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Hazen Paper Co.

This Family Business Has Been Innovating for Nearly a Century

President and CEO John Hazen

President and CEO John Hazen

John Hazen figured there was some risk in purchasing his first holographic printer back in 2005. But, as the third-generation co-owner of Hazen Paper Co. in Holyoke, he also saw the potential.

“I always say I was like Jack and the beanstalk,” he told BusinessWest. “Dad sent me out with a bag of beans — ‘grow the business, son!’ — and I bought this crazy thing called a holoprinter.”

But he was determined to build Hazen’s footprint in the world of holographic printing, and plenty of other technology at the company sprung from that first investment.

These days, Hazen regularly wins awards from the Assoc. of International Metallizers, Coaters and Laminators for everything from beverage packaging to annual programs for the Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and the Super Bowl. The 200-employee company has also been recognized for workforce-development efforts like an internship program with Western New England University that helps engineering students gain experience.

Clearly, Hazen Paper has come a long way from its origins in 1925, when Hazen’s grandfather, also named John, launched the enterprise as a decorative paper converter and embosser. His younger brother, Ted, joined Hazen in 1928 to help manage the growing company, which grew rapidly in the 1930s and expanded into printing and foil laminating by the 1940s.

Ted’s son, Bob, joined the company in 1957, and John’s son, Tom, signed on in 1960, and the second generation dramatically expanded the company, which became known worldwide for specializing in foil and film lamination, gravure printing, specialty coating, and rotary embossing. Hazen products became widely used in luxury packaging, lottery and other security tickets, tags and labels, cards and cover stocks, as well as photo and fine-art mounting.

The third-generation owners, John and Robert Hazen, joined the company at the start of the 1990s, and have continued to grow and expand, with a special emphasis on coating, metallizing, and — of course — holographic technology.

“It really was a startup, a technology startup in an older company. And ultimately, we really reinvented Hazen Paper,” John told BusinessWest. “The holographic technology ended up feeding the old business. So it’s like we installed a new heart in an old body.”

—Joseph Bednar

 

Crave

Nicole Ortiz Has Turned a Love of Food into a Growing Enterprise

Owner Nicole Ortiz

Owner Nicole Ortiz

Nicole Ortiz was born in Springfield, but became intrigued by food during her four years in Cleveland.

There, she worked her first job in a kitchen, prepping and washing dishes in a small Puerto Rican restaurant, and the city’s West Side Market — filled with fresh foods from all over the world — became her favorite place, where she became captivated with food culture, local ingredients, and … food trucks.

After moving back to New England in 2016, she put her business degree and an itch for entrepreneurship to work, enrolling in the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Center, then winning a pitch contest and setting up a successful pop-up restaurant experience at HCC. She bought a food trailer, graduated from both HCC and EforAll Holyoke, and launched a food-truck business called Crave, specializing in modern Puerto Rican cuisine, all in 2020.

“My father is from Puerto Rico, and my mom’s family is from Italy and Finland,” she said. “I think the food we offer is different and unique, and draws inspiration from the many walks of life that I have had the opportunity to experience.”

Despite opening into the teeth of the pandemic, Crave Food Truck was a big-enough hit that Ortiz started sharing storefront space on High Street with Holyoke Hummus early in 2021, where she could prep meals and sell takeout orders. In June, she solely took over the lease, and Crave had a full-service restaurant, which now offers sit-down and takeout service, in addition to the food-truck operation and catering gigs.

Now managing a staff of eight, Ortiz is proud to be part of an ongoing entrepreneurial renaissance on High Street (see related story on page 36).

“We want to build on that and let people know what’s going on down here. Before, this street had a bad image, and a lot of people didn’t want to come down here. We created a High Street Business Association to look at all the businesses here on High Street and get all of us on the same page, working for a common goal — you know, bringing more people down here. That’s really exciting.”

—Joseph Bednar

 

Nick’s Nest

Area Residents Relish Visits to This Holyoke Landmark

Co-owner Jenn Chateauneuf

Co-owner Jenn Chateauneuf

If you’re looking for perhaps the most iconic hot dog this side of Fenway, look no further than Nick’s Nest — a Holyoke landmark since 1921.

What originally started as a simple popcorn cart evolved into the well-known hot dog stand it is today, more than a century later. It started when founder Nick Malfas was told by his wife that the original location looked like a little bird’s nest — and the name ‘Nick’s Nest’ stuck.

The current owners of 18 years are Jenn and Kevin Chateauneuf.

“We always worked in the restaurant business; my husband was a bartender, and I was a waitress,” Jenn said. “We always wanted to venture out and own our own place. I’m from Holyoke, he’s from South Hadley, so obviously we knew of Nick’s Nest. When it came up for sale, we just jumped at the opportunity.”

Nick’s Nest has been at its current location on Northampton Street since 1948, but Jenn and Kevin have since expanded the menu from its original offerings. “Our specialty is hot dogs; when we bought the place, it was hot dogs, baked beans, and popcorn,” she explained. “We’ve added french fries, onion rings, homemade soups … we have homemade potato salad, homemade macaroni salad.”

Nick’s Nest continues to be the area’s go-to destination for hot dogs. In fact, the venerable eatery has won ‘best hot dog’ honors in the Valley Advocate’s reader poll every one of the 18 years the Chateauneufs have owned the restaurant.

In addition to its food offerings, Nick’s Nest has an assortment of branded merchandise including T-shirts and hats that display the name of the establishment along with its slogan — “A Holyoke Tradition” — for patrons to proudly show their love of good food and community.

Though Nick’s Nest has achieved much success over the years, Chateauneuf noted that it hasn’t been without its fair share of trials.

“We try to do a lot for the community because, obviously, they support us,” she said. “They were tremendous through COVID. We’re happy that we’re still standing after those couple of years because a lot of small businesses can’t say that.”

—Elizabeth Sears

 

Star Dancers Unity

This Business Helps Young People Take Positive Steps

Alex Saldaña has made important moves to improve his community — dance moves, that is.

He’s been the owner and operator of Star Dancers Unity on High Street in Holyoke for the past 10 years. He originally became an enrichment dance instructor for Holyoke Public Schools, which is what inspired him to open his own business.

“I pretty much didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” he said. “But it’s just finding the opportunity — to be able to open a center in our community for youth that can benefit from dance services.”

Saldaña knew he wanted to use his background in dancing for good within the community, and he envisioned a space where area young people could go, noting high rates of teen pregnancy at the time of the studio’s opening.

“My inspiration was to be able to help some of those kids get some different activities besides being on the streets or doing things other than being productive in the community,” he said.

Star Dancers Unity currently has 65 students enrolled, said Saldaña, adding that Holyoke has been a great place to run his growing dance studio.

“The community has been supportive of my business, and also the aspect of understanding that I serve not just the youth but families in povery,” he explained. “I try to keep my tuition in a reasonable price range where it could be affordable to all families.”

As an extension of this work, Saldaña has taught salsa and hip hop for Holyoke Public Schools, and has been a visiting teacher in local afterschool and summer programs throughout the region. Currently, he works as a family coordinator for Holyoke Public Schools.

Star Dancers Unity not only participates in dance competitions, but is involved in many community events as well, from Celebrate Holyoke to performances at Holyoke High School for Hispanic Heritage Month.

“We partner up with different art pageants and do things for the schools,” Saldaña said. “When they have cultural diversity times, we also do presentations there.”

Clearly, by creating a safe, inclusive space, Star Dancers Unity is offering young people much more than dance lessons.

—Elizabeth Sears

 

Black Rose Trucking

These Two Women Are Hauling a Load of Ambition

Co-owners Yolanda Rodriguez (left) and Ashley Ayala

Co-owners Yolanda Rodriguez (left) and Ashley Ayala

All Yolanda Rodriguez and Ashley Ayala needed to start a hauling company was … well, a truck. Soon, they will have two. And they’re not stopping there.

