants in the social-equity program or the economic-empowerment program of the CCC. Anybody who checks those boxes and has a quality product, we definitely give priority to.”

A wide variety of products is key, he added. “We have about 450 to 500 items on the menu at any given time, which is a burden to control inventory-wise, but we have systems in place and experience with that well enough to handle all those SKUs and provide a wide selection to our customers.

“Most customers are shopping with their phone prior to coming in with us, seeing what our menu looks like, seeing what our price points look like, and if they can’t find the specific product that they’re looking for, then they’re going to go somewhere else,” Yee went on. “Our mentality is, if they can find the item here and maybe try some new items too, then they’ll become a repeat customer with us.”

“To kind of wade through the chaff and find the quality product at the right price point that the customer will enjoy can be a little overwhelming.”

He said many customers settle into buying favorite brands, but still appreciate variety.

“Five years ago, there weren’t very many brands, and quality wasn’t the highest, but now, with the level of competition we’re seeing in the wholesale market, there are brands that are definitely excelling. We have a couple of brands in-house that are excellent performers, and people come back for more.”

With competition forcing retail cannabis prices down to five-year lows in Massachusetts, Yee said his time in the restaurant world, where stiff competition also challenges profit margins, has taught him the value of customer service, as well as product knowledge and customer engagement — all factors that make the experience easier and more enjoyable, especially newcomers to the cannabis world. “That’s something we really pride ourselves on and strive for.”

The other differentiating factor is location — not just the strategic second location in Indian Orchard, where competition in the immediate environs is low, but in Northampton, where the flagship store sits right off the Coolidge Bridge rotary.

“Everybody’s kind of congested in the downtown area, which makes it far more difficult because somebody could just walk next door and find a cheaper price and buy there,” he said. “Here, with our location, situated right by the bridge and off the highway, we provide a convenience for people. It’s easy in, easy out, with plenty of parking that’s tough to find downtown. Our consumers want convenience, so that’s the other aspect we try to excel at.”

 

Highs and Lows

That said, Yee was quick to stress that captivating an audience and generating repeat customers is a constant focus, not something Enlite takes for granted.

“I think the other challenging aspect is the amount of wholesale product that’s becoming available on the market,” he explained. “Something I buy this month may be far less expensive two months from now, which would mean another retailer might pick it up for that price point and sell it for that price. So we’re seeing constant fluctuations in the price points of the wholesale product.

“That, along with the sheer amount of wholesalers that are knocking on our door and calling our phone, is pretty overwhelming,” he went on. “To kind of wade through the chaff and find the quality product at the right price point that the customer will enjoy can be a little overwhelming.”

Some cannabis-industry observers have commented on the experience of other states that followed a similar pattern to what’s happening in Massachusetts — exploding competition sends prices plummeting, and many operators focus on competing on price above all else, including quality and customer experience.

“We’ve always been conscious about that. We’re not trying to race to the bottom,” Yee said. “There are some operators here in Northampton who are dropping their prices, and all the other operators are forced to match those prices, which is difficult. But maintaining a healthy economy here in the Western Mass. market is something that we think about a lot. We’re not trying to drive the prices down too low and hurt everybody’s margin. There are definitely some players in town who are playing that game.”

Enlite will be the second minority-owned dispensary in Springfield, after Six Brick’s, which opened in September 2022. Enlite’s Northampton site was also the state’s first Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) applicant to open its doors, and Yee said the process of getting into the industry is still laden with minefields, especially for smaller entities.

“It’s definitely difficult. The requirements to get through the licensing procedure and then the buildout, inspections, and final licenses … it’s strenuous, and a lot of that knowledge is unknown to those smaller operators,” he explained. “So a lot of money can be burned just going through that painful process and experiencing that learning curve. And for those smaller operators who don’t have the capital of the big, multi-state operators or well-capitalized groups, that can be very difficult and sometimes detrimental to the business.”

As Enlite grows and expands, Yee said he’s still learning new things all the time, whether it’s a new product — from fast-acting edibles to new beverage lines — or a new market opportunity. “There’s something new coming out every month, it seems, and the customers are being introduced to those products with us.”

 

Business in Bloom

Yee has said Enlite’s biggest competitor is the black market, but analysts have pointed out that the leveling out of prices in the legal cannabis market may mitigate the illicit market’s advantage somewhat — while bringing on a whole new set of headaches in an industry where profits are already very tight due to onerous taxes.

He hopes, as consumers find more options in their price range, that stores that focus on quality, education, and customer experience will maintain an edge. And he said dealing with those customers, and hearing their stories, is his favorite part of the job.

“On a daily basis, we have first-time consumers come in, curious about cannabis and wanting to learn more. I have so many stories of first-time consumers coming back in and saying, ‘wow, that really helped me. That got me to go to bed more regularly. I got more sleep. I’m less stressed out. I have more fun with my kids — thousands of stories like that.

“Every day, somebody comes in, and we have a great conversation, and we can introduce them to a new product that they didn’t know existed, and we’ll see them back here a couple of days later. And there are still a lot of people who are just wading into this industry and finding these products.”

And finding them at a shop that continues to navigate an ever-changing, always-challenging landscape for business owners, with not just survival in mind, but continued growth.

Creative Development Sought for Springfield Landmarks

By
Clocktower Building
Commercial Real Estate Special Coverage

Turning Back the Clock

Clocktower Building

The Clocktower Building, above, was home to Masonic Temple more than a century ago (right).

At other times in Springfield’s history, the properties at 113 State St. and 1155 Main St. were prominent players in the vibrancy, culture, and overall tenor of the City of Homes.

The former — long known, for obvious reasons, as the Clocktower Building — was home to the Masonic Temple when it opened in 1893, before a new, much larger facility was built further east on State Street. The latter, the Colonial Block, which opened in 1903, was one of the city’s first real mixed-use facilities, noted Tim Sheehan, Springfield’s chief Development officer, featuring a blend of office and retail space on the lower floors and residential units on the upper floors.

Until fairly recently, meaning before the pandemic, the two properties had still been somewhat vibrant, featuring a wide array of tenants, including nonprofits, small businesses, a bank (at 113 State St.), and a number of various-sized law firms taking advantage of the buildings’ proximity to the Hampden County Courthouse just down State Street. These days, though, they are almost entirely vacant and stand in stark contrast to the progress seen around them, most notably across Main Street at MGM Springfield and across State Street at the MassMutual Center.

City officials have been looking to change that picture, obviously, and are moving forward with a plan to return these buildings, and also 11-21 Stockbridge St., a smaller, better-occupied office property in that same area, to their former status and make them part of the city’s resurgence. After acquiring them as a package in 2021 for $2.75 million, the Springfield Redevelopment Authority (SRA) has invited the development community to step up and submit proposals for the properties, separately or perhaps collectively.

Responses to this request for qualifications (RFQ) are due later this month — the deadline was originally late March — and Sheehan and SRA Executive Director Amanda Pham are expecting some imaginative proposals because that’s what will be needed to turn back the clock and make them key players again.

“This will require a responsive, creative developer, someone who has a vision for preservation of these buildings,” Pham said. “They have great potential.”

Sheehan and Pham are expecting proposals that will likely blend office and/or retail with a residential component, noting that what emerges for one, two, or all three properties will likely require a public-private partnership, similar to what was needed to finally move the needle and create a new use — a mix of residential and retail — for the former Court Square Hotel, just a block or so from the three properties in the RFQ.

Finding a preferred developer is a two-step process, said Pham, adding that, after responses to the request for qualifications are received and reviewed, three finalists will move on to a request for proposals.

If all goes well, a preferred developer is expected to be named by June, they said, adding that it may not be long after that when people start talking about these landmarks using mostly the present and future tenses, and not the past.

 

Building Momentum

As she gave BusinessWest a tour of 1155 Main St., Pham referenced some reminders of, well … what it once was, starting with the large directory on a wall in the lobby listing tenants and their suite numbers.

Tim Sheehan and Amanda Pham stand outside the historic structure.

Tim Sheehan and Amanda Pham stand outside the historic structure.

The board still includes the names of dozens of tenants that are no longer there — from the law firm Pellegrini Seeley, Ryan and Blakesley, which once took much of the space on the third floor before moving to the Basketball Hall of Fame complex, to Revitalize Community Development Corp., which occupied a large suite on the second floor. In fact, the 82,000-square-foot property is currently only about 12% occupied.

Later, she pointed to a large bookcase full of law books left behind by one of the departing law firms.

“We have a lot of law books,” she said, adding that, apparently, many of the departing firms located in various-sized offices on the maze-like floors had no use for the books in this age of the internet and simply left them behind.

Thus, these law volumes become part of the dialogue concerning what this property used to be, said Pham, who took the helm at the SRA in 2021, adding that, increasingly, the focus is on what they can be moving forward.

The SRA has taken the matter from the discussion phase to what could be called the discovery phase with the request for qualifications. It includes a link to a six-minute video that features comments from Pham, Sheehan, Mayor Domenic Sarno, MGM President and CEO Chris Kelley, Peter Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan Bus Lines and a key player in the Court Square project, and others, all inviting developers to take advantage of this “Main Street and Convention District development opportunity.”

“This will require a responsive, creative developer, someone who has a vision for preservation of these buildings. They have great potential.”

Together, they talk about the progress made downtown and the progress still to come, with projects like the $74 million parking garage and event space that will replace the facility torn down last fall. They also discuss how much of this progress was the result of public-private partnerships.

“This development behind me never would have happened if not for the cooperation of City Hall and the state of Massachusetts,” said Picknelly as he stood in front of the Court Square property.

The Colonial Block

The Colonial Block was one of the first mixed-use buildings in Springfield, with retail and residential space. It may see a similar blend in the future.

A number of developers, both with local ties and from outside the region, have expressed interest in the properties, said both Sheehan and Pham, noting that the city acquired the properties to move beyond the ongoing speculative nature of previous ownership and take redevelopment to a higher plane.

“We wanted the buildings situated so their redevelopment would ultimately fit the city’s overall planning as it relates to the Main Street Convention Center District Plan,” said Sheehan, adding that this plan, in general terms, calls for building on existing momentum and creating a true destination in the downtown, a place where people can live, work, and (especially with MGM and the MassMutual Center right next door) play.

A developers’ tour conducted several weeks ago attracted several parties, many in person, but some virtually, said Pham, adding that Springfield has managed, through its recent spate of progress, to put itself on the map with regard to regional and national developers looking to expand their portfolios.

There were site tours of the properties and the surrounding area as well, she went on, adding that firms brought full teams with them, including architects, engineers, and planners, to gauge future uses for the landmarks.

Given the current glut of office space, Sheehan said, especially the class B and class C variety that these properties have featured, future redevelopment will likely not focus on that use entirely, although it could be part of the equation.

“There is an overabundance of class B and C space in the office sector, so we’re really encouraging people to look at adaptive reuse to … something else,” he noted. “Developers may want to reduce the amount of office, but not completely eliminate it, either.”

A much larger part of the equation will likely be market-rate housing and activation of the ground floors with retail and hospitality-related businesses that will give downtown visitors more things to do and more opportunities to stay, he went on.

Colonial Block

Above, the directory inside the Colonial Block is quite dated, as most of those tenants have moved out. At right, one of the unique spaces in the building.

“Our planning ultimately calls for extensive ground-floor activation,” he explained. “You have two very strong anchors, in MGM and the MassMutual Center, adjacent to these properties, and we really think there is the ability to activate the ground floors so that it encourages people who want to come to the MassMutual Center or MGM to want to linger and stay in the area.”

As for housing, Sheehan said a recent study identified the need for 1,500 units of additional housing of this type in and around downtown.

And while conversion of such properties to housing is often difficult and expensive, developers need only look a few hundred yards to the south for inspiration, to the massive Stockbridge Court apartment complex, created more than 40 years ago and perhaps the city’s best market-rate-housing success story.

“Stockbridge Court is certainly an example of what can be done,” he said, adding quickly that any residential projects in these properties will likely require a public-private partnership to not only renovate the buildings in question but improve the overall area and its connection to Main Street.

“We’ll need to enhance the infrastructure to make it a much more walkable environment — and a pleasant walkable environment — if we’re going to attract that scale of residential development in this area.”

 

Right Time and Place

Overall, there are some building blocks coming together that could make development of these properties a more attractive and more viable opportunity, said both Sheehan and Pham, noting that leasing activity will start soon at Court Square, and construction is set to commence on the new parking garage. Meanwhile, a new entrance is planned at the southwest corner of the MassMutual Center.

Meanwhile, the two leaders are looking at adaptive reuse of these properties as just part of a larger effort in the city’s downtown.

“We’re looking at these as the first step in the redevelopment of the area,” said Sheehan, noting that that there are several other vacant or underutilized spaces, including the neighboring 1260 Main St., several surface parking lots, and other properties.

As he referenced a photo of the Clocktower Building, from the days before its stone exterior was mostly stripped away — it remains in some places as a reminder of what was — Sheehan waxed nostalgic on its place in city history.

“For a long time, this building has certainly played a major role in downtown Springfield in terms of being a major corner and a huge presence,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the hope is that this property, as well as the Colonial Block — and other properties in that area — can attain that status again.

Time will tell, of course, when and how soon that happens, but this is certainly a developing story — in every sense of that phrase.

Proposals for ‘Free’ Community College May Have Broad Impact

By
GCC campus, as a whole, is innovative and entrepreneurial
Education

A Potential Game Changer

John Cook says that, while the cost of a community-college education (roughly $7,000 per year) isn’t high, at least when compared with that of a four-year institution, public or private, it can be, and often is, a barrier that some cannot overcome, even with financial aid.

And for others, it’s enough of an obstacle for them to think twice about college — or not at all.

“Like anything in our lives, we can’t just separate this cost or isolate it from all the other considerations for a human being; it’s one more thing, one more cost in the lives of so many … this is why we see students drop out, or say ‘now is not the time,’” said Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). “Any way to get a whole lot of people, frankly, to take this second look is a good thing.”

With that, Cook added his voice to many others who are praising Gov. Maura Healey’s inclusion in the budget of something she calls MassReconnect, which would fund free community-college certificates and degrees to the Commonwealth’s residents who are age 25 and older and have not yet earned a college degree.

“This is a group of adults, many of whom have college credits, that we really want to encourage to come and take another look at college.”

John Cook

John Cook

According to some statistics released by the state, roughly 2 million residents would be eligible for the program — individuals who have a high-school diploma but not a college degree — and perhaps 700,000 of these individuals already have some college credits.

MassReconnect, which is actually one of two ‘free’ community-college programs that have been proposed (Senate President Karen Spilka has proposed free community college for all students), would provide both incentive and the means for many people to return to college and get the degree or certificate that might open a door to not just a job, but a career, said Christina Royal, president of Holyoke Community College (HCC).

“This is a potential game changer,” she told BusinessWest, adding that MassReconnect targets what she called the “emerging space of adult learners,” individuals who want a college education, but are held back by competing demands on their life, including family and work.

“The governor’s MassReconnect proposal is a great starting point that increases access for adult learners who don’t already have a college credential,” she went on. “It’s designed to help them finish that stretch so they can get a college credential.”

Michelle Schutt, president of Greenfield Community College, concurred. She said GCC ran some numbers and determined that nearly 200 of the roughly 1,400 students currently enrolled would qualify for the program. “That’s not insignificant,” she said, adding that many more in the community who are not enrolled who might be inspired to connect, or ‘reconnect,’ as the case may be.

“I’m incredibly excited about this,” she added. “Reconnecting with those people who have some college but no degree and letting them know that there’s a new opportunity here has great potential for the community colleges and GCC specifically.”

Rick Sullivan, president and CEO of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, agreed.

Using similar language, he said MassReconnect could have broad and powerful impact over time, providing benefits for the region, its employers, and both community colleges and the four-year institutions for which they are feeders.

“Reconnecting with those people who have some college but no degree and letting them know that there’s a new opportunity here has great potential for the community colleges and GCC specifically.”

michelle Schutt

Michelle Schutt

Based on initiatives in Michigan and Tennessee, the MassReconnect proposal actually goes further than those programs by covering more than just tuition; it also covers mandatory fees, books, and various support services. It is designed to remove barriers to getting the college degree that is needed to succeed in most jobs today, and it holds significant promise to just that, said those we spoke with.

Cook told BusinessWest that the average age of a student at STCC is 26, a statistic that might surprise some, but certainly helps explain the thinking behind MassReconnect and its potential impact.

“This idea is right in our wheelhouse,” he noted. “This is a group of adults, many of whom have college credits, that we really want to encourage to come and take another look at college.”

Indeed, he went on, for many individuals over age 25, there are now many competing forces when it comes to the weekly budget, and for a good number of them, higher education is something that doesn’t make the cut. MassReconnect, as he noted earlier, provides people an opportunity to rethink college education.

“There are many students who might just have the perception that they are priced out,” he said. “And when we give them a chance to look at this, they might realize, ‘OK, that business degree is not out or my reach,’ or ‘maybe a manufacturing program isn’t going to be too big a lift for me.’”

 

Ripple Effects

Royal concurred, and noted that MassReconnect will bring more attention to the state’s community colleges — and the careers that individuals can access with two years (or less) of college education.

“Massachusetts, as a state, needs to move beyond the notion that everything requires a bachelor’s degree,” she told BusinessWest. “There are many jobs where an associate degree would either elevate their wages or help them gain a footing toward a career change or a particular job.”

Cook agreed, and said he considers MassReconnect to be an investment in the state’s community colleges and a huge opportunity to introduce more individuals to the value of the education provided by these schools and their ability to help open doors.

“At this price point, and with our class sizes, you won’t find a better deal,” he told BusinessWest.

“Massachusetts, as a state, needs to move beyond the notion that everything requires a bachelor’s degree.”

Christina Royal

Christina Royal

Schutt noted that these arguments and others have been born out in other states where the notion of free community college has become reality, especially Michigan, which adopted a model on which MassReconnect is based and has had it in place for three years now. She said that state has measured its success in many ways.

“From the number of people who came to the college to the number earning better wages, and more, this model has proven successful,” she said. “Those schools recognize that these are students they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

As he assesses MassReconnect and the broad concept of free community college, Sullivan said there will be a broad trickle-down resulting from making these schools more accessible.

For starters, the community colleges themselves will benefit, he said, noting they have been hit hard by sharp declines in enrollment over the past decade, a trend only exacerbated by the pandemic.

Cook qualified this decline by pointing out that STCC’s enrollment — just over 3,600 — is down a full 50% from the school’s peak in 2012 of roughly 7,000, numbers that reflect everything from smaller high-school graduating classes to a still-robust economy featuring low unemployment — the conditions that don’t spur enrollment at community colleges.

But enrollent has become a challenge at most all public and private institutions, Sullivan noted, adding that, over time, this concept of free community college could provide a boost for the large and important ‘Eds’ component of the region’s economy.

“Western Mass. is really lucky … obviously, we have four community colleges [STCC, HCC, Greenfield Community College, and Berkshire Community College] that are well-respected and do a great job,” he said. “But they are also feeders into our four-year colleges and universities, and we’re fortunate that we’ve got such a high-end cohort of four-year and community colleges in this region, and it is an important part of our economy.

“Most all of these schools are looking to bring in more students to be able to grow,” he went on. “So it shouldn’t be lost on people that, in many cases, the community colleges are the start of the training and retraining of that workforce.”

Elaborating, he said that while the higher-ed sector will benefit from free community college, the broader impact will be on the region’s employers, which have been struggling with workforce issues, to one degree or another, for the past several years.

“Workforce is the issue that every single employer is facing right now, and it’s probably the biggest barrier to growth; it doesn’t matter what sector you’re in,” Sullivan said. “This opportunity to bring it back — or, to use the governor’s phrase, ‘reconnect’ — is a good one for our region.”

Cook agreed, and noted that while sectors — and college programs — may not be greatly impacted by MassReconnect (many healthcare programs, such as nursing, already boast strong enrollment), there are others that will, because the assistance from the state might act to remove a barrier to exploring certain fields.

He mentioned manufacturing as one of them, noting that, while this sector features well-paying jobs and attractive opportunities, it still manages to elude the attention of many job seekers.

“I would love for us to continue to demystify manufacturing, to see people realize it’s very much a high-tech, high-end, laboratory type of setting for so many of the professionals working in this field,” he said, adding that MassReconnect, if it becomes reality (and it has the support of many in the State House), could help achieve that.

 

Bottom Line

Overall, and combining MassReconnect with the elimination of COVID vaccine requirements and proposed fee-stabilization initiatives, Cook can envision a lift in enrollment for this fall’s semester — perhaps a 2%, 3%, or 4% gain, this on top of a 4% improvement registered this spring.

Just how big a lift remains to be seen, obviously, but any improvement would be a step in the right direction, he said, and hopefully the first of many such steps.

Tackling Issues of Nutrition, Hunger Requires Multi-level Approach

By
Healthcare News

All Hands on Deck

 

In the six months since the Biden-Harris administration hosted the second-ever White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern has recognized the significance of the moment — only, he hopes it’s more than a moment.

“The first and only other conference was held more than 50 years ago — in 1969, the year we put somebody on the moon,” McGovern said at a recent virtual gathering with officials from food-justice organizations, farm advocates, public-health leaders, healthcare providers, and other legislators, to discuss the White House event, legislative action that has emerged in its wake, and what is being done in Massachusetts — and what more can be done — to end hunger.

Liz Wills-O’Gilvie

Liz Wills-O’Gilvie

“The only way that we’re going to eradicate hunger and improve health is by centering our work with a racial-equity lens.”

“Out of this conference came an ambitious but achievable roadmap to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by the year 2030,” McGovern said, adding that the conference has the potential to impact even more change than the 1969 event, which is saying a lot, since innovations like WIC, the modern-day SNAP program, and better food labeling came out of that session.

“There were so many important things,” he went on. “But I think this conference, if we do the follow-through, has the potential to have even a greater impact on this country.”

The March 17 briefing, attended by about 300 people, was co-hosted and organized by the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Growing Places, Stone Soup Cafe, CISA, the Springfield Food Policy Council, the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, Project Bread, and the Western Mass. state legislative delegation, including state Sen. Jo Comerford and state Rep. Mindy Domb.

Liz Wills-O’Gilvie, who chairs the Springfield Food Policy Council, saw the historic nature of the White House event, which she attended, from a unique perspective: her own personal history as “a little Black girl from Springfield who was dependent upon commodities food before food stamps as we know it now existed.

“Our family’s life improved when food stamps emerged out of the last conference,” she recalled, “so I was struck by the significance of the moment I got to be there in that room and hear both President Biden and Secretary [of Agriculture Tom] Vilsack make the comments that they did … that the only way that we’re going to eradicate hunger and improve health is by centering our work with a racial-equity lens.”

To that end, Wills-O’Gilvie called Massachusetts’ Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) — which reimburses EBT card users when they used SNAP benefits for healthy produce from local farm vendors — a tool for racial equity as well as a way to improve the health of families.”

She also called for making universal free school meals permanent in the Bay State, a priority shared by Domb, who also praised HIP, talked up the benefits of food-literacy education, and called for a conversation about hunger on college campuses.

“We need to make universal free school meals in Massachusetts permanent,” Domb said. “It’s terrific that we extended it this year. It’s wonderful that the Legislature in the supplemental budget has included additional money to make sure it continues through the end of this academic year.”

“There’s obviously much, much more that needs to be done in these areas. But we’re off to a good start. And there is finally momentum at a national level behind efforts to end hunger.”

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern

But she said expansion of such benefits during COVID demonstrated how important they are to families, even beyond the pandemic. “So we need to make sure that that continues.”

 

One Bite at a Time

McGovern said President Biden has made it clear that the federal government wants to implement an aggressive national strategy to end hunger in the next decade.

“In the months following the conference, Congress has gotten to work on some of the priorities that were laid out in the strategy,” he noted. “We created a permanent summer EBT program to give families with kids $40 per child per month over the summer, when we know that hunger is often worse. It’s a small step in the right direction, but it’s an important step in the right direction. And especially during these times of high inflation and especially in the aftermath of the SNAP pandemic boost being cut, this is really, really crucial.”

He also said lawmakers responded to a recent EBT-skimming problem by requiring benefit replacement for those who had SNAP benefits stolen through no fault of their own, mandated that the Department of Defense screen military families for food insecurity, and passed the Food Donation Improvement Act to make it easier for retailers, manufacturers, farmers, and schools to donate food directly to hungry people.

“And we passed a massive omnibus spending bill that includes the highest level of non-defense spending in history. That translates into robust funding for WIC, farm-to-school grants, school meal equipment grants, among other things,” McGovern went on. “There’s obviously much, much more that needs to be done in these areas. But we’re off to a good start. And there is finally momentum at a national level behind efforts to end hunger. We have people in the administration saying that we want to end hunger.”

He also recently introduced legislation to permanently increase the reimbursement rates paid by the federal government to schools for every breakfast and lunch served.

“We talk a lot about the quality of food that we provide our kids in school, but we also talk about the importance of supporting our local farmers,” he explained. “With a little more money for breakfast and lunch, it gives school districts and people who oversee school meals some flexibility to do some things that, right now, they don’t do because it’s too complicated or it might cost a little bit more.”

Kirsten Levitt, executive chef and co-director of Stone Soup Café, a volunteer-driven, pay-what-you-want meal spot in Greenfield, also attended the White House conference and came away with the belief it will take all sectors of the nation to eradicate hunger, and Western Mass. has the ability to be a national model for its emphasis on farms, food, and nutrition. She added that children will be the best ambassadors for health and nutrition, especially if school meals are funded properly.

Erin McAleer, president of Project Bread, an anti-hunger nonprofit based in Boston, identified five pillars to a statewide strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health: increasing access and improving quality of child-nutrition programs, increasing access and affordability of food for all, integrating food access into healthcare, strengthening and integrating the local food system, and ensuring economic stability and promoting economic opportunities to address the root causes of hunger.

“I never imagined I would be sitting in a room with the president of the United States, and certainly never imagined I would be sitting in the room when he expressed that what I went through my childhood was unacceptable — that food insecurity is unacceptable,” McAleer said.

“When 21% of families in Massachusetts are food-insecure and 33% of the Black and Latino families in Massachusetts are food-insecure, that is a systemic issue. And that requires systemic solutions. Too often, we focus on individualized solutions when it comes to this issue.”

Erin McAleer

Erin McAleer

“What I really appreciated about the plan that was put together by the White House is the focus on systemic solutions,” she went on. “When 21% of families in Massachusetts are food-insecure and 33% of the Black and Latino families in Massachusetts are food-insecure, that is a systemic issue. And that requires systemic solutions. Too often, we focus on individualized solutions when it comes to this issue.”

McGovern agreed that fighting hunger and improving nutrition is a battle that can, and should, be waged on all levels — federal, state, and local.

“There are things that can be done at the local level — things like expanding access to culturally appropriate cooking classes, bringing gardens and hydroponics to every school, and more robust food-recovery partnerships. All of this is going to require close collaboration.”

 

Menu of Activity

On the state level, myriad bills have been filed recently relating to nutrition, hunger, and agriculture: “An Act Relative to Universal School Meals,” “An Act to Promote Food Literacy,” “An Act Protecting Our Soil and Farms from PFAS Contamination,” “An Act Strengthening Local Food Systems,” “An Act Promoting Equity in Agriculture,” “An Act Relative to an Agricultural Healthy Incentives Program,” “An Act Supporting the Commonwealth’s Food System,” “An Act Encouraging the Donation of Food to Persons in Need,” “An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Hunger-free Campus Initiative” … the list goes on.

Comerford said those who organized the March 17 briefing with McGovern wanted participants to be inspired by the White House’s 2030 hunger goals, tackle diet-related diseases like hypertension and obesity in the Commonwealth, and strengthen the region’s food system and farms in the process.

“We also want to help participants take away concrete and timely action steps around critical budget priorities and policy proposals that are going to move the Commonwealth boldly toward ending hunger in just a handful of years.”

 

 

Experts Reveal Ways to Stay Fit Working from Home

By Contributor
Healthcare News

An Active Office

Standing desks are standard at many local companies.

Since COVID-19 swept across the globe, many industries have shifted to fully remote or hybrid working. During the pandemic, 70% of the workforce was working from home, and since then, 62% of companies have planned to incorporate remote work, be it fully remote or hybrid.

With more and more people working from the comfort of their own home, concerns have arisen that this model may be associated with more sedentary lifestyles and, in turn, increased risk of obesity. Most of our calories throughout the day are burned through non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which includes walking and other basic activities. When working from home, sometimes those activities can be even more limited.

Here are a few ideas from online fitness resource Total Shape to stay fit even while working from home.

Standing Desk ($150-$600)

Standing desks have gained popularity over the last few years and have been proven to provide many positive health benefits. Simply put, standing burns more calories than sitting, even if you simply stand still. Research has also shown that 66% of workers felt more productive, and 87% felt more energized, using standing desks. Standing activates the muscles in your legs and core while stimulating circulation, which can help you to burn extra calories (typically 60 to 90 per hour) and build your strength. Standing desks come in a range of styles and cater to many different budgets, meaning this is an accessible option for all.

Desk Treadmill ($200-$800)

Although it is a more expensive option, this is one of the most effective ways to stay fit while working at home. It essentially takes the standing desk a step further by adding the walking element. Studies have shown that walking between 1 and 2.5 mph can lead to an extra 170 to 240 calories burned per hour. Not only have people encountered the physical benefits of getting more exercise, but walking helps oxygenate the brain by stimulating blood circulation. In other words, we think better and more efficiently when we walk. With most people having busy schedules outside of work, it can be difficult to get the recommended amount of physical exercise, which makes this a great way to stay fit while working from home.

Under-desk Bike ($50-$200)

A very similar concept to the desk treadmill, an under-desk bike features a small set of pedals that can slide under your desk so that you can pedal while sitting. The small machines can be altered to have more resistance, which makes it harder or easier to pedal. This type of aerobic exercise is good for staying fit and can help strengthen your legs and joints. Studies estimate that pedaling while seated can burn up to 10 calories per minute, depending on the intensity, which means you could burn up to 600 calories per hour. However, the average gentle pedaling will most likely burn 100 to 300 calories per hour.

Resistance Bands ($15-$40)

Resistance bands are an affordable option to help train your body and get fitter, by helping you build muscle and burn calories (180 to 250 per hour) while seated at your desk. You can perform plenty of passive resistance-band workouts even when you’re doing something at your desk, and in between typing and during brainstorming sessions, your body can keep active alongside your mind. Exercises could include bicep curls, overhead tricep extensions, and shoulder raises. However, there are many variations and other exercises that can be done with resistance bands. A study published in 2022 showed that resistance-band training lowers body fat in people who are overweight better than other forms of training, including free weights and body-weight exercises.

Seven-minute Workout

Searching ‘seven-minute workout’ on an app store will reveal an app that will guide you through various workouts you can do in your own home, which take just seven minutes at a time. The best thing about the seven-minute workout app is that its programs are designed especially for people who are doing the workouts at home, and who have no special equipment. The brief nature of these workouts allows people with busy schedules to fit in exercise and can help break up your workday, which can increase productivity while burning 20 to 50 calories per session. While there are some in-app purchases available, you can use the app completely free, so there’s nothing stopping you from getting started.

Diet

Exercise and living an active lifestyle are obviously important in staying fit and healthy; however, diet is a key contributor to overall health and fitness. People with few distractions at home may find they are more aware of hunger than they would be at the workplace, which can lead to more snacking and possibly an unhealthier diet. By focusing on eating healthy foods and healthy snacks, people who work from home can ensure they are staying fit and keeping their bodies healthy. Studies show that both the overall composition of the human diet and specific dietary components have been shown to have an impact on brain function, which means diet isn’t only going to keep you fit, but it’s going to improve cognitive function, and thus the quality of work produced.

Why It’s Important

A spokesperson from Total Shape noted that “roughly two in three people in the U.S. are overweight, and with many aspects of life becoming more sedentary, it’s important that people try to find new ways to keep fit and healthy. Life has become busy and more expensive, meaning that it’s harder to find the time and money to attend gyms or activities that help us to remain fit. This guide provides a plethora of choices for people on various budgets and with specific preferences to ensure we are keeping ourselves healthy.”

Total Shape is a fitness resource site providing information about workouts, supplements, and fitness to help people reach your goals. Total Shape does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Why Many Diets Don’t Stick, and How to Improve the Odds

By Contributor
Healthcare News

Set Up to Fail

 

 

“How to lose weight fast” has an average 284,000 monthly search volume in the U.S., demonstrating that Americans are desperate for a quick fix to help shed those unwanted pounds in time for summer.

How to lose weight is one of the most pressing health questions for many people. As many as 95% of dieters fail to reach their body target or quickly backslide and regain the weight they lost once their diet is finished. Because of this, a massive number of people are serial dieters who skip from one eating plan to the next, trying to find best way to lose weight and keep it off.

While there are thousands of diets to choose from, the overall rule is, if you want to lose weight, get toned, build muscle, or even just improve your energy levels, you’ll probably need to change what you eat.

“Provided that your diet of choice meets your caloric needs, it will have the desired effect,” an exercise and nutrition expert at online resource Fitness Volt said. “For example, consume fewer calories than you need, and you will burn fat and lose weight, but consume more than you need, and you will gain weight.

“However, most people fail to stick with their diet long enough for it to work sustainably. They’re strong out of the gate, but soon fall off the wagon and return to their previously sub-optimal eating plan,” the expert continued. “That’s why so many of us lose weight only to regain it shortly afterward, and it seems long-term, sustainable weight loss is rare nowadays.”

According to Fitness Volt, here are six reasons why most diets fail.

 

Foods Are Too Restrictive

Most diets ban certain food or food groups. For example, the paleo diet excludes all processed foods, while keto severely limits your carb intake. Other diets will cut out sugar or alcohol. The problem is, while cutting out certain foods can help contribute to your daily calorie deficit, this technique is also guaranteed to trigger cravings.

Essentially, any diet that bans a particular food or food group will invariably result in cravings, driving you to cheat on your diet. So allow yourself the smallest amount of this particular food or drink to allow your body to feel like it isn’t being deprived of something. In other words, everything in moderation.

 

Ingredients Cost Too Much

It is good to follow a diet of healthy, fresh ingredients, but with food being one of life’s unavoidable expenses, it will be harder for you to sustain this diet plan long-term if you aren’t always financially stable.

For example, some diets specify that you must eat expensive foods and that somehow these products are better for weight loss than those that are more reasonably priced. Organic vegetables and grass-fed beef from free-roaming cattle cost a lot more than the basics you get at Costco, but nutritionally are not all that different. They certainly won’t help you lose weight faster.

For a diet to be sustainable, you need to be comfortable with how much your food costs. For example, if your grocery bill doubles overnight, you’ve got a ready-made excuse for quitting your new eating plan.

 

It’s Too Complicated

To make diets unique, they are often unnecessarily complicated. This complexity can often cause people to make mistakes or just give up after a while.

Food-combing diets are a perfect example of this. Some may say things like “you can’t eat fat and carbs in the same meal,” which looks OK on paper, but makes meal prep far more complicated than it needs to be. Ultimately, for any diet to work, it needs to be simple enough to follow every day.

 

Perfection or Failure

Diets can often be very prescriptive and allow no variation. However, in everyday life, any diet can be difficult to stick to. Perhaps you have a friend’s birthday or an off day, and you decide to indulge in something sweet.

The reality is that your diet doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to pretty good most of the time, which is more than enough to reach weight-loss goals.

 

Ignoring the Long Term

Putting a timeframe on any diet sets you up for failure. Some of the most common ways diets are advertised are through their quick-fix timestamp, like “lose 30 pounds in 90 days” or “30-day get-ripped plan.”

Excess body fat accumulates over many years, and no one goes to bed lean and then wakes up fat. Likewise, achieving your body goal could take many months, or even years. To achieve a significant result in just a few weeks, any diet must be very restrictive, and, therefore, it may be unsustainable, as your body will soon put the weight back on that it dramatically lost. Before considering any diet, ask yourself, “can I follow it for the next six to 12 months?”

 

What’s the Science?

Some diets are based on very flawed science or may not be based on any science at all. One example of this is calorie-burning or negative-calorie foods, such as celery. No food burns more calories than it contains, and these claims are very misleading.

Effective diets work by manipulating your calorie balance. Consume fewer calories, and your body will make up the shortfall by using stored body fat for energy. No deficit means no fat burning. There are no shortcuts around this law of thermodynamics.

 

Bottom Line

As a rule, if a diet promises something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so don’t fall for it.

“Fortunately, healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated or unpleasant, and weight management doesn’t have to take over your life,” Fitness Volt’s expert said. “You don’t even have to give up your favorite foods. However, you will need to quit looking for short-term fixes and adopt healthier, long-term habits.”

 

Fitness Volt is a comprehensive online resource dedicated to strength sports. Its mission is to empower readers with tried and tested knowledge and practices surrounding the latest fitness and nutritional information.

Cybersecurity Conference This Fall Will Help Businesses Stay Safe

By Contributor
Technology

Layers of Protection

By Mark Morris

 

As the world increases its dependence on the internet for all kinds of transactions, keeping everything secure becomes a constant challenge.

Cybersecurity experts compare their work to an ‘arms race’ in which every new, secure tool they put in place motivates cybercriminals to find a new way to defeat it.

“When you think about it, we need to be right all the time; they only need to be right once,” said Charlie Christianson, president of CMD Technology Group, which installs computer networks for all kinds of companies and keeps them safe.