That second truck is the result of a successful crowdfunding campaign on Patronicity, bringing in $21,448 from 35 backers, more than their goal of $19,950. It’s an example of growing by thinking outside the box.

“Our long-term goal is to have more equipment and do more transport, which means more employees and growing our company,” said Ayala, the daughter in the mother-daughter ownership team that launched Black Rose Trucking three years ago. “We definitely have big dreams of having a lot of trucks, and being able, in the future, to offer different services than what we do now.”

Rodriguez has been in the commercial trucking industry for a long time, and Ayala eventually caught the bug. “She had a dream of owning her own business,” Ayala said. “She’s passionate about what she’s doing, and that kind of rubbed off on me. So a few years ago, I ended up getting my commercial driver’s license as well. And we decided to make a business out of it. Her dream kind of became my dream.”

COVID-19 delayed the process, and Black Rose didn’t start taking jobs in earnest until early 2021. “We just kept going until everything kind of opened up,” Ayala said.

They haul asphalt and other materials to and from construction sites, as well as doing paving and milling work for contractors and on highway projects, all the while taking pride in their position as women of color in a male-dominated field — and pride in their city as well.

“I was raised in Holyoke, so I see how Holyoke has progressed. And I’ve seen all these small businesses also come about and grow,” Ayala said. “We see these restaurants and other businesses come about that are owned by women of color. You can see every day how they’re progressing, and they’re still around. It’s definitely a nice feeling to be a part of that.”

—Joseph Bednar

 

Holyoke Sporting Goods

This Venerable Institution Helps Foster Team Spirit

Owner Betsy Frey

Owner Betsy Frey

Nothing says ‘team spirit’ quite like matching uniforms, and whether you’re on a sports team, a sales team, or even team Gas & Electric, there’s a place in Holyoke to find your team spirit — Holyoke Sporting Goods.

Originally founded in 1928 in downtown Holyoke by James Clary, the company moved to its current location on Dwight Street under current owner and operator Betsy Frey in 2005.

“It’s in a much easier section of town to get to, we’re right off of the highway, which is convenient,” Frey said. “We have our own dedicated parking lot, which is nice, too; you don’t have to park on the street.”

Holyoke Sporting Goods caters not only to sports teams, but to many area businesses. “We do a lot of schools; we sell their sports equipment and their uniforms,” Frey said. “Then we do leagues like Little Leagues — we’ll supply them with all their baseballs, their equipment, their uniforms. I also do a lot of municipal stuff for the city of Holyoke or the city of Springfield, like Holyoke Gas & Electric, Water Works, Housing Authority, all the uniforms that they wear — they’ll wear shirts and stuff with a company logo on them. So we do all that.”

And with St. Patrick’s Day — along with Holyoke’s famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade — right around the corner, look no further than Holyoke Sporting Goods for related merchandise.

“Right now, we’re doing a lot of stuff for St. Patrick’s Day,” Frey said, “so I have a lot of Holyoke stuff with shamrocks and things like that.”

Frey said she enjoys running a business in Holyoke, adding that she gets a real team-spirit feeling from the city.

“Oh, it’s great,” she said. “Holyoke’s a great place to be in business. The people here are extremely supportive; they like to support their local businesses. I sell a lot of stuff in the store that has ‘Holyoke’ on it or is related to Holyoke. The people in Holyoke are wonderful; they support the business. This is a good community to have a business in.”

—Elizabeth Sears

 

Hadley Printing

For 125 Years, This Holyoke Staple Has Been on a Roll

Owners and brothers Greg (left) and Chris Desrosiers

Owners and brothers Greg (left) and Chris Desrosiers

Hadley Printing has been a family-owned business for 125 years. Currently in its third generation under the direction of brothers Chris and Greg Desrosiers, the commercial printer offers digital printing, offset printing, and mail services to a wide variety of customers in New England.

The business originated in South Hadley, but in 1976, it moved to its current location on Canal Street in Holyoke. When asked about operating a business in the 33,000-square-foot building alongside one of the city’s historic canals, Vice President Greg Desrosiers had a lot to say.

“We’re in an old mill building … it used to be a silk company years and years ago; that’s when it was originated, so we’re kind of in an old silk mill,” he said. “The building itself serves us well — these mill buildings were made really well back in the day; so long as you take care of them, they serve you back really well. Obviously, it has tons of windows with natural light. In a manufacturing setting, that’s really, really welcomed and beneficial.”

Desrosiers noted that many manufacturing settings don’t have any windows to allow natural light to come in, so having the abundant natural light of one of the Holyoke mill buildings is much preferred to the usual dreary setting of four solid walls. The water view of the canal is not only another added bonus for day-to-day working pleasure, but it actually helps with the printing itself — Desrosiers can say with certainty that at least 50% of the company’s power is hydroelectric, but noted the actual percentage is probably much higher than that.

Hadley Printing, with 30 employees working across two shifts, has found another advantage to being located in Holyoke aside from operating out of the former silk mill. The company services customers in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, the Boston area, and Albany, in addition to local customers, making Holyoke a sweet spot.

“It’s really the crossroads of New England, with 91 and the Mass Pike intersecting right through Holyoke,” he explained. “It’s the center of our customer base. We’re in the middle of who we service.”

Elizabeth Sears

 

International Volleyball Hall of Fame

For a Half-century, It Has Lifted Up Its Sport and Its City

Executive Director George MulryStaff Photo

Executive Director George Mulry

Honor. Preserve. Promote.

Those three simple words reflect a robust, multi-pronged effort to celebrate the sport of volleyball and secure its future, and George Mulry detailed just a few of those prongs. Or spikes, if you will.

“On the honor side, we certainly recognize the inductees and those worthy of enshrinement in the Hall of Fame,” said Mulry, the Hall’s executive director. “But with some of our awards, we’re recognizing local individuals and organizations that are doing great things, not just for the sport of volleyball, but to help move the Volleyball Hall of Fame forward, which in turn helps move the city of Holyoke forward.

“The preserve side is really where we’re focusing a lot of our time now,” he added. “We have our Archival Preservation and Community Access Project, where we’re going through our entire archive, cataloguing it, and trying to digitize it and make it available as a resource library for the area. That will help bring some scholars in, which will give us an opportunity to improve the exhibits that we have and improve some online exhibits as well.

“And on the promote side, we’re not only trying to promote the growth of volleyball, but we want to promote volleyball itself within our region,” Mulry said, listing events like a summer volleyball festival, the collegiate Morgan Classic tournament at Springfield College, and no-cost youth clinics. “We’re just promoting the sport as a whole, while at the same time promoting the Hall of Fame as that vehicle for telling the story.”

From the Hall’s inception in 1971 to the opening of its current facility on Dwight Street in 1984 through today, with conversations taking place about what a future Hall of Fame might look like, Mulry said Holyoke has always been top of mind.

“For over 50 years, the city has really embraced being the birthplace of volleyball and used that as an economic driver for tourism and economic spinoff,” he explained. “There are a lot of really exciting things going on. But it’s the support that we’ve received from the city of Holyoke that really makes the whole thing go.”

—Joseph Bednar

 

Valley Blue Sox

This Team Has Become a Summer Tradition in Holyoke

If you visit Holyoke during the summertime, you might catch the Valley Blue Sox in action at Mackenzie Stadium.

The Blue Sox, originally known as the Concord Quarry Dogs, began in New Hampshire but have since rebranded and have called Holyoke their home for more than a decade now. The team is part of the New England College Baseball League, with players coming from all over the U.S. each summer.

“Having a team in Holyoke is great for us; you have a really loyal fan base, the same fans that usually come to a lot of games, so we get to know the same people throughout the summer in the city,” said Tyler Descheneaux, the new general manager. “The community really rallies around it.”

He went on to explain the team’s national impact as well as local significance.

“The purpose of this league is to try and have players that are trying to make it to that next level, to the major leagues, play summer ball,” he explained. “Our league is ranked as one of the top leagues in the entire country for summer leagues — last year, we were number two in the entire country. It’s a highly coveted league, so a lot of MLB scouts or even college scouts will come to our games to see how these players are.”

The team is going to bat with plenty of new promotions this season, including a partnership with Michael’s Bus Lines on a raffle, with one lucky fan winning a free bus ride for 25 people. Additionally, opening weekend will feature a giveaway of shirts to the first 250 fans who come to the game, and these aren’t just any shirts — the team is debuting a new logo this season, and this will be the first chance for fans to sport the team’s new look.

The Blue Sox are actively involved in the community — on and off the field.

“One thing that we do every summer is we always hold different youth baseball clinics, which usually last a week. We always hold one in Holyoke, and that’s coming up,” Descheneaux said.

With so much in store for the team and the community, this summer seems to be shaping up to be a home run.

—Elizabeth Sears

 

Marcus Printing

For Almost a Century, This Press Has Found Success

The printing industry has seen plenty of changes over the past century, but they’ve only accelerated in the new century, said Susan Goldsmith, president of Marcus Printing.

“Technology in printing has changed more rapidly in the past 20 years than the 100 years before that,” she noted. “We have basically kept up with technology, starting with eliminating film from the printing process and going direct to plate, and then getting into the digital world and most recently expanding into mailing as well as wide-format; we’ve become a little bit of everything to everybody.”

It’s a model that works for Marcus, she added. “We couldn’t be just a standalone digital shop, or a standalone offset shop. We’re a mid-sized print shop. That’s where we’re most comfortable — not printing a million pieces, but we can print 50,000, or we can print two for you. That’s been the niche we always wanted to serve.”

The third-generation family business was established in 1930 by Phil and Sarah Marcus at 32 Main St. in Holyoke, who moved to 109 Main St. in 1942. Back then, it was strictly a fine letterpress printing company, installing its first offset press in 1945.

In 1961, Marcus moved to a 7,000-square-foot space in the former Skinner Mill on Appleton Street. During the next 25 years, it expanded its offset production, purchased the building, and expanded to use all of its 21,000 square feet on three floors. The current location, at 750 Main St., is a 33,000 square-foot facility, all on one floor.

The company’s 30-plus employees pride themselves on customer service, Goldsmith said. “We don’t make promises we can’t keep, and we do everything in our power to get it to you when you need it. And we try to employ as many Holyoke people as we can.”

She’s also proud of her company’s place in the Paper City.

“Holyoke has a great business community, and printing and paper have been at its foundation. We just had a conversation with John Hazen about work our parents did together, and I’m guessing maybe our grandparents. It’s nice to have that long-term connection with the history of what the city is built on.”

—Joseph Bednar

Features

Pride and Promise

Jim Sullivan

Jim Sullivan says Holyokers, like himself, share a deep sense of pride in their community.

Jim Sullivan says he’s not really sure where it comes from. Like most people from Holyoke, he’s just taken it for granted.

He was referring to the immense pride people take in being from this city and, in a great many cases, still living in it.

“There’s been a lot of change over the years, but what hasn’t changed is the spirit of the people,” said Sullivan, president of the O’Connell Companies, which was started in Holyoke and is almost as old as the city itself (it will mark its own sesquicentennial in six years). “There is a very proud heritage in the city of Holyoke, and it still exists today. Even with the youth today — and I like to spend some time with them at the Boys & Girls Club, where I’m a trustee — you get a sense of pride with the folks that you talk to.”

This pride is something that’s almost palpable as you talk with people from this city, and it was referenced by just about everyone we talked with for this special section — in one way or another.

“There’s a saying … as Holyokers, we can talk bad about Holyoke, but you can’t talk bad about Holyoke,” said Gary Rome, owner of Gary Rome Auto Group, another Holyoke native, and someone with a huge presence in the city. “People here are very committed and passionate about their city.”

Beyond this omnipresent pride, Rome, Sullivan, and other business leaders we spoke with see many other qualities in Holyoke — history, tradition, diversity, economic progress, collaboration, energetic new leadership, new businesses, new business sectors (including cannabis and green energy), and something they’ve always seen: opportunities.

As in opportunities for entrepreneurs, for individuals looking for work or a career, for professionals looking for an affordable place to live, and for people aspiring to work for themselves instead of for someone else.

“There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit really coming alive in the city,” said Lynn Gray, general manager of the Holyoke Mall, which opened 44 years ago, changing the landscape in the community in many ways. “And that’s exciting because it benefits the city; it benefits everyone in and around the mall, having that entrepreneurial spirit. Moving forward, it’s a great path to be on.”

Meg Sanders, one of those entrepreneurs — she opened Canna Provisions on Dwight Street, part of a wave of cannabis-related businesses in Holyoke — agreed. She said she sees a great deal of vibrancy and entrepreneurial energy in the city, not just in cannabis, but also in the arts, hospitality, retail, and more.

“There’s a lot happening here — Holyoke is a great city that has so much to offer,” she said, adding that downtown is becoming more vibrant and, with many new types of arts and hospitality businesses opening, becoming much more of a destination.

Matt Bannister, senior vice president of Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at PeoplesBank, another Holyoke institution nearly as old as the city (it was founded by silk-mill owner William Skinner in 1885), concurred.

Steve Grande (left) and his son, Ben

Steve Grande (left) and his son, Ben, have engineered a transformation at Meridian Industrial Group.

He cited Gateway City Arts on Race Street, a live-entertainment venue, as an example of a relatively recent arts-fueled resurgence in the city, one that displays the trickle-down effect of such businesses and their ability to spur more development.

“Gateway is an example of the kind of anchor that you can build around,” he explained. “You get some nightlife, and the next thing you know, you have entrepreneurs and food trucks and all that. What’s happened down at Gateway, and what’s happening on Main Street, is that there’s some nice enthusiasm and energy.

“Overall, there is a good core of solid businesses, and there is a government in place that understands the importance of business development — we have smart people with a good vision,” Bannister went on, adding that the current wave of entrepreneurial energy coupled with large amounts of state and federal stimulus money make this a unique and potentially powerful moment in the city’s history.

For this special 150th-anniversary celebration edition, BusinessWest talked with a number of business owners about what they see today in Holyoke — and what they expect to see down the road.

 

Making Progress

There’s a manhole cover embedded in the floor just inside the main entrance to the property at 529 South East St., near the lower canal in Holyoke.

It bears the name J.W. Jolly, the company that made manhole covers for cities across the country and around the globe at that site more than 140 years ago.

There’s a mat now covering the one in the lobby here because more than a few people tripped over it, said Steve Grande, a former Springfield police officer who bought the business that was operating there, Central Massachusetts Machine, in 2009 and eventually changed the name to Meridian Industrial Group to reflect a broader customer base and product portfolio.

Indeed, this cutting-edge machine shop that he manages with his son, Ben, now specializes in very large parts (up to 30,000 pounds), including components for missiles, submarines, and even NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) program that famously knocked a meteorite off its orbit a few months back.

Meridian is an example, and there are many of them in this city, where the past, present, and future come together at the same mailing address. And this is one of the many things being celebrated as the city turns 150.

It’s like that at the Canna Provisions facility on Dwight Street, where a dispensary designed to look like an art gallery has been created in an old mill where Yankee Candle once leased space and began its meteoric rise.

It’s like that at the Gary Rome Hyundai dealership on Whiting Farms Road, where a combination car wash and dog wash is taking shape on property that also boasts a solar array and, in his office, pictures of Rome’s father, who started selling cars in Holyoke more than 60 years ago.

It’s like that the O’Connell Companies’ gleaming new headquarters building on Kelly Way, which includes photos of the company’s founder, Daniel J. O’Connell, and his descendants, as well as construction projects undertaken decades ago — specifically the Memorial Bridge reconstruction project and the Rowes Wharf initiative in Boston, that won Build America awards from Associated General Contractors of America.