Paul Whalley, president of Growth for Your Company (G4YC), said cybersecurity is like physical security in that, the more difficult it is for criminals to defeat, the better the odds of not being a victim.

“For example, if criminals want to rob a house, they are more likely to hit the house with an open door over one with bolted locks on every door, tightly shut windows, and a sign out front that says they have a security system.”

“Two-thirds of people use the same passwords on multiple online accounts. Imagine if a cybercriminal knows that one password and can log into your financial, work, or cloud accounts. It happens every day to millions of people.”

In his current venture with G4YC, Whalley helps companies like CMD Technology Group grow their business. In addition, Growth for Your Company is organizing a cybersecurity conference on Tuesday, Sept. 19 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Twin Hills Country Club in Longmeadow. The idea is to educate local business leaders and IT professionals on evolving cyberthreats and the latest tools to combat them.

Businesses that purchased antivirus software years ago may think they are protected, but Christianson noted that, even if the old software blocks a cyberattack, it can take months to determine the source of the attack and how it gained entry.

“The new software tools can make a huge difference because they will immediately point you in the right direction to find the problem,” he said. “Some will block the threat and move it to a safe server to determine if it needs to be quarantined.”

Two-factor authentication (2FA) — that access code a bank sends by text after the customer inputs a password — has emerged as a strong deterrent against outside attacks. Encouraging safe practices such as a written policy to guide employees on how to act when they are using the company’s system is another key to fighting cyberattacks.

The software tools are only as good, however, as the people using them. Scott Augenbaum is a retired FBI agent and cybercrime-prevention trainer who is scheduled to present at the fall cybersecurity conference. Augenbaum contends that online safety begins with basic practices everyone can follow, starting with passwords.

“Two-thirds of people use the same passwords on multiple online accounts,” he said. “Imagine if a cybercriminal knows that one password and can log into your financial, work, or cloud accounts. It happens every day to millions of people.”

When he retired from the FBI in 2018, Augenbaum said, cybercrime was a $4 trillion problem. Since then, the cost to society has doubled. “The pandemic ruined everyone’s lives except the cybercriminals. So many people were shopping online, working from home, and logging in remotely to our most critical sites.”

In addition to using 2FA, Augenbaum recommends that businesses and individuals identify what he calls “mission-critical accounts,” such as banks, credit cards, and cell-phone accounts, and make sure each password is unique and at least 12 to 15 characters long.

All three cybersecurity experts told BusinessWest no one is too small to be a target for cybercriminals.

“Every one of the victims I’ve worked with felt they didn’t fit the victim profile,” Augenbaum said. “Anyone who thinks they are immune because they are a small business increases their chances of joining the list of small businesses that have been victimized.”

Christianson agreed, and gave an example of someone who owns a pizza shop. “That person might think they are only in the pizza business, so what could happen? Well, they most likely process credit-card transactions, and that’s a gold mine to a cybercriminal.”

He added that it’s important for a business owner to consider what is unique in their environment that makes them vulnerable to a cyberattack. There was a time when insurance for cyberattacks could quickly help a company get back to business but after years of increasing claims, that has changed.

“There is a new landscape for cybersecurity insurance companies,” Whalley said. “Companies are now more stringent on eligibility to get cyberinsurance.”

Before selling a cybersecurity policy, Christianson added, insurers want to know that a business has built several layers of protection into its systems.

“Just like an onion has layers, an effective security system also has layers to make it harder to penetrate a company’s data,” he explained. “If one layer gets defeated, there’s another one right behind it to stop a potential breach.”

The Sept. 19 conference will focus, in large part, on how to create those layers of protection with technology and a more educated human element.

“Along with the technology, we will be encouraging training so everyone understands how to mitigate the risks,” Christianson said. “We all have a role to play in preventing cyberattacks.”

Discovery High Students Gain an ‘Identity’ Through Early College

By
Izabella Martinez
Cover Story Education

Taking Themselves More Seriously

Izabella Martinez

Izabella Martinez

At first, Izabella Martinez said, she was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of taking college courses when she was only a freshman in high school.

But then, when she got into it, that apprehension soon melted away and was replaced by a host of emotions and feelings, but mostly pride in accomplishment in taking, and doing well in, courses such as Introduction to Computer Technology, English 101, Art, Philosophy, Public Speaking, and what she considers her favorite thus far — College Writing.

“The teacher gave us a lot of freedom to write about what we felt passionate about,” said Martinez, a student at Discovery Early College High School in Springfield, a unique learning center that opened its doors in 2021. “I was able to improve my writing skills while also having creative freedom.”

Martinez believes she’ll have at least 24 college credits by the end of her sophomore year at Discovery. But she’ll have much more than that. She’ll have a higher level of confidence and perhaps something even more important — higher aspirations when it comes to her career and what’s doable, and the wherewithal to get to where she wants to go.

“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path to a living wage. The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing college, in the way we wanted.”

And this, is a nutshell, is what Discovery High School (DHS), part of the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP) — an independently governed nonprofit established in 2015 as a collaboration between Springfield Public Schools, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Springfield Education Assoc. — is all about.

It uses what’s called a ‘wall-to-wall’ model to build viable future career pathways for students by enabling them to take college classes while in high school — and perhaps even earn an associate degree by the time they graduate — without having to pay for the college courses.

As he talked about the school, why it was created, and its overall mission, Matt Brunell, co-executive director of the SEZP, said the inspiration came in the form of statistics showing that, while Springfield’s high-school graduation rates were improving, the number of students going to college, and succeeding there, were not growing.

Matt Brunell

Matt Brunell says Discovery High School was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of graduation.

“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path to a living wage,” he explained. “The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing college, in the way we wanted.”

“Three years ago, we took a hard look at industry and labor trends in the area, and we looked at which businesses were going to be growing over the course of the next several years,” he went on. “And we thought differently about a high-school model that would project and send students on that path to a living wage.”

Elaborating, he noted that DHS was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of high-school graduation. It does this by providing academic pathways that focus on high-demand careers in technology, computer science, engineering, and teaching.

But mostly it does this by inspiring students to “take themselves seriously.”

There are quotation marks around those words because all those we spoke with at DHS used them early and often.

“What she’s developed is an identity around college, and it’s really sticky.”

Especially Declan O’Connor, executive principal of Discovery, who referenced one student who will have amassed 24 college credits by the end of her sophomore year.

“What she’s developed is an identity around college, and it’s really sticky,” he told BusinessWest. “Kids are just starting to understand that this is real, and they’re looking toward their future, and they’re taking themselves seriously.”

Farrika Turner, assistant principal at Discovery, agreed.

“We’re really excited to see our Black and Brown students not be afraid of college, for their families not to be afraid of college and whether it will be attainable for them, to see parents become interested in returning to college and maybe take some of the classes that their children are taking,” she said. “And to have students see themselves as a college student, not as a high-school student that’s taking a course or two here and there that doesn’t add up to anything — they’re working toward the degree they’re interested in after high school.”

Farrika Turner

Farrika Turner says students at Discovery High are taking themselves, and their prospects for future employment, more seriously.

It will be another two years before DHS graduates a class of students. And it will be several years before those involved can compile real data on the outcome of students. But those we talked with said the early-college model is demonstrating promising results in many settings. Meanwhile, they say it is not too early to say it is succeeding at Discovery — at least when it comes to the very unofficial mission of getting students to take themselves more seriously.

 

Course of Action

As he led BusinessWest on a tour of DHS, O’Connor stopped in one classroom where students were learning how to create a circuit and, ultimately, a very small-scale solar panel, and in another, an Introduction to Digital Media class was ongoing where students were getting their pictures taken and compiling information to create their ‘digital brand.’

As inspiration, they were using a brand created by Ruth Carter, the costume designer from Springfield who has won two Oscars for her work on the Black Panther film franchise.

These are not college courses, he explained, but they are solid examples of how students at the school learn by doing, work together, and gain resolve by creating solutions and solving problems.

And this is what Brunell and others had in mind when they conceptualized this relatively new kind of high school.

“We’re really excited to see our Black and Brown students not be afraid of college, for their families not to be afraid of college and whether it will be attainable for them, to see parents become interested in returning to college and maybe take some of the classes that their children are taking.”

“We wanted to create a very small high school where kids were known, where they were cared for and loved during their time here, and where they could get really personalized attention and see themselves in careers that have been under-represented by Black and Brown folks in this community,” he said.

“Discovery High School is our attempt to take a really critical look at the STEM industries and to get students on a stronger pathway to those jobs,” he went on, adding that the Empowerment Zone board ultimately authorized the school in the spring of 2021, and it opened its doors that fall.

The school has open enrollment and is open to all students, said O’Connor, adding that there is no selection process. Overall, the school boasts a diverse population and draws from across the city. These students represent all levels of academic achievement as well.

“The child who chooses us … they know we are and what we’re about,” he explained. “They choose us mostly because they’re invested in our STEM pathways; they like to game, they like computers, they’re interested in engineering — or at least they think they are — and a lot of our students are those who traditionally didn’t do well in school, but have a big curiosity about technology.”

Now boasting 120 students, with plans to expand to 90 students per grade, DHS, as noted earlier, operates under the Early College model, which, as that name suggests, introduces students to college classes while they are high school. This not only gives them a solid head start when they get to college, said Declan, but it gives them that confidence and pride in accomplishment that Martinez spoke of.

Declan O’Connor

Declan O’Connor, principal of Discovery High School, says students there “gain an identity” by taking college classes.

O’Connor said every student at the school can take college classes, and most of them do, with DHS working in partnership with Holyoke Community College, Springfield Technical Community College, Worcester State University, and Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester. Classes take place at Discovery, online, and on the Quinsigamond campus.

As they take them, they are provided with plenty of support, he noted, adding this is an essential ingredient in this success formula, because they are real college classes, something he needed to be assured about himself.

“When I first started this and as I was learning about early college, I asked, ‘are these real college classes, or are they watered-down college classes that are a version for high-school kids?’” he recalled. “And Worcester State sternly said, ‘these are the same college classes.’ So the expectations didn’t change, but what had to be put in place was just a lot of supports for students.”

And what he’s learned over the past 20 months or so is that the students can handle these classes, academically; it’s the other aspects of that challenge, as they are for actual college students, that prove to be the bigger hurdle.

“These students didn’t have trouble doing the work,” he explained. “The challenge was more just ‘teenager stuff’ — following through, doing your homework, and submitting your assignments. Some of the students will say some of the classes they will take in the colleges are easier than 10th-grade English class.

“It’s really cool to see the shift from when they entered high school — to go from being scared and wondering, ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ to start future-planning and talking about their future in ways that make sense, and the feeling ‘I’m going to make some good money.’”

“A lot of it was just executive functioning,” he went on. “But when it came to the actual content of the classes, they were just fine because what we know about all of our kids is that, cognitively, they all have the capacity to learn.”

 

Learning Experiences

The learning at DHS has a stated purpose, said all those we spoke with — to put students on a path to not just a high-school diploma, but that living wage Brunell spoke of.

And this goes back to that notion of the students taking themselves seriously, an undertaking that comes with that confidence gained from taking those college classes, thus making students more ready not only for their actual college experience, but what can come after it.

“Early college for these students is an identity thing,” he explained. “They develop an identity around going to college, and there’s a lot of demystifying of going to college that happens along the way — they no longer have to wonder what college is like. Maybe they’re the first generation in their family to go to college, and in their freshman year, they can break down that psychological barrier of going to college.”

This ability to establish such an identity is one of the ways the faculty and administrators at Discovery are measuring success, more than two full years before anyone is handed a diploma or earns enrollment at a college or university.

Students at Discovery High

Students at Discovery High participate in a project to create a circuit, one of many examples of hands-on learning at the school.

“When the Empowerment Zone surveyed the schools in the entire country that were getting the strongest results for kids, the most predictive quality of the schools that were propelling kids to earn a living wage was whether or not kids were taking college classes in high school,” Brunell said. “It is far more predictive of college matriculation, of college success, of college achievement, of getting the diploma. If they can, during their high school years, actually spend the time in college-level classes and see themselves as being able to take those classes … this is the biggest element for us.”

Brunell said the state recently started compiling data on the salaries earned by the graduates of specific high schools. Looking out five years or so, he projects this data will show that DHS students are faring better than those in high school with more traditional models.

“We see this as the benchmark for whether or not the school is a success,” he said. “When we look at the average number of college credits earned by freshman and sophomores at Discovery High School, we’re incredibly enthused — this is a leading indicator that the school is on the right track.”

Elaborating, he said there will be several ‘winners’ to emerge from the creation of DHS and schools like it, starting with the students, who can earn up to 60 college credits and, as noted, perhaps even a degree in high school, without having to go into debt (those costs are absorbed by the school’s general-fund budget or philanthropy from groups such as the Barr Foundation and New Schools Venture Fund, as well as, locally, the Davis Foundation).

Other winners are the participating colleges, who gain enrollment, revenue, and, in some cases, future students, as well as area employers, especially those in technology-related fields, who are struggling, as other sectors are, to attract and retain qualified talent.

Another indicator of early success at DHS is the level of confidence exuded by students like Izabella Martinez, said Turner, noting that she and others can see this confidence build and reflect itself in how students see themselves and talk about the future.

“It’s really cool to see the shift from when they entered high school — to go from being scared and wondering, ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ to start future-planning and talking about their future in ways that make sense, and the feeling ‘I’m going to make some good money.’

“We see students come in and say, ‘I just want to graduate from high school, get a job, and help my family,’” she went on. “Now they’re understanding that they don’t have get a job at Geek Squad at Best Buy — ‘I can be a programmer; I can use my skills to go in the military and work in cybersecurity.’ It’s really cool to see that change, that mind shift.”

That’s what happens when young people start to take themselves, and their futures, more seriously.

Golf Businesses Expect Recent Surge to Continue into 2023

By
Ted Perez
Features Golf Preview Special Coverage

Staying the Course

Ted Perez

Ted Perez, long-time pro at East Mountain Country Club

When Ted Perez Jr. talks about the 2023 golf season, he uses the present tense — and even the past tense on occasion.

Indeed, Perez, the pro and co-owner of East Mountain Country Club in Westfield, said the season — for his course, anyway — began in January, as it sometimes does; this family-owned club is famous for being open whenever there is no snow on the ground.

But this January was different from just about any other that came before it, said Perez, who said the course was probably open for play all but a few days that month. And it was open most every day the first three weeks in February as well.

March wasn’t as kind, with the course closed several days by snow and play reduced to a trickle on many others, he said, but overall, it’s been a phenomenal start to 2023.

“I’ll call this a non-winter,” said Perez, whose father, Ted Perez Sr., built this course, located just a long par 5 from the runways at Barnes Municipal Airport, 60 years ago. “I wish every winter could have been like this one.”

Elaborating, he said winter golf of this kind is a real boon for the course because the revenue generated isn’t offset by the expenses encumbered most of the rest of the year, everything from cutting the grass to overseeding the fairways to paying the people to perform those tasks. “My father used to say, ‘it’s like finding money on the street.’”

As the 2023 season begins for most courses in the region — a few others were open for play through during stretches of the winter — they are hoping that their springs, summers, and falls are as good, relatively speaking, as Perez’s winter was.

“My father used to say, ‘it’s like finding money on the street.’”

Actually, they’ll settle, if that’s the right word, for what they’ve seen the past few years, a recognized surge in play that started during the summer of 2020, the height of the pandemic, when there was little else for people to do — they couldn’t even play tennis due to restrictions imposed by the state.

That surge continued into 2021 and then 2022, said Jesse Menachem, executive director and CEO of the Massachusetts Golf Assoc., noting that the numbers were down slightly in 2022 from 2021, but still better than the years leading up to the pandemic.

“We saw levels jump considerably in 2020 and into 2021,” he told BusinessWest. “In 2022, we were able to sustain levels and continue to grow. Overall, we’ve been able to retain the new golfers and the golfers who were brought back into the game by the pandemic. Our facilities, our operators, and our organizations are doing a great job of keeping the game sticky, keeping it relevant.”

The questions on everyone’s mind going into the new year are … will this surge continue?, and to what extent? As with the weather — always the biggest question mark heading into a new year — no one really knows the answers, but those we spoke with project another solid year for the local golf industry.

EJ Altobello

EJ Altobello, head pro at Springfield Country Club, is among those projecting the recent surge in the region’s golf industry will continue in 2023.

EJ Altobello, head pro at Springfield Country Club, a private club, said most all signs point to a continuation of current trends (his club now has a healthy waiting list for membership), and he points to Florida, where the first three months of the year have been on par (yes, that’s an industry term) with the past few seasons, as evidence.

“They’re off to a great start,” he noted. “Golf retail is off to a great start, golf rounds are off to a great start, and I think things will go the same way up here — there’s no reason to believe otherwise.”

Steve Elkins, chair of the board at Amherst Golf Club, a nine-hole track owned by Amherst College and managed by the board members, agreed. He said the past few years have been solid, and revenues have helped put the course on more solid ground than it has been in some time.

“We’re in good shape … we’re in as a good a shape as we’ve been in a very long time,” he said, adding quickly that courses have to be careful and smart with their spending to stay in solid shape financially.

On the downside, if it can be considered that, it is somewhat more difficult to get a tee time at some courses, said Menachem, and there are now waiting lists at many private clubs. So accessibility is certainly not what it was in the pre-pandemic years.

But for those in this unpredictable business, those are definitely good problems to have.

 

Green Lights

It’s called Good Friday, Bad Golf.

That’s the name of the first organized golf outing of the year at East Mountain Country Club, and, as that name suggests, it’s played every year on Good Friday, which means that some years, it isn’t played at all due to inclement weather, especially when Easter comes earlier rather than later.

This year, it’s set for April 7, and Perez is hoping his luck with the weather in 2023 holds, because there are 140 signed up for golf and the dinner to follow it. Meanwhile, April 7, or thereabouts, is when most courses in the area project to be open, if not a week or more earlier — a solid head start over most years.

“We saw levels jump considerably in 2020 and into 2021. In 2022, we were able to sustain levels and continue to grow. Overall, we’ve been able to retain the new golfers and the golfers who were brought back into the game by the pandemic.”

Jesse Menachem

Jesse Menachem

And as they open, they’re expecting to see roughly what they’ve seen for nearly the past three seasons — more business than they were seeing in the years leading up to the pandemic. In most cases, much more.

Indeed, through the end of the 2010s, golf was in the doldrums, continuing a downward trajectory that started in the early 2000s. For many, and especially the younger generations, the game was too time-consuming and too expensive, and they were putting their time and money elsewhere.

Public courses struggled to get daily play, often despite attractive specials, and private clubs, many of which had been historically full and boasted waiting lists, had plenty of spots available and were marketing themselves far more aggressively than ever before to bring in new members — and much-needed revenue.