And it’s like that PeoplesBank’s banking center at 1866 Northampton St., site of the former Yankee Pedlar, a popular restaurant and gathering spot for generations of city residents.

Yes, the past, present, and future come together seamlessly in this city, where change is as constant as tradition.

Lynn Gray, general manager of the Holyoke Mall

Lynn Gray, general manager of the Holyoke Mall, says there a great deal of “entrepreneurial spirit” coming alive in the city.

This change can been seen everywhere — on High Street, where many new businesses have opened in recent years (see related story on page XX); at the mall, where many of the traditional retail stores have been replaced with entertainment-related businesses, such as a trampoline center and a bowling alley; in the countless mills, many of them now occupied by cannabis-related ventures; on Race Street, where Gateway City Arts and other arts- and hospitality-related businesses are now operating; at the historic Cubit Building, now home to apartments and the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute, and elsewhere.

What hasn’t changed is the great pride that people take in their city, and the spirit of entrepreneurship that built the community and is fueling its resurgence today. In fact, what business leaders see when they look at the city today is continued progress and revitalization.

Bannister, like others we spoke with, credited Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor, and Aaron Vega, former state representative and now director of Planning and Economic Development in Holyoke, for creating a business-friendly environment in the city and generating real momentum on several fronts.

“They’re tilling a lot of soil in order to make things happen,” Bannister said. “When you throw a lot of seeds out, you’re never sure which ones are going to take and which ones aren’t, but you’re creating opportunities for things to happen.”

 

No Place Like Home

Those we spoke with said they consider it important not to just do business in Holyoke, but to be actively involved in the community and especially with efforts involving the next generations of Holyoke leaders.

Rome said his family has been doing business in Holyoke for almost a century. His grandfather started with a drugstore, he believes, and then opened a haberdashery. As Rome tells the story, money was so tight that his grandfather’s store and the neighboring shoe store would share a telephone.

Matt Bannister

Matt Bannister credits Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia and his administration for creating a business-friendly environment and fueling a surge in entrepreneurship.

“They had a hole in the wall, and they would pass the telephone back and forth through the wall,” he said, adding that things have certainly changed, for both his family and the city. What hasn’t changed is the family’s commitment to the city.

Indeed, Rome, was recently named one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2023, not only for his success in business — he was recently named TIME magazine’s Dealer of the Year — but for his work within the community, and especially Holyoke. He is a member of the foundation board at Holyoke Community College, and has donated his time, energy, and talent to countless nonprofits, while getting his company involved with them as well.

“When I look at Holyoke today, I see a lot of hope, a lot of passion,” he said. “And I see a strong initiative to let people know about all the good things that are happening in the city, and you can see that first-hand with our mayor and our economic-development team.”

Sullivan, who has been involved with the Boys & Girls Club for more than a decade now, said O’Connell supports a number of organizations and initiatives, from Girls Inc., which found a new home in the O’Connell Companies’ former headquarters on Hampden Street, to Providence Ministries for the Needy.

Gary Rome

Gary Rome, one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2023, is one of many Holyoke business leaders actively involved in the community.

PeoplesBank, meanwhile, has always been heavily involved in the community — supporting its nonprofits, being the main sponsor to the city’s famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and backing the many efforts at EforAll, the chamber, and other agencies to promote entrepreneurship and help others launch their own ventures, a key to the city’s continued progress.

“There’s an awful lot bubbling up,” Bannister said. “You have to wait and see which ones take root and which ones don’t, but we work with the Holyoke EforAll group to drive entrepreneurship because that’s how the next generation of businesses will come up; it won’t be a giant company that you lure here with tax incentives — it will be a whole lot of small businesses that will take off. It’s entrepreneurs at the street level that will drive growth.”

Even some of the relative newcomers to the scene in Holyoke said they realized early on the importance of getting involved, collaborating with others to generate more positive energy in the city, or just choosing the city as a landing spot.

Indeed, Sanders said there were many reasons why Canna Provisions put down roots in Holyoke, literally. Business-friendly bylaws and attractive space were among them, but there was also a desire to positively impact a city that was negatively impacted by the war against drugs and has, as she put it, “such good bones.”

“For us, Holyoke was a perfect canvas to do good,” she explained, adding that, in addition to bringing jobs and a new storefront to the city, the venture is also sparking other new business. Meanwhile, Sanders herself is getting involved with several initiatives, from the 150th-anniversary celebrations to the parade committee.

“Holyoke is an amazing city with so much potential, and bringing awareness to downtown and making sure everyone knows about all the cool things that are happening is very important,” she said. “Downtowns don’t turn around overnight, but it’s helpful if a community gets behind it — we see things turn around faster when everyone gets behind those efforts.”

Grande agreed, noting that he’s seeing progress in the community and is getting involved himself, with everything from workforce-development issues in manufacturing (he’s involved at Dean Tech and, specifically, an ongoing project to market its manufacturing programs) to his work as vice president of the Holyoke Taxpayers Assoc.

“I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and let other people do the heavy lifting,” he said. “We see improvements and excitement; this administration is bringing city officials together, and the real push from the business community is to make the city more attractive to potential new businesses by streamlining the permitting process, addressing crime, and much more. There’s an upward trajectory, but Holyoke has not been an easy sell.”

 

Passion Play

Flashing back more than a half-century to his youth, Sullivan said he and his friends thought Holyoke was “the center of the universe.”

It was only when they got older that their perspective changed — but only somewhat.

For many, it’s still the center of their lives, if not the universe, and the home of their businesses. It’s a unique and special place where the past, even the events of 150 years ago, are never far away and the future seems increasingly bright.

Features Picture This

Photos Past and Present

Holyoke’s rich industrial past, one that earned it the nickname ‘Paper City.’

Holyoke’s rich industrial past, one that earned it the nickname ‘Paper City.’

Old Holyoke Dam

Mountain Park

A view of Mountain Park, the popular amusement park that closed its doors in 1987.

 

Holyoke’s canals gave the city water power — and an identity.

Holyoke’s canals gave the city water power — and an identity.

 

City Hall has become a symbol of Holyoke.

City Hall has become a symbol of Holyoke.

 

One of the horses from the carousel

One of the horses from the carousel at Mountain Park, later moved to Heritage State Park, where it has become a popular attraction.

 

An aerial shot of Holyoke, one of its canals

An aerial shot of Holyoke, one of its canals, and one of its many distinctive mills.

 

The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center

The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center is part of a new era for Holyoke’s business community.

 

This mural created by the artist known as BORDALO II

This mural at 44 Clemente St., created by the artist known as BORDALO II, is part of the Beyond Walls initiative that has changed the landscape in downtown Holyoke and beyond.

 

Features

Getting Down to Business

Brothers Juan (left) and Gilberto Uribe

Brothers Juan (left) and Gilberto Uribe are co-owners of El Paraiso Colombiano restaurant, a true family affair that has found a home on High Street.

Juan Uribe calls it a “family dream.”

He was referring to El Paraiso Colombiano restaurant, an entrepreneurial gambit that is truly a family affair.

Indeed, Juan and his brother, Gilberto, are co-owners and also cook and tend bar. Their father is head chef, and their sister is a waitress. Together, they created and now operate what they believe to be the only Colombian restaurant between here and Hartford, one that opened in the middle of the pandemic, but quickly found its stride nonetheless.

“On grand-opening day, there was a line outside to the corner,” said Juan, adding that, while there have been plenty of challenges with this venture, it has been a huge success to date, drawing patrons from around the block but also across the region and even beyond. “We thought people would come out and support something new, and they have.”

Juan, Gilberto, and other members of the Uribe family are now part of a changing scene on High Street, one of several ‘main’ streets in this city, and also part of an ongoing surge in entrepreneurship that is changing the face of the local business community.

Indeed, where once this city was dominated by large mills that covered several blocks of real estate, it is now marked increasingly by smaller ventures that occupy a storefront or even a desk or cubicle in the incubator space at the EforAll offices, also on High Street.