The downward spiral was punctuated by the closing of several courses in the area, including Hickory Ridge in Amherst, Pine Grove in Northampton, and Southwick Country Club. Despite this thinning of the herd, many area courses continued to struggle.

Then, the pandemic came.

Golf was still slow and still comparatively expensive, but suddenly, people didn’t seem to care, or care as much. People of all ages and other demographic categories were looking for things to do, ways to keep active as they were eating and drinking more, and opportunities to socialize — and golf could check all those boxes, to one extent or another.

Then-Gov. Charlie Baker lifted tight restrictions on golf in early May 2020, and for the rest of the year, clubs saw surges in play, memberships, and retail sales.

Elkins said Amherst Golf Club (AGC) received a huge boost from students, most of them from UMass, who were still living in the area but not attending classes in person. Looking for things to do with their time, maybe 30 bought attractively priced memberships at AGC, a semi-private course.

Amherst Golf Club

Amherst Golf Club, a 9-hole track with a long history, has seen an increase in memberships and overall play since the start of the pandemic.

“We got a huge COVID bounce from students who couldn’t attend classes in person,” he said. “It was a one- or two-year bump, and now it’s gone away.”

Still, membership remains solid — it’s currently at about 265, down from the peak but certainly up from the pre-COVID years — and daily play (there’s a $32, play-all-day rate) has been stable as well and certainly helped by the closing of Hickory Ridge (just a mile or so down the road) a few years ago.

 

Different Strokes

The surge in play — and spending at local clubs — continued, and even accelerated, in 2021, despite the loss of maybe two dozen days of play to seemingly non-stop rain.

The skies brightened in 2022 — when obsessive heat was the bigger problem — and those trends continued. Indeed, almost everyone we spoke with said 2022 was down slightly from the year before, but still quite solid and better than pre-pandemic.

“Last year wasn’t quite as good, but right in that same ballpark,” said Altobello, using total rounds and membership, which is at a 15-year high, and his main measuring sticks. He noted that the difference might have been as simple as more people returning the office last year, making it somewhat more difficult to “sneak out for an afternoon round,” as he put it.

Overall, though, the numbers were quite good, and they provided ample evidence that those who picked up the game during the pandemic, or picked it up again after putting it down, were, indeed, staying with it, said Altobello, adding that these increases were across the board, and especially encouraging when it comes to women and young people, two demographic groups that many feel hold the key to the long-term success of the industry.

“The indicators are that they are still here,” he said. “How long they stay … that’s to be determined. But as of right now, they’re still out there playing. We’re seeing more and more women in the game, more and more men in the game, and we’ve had a great increase in our youth programs as well.”

As play picked up over the past few years, there were some changes to the landscape, ones that reflect concerns about the cost of the game and the time it consumes, said those we spoke with. Indeed, the nine-hole outing, or ones that are even shorter, became far more common, and more accepted, than perhaps ever before.

“In many cases, people only have time for nine holes. That’s roughly two and a half hours on a full course, and that’s all the time many people have.”

“Ten or 15 years ago, that wasn’t even a thought,” Menachem said of a nine- or maybe six-hole round. “It was either 18 holes or nothing; now, nine holes is a far more realistic and accepted option for those with families, for those with shorter windows of time to play before work or after work. That is definitely a positive.”

Dave Twohig, the head pro at Amherst Golf Club for more than 40 years, agreed. “In many cases, people only have time for nine holes,” he said. “That’s roughly two and a half hours on a full course, and that’s all the time many people have.”

Amherst actually has two “loops,” as he called them, holes 1-5 and 6-9 — both wind up back at the clubhouse — that people can play if they have just an hour or so and want to get a little play in, and many do just that.

 

Round Numbers

Looking ahead, or at what’s right in front of them, in the case of East Mountain and other courses that have been open for play in Q1, those we spoke with said the outlook for 2023 is colored by optimism.

And the head start many courses were able to get will certainly help, said Menachem.

Indeed, he said that, for tracks like East Mountain and many others, especially in Eastern Mass. and on the Cape (maybe 20% of the state’s courses), the robust first quarter provides needed cash flow, as Perez noted, when there are few, if any, offsetting expenses.

“It’s like found money,” said Menachem. “You’re running on a thin operation, and you’re allowing access to the golf course in the condition that it’s in without much preparation on the maintenance front; it’s not too much of a heavy lift, and the revenue you’re able to derive should completely outweigh the expenses.”

Also, the early, solid start provides a buffer against possible headwinds, such as heavy rain and excessive heat, later in the year, he went on.

Meanwhile, almost all courses should be able to open earlier than what would be considered normal, said Menachem, who, as he spoke with BusinessWest a few weeks back, said 60 to 70 were already open.

Despite all the optimism that prevails within the industry, there are still challenges to be overcome.

Indeed, the ongoing workforce crisis is still making it more difficult to attract and retain help than it has been historically.

“Labor is still a huge issue, especially on the maintenance and operations side of the game,” Menachem said. “It’s not always been attractive to get up early and set up a golf course, and we want to make sure we can support the next generation of staff and make sure wages are competitive with other industries. Meanwhile, being a seasonal sport also has its challenges.”

Elkins agreed, noting that Amherst Golf Club has increased pay rates to remain competitive and hire and retain not only young people, but also some retirees looking to work and stay active.

Meanwhile, the higher cost of … well, just about everything poses stern challenges for clubs, most of which are operating on rather thin margins and without huge reserves to fall back on. In a word, clubs need to be careful, said Elkins, adding that this certainly the case at AGC.

“Making sure that we manage our cash is really important,” he noted. “Like a lot of courses, we’re in good shape, but we’re not going to spend a ton of money on something that’s not core to the course, because it’s risky. We want to make sure we have a good capital reserve and that we spend our money wisely.”

Perez agreed, noting that, despite his great start to 2023, he knows things can change quickly, and he’s learned to reserve judgment until he’s added up all the numbers in December.

“I don’t get too caught up in all the numbers until the end of the year,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know better than to get too excited in March. But it is good to have a non-winter like this one; it beats the alternative.”

 

Staying on a Roll

With the non-winter of 2023 now in the rear view, the region’s golf industry looks forward to the next three seasons.

They do with a spring in their step — figuratively but also quite literally, and optimism that the recent surge the game has enjoyed will continue.

Time will tell if they are right, but all signs indicate that area operators will be able to stay the course — in all kinds of ways.

 

Fitness Centers Report Renewed Interest in Getting Healthy

By Contributor
Steve Conca
Healthcare News Special Coverage

Second Wind

By Mark Morris

Steve Conca

Steve Conca says he’s seen a post-pandemic uptick in people wanting to take charge of their health.

Editor’s Note:

These are exciting, challenging, and ever-changing times for healthcare and the businesses and individuals providing it. To better inform and educate its readers about the many issues, trends, and developments in the healthcare sector, BusinessWest will be introducing a new, monthly segment that will present content from its sister publication, Healthcare News (HCN) .

This new resource will be called “HCN Monthly Feature,” bringing news and information on the many health, wellness, and fitness issues and developments of today, from both regional and national sources. Each HCN Monthly Feature will have specific themes and points of emphasis — everything from health and fitness (this month) to behavioral health; from cancer care to a salute to the region’s nurses — and it will be made available online at both businesswest.com and healthcarenews.com, as well as via the daily e-newsletters BusinessWest Daily News and HCN News & Notes, making it readily available to subscribers and consumers in the Western Mass. region and beyond. 

For subscriptions, additional information, and to send us your news and story ideas, please visit BusinessWest  and HCN

Marina Lebo remembers what Healthtrax in East Longmeadow looked like during the pandemic — and is glad it looks a lot different now.

“The plastic barriers are down, and the equipment is all back where it was,” said Lebo, vice president of Operations at the club. “We have more cleaning supplies available, but that’s the only difference.”

Fortunately, that return to normal is manifesting in other ways as well — including an increase in activity.

That’s only natural; at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, fitness centers were forced to shut down. Three months later, they were allowed to reopen at 40% occupancy only after installing clear plastic barriers at the front desk, mandating masks for everyone, spacing out exercise machines, and providing lots more sanitizing wipes to clean the equipment after each use.

With Healthtrax membership back to about 70% of pre-pandemic levels, Lebo’s goal is to keep increasing everyone’s comfort level to encourage going to the club as a normal activity again.

Steve Conca, owner of Conca Sport and Fitness in West Springfield, described the last few years as a whirlwind. He’s grateful his business has survived — and even thrived — since the early days of the pandemic.

“We don’t have a huge membership base, probably around 150, and it’s a very tight-knit community where people support each other inside and outside the gym,” he said.

When everything shut down in the spring of 2020, Conca began meeting with clients outdoors and over Zoom. “Everyone stuck with us, which was great. We didn’t lose too many people once we got back into the swing of things.”

Outdoor gatherings and livestreams were options Ashley Brodeur also used to keep her business going during the height of the pandemic. The owner of Active Lifestyle Fitness in Agawam hosted a private group on Facebook Live to keep her members on a regular workout schedule. While she appreciated virtual classes as a short-term necessity, she said, nothing beats the in-person experience.

In fact, shortly after in-person sessions resumed, Brodeur noticed several members getting easily winded from doing the same workouts they were performing during the livestream sessions. “When I asked why, they admitted that they weren’t doing the entire workout at home.”

So everyone was glad to return, she went on. “There is an accountability in having to show up somewhere and having someone watch how you are exercising.”

 

Wake-up Call

Everyone who spoke with BusinessWest pointed out that the pandemic served as a wake-up call about the importance of good health. As their members return to fitness centers, all agree there’s a new emphasis on getting results.

Marina Lebo

Marina Lebo says the rise of flexible and hybrid work schedules has led to Healthtrax being busy at less traditional times.

“I think a lot of people’s minds shifted during the pandemic,” Brodeur said. “Instead of working out to quickly lose some weight, our typical member now seeks a higher quality of life and to avoid becoming an unhealthy person.”

Lebo noted that the most vulnerable people to getting COVID usually have issues with obesity or struggle with other health problems.

“There’s been a realization that, if you stay in shape, you will be better-prepared for all kinds of ailments, and you’ll be less likely to have symptoms over someone who isn’t as healthy.”

For the past year or so, Conca has seen a resurgence in his West Springfield facility due to people taking more initiative with their own health and wellness — especially older people or those who navigated the pandemic with heart disease, diabetes, weight issues, or other health factors, and now want to improve their outlook.

“They weren’t really paying attention to their fitness or health before,” he said. “These are folks who want to take a much closer look at their health.”

Most of Conca’s members are in their mid-40s through their 60s. “We have some folks in their 30s, but they’re not the majority,” he said. “It’s a nice mix of folks, and no one’s here for vanity reasons like getting ready for bikini season. They want to move better, feel better, take care of themselves. When they go on vacation, they want to be able to go on a hike without pain.”

The demand for more results-oriented workouts has meant growth in the personal training and small-group training programs at Healthtrax. Lebo said the small-group training appeals to people who like a dedicated workout at a scheduled time.

“If you’re a biker, golfer, tennis player, runner, obviously you can’t go as fast and hard and aggressive as you did in your 20s or 30s, but you can still go out and enjoy doing it, at maybe a little less intensity.”

“If you have a goal and you start to see results, you are more likely to stick with the training,” she said. “It’s far more effective than going to the gym for weeks, doing your own thing, and not seeing any noticeable results.”

To establish a starting point for fitness, Healthtrax uses a high-tech body-composition machine known as InBody 570. While the user stands on it barefoot and holds the handles, the machine provides a wealth of fitness information that helps a person understand what type of workout would benefit them most.

“For example, someone who is thin might learn they are not as fit as they thought, and the InBody might also reveal a heavy person has a good amount of muscle, so they can concentrate on exercises that burn fat,” Lebo said.

At Active Lifestyle Fitness, Brodeur offers what she calls a 6 Week Transformation Challenge, with an emphasis on strength, cardio health, and flexibility. She emphasized this is not a quick fix, but a results-oriented approach to a healthy and balanced body.

“We developed this program because people told me, ‘I need help. I don’t want to mess around with my health anymore’” she said. “It’s been successful because it centers around the basics of helping people properly move their body and build strength.”

Ashley Brodeur

Instead of just wanting to lose some weight, Ashley Brodeur says, today’s fitness crowd is looking to improve their quality of life.

An emphasis on long-term health comes with many rewards. Conca noted that, while everyone knows the definition of ‘lifespan,’ he talks with members about ‘healthspan’ — the number of years one spends without being hampered by chronic disease — and ‘playspan,’ the number of years one is able to continue to enjoy favorite activities.

“If you’re a biker, golfer, tennis player, runner, obviously you can’t go as fast and hard and aggressive as you did in your 20s or 30s, but you can still go out and enjoy doing it, at maybe a little less intensity.”

Understanding the value of that playspan, and of maintaining the ability to enjoy quality-of-life moments like getting on the floor to play with a grandchild and easily getting back up, puts a real-life emphasis on fitness goals, Conca said, which are more powerful than the numbers attached to weight-loss goals.

“When they come here, a lot of folks are not in a good place; they’re struggling, and there’s a lot of misinformation out there,” he explained, adding that many people have tried different approaches but lacked proper accountability along the way.

“We really personalize it. I’ve been really blessed to help people and have a team around me who feel the same way. It’s exciting because we’re really helping people.”

 

Opportunity Knocks

Lebo has seen a huge change involving when people choose to access her club. In the past, the hours before and after work were consistently busy, while the club was practically a ghost town in the early afternoon. That’s no longer the case.

“We are busy at all different times during the day,” she said. “With more people working from home or on floating work schedules, they might come in after 9 a.m. or after 2 p.m.”

All-day activity has been a positive development because, in addition to seeing activity all day, members no longer experience those congested times waiting to use the more popular exercise equipment.

“It’s also good for our training classes because we can schedule throughout the day instead of trying to jam everyone in after work,” Lebo said.

Whether it’s through personal training sessions, small groups, open gym time, or an introductory, six-week program called Mastering Your Best Self, Conca emphasizes that fitness should not be stressful. In fact, when done properly, it should reduce other stressors in life.

“Everyone’s dealing with something, whether it’s physical stress, financial stress, or family situations, taking care of someone. Everyone’s got a lot of stuff on their plate. So we try not to make fitness another burden for them,” he said.

“We want people to recognize, they have an opportunity to take better care of themselves, and it’s going to make all those things they are dealing with much more manageable. Fitness can be fun, let’s not make it a punishment.”

From Personal Finance to Fitness to Travel, There’s an App for Everything

By
Special Coverage Technology

The World in Your Pocket

 

It’s staggering how much accumulated knowledge is available with a few taps on a smartphone screen. Whether Apple or Android, countless apps are available to help users with a wide range of tasks, from managing their finances to tracking their fitness goals to getting an education in various topics to making travel easier and more fun.

For this year’s roundup of what’s hot in technology, BusinessWest checks in on what the tech press is saying about some of the most popular smartphone apps.

 

Dollars and Sense

Smartphones have put a world of personal finance in people’s hands. For example, Intuit’s Mint gives users a real-time look into all their finances, from bank accounts and credit cards to student loans and 401(k) accounts.

“Let’s start with Mint’s very high ratings in both the App Store and Google Play,” Nerdwallet notes. “It’s free and syncs many kinds of accounts: checking and savings, credit cards, loans, investments, and bills. As far as the actual budgeting, Mint tracks your expenses and places them in budget categories. You can personalize these categories, which are unlimited. You set limits for these categories, and Mint lets you know if you’re approaching those limits.”

Besides those budgeting features, Nerdwallet notes, Mint may help users pay down debt, save more money, and track goals, while showing users their credit score and net worth. As a bonus, Mint provides plenty of support for using the app, including a detailed FAQ.

As its name notes, You Need a Budget, or YNAB, earns top grades from Investopedia because of the company’s renowned budgeting philosophy and reputation. YNAB says new budgeters typically save $600 in their first two months and more than $6,000 in their first year. It includes customizable reports that break down the user’s income and expenses by category, account, and time frame, with the aim of helping users get their finances in order.

“YNAB allows you to sync your bank accounts, import your data from a file, or manually enter each transaction,” the site adds. “After signing up, you create your first budget and assign every dollar a purpose, such as your rent or car payment. The goal is to eventually get at least one month ahead, so you’re spending money you earned 30 days ago. The company offers extensive educational resources and customer support to keep you on track.”

For investors, Forbes recommends Empower (formerly Personal Capital) for its outstanding reporting options, desktop capabilities, investment-management platform and spending tracking. Empower gives a holistic view of customers’ entire financial picture, from day-to-day spending to tracking portfolio performance.

“The app has several savings tools designed to help build retirement savings and emergency funds and pay down debt,” the publication adds. “It also has excellent advisory tools, including an investment checkup, investment-fee analyzer, financial planning, cash-flow tracking, education cost planning, and real-time net-worth tracking. All of these tools give detailed insights into your current financial picture, while also helping you plan for the future. The list of features may sound overwhelming, but the app is easy to use.”

Meanwhile, CNBC sings the praises of PocketGuard, which, among other features, taking into account the user’s estimated income, upcoming expenses, and savings goals, and uses an algorithm to show how much is available for everyday spending. The app categorizes expenses; syncs to bank accounts and credit cards; and boasts security features like bank-level encryption, PIN codes, and biometric IDs.

 

Beyond the Workout

Moving beyond financial wellness to physical wellness, countless apps are available to offer information on what to eat, how to exercise, and how to stay committed to better habits.

Forbes recommends FitOn, which offers a wide variety of workouts, including cardio, strength, high-intensity interval training, dance, yoga, Pilates, Barre, and more. It even features workouts led by celebrities like Gabrielle Union, Julianne Hough, and Jonathan Van Ness. Classes are available in real time with the app’s live classes feature or through on-demand workouts.

With a live leaderboard and real-time heart rate tracking via Apple Watch, users can track their progress and fitness goals. Upgrading to the Pro version grants users access to more than 500 recipes, live workout video calls, personalized meal plans, and more.

One of the most popular nutrition apps is MyFitnessPal, which offers a wealth of tools for tracking what and how much the user eats and how many calories they burn through activity, according to PC Magazine.

The app is also a top pick of Verywell Fit, which notes that “MyFitnessPal is our pick for best overall fitness app because of its robust food and activity database, easy-to-use logging and tracking tools, library of workouts, and ability to connect to several other apps.” It includes a database of more than 14 million foods, is customizable based on health goals, and offers restaurant menu logging as well.

According to CNET, Nike Training Club provides various workout programs such as body-weight exercises, high-intensity interval training, cross training, yoga, core exercises, and even expert health tips by Nike trainers to keep you on track.

“The workouts are easy to follow because there are video demonstrations of each exercise with the allotted time you should be doing them,” CNET notes. “This keeps you from losing track during your workout and mentally prepares you for the following exercise. The app also connects to your Apple watch to provide health metrics such as your heart rate and logs your activities. The best part of this app is that it’s free and gives you access to many resources no matter if you’re a beginner or more advanced.”