Jeff Cattell and Joseph Charles are also part of this changing scene. Business and life partners, they launched Paper City Fabrics, a supplier of a wide variety of fine fabrics, in September 2021, and have taken it from an online operation to a storefront on High Street that was most recently home to a law firm. They are completing renovations now and expect to open in the spring.

“Our goal has always been to open a brick-and-mortar storefront,” said Cattell, adding that he and Charles moved to the city four years ago and, after considering several business options, settled on a thrift-store model in what he called the “fiber-arts realm.”

Elaborating, he said the store will accept donations of fabric, everything from cotton to silk, as well as sewing machines and other goods and equipment, and sell them at steep discounts, thus bringing another unique concept to downtown Holyoke and one that speaks to its storied past in many respects.

Paper City Fabrics, El Paraiso Colombiano, and many other new businesses on High Street and beyond, from City Sports Bar to the Artery, a pop-up shop, to Star Dancers Unity (see story on page 50), are, indeed, part of a wave of entrepreneurship in the city, said Jordan Hart, executive director of the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce.

“There’s a lot of old players in Holyoke — there are many established businesses in many sectors, including manufacturing, which has traditionally been our foundation,” she explained. “But we’re seeing a lot of young, new faces as well, people who are investing in our downtown.”

Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, executive director of EforAll Holyoke and its Spanish equivalent, EparaTodos — an agency that is fueling this wave through accelerator programs, pitch contests, virtual workshops, co-working space, and more — agreed.

She said that the chamber, EforAll, and programs like the Transformative District Initiative, which are funneling dollars into storefront-improvement efforts and other programs, are helping people launch new businesses and then weather the many challenges they will face.

Tessa Murphy-Romboletti (left) and Jordan Hart

Tessa Murphy-Romboletti (left) and Jordan Hart say a surge in entrepreneurship has helped Holyoke’s business community become as diverse as the city itself.

These efforts are also making Holyoke’s business community much more diverse, said both Jordan and Murphy-Romboletti, noting that it looks much like the city itself, with many Hispanics and other minority groups taking on risks and putting their names (figuratively and, in some cases, literally) over the door of buildings on High Street and many other roads.

“Holyoke is such a diverse community, and I think we’re both trying to make sure that our business community reflects our community at large,” said Murphy-Romboletti, who is also an at-large city councilor in Holyoke. “That’s one of the great things about the Holyoke chamber now — you go to one of its monthly networking events, and it looks like the community of Holyoke; it’s very diverse, and Jordan has created a very welcoming environment.”

 

Food for Thought

Juan Uribe was driving a truck when he and other members of his family decided to pool their talents and resources and open El Paraiso Colombiano.

And he still drives a truck in the morning and sometimes during the day depending on how business it is at the restaurant, because … well, because he needs two jobs at this stage in his life, especially as the restaurant continues to emerge and build its brand.

But, like other members of his family, Uribe desired to be in business for himself, and with some encouragement and learning while doing from EforAll, the dream became a reality.

Like many such ventures, it started with a passion that would become a business.

“We were born and raised here in Holyoke, and friends would come around; we’d have little events — my grandmother would make empanadas, and my father would cook, my mother would cook, everyone would just love to be in our house,” he recalled. “So we decided to make it a business; we all love to cook, and this is a family business.”

A restaurant operating at 351 High St. had to shut down because of COVID, he went on, adding that, while the timing may not have been perfect for launching a new eatery, the family took the plunge.

Joseph Charles, left, and Jeff Cattell

Joseph Charles, left, and Jeff Cattell, owners of Paper City Fabrics, are part of a changing scene on High Street.
Staff Photos

“We knew we had a good idea going, so we decided to take everything we had and move ahead,” he said. “We knew that, even though there was a pandemic, people still had to eat, and we thought they would come out and support something new.”

That’s the quick version of the story, he said, adding that many pieces to the puzzle had to come together, obviously, as well as a business plan for bringing that ‘something new’ — authentic Colombian cuisine — to Holyoke and the region.

And the learning while doing continues, he said, adding that working for himself is “a lot of work, but it’s something that I love, something that my brother loves. It’s challenging, and it’s hard, but it doesn’t get any better than this.”

Cattell and Charles offered similar sentiments and similar excitement when it comes to being part of the scene on High Street, which is the logical next step for their venture.

“Shopping for fabric is a tactile experience,” Charles said. “Touching and seeing the colors in person and the textures of the fabric is an important part of the buying process.”

The two had been looking for a storefront for more than a year and eventually settled on 330 High St., across the road from El Paraiso Colombiano, a location that affords them the space they need for their retail operation as well as to process donations and create a classroom for sewing lessons. The space has some history — it was once a popular lunch counter — and some intriguing features, such as tin ceilings and a mosaic tile floor that was hidden by carpeting.

“It’s really cool to be able to restore some of that historical perspective,” said Cattell, adding that it’s also cool to be part of a changing dynamic in downtown Holyoke, which is seeing new businesses across many sectors.

Meanwhile, the chamber, EforAll, and other agencies, such as Nuestras Raices, a grassroots urban-agriculture organization, are working collectively to not only create a pipeline of new businesses like these, but help those businesses survive, thrive, and get to the proverbial next level.

For example, EforAll has, in addition to accelerator programs, a number of virtual programs it calls Deep Dives.

In recent months, such dives have been taken into subjects ranging from “Making It in the Food Business” to “Are You Getting All You Can Out of QuickBooks?” to “How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Small Business.”

Meanwhile, the chamber, through its many networking programs, is enabling these new small businesses to make the connections they need to grow their portfolios, while also learning from others facing the same challenges.

Indeed, Jordan told BusinessWest that the chamber has an attractive rate for solopreneurs and small businesses, enabling these ventures to be part of a full slate of events that provide invaluable opportunities to not only hand out business cards but also be an active part of a growing, more diverse business community.

Murphy-Romboletti agreed.

“The chamber has created a very welcoming environment, especially for my entrepreneurs who are not familiar with networking and are often so focused on being in the business and not necessarily working on the business,” she explained. “I think the chamber creates this environment where people can step away from the cash register or step away from the kitchen and connect with the community and build those relationships so they can be successful and really be part of the community; that’s been really valuable.”

In addition to helping individuals start a business and move it to the next level, agencies like the chamber and EforAll are working to get them involved in the community and take ownership of efforts to revitalize High Street and, overall, improve the landscape for business in the city.

“Whether it’s a new business or a business that’s been around for decades, we want them to feel like they have the ability to make change and advocate for what they want,” Murphy-Romboletti said. “We’re really being intentional about creating these spaces for them.”

Uribe said that getting involved in the community has been not just part of the business plan, but something important for the family.

Indeed, they are part of the many festivals that place in the city, and Uribe is the founder of the Paper City Food Festival, which staged its second edition last fall on the section of High Street between Appleton and Dwight streets, attracting more than 20 of the city’s restaurants.

“It’s a way for people to come out and see all that this city has to offer,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he engaged the chamber and started the festival to uplift local businesses and celebrate the community’s heritage and diversity.

 

Bottom Line

There was much to celebrate at last October’s food festival, and, similarly, there is much to celebrate with this city’s business community as it turns 150.

There is diversity. There is change. There is vibrancy. And, overall, there is a wider pipeline of new businesses, entrepreneurs like the Uribe family and Jeff Cattell and Joseph Charles.

Together, they are not just filling storefronts on High Street. They are energizing a city and writing an intriguing new chapter in its long and distinguished business history.

 

Features

A Portrait of Resilience

Mayor Joshua Garcia

Mayor Joshua Garcia says Holyokers need to take the long view when it comes to their city and its future.

As he talked about his city and its outlook moving forward, Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia first turned the clock back nearly 150 years and did what amounts to a ‘what if?’ exercise.