Although Peloton is famously associated with the home-workout bike of the same name, the workouts on the app don’t all require users to have the bike or other equipment, U.S. News and World Report notes, while boxing, running, yoga, and many more types of fitness workouts are available on the app.

Women’s Health agrees, adding that “testers loved the huge choice of workouts available, from strength sessions to yoga to meditation, and found it easy to filter classes on the app by duration and difficulty to find the right one for them. Our team also said they were persuaded to push beyond their usual limits during each session thanks to motivational instructors, who helped keep their form in check with non-stop helpful pointers — though some testers found them a tad too intense for their liking.”

 

 

So Much to Learn

Countless popular apps focus on education and learning for all ages. For kids, Verywell Family recommends Khan Academy, which collaborates with the U.S. Department of Education and myriad public and private educational institutions to provide a free, world-class education for anyone.

“From preschoolers to high-schoolers, there are few educational apps that can measure up to Khan Academy when it comes to the wide range of courses it offers to students of all ages,” the site notes. “Khan Academy’s YouTube videos cover most subjects at a range of levels: math, science and engineering, arts, humanities (which includes history and social studies), economics, AP courses, and test prep.”

It adds that Khan Academy is popular among students, parents, and educators because its videos are engaging and targeted at visual learners, using photos, maps, and other illustrations, and because it allows students to work at their own pace.

For teachers, Education Corner calls Google Classroom an excellent resource. “It pulls together all of the G-Suite apps (Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Draw). Teachers can create assignments and announcements for individual classes. They can attach worksheets, slideshows, or weblinks (along with many other things) and set deadlines. The work can be marked/graded and returned to students for further work.”

When a student completes work, it gets saved automatically to their Google Classroom class folders in their Google Drive (which are set up automatically). All work is saved securely. Students may submit class comments that are viewable to all students and teachers assigned to that ‘classroom,’ which leads to collaborative working.

My eLearning World touts HOMER as a personalized learning app designed to help younger kids fall in love with learning, featuring more than 1,000 learning activities across all subjects. “From toddlers to second-graders, this educational app is a fit for every eager kid ready to learn something new, especially younger kids early in their development. HOMER is an early learning software designed to help children develop their critical thinking skills. It helps them build their confidence for the future by leading them on their customized educational journey.”

HOMER features a variety of interactive lessons, stories, and activities that are tailored according to the student’s individual skills, age, and interests. “The level of personalization is what really sets HOMER apart from other kids educational apps,” My eLearning World notes, “and it’s why this is our favorite app for keeping children of various ages and skills engaged and learning at their own pace.

For learning another language in the go, Lifewire gives top marks to Duolingo, which “stands out among language-learning apps, and among education apps overall. Duolingo includes dozens of languages, including a couple of fictional ones just for fun. Each language offers a mostly linear path divided into topics of conversation. Each topic presents you with short exercises to familiarize you with the material through spoken and written formats.”

The app encourages users to make a habit of practicing with a reward system and a social component. The rewards can be spent in the app’s store on powerups and fun accessories. Meanwhile, the in-app social network encourages users to invite friends to the app and compare scores.

 

Now Go Away

Thinking about a vacation? PC Magazine says Hopper “is an app you definitely want to use while you’re planning a trip and before you buy any tickets. The mobile-only app tracks flight prices and gives you clear advice on the best time to buy — including through notifications when the price drops. What makes this travel app valuable is its level of detail. It doesn’t just tell you to wait to buy your ticket, but gives you a date when the price will likely rise. You can book through Hopper, too, with a commission fee of a few dollars.”

Travel + Leisure notes that flight prices can fluctuate, making it tricky to decide whether to book right away or hold off. Hopper can remove some of the uncertainty by predicting the best time to find the cheapest fares, saving up to 40%. The app also has a price-monitoring feature so users can select a particular flight and receive alerts if the price drops. They can also compare the prices and amenities of more than 250 airlines and get alerts about airfare flash sales.

For lovers of the great outdoors, Travel + Leisure also sings the praises of AllTrails, noting that “this app will provide you with the area’s best hiking, biking, and running trails. In addition to details on length, starting location, and trail quality, AllTrails includes reviews and photos from a community of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. You’ll find useful information like what to pack, obstacles you’ll find along the route, and the best scenic spots to check out.”

Finally, Afar singles out TripIt, which automatically tracks confirmation emails for flight itineraries, hotel, or Airbnb bookings; car rentals; restaurant reservations; and even event tickets, then populates those travel plans into an itinerary that be viewed in one place.

“The easy-to-use organizational app makes it simple to share the consolidated information with family or friends, so you can send them your itinerary directly and avoid having to answer repeated texts like, ‘when are you landing again?’ to coordinate an airport pickup,” Afar notes. “TripIt even features a personalized travel stats page for really data-hungry folks who want to know how many trips they’ve taken or countries they’ve visited — and that’s just in the free version.” Meanwhile, the paid version includes extras like real-time flight alerts, TSA wait times, and loyalty reward program updates.

In short, whatever you’re looking to improve in your life, as Apple’s famous ad slogan notes, there’s an app for that.

 

Greenfield Envisions a Future-focused Downtown

By
MJ Adams
Community Spotlight Special Coverage

Community Spotlight

MJ Adams

MJ Adams, seen with one of Greenfield’s signature bees, says commercial and residential development are equally important downtown.

 

MJ Adams recalled a community event in February 2020 called “A Deliberate Downtown: Growing by Design.”

“Because so many interesting things were happening downtown at that time, and we were getting ready to launch a downtown-revitalization effort, we wanted to engage everyone in the community conversation about downtown,” said Adams, Greenfield’s director of Community and Economic Development.

Then the pandemic struck, the world went into lockdown, and the city pressed pause on its plan, she said. But only a pause.

“The COVID-19 pandemic changed many things about the city’s growth plans for the short term, all of 2020 and most of 2021, but it did not change the grit, determination, and resiliency of our city’s business and government leaders,” Mayor Roxann Wedegartner said in a recent state-of-the-city address, noting that municipal leaders moved forward with construction and revitalization programs, aided by a rush of state and federal money intended to pump life into the economy and infrastructure.

During that time, the city broke ground on a new, $20 million library (set to open this spring), solidified a location for its new $21 million fire station (expected to open early next year), and built a temporary fire station to ensure continued service.

“These projects are a testament to the willingness of Greenfield citizens to fund essential services that serve our city and surrounding communities,” she said, adding to that list a skate park soon to open between Chapman and Davis streets downtown, funded with a combination of state grant money and city capital-improvement funding.

It’s all part of what the mayor calls the city’s ‘rurban’ lifestyle, an appealing combination of urban amenities and a rural feel, all highlighted by a downtown set to undergo significant changes to make it more liveable, walkable, and attractive for businesses and visitors alike.

“Downtown areas throughout the nation are changing; some have dried up completely, while others, like ours, are focusing on recognizing demographic and business shifts and are embracing that change,” Wedegartner said in her address. “We have a robust downtown-redevelopment strategy focused on transformational change incorporating available and new housing, new infrastructure improvements, and retail and commercial opportunities. Here is where we merge our economic-development, infrastructure, and housing efforts into a cohesive plan.”

 

What’s in Store?

A significant element in the downtown mix is the former Wilson’s Department Store site, which is being converted into an intriguing mixed-use development.

The city brought together the Community Builders and MassDevelopment in the acquisition and redevelopment of the former Wilson’s property, originally built in 1882. The redevelopment will create approximately 65 residential rental units and will reactivate prominent first-floor and basement retail spaces through the relocation and expansion of Franklin Community Co-op’s Greenfield store, Green Fields Market.

“In addition to creating much-needed, high-quality housing in Greenfield, relocating and expanding Green Fields Market will provide the community with access to healthy food in an area of Greenfield currently without a full-service grocery store,” said Rachana Crowley, director of Real Estate Development at the Community Builders, when the project was announced. “We’re proud to be a part of this team which will create new housing and employment opportunities and invest in a strong and robust Main Street in Greenfield.”

Adams said attracting a combination of commercial and residential tenants through mixed-use development has been important in the ongoing downtown plan. “What happens downtown, how we perceive it, is how the region perceives us as a community. So we knew we had to work on downtown. And we knew we couldn’t leave Wilson’s sitting empty.”

Jessye Deane

Jessye Deane says Greenfield businesses thrive through connections with myriad agencies that provide technical, financial, and other forms of support.

Adams called upper-story redevelopment “a significant building block in our efforts to create more business development and housing in Greenfield.” But the Wilson’s project is only one piece; another 36-unit development on Wells Street will hit the construction phase soon, and developers are eyeing other potential residential-development sites both within and outside of Greenfield’s downtown sector.

“We know we need to take a look at the missing middle-market supply of housing that serves working people who are not eligible for subsidized housing but are also struggling to find housing in any market now,” she said. “This is an issue for the whole state. Everyone is feeling, quite accurately, that we’ve made progress with affordable rental housing, but now we need to work on other aspects of the market.”

Adams feels like Greenfield is an attractive market for people looking for a place to live because it’s considered more affordable than other communities and boasts strong transit links to the rest of the region and beyond.

A $7.8 million, state- and federally funded multi-modal Main Street improvement project should only lend momentum to that perception, she and Wedegartner believe. The mayor appropriated $288,900 in capital funds for engineering and design of the project, which begins 100 feet to the east of Colrain Street and ends at High Street. The project is on track to be included in MassDOT’s Transportation Improvement Program, with construction slated to begin as early as fall 2026.

“While this project is underway, the city will also be able to upgrade underground utilities, primarily our water and sewer infrastructure. This will save the city money as we will not need to dig up Main Street twice,” the mayor noted, adding that additional grant money is being used to fund a parking-management study for the downtown area.

One significant goal of all this, she told BusinessWest, is to make Main Street more pedestrian- and bike-friendly, including continued efforts to make Court Square a pedestrian plaza. “Route 2A can never be pedestrian-only; Main Street has to be open to all traffic. But there’s significant work being done curb to curb.”

“I’m fond of saying that, in five years, you’re not going to recognize Main Street.”

Wedegartner stressed that development activity in Greenfield extends well beyond downtown. The Planning Department and City Council continue work to rezone about 40 acres across Route 2A from the I-91 Industrial Park as additional industrial space geared to attracting more advanced manufacturers and sustaining existing manufacturers who have run out of space in the current industrial park.

Jessye Deane, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce and Regional Tourism Council, said one of the city’s selling points is its balance between that industrial sector and the sorts of small, locally owned shops and eateries that dot the downtown, as well as attractions ranging from Greenfield Garden Cinemas, which recently celebrated its 94th birthday, to Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center.

Greenfield at a glance

Year Incorporated: 1753
Population: 17,768
Area: 21.9 square miles
County: Franklin
Residential Tax Rate: $19.65
Commercial Tax Rate: $19.65
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

The owners of Greenspace Co-work, located upstairs from Hawks & Reed, have been bringing local businesses together at a monthly event called Business Breakdown, and Deane has been impressed with what they’re saying.

“The Business Breakdowns are so interesting; we’re hearing how many people not originally from this area chose to start a business in Greenfield because there are so many resources available — partnerships with the chamber and the Franklin County CDC and the city — and how glad they are that they did choose Greenfield.

“Greenfield is the seat of Franklin County,” she added. “When Greenfield does well, all of Franklin County does well. So it’s good to see Greenfield making such a concerted effort to revitalize the downtown.”

 

Partners in Progress

With technical and financial assistance and other resources provided to businesses through agencies like the CDC, Common Capital, the chamber, and others, and workforce-development efforts at Greenfield Community College, Franklin County benefits strongly from a culture of partnership, Deane said.

“It feels like there’s this collective effort to really build on the partnerships; it’s one of the things Franklin County generally does very well,” she explained. “Working through the pandemic, we had effective partnerships, and I’m really seeing those grow as we’re able to share resources and think more strategically about the next generation of Greenfield and what the city should look like.”

That said, “I’ve been really impressed with the energy and momentum I’m seeing in Greenfield,” she told BusinessWest. “We’ve seen the city of Greenfield creating an environment more attractive to businesses, while simultaneously supporting the outstanding businesses we already have to make sure we’re ensuring their success.”

That’s Wedegartner’s goal too, of course, even as she asks people for patience as all the visible signs of progress come together downtown over the next few years, from the new library and fire station to new housing and a more walkable city center.

“I’m fond of saying that, in five years, you’re not going to recognize Main Street,” she told BusinessWest. “It’s going to be so different and so much more vital in so many ways. But it’s going to take time.”

 

Chase Bank Continues Ambitious Growth Plan in Springfield

By
Oumkar Tobaran
Banking and Financial Services

Branching Out

Oumkar Tobaran

Oumkar Tobaran says the human element is critical in banking even amid the rise of online and mobile tools.

At a time when a bank’s customers can conduct business from anywhere with a few clicks, dramatic branch expansion may seem outdated.

But it’s not, Ali Zaidi said, explaining why Chase Bank is looking to double its presence in Massachusetts over the next several years, starting with the opening of a downtown Springfield office on March 7.

“When you think about the important life events that customers go through, whether it be retirement planning, buying a house, or the birth of a child, people still have an appreciation for that face-to-face conversation. That makes an impact,” said Zaidi, Chase’s market director for Western and Central Mass. “And about 75% of our customers that have balances with us still come to the branches. So, clearly, the customers are telling us they would love to have that face-to-face interaction, especially with complex life events.”

Oumkar Tobaran, branch manager for the new location in Harrison Place — which has a long history of housing banks, including Third National Bank and, in recent decades, Bank of Western Massachusetts and People’s United Bank — said the human element is critical.

“With all the technology and innovation we have, think of the amount of things that we can go on our phones to do on a daily basis,” he told BusinessWest. “But the minute something doesn’t go right or the minute you need support or additional advice on something, we want to show that customer service matters, with a physical presence.”

The branch is Chase’s 38th in Massachusetts since opening its first Bay State location in Boston in 2018 — an impressive growth trajectory, and a number the institution is looking to double by 2025, including a location to open this spring in the former Silverscape Designs building on King Street in Northampton.

“This is a central point,” Zaidi said of downtown Springfield, noting that Chase has an office a few miles down I-91 in Enfield, but this is technically the first in Western Mass. “There’s definitely a rich history here on Main Street and its local businesses, as well as larger clienteles with MGM and the Hall of Fame. We’re serving clients of different demographics, and I’m very excited that we were able to secure this spot on Main Street.”

Tobaran said he expects plenty of foot traffic downtown, as well as visits from customers who may have been banking in Enfield or branches to the west, while Chase has been conducting outreach to build a larger base of business in the region.

“About 75% of our customers that have balances with us still come to the branches. So, clearly, the customers are telling us they would love to have that face-to-face interaction, especially with complex life events.”

“We wanted to make sure that we have a convenient place for them to visit because it’s important to be able to interact with the community,” he added. “There’s a lot of development happening in Springfield, and we wanted to be part of that momentum as well.”

Zaidi agreed. “Springfield is a key cog that gives us an entry point into expanding into Western Massachusetts and brings convenience to our customers. Springfield is being revitalized, and I feel we can be an integral part of that.”

He also feels there’s an opportunity to add customers who might already be familiar with Chase through its mortgage products and credit cards. “That’s what people know. So one of our consumer-banking priorities is to be a bank for all and make it easy for people to do business with us. And technology-wise, where customers were able to bank with us remotely, this now gives them a physical location to meet their diverse needs.”

Ali Zaidi

Ali Zaidi says downtown Springfield is the first Chase branch in Western Mass. and the springboard to an eventual doubling of the bank’s branches in Massachusetts.

As he showed off the space at 1391 Main St., from the tellers and ITM machines up front to the various offices further back, Zaidi said the new Springfield branch can do all of that.

“We will help our customers with any needs, and we have more licensed specialist bankers to navigate those complex life events — retirement, financial planning, or just navigating your credit-history trajectory if you’re looking to purchase something down the road. We’re so excited to be providing that face-to-face value, and we’re looking forward to continuing the expansion.”

 

Set Up to Help

This first Western Mass. branch is about 3,000 square feet in size and features a modern, bright design with plenty of natural light, quiet meeting areas, and state-of-the-art banking technology, including those ITMs, which allow a higher withdrawal limit than traditional ATMs, as well as access to Chase professionals.

“For customers who have commercial or small-business banking needs, we have our team of experts, partners who will be working out of here and supporting other branches to connect customers. So it’s a one-stop shop.”

A dedicated Chase Private Client team provides premium banking services, personalized attention, and access to the expertise and investment capabilities of J.P. Morgan to help families reach their goals. Customers may also meet with financial and home-lending advisors and business-banking relationship managers.

“Our retail banking operations are here, and we have our licensed bankers to deal with client management,” Zaidi explained, “and for customers who have commercial or small-business banking needs, we have our team of experts, partners who will be working out of here and supporting other branches to connect customers. So it’s a one-stop shop.”

Tobaran said the open layout will help customers easily navigate what they need. “We will have associates in the lobby greeting clients, interacting with them. And then, depending on the transactions they’ll need to leverage, we can go back here and figure out what we need to help them with,” he explained, gesturing away from the front door toward the offices in back.

“But we equip a lot of our associates with tablets,” he added. “So in addition to helping them back there, however we can help support them face to face, sitting down in the lobby area, we will do that with the resources and tools we have.”

Besides banking business, Chase also wants to connect with Greater Springfield in other ways, Zaidi said, through financial-literacy programs and other types of community outreach.

“The idea is to have our branches be community anchors. So when we think about financial-literacy conversations, be it with young professionals or small-business owners, we want to host workshops and assistance in that space as well,” he explained, noting that Chase is working on several community-development efforts around financial literacy, including a partnership with Western New England University. “So this would serve as an anchor for us where we could do before- or after-hours seminars and events. It makes sense.”

Harrison Place

Harrison Place has been home to several banks in the past, from Third National Bank to the Bank of Western Massachusetts and People’s United Bank.

Tobaran added that the bank’s employees also reflect its region, as the branch hired locally, including people who hail from the Latino and Vietnamese communities, among others.

“We want some familiar faces to be representing Chase, saying, ‘hey, these are the resources we have to help you accomplish your goal.’ It was important for us to get local talent, people who had ties to the community, people who are passionate about giving back and who genuinely want to see Springfield succeed.”

 

Only the Beginning

Zaidi and Tobaran know Chase is making an ambitious surge into a region some have called overbanked, and where community banks have long dominated. But they say Chase is committed to local residents and organizations in much the same way locally headquartered banks are, while also bringing vast financial resources to the table.

“When you think about Chase, we have the resources of a large global corporation,” Zaidi said. “And our vision is, how do we take those resources and localize the solutions for our customers? Our technology and data analysis help us strategize and take a more targeted approach, because all the branches are going to operate differently based on the community-specific needs.”