He was referring to Holyoke’s ubiquitous canals, which were, when they were conceived, no small bit of engineering — and financial — daring.

“It was a risk,” said Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor, who took office in late 2021. “When folks built the canal system … I think about what that conversation might have been like, the divide that might have been going on in this community. You had some who probably said, ‘yes, we need to be proactive and build this system,’ and others who likely said, ‘this is too much money; our taxes are going to go up if we do that, and besides, I’ll be gone in 30 years.’”

Fortunately, those in that first category prevailed, he went on, adding that the canals helped fuel decades of prosperity, jobs, and an enviable quality of life, and they put the city on the map. And as he looks ahead, Garcia believes Holyokers must have that same willingness to take reasonable risks — to be daring, if that’s the right word — and make the necessary investments to continue, and bring to a higher level, an ongoing renaissance in a city that was among the nation’s wealthiest and a model of innovation and manufacturing excellence.

“I’m trying to get people to not think short-term — the investments we make today are not just for next month or next year, but 20 to 30 years out,” he said. “We want to build a middle school, for example, something that would benefit this city for generations to come.”

Long-term thinking is one of necessary ingredients for continued progress in this city, said Garcia and many others we spoke with for this special section commemorating Holyoke’s 150th anniversary. Overall, they said many of the other needed ingredients are already in place, everything from a focus on entrepreneurship to inexpensive and reliable green energy; from a solid, diverse workforce to spaces in which new businesses can get started and eventually grow.

Jeff Hayden, currently vice president of Business and Community Services at Holyoke Community College, previously served in several economic-development posts in the city, including as director of Planning and Economic Development. Nearly a half-century ago, he worked part-time at a Dairy Mart on Dwight Street managed by his father.

He has seen a lot of change over that half-century, and, more recently, a good deal of progress as Holyoke has diversified a business community once dominated by manufacturing, especially paper and textile making.

In the ’90s, manufacturing was still a pillar of the local economy, along with healthcare — there are several facilities providing everything from acute care to behavioral-health services to care to veterans, he noted, adding that, in recent years, diversification has included more retail (the city already boasts the Holyoke Mall), cannabis businesses, and strong growth in the arts and entertainment sectors.

And this diversification has strengthened the economy and made it more resilient, he said, adding that current efforts have been focused on creating opportunities across the board — meaning both jobs and opening the door to entrepreneurship.

Holyoke’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Holyoke’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, this year celebrating its 70th edition, is a great tradition for the city and the many organizations, schools, and clubs that march.

“When I look at where Holyoke is today and where it’s going, it’s clear that its leaders are focused on providing economic opportunity for all, whether they be entrepreneurs who perhaps identify as Latinx or established businesses that have been here for a long time,” he said. “The hope is to help everyone grow, and grow together.”

Aaron Vega, the former state representative who is now serving as director of Planning and Economic Development, agreed.

“Like a lot of cities, we’re at a crossroads,” he said, noting that, while manufacturing has declined in recent years and decades, other sectors have emerged, such as cannabis, IT, and clean energy. One of the keys moving forward, said Vega and many others we spoke with, is that focus on entrepreneurship and helping new small businesses take root, in some cases literally.

“It’s very hard these days to start a small business, but we have a lot of supports for that, like EforAll and the chambers, and people now realize, especially here in Western Mass., that it’s the downtown businesses that create the character in a community,” he said. “So we’re really trying to focus on that; we’re really trying to empower people who live here already to open up their own business.”

 

Something to Celebrate

Like many others we spoke with for this special section, Garcia said the 150th anniversary is a time of reflection, an opportunity to look back at the city’s proud history and ahead to what the next chapters might be.

It’s also an opportunity to celebrate all that Holyoke is — a proud city with a rich history, rich traditions, a diverse population, a legacy of innovation, and other enviable qualities, he said, noting that perhaps the greatest of these is resilience.

Indeed, the city has always displayed the ability to withstand adversity and move on — whether it was the many challenges of becoming the nation’s first planned industrial city or reinventing itself and diversifying its economy when much of the manufacturing moved south or overseas, or, most recently, persevering through the COVID pandemic and its many side effects.

“It’s a celebration of resiliency,” he said, adding that the city will mark the occasion in a number of ways, including a gala, an ‘Eat, Drink, and Be Holyoke’ event, a time capsule that will be placed in City Hall and opened at the 200th anniversary, ‘150th’ merchandise (hats, key chains, etc.), commemorative beers made by local brewers, and much more. “It’s a celebration of everything Holyoke.”

Vega agreed, and noted that one of the driving forces behind the city’s ongoing resurgence is a focus on the arts and culture. He cited businesses such as Gateway City Arts, a live-performance venue, and organizations such as Beyond Walls, which partnered with Nueva Esperanza Inc., a community-development and social-services agency, to honor Holyoke’s designation as a Puerto Rican Cultural District, as well as the city’s rich history and diversity, with the installation of five large-scale outdoor murals.

“When you celebrate culture, people feel more connected to their community, more connected to their neighbors,” he explained. “And when you have the ability to celebrate art, it’s about bringing people into your community, with initiatives like Beyond Walls, the events at Wistariahurst, Gateway City Arts — it’s a celebration of music and arts that invites everyone to come join.”

Aaron Vega

Aaron Vega says Holyoke has many outstanding traits, especially its long history of resilience.
Staff Photo

Beyond the arts, Holyoke is seeing a surge in new businesses on High Street; a strong wave of cannabis businesses of all kinds, including large cultivation facilities; and an influx of data centers, including the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center. And in many cases, the city’s ability to provide lower-cost, green energy is a big reason why many of those businesses found Holyoke.

“Anyone who is looking for cheap electricity and green energy will knock on our door — we’re the first call they’ll make,” said Jim Lavelle, general manager of Holyoke Gas & Electric (HG&E), which can trace its roots to 1902. “It’s an interesting time, to be sure, and we’re getting a lot of inquiries; people like the story of the low-carbon, cheap electricity.”

Interest is across the board, he said, adding that it comes from data centers and cannabis cultivators (both huge consumers of electricity), but also from business owners who want to minimize their carbon footprint, he said, adding that HG&E is working with city officials to help make the most of this asset and many others the city can boast.

Another asset is Holyoke Community College, said Hayden, adding that, historically, significant numbers of city residents have been unable to take full advantage of the employment opportunities in the city because they were qualified for those jobs.

The college has long worked to change that equation through programs that will ready individuals for jobs, be they as nurses, medical assistants, chefs, or, most recently, workers in the cannabis industry. HCC also has a strong track record of students transferring students to four-year institutions.

“I like to say that we help people get a job, get a better job, or help them do their job better,” he said.

 

Traditions Old and New

Getting back to those planned celebrations … the 150th will be just one of a growing number of events in Holyoke this year, said the mayor, noting everything from the famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade later this month to the Fiestas Patronales, which debuted last August — a four-day celebration of the city and region’s Puerto Rican culture and heritage and billed as the largest Latino event in Western Mass.

Jeff Hayden

Jeff Hayden says Holyoke has diversified its business community, strengthening it in the process.

These celebrations, old and new, capture the city’s past, present, and future, he said, adding that they reflect the city, its history, and especially its people.

That’s especially true of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which this year will mark its 70th edition, said Karen Casey, president of this year’s event. The 69th parade was three years in the making because of COVID, she said, a tiring, very frustrating experience on many levels.

What the pandemic years did was make those in Holyoke and beyond — this is, after all, a regional event — appreciate the tradition even more, if that’s possible.

“After having gone through what we all went through a few years ago, you saw just how much this meant to everyone,” she explained, referring to everyone from parade committee members to those who watch each year along the parade route. “Everyone just has a greater appreciation for how important this is.

“This is the third-oldest parade in the country, and we work very hard to maintain high standards,” she went on. “Anyone from around Holyoke is very proud of it; they brag about it … it’s a great tradition.”

While the buildup to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade continues, so too does planning for the 150th anniversary, said the mayor, adding that one of the intriguing tasks — and big challenges — ahead is deciding what should go in the time capsule.

Organizers are already thinking about items like one of the Super Bowl programs created by Hazen Paper, a Holyoke High School yearbook, T-shirts, a history of the city, and much more. It may take the shape of a volleyball with a large box inside.

The task of deciding what goes in the limited space in the time capsule is made more complicated by the many aspects of the city’s history and the many objects — recent and more than a century old — needed to tell the story. In many ways, it’s a good problem to have.

But getting back to that matter of resiliency, Vega said that trait is at the heart of the 150th celebration. And it is one shared by the community and the people who have lived here over the past few centuries.

“People talk about Boston Strong in the wake of the marathon bombing, but there’s also Holyoke Strong; it’s about resiliency, and it’s about history,” he said. “People have always come to Holyoke who have been migrants and have had nothing — and they built a life here. That’s what we need to keep remembering. This has always been a place where people come, get that grit, and find a path.

“This is what we’re celebrating as the city turns 150,” he went on, adding, again, that there is so much to celebrate.

Features

Holyoke’s 150th

By Penni Martorell

Happy anniversary, Holyoke! 2023 is the sesquicentennial, or more commonly called the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of the city. It is our good fortune that we, the citizens of Holyoke, will, at long last, will hold an official dedication ceremony for Holyoke’s City Hall, a structure that is not only of notable architecture, but also a fundamental component of Holyoke’s past, present, and future and the foundation of our community.

In a July 1876 article, the Holyoke Transcript reported:

“There ought to be public spirit enough in this city to appropriately dedicate this noble building. There seems to be a small faction opposed to it, but they should not be allowed to present a fitting dedication by those whose money has been spent in the construction of the finest hall in New England.”

That’s right, Holyoke City Hall was never dedicated upon its completion. Apparently, that small faction held out, and other circumstances derailed the building’s official dedication. So, it is only appropriate that we take time now to dedicate this magnificent building as it has stood in service to Holyoke for a century and a half. The official dedication will take place on Thursday, April 6.

Most of the story about City Hall is documented in Holyoke Annual Reports and a lengthy, detailed, unsigned article in the Saturday morning edition of the July 1, 1876 Holyoke Transcript. And as history so often reveals itself in layers, there are likely many more stories about the building. So here is some background information and details about the construction.

The total financial outlay to build this magnificent building, when all was said and done, was $372,000 in 1876. (Additional research done by the Historical Commission indicates that final cost was closer to $500,000 at the time.) In any case, in today’s money, that would be more than $10 million.

The town of Holyoke was established by an act of Massachusetts Congress Chapter 71 and signed into law On March 14, 1850 by Gov. George Nixon Briggs. The town’s first board meetings were held in rented meeting halls like Chapin Hall, Parsons Hall, and the Exchange Hall. A separate selectmen’s office was rented starting in 1861. The largest financial challenges for the town at that time were fees to West Springfield in relation to the contract of separation.

Constructing a building of this size and character was not an easy task, nor was it inexpensive. Delays and contractual issues increased the amount of time and money it took to complete this monumental undertaking. Unfortunately, division arose early on deciding where the building should be located. More delays arose during the building of City Hall and were memorialized in Holyoke’s Building Committee reports.

Fortunately, the city’s incorporation in 1873 brought about the reorganization of elected officials and, most importantly, new Building Committee members who acted quickly and effectively to get the construction work back on track … but it wasn’t a smooth process.

In October 1874, the new Building Committee contracted H.F. Kilburn of New York to serve as architect under the supervision of Watson Ely of Holyoke. In order to facilitate the completion of the building in a timely manner, Ely ordered that everyone that had moved into the unfinished building vacate the building and then closed City Hall during the winter of 1874.

Charles Attwood was the original architect who created the Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival structural plan in 1871. However, many others contributed structural and decorative details, including local builder Casper Ranger, John Delaney, Ecclesiastical Stained Glass Works, Watson Ely, Henry Kilburn, Kronenberger and Sons, Filippo Santoro, Serpentino Stained Glass, and Samuel West.

Beyond the granite exterior walls, stone steps and pavers, and slate roof, other building materials include random ashlar, galvanized iron, glass, lead, marble, wood, brick, sheet metal, and copper.

One of the most important historical and stately features of Holyoke City Hall is the looming clock and bell tower. The imperial tower stands 225 feet high and houses a bell that weighs nearly 5,000 pounds. The clock’s face is composed of two-inch-thick Belgium milk glass. Sadly, the clock was inoperable and the bell was silent for decades. Thanks to Friends of City Hall, David Cotton, and a team of volunteers, the clock was restored after completing hundreds of hours of repairs, and on July 4, 2018, the clock was lit up and began keeping time again after almost 30 years.

But back to City Hall itself. As of July 1876, it had not been dedicated, and research has not found any indication it was ever dedicated. It’s time to remedy that.

 

Penni Martorell is Holyoke’s city historian and curator at Wistariahurst.

Features

Going with the Flow

By Joseph Bednar

bednar@ BusinessWest.com

Old Holyoke Dam

The city of Holyoke’s website details a series of telegrams sent by one James Mills on Nov. 6, 1848 to a group of industrialists in Boston who had invested in the first dam at South Hadley Falls and were eager to hear of its performance.

“The gates were closed and the water filling behind the dam,” Mills reported at 10 a.m. It would be his only happy missive.

Noon: “Dam leaking badly.”

1 p.m.: “Leaks cannot be stopped.”

2 p.m.: “Bulkheads are giving way.”

3:20 p.m.: “Dam gone to hell by way of Willimansett.”

So, it wasn’t the most auspicious way to begin Holyoke’s new direction as a planned industrial city that harnessed the power of the Connecticut River.

But the builders learned from their mistakes — and built a replacement dam. Like the first, it was also made of wood and completed the following summer. This dam still stands, 150 feet underwater, behind the current, modern stone dam that was put into service in 1900.

This bit of history is just one example of Holyoke not only overcoming challenges, but evolving with them along a winding, intriguing, still-evolving story.

The story actually begins much earlier, with the Indigenous tribes who settled there on the rich, alluvial plain, including the Nonotucks, from whom early European settlers eventually purchased the land that would be incorporated into the future boundaries of Holyoke.

Captain Elizur Holyoke is believed to be the first European to explore the future city. In 1633, he led an expedition up the Connecticut River to explore the potential for settlement. Two years later, based upon his report, European agriculture settlement began in the region. Initially concentrated in Springfield, settlers soon began to migrate to the surrounding areas that would later become West Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke. Holyoke was then known as Ireland Parish, a name that would remain in common use until 1850.

When Boston investors saw in the parish industrial potential similar to Lawrence and Lowell — and the energy potential of the river — they set out to create an industrial city on a large scale.

In 1847, taking advantage of the broad plain and the 57-foot drop in the Connecticut River at South Hadley Falls, work began on the planned industrial city. Canals, mills, boarding houses, offices, and a dam were all built by pick and shovel. And on March 4, 1850, Holyoke — with its working dam — was finally separated from West Springfield and designated its own town.

“There was some resistance from the farmers who initially didn’t want to sell their land,” said Penni Martorell, Holyoke’s city historian and curator of Wistariahurst. “But eventually [the investors] won out. They just bought the land and then laid out the plan for the city. The flats area was definitely the working man’s area. The middle area around the canals was where the factories were built, and then the highlands were set aside for retail businesses and homes of the wealthier families.”

 

Strength in Paper

Before the planned-city idea got rolling, Holyoke was mainly an agricultural community with a sprinkling of industry, including a lumber mill on the river.

“The investors had had success in Lawrence, in getting mills set up along the river up there. And then they were like, ‘well, where else can we go?’” Martorell told BusinessWest. “Lawrence and Lowell often lay claim to being the first planned industrial cities. We say they worked it out there, and then they perfected it here in Holyoke. They really took advantage of the 60-foot drop in the river, how to harness that energy and then send it through the canals.”