One example is a partnership with Habitat for Humanity, one of the organizations that will be on hand on March 15 for the branch’s official grand-opening festivities.

“That’s one way Oumkar and his team have been making an impact in the community already,” Zaidi said. “We feel that we can be a valued contributor in that space among all the other banks. The competitive edge that we have is not only through our resources, but with the community aspect that we are trying to drive here.”

New Accounting Standards Impact Business Leases for 2022

By Contributor
Banking and Financial Services

Details, Details

By Matthew Nash, CPA

 

The implementation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) new lease accounting standard, ASC 842, presents a major challenge for companies that produce financial statements under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Matthew Nash

Matthew Nash

After almost seven years since the release of Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-02 in February 2016, these organizations must now work toward implementing ASC 842 for the 2022 fiscal year. This article will provide an overview of the key changes that need to be made in order to ensure compliance with the new lease-accounting standard.

 

What Is ASC 842?

This standard intends to provide visibility on a company’s capital needs and obligations, improve consistency in financial-statement presentation, provide enhanced disclosures to the readers of the financial statements, and improve the comparability of lease practices across entities and industries.

Under the new standard, lessees are required to account operating leases with terms longer than 12 months on the balance sheet, resulting in the recognition of a right-of-use asset and the corresponding liability. Under the previous standard, ASC 840, the only leases that were required to be accounted for on the balance sheet were capital leases, which are now referred to as finance leases under ASC 842. Prior to ASC 842, operating leases required disclosure only in the notes to the financial statements.

Lessor accounting practices remain largely unchanged from ASC 840 to 842.

 

What Qualifies as a Lease Under ASC 842?

To better understand the new lease standard, you must first understand the definition of a lease. A lease is defined as the contract, or part of a contract, that conveys the right to control the use of an identified property, plant, or equipment for a period of time in exchange for consideration.

To simplify this definition, a lease is a physical asset that a company has the right to direct the use of for economic benefit. The most common examples of leases are office space, machinery, vehicles, equipment, and land.

 

What Steps Should Companies Take to Prepare?

To prepare for adoption of this standard, companies first need to account for all their existing leases and thoroughly review the contracts to determine whether they include an operating or a finance lease.

 

Do You Have an Operating Lease or Finance Lease?

If the lease meets any of the following criteria, it will be classified as a finance lease:

• Does the lease transfer ownership at the end of the lease term?

• Does the lease grant the lessee a right-to-purchase option that is lessee is reasonably certain to exercise?

• Is the lease term for the major part of the economic life of the underlying asset?

• Does the present value of the sum of lease payment and any residual value guaranteed by the lessee not reflected in the lease payments equal or exceed substantially all of the underlying asset’s fair value?

• Finally, is the underlying asset of such a specialized nature that it is not expected to have an alternative use to the lessor at the lease term end?

If the answer to all five of those questions is no, then the lease qualifies as an operating lease.

 

Lease Details

After concluding the lease type, it is time to dig into the lease details:

• When does the lease start?

• When does the lease end?

• Are there early termination or renewal options?

• Are there variable expenses related to the lease?

• What is the monthly cost of the lease?

The answer to all these questions is integral to the calculation of the asset and liability to be included in the financial statements. Once the total future lease obligation has been calculated, the obligation will be presently valued using one of three discount rate options. The newly recognized right-of-use asset and liability will then be amortized over the life of the lease, based on the lease type.

For income-statement purposes, operating leases will continue to be classified as lease expense, and finance leases will be split between amortization expense and interest expense.

 

Transition Methods

As part of the initial adoption of the new lease standard, there are certain practical expedients that can be adopted to help make the transition easier. Companies are not required to assess existing lease classifications. Existing operating leases with terms extending beyond 12 months will be included on the balance sheet effective Jan. 1, 2022, the date of required adoption. Existing capital leases will continue to be included with property, plant, and equipment, and will be amortized over the remaining life of the lease.

 

Financial-statement Disclosure Impacts

Aside from the impact on the balance sheet, the standard will also provide enhanced disclosures in the notes to the financial statements. The required disclosure will include qualitative and quantitative disclosures, including descriptions of the existing leases, disclosure of lease expenses as included in the income statement, cash paid for leases during the current year, new right-of-use assets obtained through operating and finance leases, weighted average of discount rate used to present value the lease obligation, and the maturity analysis disclosing the future obligations to be paid.

 

In Conclusion

The new lease standard is expected to have the biggest impact on those companies with a large volume of real-estate leases that have previously been required to be disclosed only in the footnotes to the financial statements. The overall expectation is that most companies with leases will see some impact related to the adoption of the new standard. Because the new standard has a balance-sheet impact, it is recommended that all companies review any financial covenants and proactively work with financial institutions to consider whether amendments to covenants may be required.

There are many intricacies within the new lease standard, and it will be a learning process for all of those involved in preparing their company’s financial statements. The best thing a company can do is take the time to make sure that they fully understand how each lease is written, and to have an open dialogue with their CPA.

 

Matthew Nash, CPA is a senior manager at the Holyoke-based accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.; (413) 536-8510.

 

It Pays to Have a Healthy Dose of Skepticism

By Contributor
Wealth Management

ESG Investing

By Josh Bedell, CFP, CIMA and Sylvia Callan, CFA

 

As with any new investment trend, a rise in popularity can give way to bad actors.

ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing is not immune. Recent articles from the Economist, Barron’s, and the Wall Street Journal focus on the rise of ESG investing, and the perhaps predictable attempt by some to capitalize on this trend in a disingenuous and unscrupulous manner.

However, they leave investors who are socially conscious without a way forward in seeking to decipher the good from the bad.

The need couldn’t be more pressing, with ESG investing slated to rival traditional forms of investing in the next several years. With this potential surge in demand, concerns have arisen about how seriously the ESG criteria are being considered.

“Some mutual funds and portfolio managers have taken to slapping an ESG title on a fund or portfolio without doing much of anything to truly incorporate ESG factors into the investment process. This practice of attempting to woo well-intentioned investors, while not actually striving for change, has even earned a sardonic title: ‘greenwashing.’”

Indeed, some mutual funds and portfolio managers have taken to slapping an ESG title on a fund or portfolio without doing much of anything to truly incorporate ESG factors into the investment process. This practice of attempting to woo well-intentioned investors, while not actually striving for change, has even earned a sardonic title: ‘greenwashing.’

Josh Bedell

Josh Bedell

Sylvia Callan

Sylvia Callan

The good news is that the SEC has taken notice, and has proposed some rules that would create consistent standards and disclosure requirements. In addition, the Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI), a globally recognized institution for sustainable investing, tracks the development of regulatory policies in sustainable finance that support ESG investment principles. Over the past year alone, the PRI identified more than 200 new or revised policy instruments that support, encourage, or require investors to consider long-term value drivers in ESG — the main elements of socially responsible investing.

Understanding the evolving landscape in ESG can feel like a daunting task, especially if you have many other things on your plate, like a job, family, and normal day-to-day responsibilities. The good news is, there are some relatively easy steps investors can take to ensure their portfolio aligns with their values.

For starters, mutual-fund families that focus exclusively on ESG and/or socially responsible investment (SRI) funds are more likely to utilize stringent criteria than a traditional fund family that has added one or two ESG funds in recent years. Further, actively managed funds, which incorporate at least some degree of qualitative analysis, tend to evaluate companies more thoroughly than index funds, which simply track a list of ‘approved’ holdings from a third party, though there are exceptions.

Investors without the time or inclination to do this research on their own can turn to a trusted asset manager who takes ESG investing seriously. Dedicated ESG portfolio managers do extensive work in the field, often talking to mutual-fund managers directly, visiting corporate offices, analyzing lists of underlying holdings, and obtaining advanced credentials related to ESG investing.

Ultimately, it pays to have a healthy dose of skepticism. It certainly helped our firm when we decided to offer an ESG strategy for our clients. It required an added layer of scrutiny to ensure that ESG investment principles were clearly defined, closely monitored, and reported in a timely manner.

It could be an encouraging sign that increasing numbers of investors are seeking to effect positive change while also generating competitive — or possibly even superior — returns. A shift of this magnitude is bound to encounter some hiccups along the way.

Far from a reason to abandon the initiative altogether, greenwashing concerns offer an opportunity to further investor engagement, advance regulatory reform, and promote endeavors to improve ESG reporting and investing standards with the potential to benefit us all.

 

Josh Bedell is a financial planner and investment advisor, and Sylvia Callan is a portfolio manager, for Gage-Wiley. Callan has earned the CFA Institute certificate in ESG investing and leads the firm’s ESG efforts. Securities offered through St. Germain Securities Inc., a FINRA member. Gage Wiley is a d/b/a of St. Germain Securities Inc.

Using History as Our Guide

By Contributor
Wealth Management

It Shows That Our Pain May Be Followed by Some Gains

By Jeff Liguori

 

According to Google searches, the popularity of the term ‘inflation’ hit its highest peak in at least five years during the second week of August of last year.

Jeff Liguori

Jeff Liguori

For the sake of comparison, the term ‘stock market’ is one of the more popular Google searches. On average, ‘stock market’ is three times more popular than ‘inflation.’ For further comparison, the search for ‘Lebron James’ is regularly much higher than ‘inflation,’ but still not quite as popular as ‘stock market’ on average. Yet, in August of last year, ‘inflation’ bested both terms, by a wide margin.

Higher consumer prices are causing anxiety. The Federal Reserve, with its dual mandate of full employment and low inflation, has been working to ease prices through higher interest rates, which led to weak performance in both stock and bond markets in 2022 — a rare phenomenon when both markets sell off in tandem.

When the Fed raises the federal funds rate, an interest rate that banks charge to one another for overnight lending, it has a ripple effect, putting upward pressure on all interest rates, from mortgages to treasury bills. In turn, all assets get ‘repriced’; stock prices adjust lower (usually) because higher rates often mean profit margins for those businesses shrink, which equates to a lower valuation for that company’s stock price. The repricing of assets has wide-ranging implications and is often disruptive to an economy.

Is the Fed acting appropriately? Wall Street, with no lack of varying opinions, either believes the Fed has overstepped by tightening too quickly and too late, or the Fed should be more aggressive in the next two sessions and then be done. Finding an economist or strategist that thinks Jerome Powell and his crew are precisely doing the right thing is nearly impossible.

Instead of opining on the Fed’s actions — I’m not an economist, more of an ‘investment historian’ — let’s put the discussion in the context of past cycles of rising inflation and what it might mean for investors.

From January 1966 to August 1969, the federal funds rate more than doubled from 4.5% to 10.25%, in what was then seen as aggressive action by the Fed to tame inflation. In August 1969, the Fed reversed course, cutting interest rates as the economy slowed and the country faced increasing job losses. To safeguard the economy, the Fed quickly went from raising to easing interest rates, moving the effective rate back to about 5% in March 1971, as unemployment started to tick up.

But the story doesn’t end there. Inflation was persistent even with a slowing economy because of a burgeoning energy crisis. Once again, the Fed moved to a tightening stance, this time increasing interest rates by more than 300% from the spring of 1971 to the summer of 1973. Interest rates skyrocketed, and stocks suffered badly, declining by more than 40% in the 14 months following the start of that new tightening cycle, before bottoming in October 1974.

Interestingly, interest rates remained historically elevated throughout the 1980s, but stocks managed to do quite well. From the low in October 1974, the S&P 500 had an impressive run until the tech meltdown in 2001, appreciating 460% into late 2000. The data is compelling.

Following the Fed pause in 1974, in 21 of the subsequent 28 years leading up to the tech bubble, stocks generated a positive annual return. The worst year was 1977, when the S&P was down 11.5%, and the best year was 1995, when the S&P 500 generated a positive 34% return. There were eight years in that three-decade stretch when stocks increased by more than 25%.

To put things in perspective: the federal funds rate increased from 2.25% to a peak of 14.3% from February 1971 to July 1974, a total increase of about 230%, a slow and steady move higher in that 40-month period. Beginning in March of last year, the Fed raised rates from a historic low of 0.08% to 4.75%. That may seem milder as the overall level of interest rates is still historically low, but consider the Fed took this action in 11 months, increasing rates by more than 5,000%.

Overall, 2022 was unprecedented, both in the dramatic measures by the Fed and the performance of financial markets. Bond and stock markets haven’t generated a negative return in the same calendar year in almost 60 years. And there has only been one other year since 1960 when bonds had a decline in value of more than 10%, in 2009; however, the stock market appreciated almost 26% that year as the country emerged from the 2008 Great Recession.

So, what if the Fed — irrespective of Wall Street opinions — is doing exactly what needs to be done? And what if the economy avoids a recession? And what if stock and bond prices have already adjusted for a recession that doesn’t materialize (or is mild)? If history is our guide, financial markets can produce healthy returns even in inflationary periods, after some initial pain.

The answer may be as simple as to ignore consensus. Be a contrarian. The pain to our portfolios over the past 18 months may be the first step to higher returns in the near future.

 

Jeff Liguori is the co-founder and chief Investment officer of Napatree Capital, an investment boutique with offices in Longmeadow as well as Providence and Westerly, R.I.; (401) 437-4730.

BBB Reports on Most Common Types of Scams to Avoid

By
Wealth Management

Don’t Let Your Gains Be Drained

 

Employment scams climbed to the second-riskiest in 2022, according to a new Better Business Bureau (BBB) report, while online purchase scams remained the riskiest scam type.

Employment scams rose from third-riskiest in 2021 to second-riskiest in 2022, according to a new report from the Better Business Bureau. Employment-scam reports submitted to BBB Scam Tracker rose 23.1% from 2021 to 2022. People also lost more money to this scam type in 2022, up 66.7% from 2021 ($900) to 2022 ($1,500). The median dollar loss for employment scams ($1,500) was significantly higher than that of $171 for all scam types.

Online purchase (shopping) scams remained the riskiest scam type in 2022. Online purchase scams comprised 31.9% of all scams reported to BBB Scam Tracker in 2022, with 74.0% of people reporting that they lost money.

Cryptocurrency scams dropped in 2022 from second- to third-riskiest due to a drop in reported scams, susceptibility (the percentage of those who lose money when exposed to a scam), and median dollar loss.

“Employment scams, which peaked at #1 on our list in 2019, are seeing a resurgence,” said Melissa Lanning Trumpower, executive director of the BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust, which produced the 2022 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report. “This is a high-touch scam in which perpetrators spend more time with their targets in the hope of stealing more money from each target. Employment scams tied for the highest median dollar loss of all scam types. Home-improvement scams, #4 on our list of riskiest scams, also had a median dollar loss of $1,500.”

More people reported losing money when targeted by websites, social media, and email than other contact methods. Those who were targeted in person reported losing the most significant amount of money ($715), followed by text messages ($579) and phone ($550). Scams perpetrated by text messages increased by 39.6%, from 9.1% in 2021 to 12.7% in 2022.

Scams perpetrated online were more likely to result in a monetary loss than scams targeted via phone or in person. Credit cards remained the most reported payment method with a monetary loss, followed by online payment systems. The payment methods with the highest median dollar loss were wire transfer ($2,700), check ($1,277), and cryptocurrency ($1,135).

The riskiest scam type varied among age groups, with employment scams landing as the riskiest for ages 18 to 34. Online purchase scams were again the riskiest for ages 35 to 64. Home-improvement scams were the riskiest for ages 65 and up.

Military consumers (active-duty military, spouses, and veterans) reported significantly higher median financial losses ($238) than non-military consumers ($163). Active-duty military reported losing significantly more money ($490) than military spouses ($248) and veterans ($200).

The five most impersonated organizations reported to BBB Scam Tracker in 2022 were Amazon, Geek Squad, Publishers Clearing House, the U.S. Postal Service, and Norton.

For more report highlights, visit bbbmarketplacetrust.org/riskreport. Go to bbb.org/scamtracker to report a scam and learn more about other risky scams on bbb.org/scamtips.

BBB Scam Tracker is an online platform that enables consumers and businesses to report attempted and successful acts of fraud. The platform also enables people to search the scam reports to help determine if a scam is targeting them. The platform was upgraded in 2022 with support from Amazon and Capital One.

 

Vedang Chauhan Named a 2022 Engineering Unleashed Fellow

By
Architecture

Instilling an Entrepreneurial Mindset

 

Western New England University College of Engineering Professor Vedang Chauhan has been named an Engineering Unleashed fellow, a designation that recognizes leadership in undergraduate engineering education by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), a 50-partner collaborative whose mission is to instill an entrepreneurial mindset within undergraduate engineering students.

Chauhan is part of a select group of 21 individuals from colleges and universities across the country — and only two from New England — who have been named Engineering Unleashed fellows for 2022. Engineering Unleashed is a community of 4,000 faculty members from more than 350 institutions.

“KEEN supports teaching undergraduate students with an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through their work,” Chauhan said. “I believe in KEEN’s mission and incorporate EM through my teaching. I design project activities for my students that help them develop an entrepreneurial mindset.”

“KEEN supports teaching undergraduate students with an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through their work.”

Vedang Chauhan

Vedang Chauhan

Chauhan is a mechanical engineering professor with a wealth of experience in the field. He received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Queen’s University and has published numerou papers in prestigious journals, demonstrating his expertise in the field. He has also received several awards and grants for his research, which focuses on areas such as mechanics, materials, and manufacturing.

The nomination and fellowship naming process began with Chauhan’s initiative to participate in the Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development National Workshop Program. These workshops are designed and delivered by a collaborative group of subject-matter experts who serve as faculty members within the national network of partner institutions. The workshops attract faculty participants from across the country focusing on the development and application of an entrepreneurial mindset, whether it be in teaching, learning, research, industry, or academic leadership. Chauhan participated in the Integrating Curriculum with Entrepreneurial Mindset (ICE) 1.0 workshop, which connects problem-based active and collaborative learning to the development of entrepreneurial mindset.

“Students enjoy working on the projects and provide positive feedback on how EM activities foster curiosity, connections, and add value to their work,” Chauhan added. “I am thankful to KEEN ICE 1.0 workshop coaches, my fellow faculty members, and my university for all their support. I am happy to be a part of a Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network of like-minded educators.”

Working with the facilitators and then the coaches for up to a year, Chauhan completed the work and contributed to the Engineering Unleashed community through an online publication-sharing platform known as engineeringunleashed.com. The workshop coaches nominated a number of candidates, and an independent review committee from the KEEN partner institutions made the final selections.

To amplify the work of these fellows and advance the shared mission, awards are provided to the awardee’s home institutions through the Kern Family Foundation. As an ambassador for entrepreneurial mindset, each fellow will work on a project through their institution with a grant award of $10,000. In total, the colleges received $210,000 in support to recognize efforts in engineering education by their faculty.

The other 2022 Engineering Unleased fellow from a New England institution is Gbetonmasse Somasse, associate professor of Teaching at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

How Landlords, Tenants Can Navigate the Commercial Market

By Contributor
Commercial Real Estate

This Is Not a Fire Drill

By Brion J. Kirsch and James F. Martin

 

Remember in elementary school when they would have a planned fire drill? The alarm would go off, and students lined up in an orderly fashion and walked single file to the nearest exit and out into the schoolyard. Inside, the school was completely empty.

Brion J. Kirsch

Brion J. Kirsch

James F. Martin

James F. Martin

Obviously, the circumstances are light years apart, but that’s essentially what occurred in office buildings in March 2020. One minute, every room is filled with people working at their desks; next thing you know, the entire place is vacant.

What would always happen after the fire drill — everyone was back at their desks in about 10 minutes — didn’t happen in office buildings. It’s been almost three years. Some are never coming back.

Remote or hybrid work is here to stay, and people’s habits and expectations have changed. As a result, the commercial real-estate market is facing challenging times. In Western Mass., for example, the vacancy rate for office space is of concern to landlords along with the reality of expiring leases for downtown office space. However, the more attractive rental price per square foot of class-A office space in Western Mass. serves as a significant advantage to retaining and attracting tenants when coupled with the lower cost of living in contrast to Eastern and Central Mass.

Thus, there are some reasons for optimism, and potential options for landlords and tenants alike.

The continuing development of multi-family apartment complexes in both the cities and the suburbs is a promising sign. And with the proliferation of shopping from home and consumer subscription services, industrial properties like warehouses and fulfillment centers are in high demand.

 

Options for Tenants

For employers who now have more workspace than on-site workers, subleasing is an interesting option that can both reduce expenses and boost revenue. This requires a conversation with the landlord, but if conducted in good faith, it can be a win-win situation.

With a landlord’s consent, a majority of commercial office leases allow subleasing and partial assignments. But finding an occupant to sublease part of your space is far from the final step; legalities and practicalities abound. The documentation must be specific and thorough as there’s an extra added layer of complexity in these situations.

Taking a contractual agreement between two parties and adding a third opens up room for all sorts of unexpected conflict and misunderstandings. The language in the agreement must be crystal clear.

“With a landlord’s consent, a majority of commercial office leases allow subleasing and partial assignments. But finding an occupant to sublease part of your space is far from the final step; legalities and practicalities abound.”

The biggest concern is historic and/or prospective liability. One party’s transgression may have a direct impact on the other party, even if there is fault on only one side. Something else to consider is the construction of a demising wall for the new tenant’s subleased space. To be up to code, this new area will also need proper access, exits, and restrooms, in addition to other possible requirements, such as a kitchen or metered utilities.

Depending on the terms of the lease, there may even be an express option that simply allows for the reduction in the total area being occupied and would prevent the need to sublease.

 

Options for Landlords

There’s an opportunity now for landlords to make a long-term play by allowing tenants to make modifications to their original lease. The value in this circumstance arrives in the form of an early renewal or extension of the current lease, in exchange for allowing the tenant to sublease a portion of their space or shrink their footprint.

As many business owners have discovered in other industries, incentives are becoming a more crucial part of attracting customers or, in this case, tenants. And just because a space was previously used for one purpose, that doesn’t have to remain the case. Repurposing is an exciting and risky but sometimes necessary option.

Taking an empty office building and converting it to multi-family apartments or mixed-use commercial space is a large undertaking. But the strong demand for housing seems likely to continue, while office space continues on a more uncertain path.

While interest rates and the cost of construction materials both remain high, supply-chain issues are easing, and real-estate profits from the past decade have some property owners’ war chests well-stocked. It’s also likely that property values will begin to fall in the coming months and years.

It’s anyone’s guess how the current confusing climate of high inflation, low unemployment, rising interest rates, and massive tech layoffs will shake out in the coming years. Some say a recession is inevitable; others are optimistic one will be avoided. One thing we do know for sure is that we’re not in elementary school anymore. And this is not a drill.

 

Brion Kirsch and Jim Martin are attorneys at the law firm Pullman & Comley, which has offices in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, as well as Springfield. Kirsch co-chairs the firm’s real estate, energy, environmental, and land use practice and practices in both Massachusetts and Connecticut; Jim Martin is located in the firm’s Springfield office and is a recognized practitioner in the areas of commercial real estate and real-estate planning.

Matt Garrity Focuses on Continued Growth as He Takes Helm at Florence Bank

By
Matt Garrity
Banking and Financial Services Special Coverage

Forward-looking Statements

Matt Garrity

Matt Garrity

 

Matt Garrity says it was a few years ago, when he was established in his role as executive vice president and chief lending officer at Premier Financial Corp. in Ohio, that he determined that the next logical career step would be to preside over his own bank.

As time went on, and the calls from recruiters started multiplying, the major questions to be answered concerning this ambition were … where, and what?

The ‘where’ involved geographic regions, and Garrity had his preferences, especially the Northeast — he grew up in Lee. As for the what … he desired to be at a bank with a long history, a solid track record, a strong growth pattern, and a plan to continue along that path.

Not long after being encouraged to consider succeeding Kevin Day as president and CEO of Florence Bank, he concluded that all of those boxes could be checked — with authority.

“It’s a perfect fit — this is such a great bank, and it’s got a terrific board,” said Garrity, adding that there many things that stood out about the institution. “From a financial standpoint, this is a very strong and well-positioned bank, and what also came across loud and clear in my conversations with the board was what a great culture this organization has; this is a very customer-focused, community-minded culture that we have here, and a very engaged workforce.”

Garrity, who arrived at the bank in January, takes the helm at a very intriguing time in its history. Indeed, the institution will celebrate its 150th anniversary this year — May 6 is the actual anniversary date. It will mark the occasion in a number of ways and over the course of the year, he said, adding that the planning process is well underway, and details will emerge in the coming weeks.

“We’ll look to continue to grow the bank in Western Massachusetts, looking for opportunities to grow not only in Hampden County, where the bank has started to grow in recent years — we’ll look to continue that strategy — but also with our commercial business within the bank.”

Meanwhile, the institution that started as Florence Savings Bank to serve that growing village has moved well beyond its roots, most recently with a push into Hampden County. Where the next steps in that progression will take place have yet to be determined, but they will likely be in that corner of Western Mass., said Garrity, adding that, like most institutions, Florence is eying controlled, orderly growth, not growth for growth’s sake.

“We’ll want to continue that growth pattern in Hampden County,” he said, noting that branches opened the past several years in Springfield, West Springfield, and, most recently, Chicopee. “That’s certainly on the drawing board for us.”

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest talked at length with Garrity about his new assignment and his vision — still very much in the formative stages — for the next 150 years for this Western Mass. institution.

 

Points of Interest

Garrity said he’s spent his entire career in financial services, most of it focused on the commercial-banking side of the spectrum. It was at Premier Financial Corp. that he started taking on additional responsibilities and work in areas “other than the one I grew in,” as he put it, which put him on a path to the corner office at Florence Savings.

Among these areas was residential lending, he said, adding that gaining traction in this and other realms created learning experiences on a number of levels, not just adding lines to a résumé.

“That was a real step in my career,” he said. “Being able to work effectively and work with the team and run that business successfully was something that was really important in my career development.

Florence Bank’s branch on Allen Street

Florence Bank’s branch on Allen Street in Springfield is one of three in Hampden County, where additional expansion is expected in the coming years.

“As careers go on their paths like they do, and your responsibilities begin to grow and you get exposed to new businesses that maybe you weren’t the subject-matter expert in, and you begin to show your ability to effectively manage those businesses and work with the people in those businesses, that’s when you start to think that you can do this on a broader level,” he said, adding that it was several years ago that he considered himself both ready and willing to consider those calls from recruiters asking him to consider bank-presidency positions.

And there were many of them in recent years, Garrity noted, adding that he was, in a word, selective about which ones to pursue.

“Not every bank CEO position was in a part of the country that my wife and I would be comfortable going to, or you really wanted to go to, since we had optionality,” he told BusinessWest. “We were somewhat selective about the ‘where,’ the ‘what,’ and the ‘who’ we would be working with.”

As noted earlier, Florence, now with $2 billion in total assets, checked many of the boxes on his list, especially financial strength, corporate culture, and a long history of service to, and involvement in, the community.

In recent years, that word ‘community’ has come to mean much more than Florence, he said, and its definition will continue to broaden in years to come.

As he talked about the bank’s growth strategy and the next steps in that plan, Garrity acknowledged that there is a great deal of competition in the region, and it comes with institutions of all sizes, from smaller community banks — Florence is still in that category — to very large regional and national banks, like Chase, which just opened a branch in downtown Springfield and will soon open another in Northampton (see story on page 18). But he also acknowledged that banks like Florence need to continue growing at a time when size certainly does matter.

Florence Bank’s branch on Allen Street in Springfield is one of three in Hampden County, where additional expansion is expected in the coming years.

“We’ll look to continue to grow the bank in Western Massachusetts, looking for opportunities to grow not only in Hampden County, where the bank has started to grow in recent years — we’ll look to continue that strategy — but also with our commercial business within the bank.”

 

Taking Things into Account

Florence currently has 12 branches, nine in Hampshire County and those three in Hampden County. Future growth will likely be within that footprint, Garrity said, adding that, while several area banks have ventured into Northern Connecticut, Florence has no immediate plans to follow suit.

“As we look to continue to build the franchise, we’ll be strategic about that and determine what makes the most sense for us, and where the Florence Bank story makes the most sense for the community and for the bank.”

Despite advances in technology and the ability of consumers to do much of their banking remotely, he added, there is still a place for brick-and-mortar branches, for reasons that include everything from quality of service to marketing.

“Branches are more than deposit-taking propositions,” Garrity noted. “Not only do they represent the bank out of the market, it’s a place for outbound activity, for a bank to get out in the community and to make its presence felt.

“I think branch banking is really evolving,” he went on. “For us, that doesn’t mean we need a branch in each and every town and on every corner — that wouldn’t be our model — but we’ll need more in Hampden County to get the most out of our network.”

Within this very crowded banking marketplace, Florence has what Garrity describes as some competitive advantages.

“It gets down to people,” he explained. “As we look at what our strategic advantages are as we compete in these markets, we have terrific people, and that’s always a big strength that we’re going to have. We’re also very locally focused; the deposit dollars that we take in from Hampshire County and Hampden County are being redeployed in Hampshire County and Hampden County, and from a philanthropic perspective, this organization is focused on these communities as well.

Florence Bank’s branch in Chicopee

Florence Bank’s branch in Chicopee is the latest addition to the portfolio.

“Over the past five years, this organization has donated to charitable causes in this region close to $3 million,” he went on. “So there’s a significant commitment that we have, and this is part of what helps us continue to be relevant over these past 150 years. One of the founding principles of the bank back in 1873 was ‘neighbors helping neighbors,’ and that’s as important to us today as it was back then.”

People, meaning the team at the bank, are also a key component in the growth strategy for the commercial-lending side of the ledger, said Garrity, adding that there is no shortage of competition in this realm, either.

“It’s the people that help you stand out, people and the ability to bring solutions. The advantage of working with a bank such as Florence Bank, given our size and what I’ll call our flat structure and local decision making, is we can get the right people around a table to make a good, common-sense answer for our client — a custom solution. That is a distinct advantage that we would have over some of our larger competitors that are more decentralized and a little more pigeonholed from a policy perspective.”

He noted that the commercial market was strong in 2022 because many businesses that were on the fence decided to move ahead before interest rates went up. They did rise, considerably, and these increases, coupled with uncertainty concerning the economy and other headwinds, has slowed the commercial market in recent months, he went on, adding that this is a nationwide phenomenon and one that bears watching in the coming months.

The same can be said for the residential market, which has slowed dramatically in recent months — a 28-year low nationwide, in fact — as a result of rising interest rates and low inventory.

 

Bottom Line

Garrity said he’s spent his first few months at Florence engaging with his team at the bank, looking for opportunities to engage in the community, and “learning the bank,” as he put it.

“I’m asking a lot of questions and listening for the answers,” he noted, adding that what he’s heard so far is that this institution is well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that will present themselves in the months and years to come.

“We have a great team, and we have a really good bank in a very good position,” he said. “And we’ll plenty of opportunity to continue to do great things here and great things for our customers, so I’m excited; 150 years is a great accomplishment for this organization — and for this community that has supported us. We have more than 50,000 customers that support this bank in the communities we serve, and we want to continue to serve them for another 150 years.”

 

How to Teach Your Teens and Young Adults About Money

By Contributor
Special Coverage Wealth Management

Learning Opportunities

By Barbara Trombley, MBA, CPA

One of my most frustrating issues with being a parent is the lack of school education regarding money and personal finance. My children were required to take history, trigonometry, English, and numerous other courses, but they were never required to take a class about personal finance. I would argue that this knowledge is just as important.

This oversight leaves the instruction about personal finance to parents, and many parents are not good with their own money, resulting in generational problems with financial matters.

How can we teach our kids to have good financial habits? What does that mean? Obviously, modeling good financial behavior is an obvious start. Have a budget and stick to it. Contribute regularly to a retirement plan. Do not be afraid to discuss money in front of your kids. Talk about your household income and household bills and how much of your paycheck goes to taxes, retirement savings, and your emergency fund. Discuss vacations, how much they cost, and how you are saving for them.

One of my favorite ways to involve my children in money talks was to take them with me to the grocery store. I would show them how to shop for generic items, compare unit costs and sizes of items, and use coupons. In general, we should take the stigma out of money discussions and make spending and saving discussions easier to have.

Discussions with your children are not the only way to teach them about good financial practices. Here is a list of eight ways to teach good financial habits.

 

• Let your teen earn money. They don’t need to get an actual job, although I would recommend this at some point. Your teen can work around the house, cut the grass, do odd jobs, etc. The idea is to get them used to managing their own money. Once they are regularly earning, you can teach them to set aside money for short-term saving (maybe to purchase a big item), long-term saving (maybe for college), and spending now. If they are receiving a paycheck, it is a great opportunity to discuss taxes and Social Security and Medicare withholdings.

• Open a bank account. It’s a great idea to have a child manage their own savings account. Many little ones start with a piggy bank for odd change. When the birthday or allowance money starts to accumulate, it is time for a bank account. Make sure to have access so that you can monitor the account. When the teen gets their first job, they can have their paycheck deposited in a checking account.

• Get a debit card. When your teen gets a checking account, it is the perfect time to get a debit card. They can practice using it and seeing purchases impact the account balance. Your child can get an online login to their bank account and learn to watch the activity.

• Help them set a budget. Teens are notoriously frivolous. Starbucks, dining out, shopping, video games — there are so many more ways for our teens to spend their money than we had as young adults. Discuss with your teens how many hours they would need to work to buy a grande Frappuccino at Starbucks. Talk about how long they would need to save to go to a big concert. If it is easier to illustrate, find an app for budgeting. There are many available.

• Consider credit cards. This is a tricky one. Each of my children was given an additional card on our account when they were 16. This card came with explicit instructions (from mom and dad) on how and when it was to be used, as my husband and I were ultimately responsible for the bill. Our kids understood that the card could easily be taken away if misused. This was a gentle introduction to credit and allowed them to establish a credit score (see the next tip). You could also start with a pre-paid credit card on which you put a certain amount. When each of our children were juniors in college, we helped them apply for their own credit cards. By this time, their money skills were good, and they understood the importance of paying the bill monthly.

“In general, we should take the stigma out of money discussions and make spending and saving discussions easier to have.”

Barbara Trombley

Barbara Trombley

• Explain credit score. Many teens and young adults do not understand the need to build credit. Emphasize that, by using credit responsibly, your teen will build credit and increase their credit score, which is imperative when it is time to finance a car or a house. Explain how people with the best scores are given the lowest interest rates when looking to make large purchases.

• Discuss compound interest. This topic can apply to both credit cards and investments. Explain to your teen how compound interest (paying interest on the interest from last month’s bill) can make a large credit card balance even bigger over time. Consequently, compound interest is your friend when dealing with investment accounts. Earning interest on the interest generated year over year is how many people grow their investments.

• Discuss paying for college. Another hot topic that too many parents avoid is who is going to pay for college and how. Teens need to be included in the discussion about college tuition and debt from an early age. If expectations are set about how much college costs and how much you can contribute, disappointment with a college choice can be managed. Also, one of the absolute worst financial mistakes a parent can let their teen make is to choose a college without regard to the financial burden on both the parents and the student. Letting an 18-year-old be unknowingly responsible for college debt can set them up for a lifetime of money troubles.

If your teen is really interested, find online classes that teach financial literacy. Also, look for books in your library. Particularly savvy teens can open investment accounts easily online and start investing with a minimum deposit. There are many ways to educate our children, and we need to take the responsibility for their financial education.

 

Barbara Trombley, MBA, CPA is a principal with Wilbraham-based Tromblay Associates; (413) 596-6992. Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Trombley Associates, a registered investment advisor and separate entity from LPL Financial. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as ERISA tax, legal, or investment advice.

Businesses Look to Ride Momentum at Annual Home & Garden Show

By
Dave Coyne
Home Improvement Special Coverage

The Surge Continues

By Elizabeth Sears

Dave Coyne

Dave Coyne (right) says the Home & Garden Show has been beneficial to his business.

A ‘COVID bump.’

That’s what some in the home-improvement industry call that surge in business that accompanied the pandemic nearly three years ago now.

“It’s been kind of amazing; I think the industry had a sort of bump when, sadly, people stayed home and conserved their money and their time outside of their home,” said Deb Kelly, staff designer at Modern Kitchens in Agawam, which specializes in start-to-finish kitchen and bathroom renovations.

“Then, maybe they looked around and thought their home was a little shabby, and they could pick some things up,” she went on. “Since they weren’t taking cruises or going out to dinner as much, they said, ‘let’s do these projects that we’d really love to accomplish.’ We’re still feeling the effects of that; we’re going into a strong 2023.”

Yes, the COVID bump, or whatever one chooses to call it, still has some legs to it, and this bodes well for area businesses across the very broad spectrum of home improvement, many of which are gearing up for the 68th Western Mass. Home & Garden Show on March 23-26 — and expecting to come away from that event with more prospective customers.

Tony Witman, owner of property-management company Witman Properties in Holyoke, said he recognizes that, despite these beneficial trends in this sector, services are not necessarily going to sell themselves — which is where the Home Show comes in.

“Since they weren’t taking cruises or going out to dinner as much, they said, ‘let’s do these projects that we’d really love to accomplish.’ We’re still feeling the effects of that; we’re going into a strong 2023.”

“Many of the services we provide are same-day or next-day, whether it’s plumbing, electrical, HVAC … and I don’t think homeowners get that level of service by just flipping through the internet calling people,” he said, noting that the event offers an immediate response to their inquiries from a professional contractor. “I think there’s value.”

Indeed, it seems the value of the Home Show goes beyond in-person contact. There is a unique human aspect to local clients brainstorming renovations with local home-improvement businesses. That’s where Home & Hearth Remodeling in West Springfield got its motto, “a craftsman who cares.”

“When I interview people, I just look at them and think, ‘is this person a craftsman, and do they care about their work? Do they care about doing a good job? Do they care about getting better in learning? Do they care about the customer who’s home? Do they care about the people they’re working with?’ Those are all important,” owner Dave Coyne explained. “We have a very low turnover, and we generally have pretty experienced people working for us — and they stick around.”

Coyne joined the Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. of Western Mass. (HBRAWM) — which stages the annual Home Show — when he moved to the area, and said it has been a great resource. He began at the show as a solo practitioner, but as his company has grown, he’s added more staff, and now has “a proper business,” as he called it, and his company has increased its presence at the show, with its booth becoming “a little bit fancier” year after year.

Tom Cerrato

Tom Cerrato says the pandemic-fueled surge in home improvement is still going on.

“We still have just a single booth this year, which we are in the process of refurbishing,” he explained. “Next year, we’re contemplating actually getting two side by side to focus part of the home show on decks and outdoor work, and then the other part on the interior remodeling and additions.”

 

Captive Audience

It’s a plan that reflects the event’s flexibility and opportunities to showcase one’s offerings to an enthusiastic audience, many of them actively shopping for services.

And many vendors are still seeing that COVID (or, perhaps, post-COVID) bump.

“People are still thinking about staycations, right? That buzzword is still out there,” said Andy Crane, executive director of HBRAWM. “Even though COVID is in the rearview mirror, it made people rethink how they’re going to live. A lot of these companies did pretty well during the pandemic, during the height of it, because people were investing in their homes because they weren’t going away.”

And they’re still investing, said Tom Cerrato, branch manager at Kelly-Fradet Lumber in East Longmeadow. “When the pandemic started, we went back and forth on whether we’d even stay in business, but fortunately for us, it turned out to be a boom because there were so many people who stayed home, stopped traveling, and had those extra funds to spend, and fortunately spent it on an industry that benefited us — home improvement and building. It’s been very good for us the last few years.”

In the years Kelly-Fradet has participated in the Home Show, Cerrato said the event has created strong brand awareness among a receptive crowd.

“It’s a good-sized booth, and our presence gives us good branding locally. We get to be top of mind with customers in our market, and a lot of them are making large purchases for their home, decks, windows, kitchens, doors, a lot of stuff. So we like to be in front of them as they start their projects.”

“We get to be top of mind with customers in our market, and a lot of them are making large purchases for their home, decks, windows, kitchens, doors, a lot of stuff. So we like to be in front of them as they start their projects.”

First-time Home Show vendor Witman Properties, is exhibiting this year due to the visibility and tangibility of meeting potential clients, and making that personal connection that others described as being vital to good business.

“There’s so much online marketing, and I think people in general might be getting a little burned out from just looking at their screens and their phones all the time,” Witman said. “We figure it’s a really good chance to get in front of people. A lot of people see our trucks driving around, and they see our signs … but they don’t know who we really are. So it’s a good way to get out there and meet the local people in the communities we service.”

Crane can relate. “I have never bought anything off the internet. I will drive three hours on a Saturday morning to go see a safe in Rhode Island before I buy it off the internet.”

That’s one of the show’s main draws for a company like Eastern Security Safe in West Springfield, Crane explained. “What is the value? If I was Eastern Security Safe, I would say the value is people can touch and feel my safe. They feel the quality. They want to see my face; they want to talk to me and negotiate face to face. You can’t negotiate to a computer too well, and when nothing shows up or something is dented or scratched, you don’t even know who to talk to.”

That’s not to say technology is a hindrance to local businesses gaining customers; sometimes, it is a great help. With the availability of home-improvement inspiration online, clients often come to the Home Show prepared with ideas and visions of what improvements they would like to achieve.

“I think one unique aspect we have is this — a lot of times people have images in their head of what they would like their kitchen or bathroom to look like,” Kelly said. “Many will walk in with their phone starting to scroll and show me things they’ve researched, that they’d like to try to accomplish in their own home.

“That’s where we sit down with them and pull together all those puzzle pieces, and actually physically lay them out on the tabletop — ‘here’s your door, here’s your countertop, here’s the paint color, here’s your tile that we’re going to use,’” she went on. “It really allows them to pull the whole project together and turn it into more of a reality instead of just a pretty picture they found on their phone.”

She went on to note the large volume of contacts Modern Kitchens has made as a result of being a vendor at the Home Show over the years. The company has followed up with all of them, converting many into customers.

“We’ve met some really nice people who were at the Home Show with some project in mind,” Kelly said. “It’s like talking to qualified leads, really.”

 

Get Out There

Crane said the Home & Garden Show is a personal experience in another way: many attendees turn it into a social gathering with family or friends.

Before he was actually in charge of it, “we would go all the time to the Home Show, spend two or three hours, then go to some local restaurant. People consider it a social event.”

The vitality of the Home Show — booth sales are way up (see sidebar on page 33) — accurately reflects the booming prosperity of the industries represented at the show. However, substantial business often means substantial wait times, one downside to this ongoing surge. Clients may find themselves disappointed with long wait times before they see their renovation plans come to fruition — but so far, that hasn’t seemed to deter their willingness to book projects far in advance.

Over the past few years, Kelly said, “people were willing to wait; I think the industry was busy, so people could accept a timeline that was a little further out. When you want to do a project, you’re a little antsy, you make the decision — ‘yes, let’s move forward with this, we have the money, let’s do it’ — and many people who normally would want to have a start date within a couple of weeks have been willing to wait because the industry is busy.”

As a result, Modern Kitchens has been able to schedule a full year’s worth of business from the Home Show. Coyne echoed this experience, having also received large amounts of business from previous shows.

“I get enough business from the Home Show to carry me through the year. We always get plenty of good leads,” he said. “After this last Home Show … I’m not joking, we were probably still following up with leads four months or more afterwards. We have jobs that we are starting in April — we actually have a job that we just started today — that I think came from the Home Show last year.”

The 68th presentation of the Western Mass. Home & Garden Show will take place in the Better Living Center building at the Eastern States Exposition, with displays in the outdoor area. This year’s show hours are Thursday and Friday, March 23-24, noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday, March 25, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, March 26, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

General show admission is $10 for adults, and children under 12 are admitted free. A coupon reducing admission to $7 can be found on the show’s website. Active military and veterans will receive free admission on Thursday, March 23. Parking on the Eastern States Exposition grounds costs $5 per vehicle.

 

 

 

 

Home Show Has Evolved in Many Ways

 

As Andy Crane perused a list — a very long list — of vendors at the 68th annual Western Mass. Home & Garden Show, he made a point of picking out a bunch that may surprise some attendees.

A chiropractor. A healing and spiritual-development center. Gourmet food producers. Makers of jewelry and accessories.

“That’s a cool theme this year,” said Crane, executive director of the Home Builders & Remodelers Assoc. of Western Mass., which stages the annual show at the Eastern States Exhibition, slated this year for March 23-26. “It’s not just roofing and siding and patios. It’s home life.”

The annual event sees all types of attendees who visit for a variety of reasons, he noted. Attendees typically fall into one of several categories:

• People planning to buy or build a new home, who may visit with builders, real-estate agents, financial institutions, and sellers of component products, such as hardwood flooring, tile, and appliances;

• People planning to remodel or renovate, who may want to check in with all of the above, plus vendors of replacement components such as windows and doors, as well as appliances, wall treatments, and home furnishings;

• Yard and garden enthusiasts, who tend to be interested in lawn and landscaping services; wall, walk, and edging components and materials; and trees, shrubs, flowers, and seeds;

• Committed renters, who have no plans to own a house, but may be interested in space-conservation and space-utilization products, as well as home furnishings;

• Impulse buyers, who flock to vendors of home décor, arts and crafts, cooking and baking products, jewelry, and personal goods; and

• Lifestyle-conscious individuals, who like to check out trendy, high-tech, or time-saving products, as well as home furnishings and products focused on self-improvement, fitness, and health.

It’s those last two categories that many people don’t often think of when they consider who wants to set up shop at the show.

“The Home & Garden Show is really about taking care of you and your family in your home. Quality of life is a good way to put it.”

“B-Well and Thrive is one company that’s going to be very interesting,” Crane said of the Hampden-based wellness practice, which will feature bioenergetic testing, therapeutic crystal mats, and the expertise of holistic practitioner Colleen Mancuso at its booth, among other offerings.

Then there’s Adult & Teen Challenge Greater Boston, which will be on hand to talk about resources to treat addiction, a scourge that affects far too many families in Massachusetts.

“I feel terrible for any family that has to go through that. They often don’t know where to turn,” Crane said. “But here’s at least one company — and there are many more than one — that is addressing it publicly so that people will have someone to turn to.”

Or, on a lighter note, Own Your Own Arcade Game, a national company that … well, the name pretty much describes it: they sell full-size, stand-up arcade games for the home. “They realized they found a niche that works, and they’re buying a booth,” Crane said.

In all these cases and more, from personal health and wellness to just plain fun, vendors aren’t selling building supplies and home-improvement services, Crane added. “The Home & Garden Show is really about taking care of you and your family in your home. Quality of life is a good way to put it.”

Andy Crane

Andy Crane says the Home Show isn’t just about home improvement, but lifestyle improvement as well.

Fran Beaulieu, vice president of Phil Beaulieu & Sons Home Improvement Inc. in Chicopee — and president of this year’s Home & Garden Show — can appreciate the ways in which the event has evolved, as his company has been participating as a vendor for almost seven decades.

“The value has changed over the years,” he told BusinessWest. “Everyone has a smartphone, so they don’t necessarily need a home show, but we’ve noticed something over the past several years: in the early days, it was about generating leads because it was really hard to get in front of everybody. Nowadays, with such a huge customer base, we’re rekindling old relationships.”

He can cite many instances of meeting a former customer for, say, a roofing project, they get to talking, and by the end of the conversation, she’s ordering patio doors.

In fact, about 70% of Phil Beaulieu & Sons’ projects last year were repeat customers, and “we think the Home Show is huge for that because we get a lot of the same people coming back every year and buying something new — not to mention, we do a lot of work for people who have booths. Not everyone is in the roofing, siding, and windows business, so we do work for garage-door guys, and we cultivate those relationships.”

Fran Beaulieu

Fran Beaulieu’s company has been involved with the Home Show for almost seven decades.

Another category of show attendees are those who attend purely for fun, who may arrive without an agenda but often develop ideas for future purchases and home products. Not only might they make a connection on a traditional improvement project, but they might find something unique, in realms like home entertainment, security, and energy efficiency.

“A high point of this year’s show will be energy,” Crane said. “Everyone knows their energy bills have gone up, specifically electricity. Energy is a big buzzword; everyone’s talking about it, and the building industry has to react to it.”

Of course, many vendors are producing not high-tech innovations, but quality craftsmanship in time-honored fields, like American Rustic Woodworks of Spencer. “People are asking for that, too,” Crane said. “It’s beautiful stuff — and where do you go to get it?”

That, in the end, may be the one unchanging draw of the Home & Garden Show — bringing together, in one space, old and new disciplines in every possible aspect of home improvement and, yes, quality of life at home.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get all that on a computer,” Crane said. “Here, you can certainly talk to the salesperson, owner, what have you, and feel like you’re leaving with an answer.”

 

 

 

UMass Amherst’s LARP Program Aims to Create a More Sustainable Future

By
Robert Ryan
Architecture Special Coverage

Surveying the Landscape

Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan stands on the green roof of the John W. Olver Design Building.

 

It’s called Valley on Board.

The effort is part of a federally funded project by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) that involves a comprehensive assessment and strategic planning of transportation routes, services, and facilities throughout the region, one that aims to inform the design of a sustainable transit system to support economic vitality across the Pioneer Valley into the future.

One goal of Valley on Board (VoB) is to develop a route redesign that will serve the PVTA and the Pioneer Valley for at least 20 years into the future while achieving goals such as increased ridership, improved efficiency, and enhanced accessibility and equity of the system.

Since the summer of 2021, graduate students under the guidance of Camille Barchers, assistant professor of Regional Planning at UMass Amherst, have been working with the PVTA on the VoB initiative.

“They did many, many public participation activities to get people’s feedback across the region about what they wanted, what’s working, what’s not working. And they also did mapping of routes to find what areas are served and what areas can be served better,” said Robert Ryan, professor and chair of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning (LARP), the innovative, cross-disciplinary department at UMass whose graduates — and, often, current students — are impacting communities everywhere in disciplines like urban planning, sustainable living, climate resilience, transportation planning, and others.

“Landscape architects are licensed by the state to do work on designing landscapes — it could be with a building, without a building, campus-planning work, stormwater management, schoolyard design, streetscapes, large-scale open-space planning, that sort of thing,” Ryan explained. “Regional planning is for students who may want to work as municipal planners in the Commonwealth or with a regional planning agency or as a planning consultant; it’s similar to an urban planning degree.”

The Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning department provides professionally accredited degrees (MRP, MLA, BSLA); a sustainable community development degree that UMass touts as one of the most innovative sustainability-focused undergraduate degrees in the country; a skills-based, two-year associate of landscape contracting degree; and a PhD in regional planning. The department’s website claims that “we research, design, teach, and do community outreach to create sustainable solutions to complex problems.”

To that end, students have worked on greenway rail-trail projects in the region, new park and plaza design and redevelopment, residential design, office-plaza design, and public work for cities and towns, Ryan said, through entities like the UMass Design Center in Springfield, which engages in research and projects to create healthier, more sustainable, more walkable cities.

“That’s the landscape-architecture side,” he went on. “On the planning side, they might work on transportation planning, economic development, or land-use planning for a municipality. Certainly in this region, you often find you’re working in places that are built, so it might be a redevelopment project within a larger town or city.”

Students work on climate-change adaptation planning as well, Ryan said. “With the impact climate change is having everywhere, how can we adapt to that changing climate? And how do we sort of mitigate climate impacts by the development we’re doing?”

He said a combined Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning department may be uncommon in secondary education, but the projects and issues students and graduates tackle lend credence to the model. And those issues are only becoming more prominent.

“The way that municipalities approach this sort of thing has created an evolution of the program as well,” he told BusinessWest. “When you look at city planning these days, the importance of sustainability and some of the environmental focus have shifted in just the time I’ve been here. There are so many sustainability officers doing hazard-vulnerability plans for municipalities, doing climate-change vulnerability plans. I think cities are more attuned to that impact and how they should plan for it.”

Cities are particularly interested in alternative transportation, he noted, from bike lanes and enhanced train and bus service to creating more pedestrian access and walkable downtowns.

“The master planning for many cities is to make them more walkable and use more public transportation to make it more habitable. That’s an equity issue and a safety issue as well, because if you don’t own a car, or you can’t afford a car, and you need to take the bus and then walk to work or school, then you need a safe place to do that. There are a lot of federal funds and state funds to help cities do that.”

 

Evolving Picture

Graduates of LARP work in a number of intriguing fields, some of them centered on climate resilience.

“That’s what I’m most involved in,” Ryan said. “Green infrastructure is using natural systems to clean stormwater to provide climate-change adaptation to cool urban cities, to deal with water cleansing, that sort of thing. That’s a big issue in a lot of our cities that have EPA declarations; we have to clean the water up in the city, to kind of capture stormwater and treat it — instead of a catchbasin, using natural systems like ponds and pools to collect it, allowing sediment to drain out and cleaning the water before it goes into natural water bodies.”

The John W. Olver Design Building, which houses LARP (more on that later), is a good example, he explained. “There’s water that comes off our roof and adjacent parking lots, and then it’s treated in these rain gardens, these sort of swales around the building.”

Some cities are also making an effort toward urban greening, he added, planting more trees along streets to cool the city and make it more aesthetically pleasing for pedestrians.

Another specialized focus for LARP students is preservation of cultural landscapes, such as cemeteries, historic homes, and state parks. Students have been able to work with the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, and state historical groups on such issues.

“As landscapes change, trees grow, things fall down outside, so can you restore that landscape to something that might have been historically?” Ryan asked, pointing to recent efforts in Franklin Park in Boston as one example. “It was designed over 140 years ago. So there’s parts of that park that have changed over time. So which part do you preserve, and which part can you redevelop? Which parts do you change?”

Many students also develop a passion for biodiversity, he added.

“Can we change the design aesthetic of what’s been planted around our buildings and landscapes to plant more native plants and species that will then promote the biodiversity that’s native to the region? You can have your lawn, which is nice and beautiful, but doesn’t have a lot of biodiversity associated with it, or you can replace it with something that’s native plants and trees, and you can increase the biodiversity associated with that.”

The Olver Design Building reflects that priority as well; it’s a former parking lot that how boasts a green roof featuring native plants. But it’s much more than that.

Touted by UMass as the most technologically advanced cross-laminated timber (CLT) building in the country, the structure opened in 2017 to house three academic units: the department of Architecture, the Building and Construction Technology Program, and LARP.

Built of CLT timber and glue-laminated columns, the 87,000-square-foot facility saves the equivalent of over 2,300 metric tons of carbon when compared to a traditional energy-intensive steel and concrete building. It is one of just two buildings in North America using CLT for wind and seismic resistance.

The building has won numerous awards since its opening, from the WoodWorks Wood Design Awards, where it won Jury’s Choice for Wood Innovation, to the American Institute for Architecture’s (AIA) Committee on the Environment Top Ten Awards. Most recently, the AIA cited the building again with one of its 2023 AIA Awards for Architecture.

“The LEED Gold-certified building was constructed with a cutting-edge composite cross-laminated timber system, taking its cues from the Building and Construction Technology department’s research on mass timber,” the AIA noted. “It is the largest such building in the United States, demonstrating the university’s commitment to sustainability and innovation. The building’s envelope functions as a protective weather jacket that shields its wood structure. A durable rain screen enclosure composed of copper anodized aluminum panels and vertical windows suggest the patterns of historic tobacco barns and the region’s forests.”

 

Passion for Preservation

That language, again, reflects the balance of preservation, development, and sustainability at the heart of LARP studies — and the hearts of its students, who often see this work as mission-driven.

“Especially in our graduate programs, people are sometimes changing careers to come back to school via Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning,” Ryan said. “They’re really devoted to making the world a better place, which might include making cities healthier and greener, or dealing with degraded landscapes and healing them and bringing natural systems back. They could be promoting equity in our cities via more affordable housing or transportation. So there are definitely folks who have that passion to come in and do this sort of work.”

They’re also encountering a strong market for job seekers; Ryan says he posts job openings he comes across every day.

“All the firms I talk to are growing, and they can’t find the employees, so graduates are very sought after,” he added. “We do innovation here, but it’s also practical — when you graduate, you can work as a professional in a public or private office and do this work. And we have a lot of examples in our classes where you’re doing work with real clients, not just as an internship, but as a regular class.”

Like those graduate students working to improve transportation — and quality of life — close to home.