Holyoke’s development was rapid, with its population surging from about 3,200 in 1850 to 45,000 by the turn of the century and more than 60,000 at its peak in the early 1920s. Textiles were the first major product of the city, quickly followed by paper, which became the dominant force in the city. At one time, more than 25 paper mills were in operation.

By 1885, 12 years after its official designation as a city, Holyoke was the largest single producer of paper of any city in the U.S., producing around 190 tons per day, more than double the next-largest producer, Philadelphia, which produced 69 tons per day despite having a population nearly 40 times its size. By 1900, Holyoke would produce about 320 tons per day, predominantly writing paper, led by American Pad & Paper Co., American Writing Paper Co., and others.

Holyoke also built schools, churches, parks, and many public buildings, including the historic City Hall (see story on page 28). By the turn of the century, Holyoke exerted considerable influence on American life. The Holyoke Opera House was the test location for Broadway plays before moving on to New York. The Easter parade here drew as many spectators as on Fifth Avenue.

A number of industrial inventions arose out of the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first and most prominent hydraulic testing lab in the U.S., Holyoke Testing Flume, performed 3,176 tests to establish turbine efficiency from 1870 to 1932. Other pioneering developments included the first use of Hans Goldschmidt’s exothermic welding process in the Americas in 1904, by George Pellissier and the Holyoke Street Railway. In electronics, the world’s first commercial toll line, between the city’s Hotel Jess and a location in Springfield, entered service in 1878. Holyoke was also home to Thaddeus Cahill’s New England Electric Music Co., which, in 1906, demonstrated the telharmonium, the world’s first electromechanical instrument, a predecessor of the synthesizer.

Meanwhile, the availability of water power enabled Holyoke to support its own electric utility company and maintain it independently of America’s major regional utilities. The city was thus a rare unaffected area in the Northeast blackout of 1965.

But the city’s second century has been a complicated story, Martorell said.

“It was boom and bust. So every time there was a bust, the wealthier people were able to prepare for that. But the lower-income people were not able to prepare. They would move on to wherever there was work. So it was a bit of transience at certain points. The paper industry kind of morphed into other industrial spaces.”

 

Northern Migration

Beginning at the end of World War II, the city’s demographics began to change, as an influx of Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups began to migrate to the Northeast U.S., driven largely by the Farm Labor Program initiated by the U.S. Department of Labor, which recruited Puerto Rican laborers to work on agricultural land; in the case of Holyoke, many worked on tobacco farms and arrived in the city in search of better job opportunities at the mills, as previous generations had.

“In Springfield and Holyoke, housing was inexpensive, you had access to 91 and 95, and a lot of them had an agricultural background and were looking for farm work,” Martorell said of the Puerto Rican influx. “So between Hatfield and the tobacco fields along the Connecticut River, they were able to find work pretty quickly once they got here.”

By 1970, the number of Puerto Rican residents numbered around 5,000; however, by that time, many faced a city economy that was struggling. Holyoke’s mills had closed due to the changing economic landscape of early globalization and deindustrialization; from 1955 to 1970, half of all industrial jobs vanished. Despite economic and social difficulties, however, the population grew significantly, and today Latinos form the city’s largest minority group, with the largest Puerto Rican population per capita of any American city outside Puerto Rico proper, at 44.7%.

As for those old industrial buildings, their use is evolving.

“The Skinners, who made silk, sold their company to Indian Head Mills, which was a conglomerate going around buying up textile mills in the late 1950s or early 1960s. They bought the company and then shut it down a few years later,” Martorell said. “And many of the other paper companies had already gone out. Parsons Paper was the first paper company in Holyoke, and they closed their doors in 2005. So that was a pretty good run.”

A few specialty paper and printing companies remain, but today, many of the old mills along the canals are being repurposed, from cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, and retail operations to the entertainment venue known as Gateway City Arts.

Martorell said change has been a constant in Holyoke, but so has a feeling of promise.

“People in Holyoke love Holyoke. People are committed to being here, and they want to see good things happen for the city,” she told BusinessWest. “And I think the last two mayors have really tried to make an effort to rebrand the city in a more positive way and say that the challenges that we’ve had in the past have made us stronger and more diverse. So we embrace that and celebrate that.”

 

Some information for this article was adapted from the city of Holyoke’s written history and from Wikipedia.

Banking and Financial Services Special Coverage

Pedal to the Mettle

Monson Savings Bank’s birthday celebration

Monson Savings Bank’s birthday celebration

Monson Savings Bank has been commemorating its 150th birthday in many different ways, from a time capsule to assembling and donating $15,000 worth of bicycles to several area charities. Through all these efforts, the bank is celebrating its continuity and its commitment to a community that is now much larger then when it took its first deposit back in 1872.

Dan Moriarty called it a ‘trial run.’

That’s how he referred to his 60-mile bike ride, which he also called the ‘Tour de Branches,’ on July 17, during which he visited all seven Monson Savings Bank (MSB) locations — five branches, the headquarters, and a loan center — on a trek that took him from Monson to East Longmeadow, with stops along the way in Ware, Wilbraham, and Hampden.

Moriarty, the bank’s president and CEO, said this was a tuneup for a ride two and a half times that length, a number that is significant because 150 is also the number of years the bank is celebrating this year, and the ride, still very much in the planning stages, has now become a poignant part of the celebration.

Dan Moriarty’s ‘Tour de Branches’

Dan Moriarty’s ‘Tour de Branches’ helped him prep for a 150-mile ride as part of Monson Savings Bank’s birthday celebration

“My goal is to raise money to give to a local charity … I’m thinking I could ask for per-mile pledges from friends, family, customers, and businesses,” Moriarty told BusinessWest, adding that the charity is still to be determined. “I’m guessing no other bank president belonging to a bank older than 100 years has done this.”

He’s probably on very safe ground with that statement. Not many bank presidents pedal such distances, although he’s certainly comfortable doing so having competed in several Ironman triathlons, where participants cycle 120 miles while also swimming 2.4 miles and running a full 26.2-mile marathon. And, more to his point, there simply aren’t many banks that can boast about being around for 100 years, let alone 150.

And that, more than anything else, is what MSB is celebrating this year, said Mike Rouette, executive vice president and chief operating officer, noting that this longevity, this stability — not only the same bank, but the same name since Ulysses S. Grant was patrolling the White House — is rare in this era of ongoing mergers and acquisitions.

bank employees buried a time capsule

As part of the 150th birthday celebration, bank employees buried a time capsule filled with a number of items reflective of 2022.

It is reflected, he said, in a borrowed slogan that the bank has adopted: ‘Never forget who you are and where you came from; it’s an important part of you that you will find strength and peace from.’

“It’s short, and it’s sweet, and it says a lot about us,” Rouette noted, adding that, while the bank has grown and expanded its presence within the region, it remains loyal to the principles on which it was founded in 1872.

Moriarty agreed.

“I think it takes a strong sense of loyalty to the legacy of the organization to hang on for that long,” he said. “As we know, in this area, some long-lasting institutions decided to go a different route and either merge or combine. It starts with the organization and how it feels the future can be laid out for a bank that’s been around a long time; if they feel they’re not going to make it, they look to a different situation or combination. So far, we’re not committed to looking in a different direction.”

Moving forward, he said the bank “has a lot to talk about” at its upcoming annual meeting and strategic planning sessions in September, from where, when, and how to expand geographically to anticipating where technology is going and how to maximize it to better serve customers.

“We had very big ideas, and I’m happy to say that we made most of them happen — and very successfully.”

“It’s all about delivery systems, customer service, where we’re physically going next, which means market analysis and possible branch expansion,” he explained. “We’re going to do it in a controlled and managed method.”

 

To a Higher Gear

While Moriarty is, indeed, a veteran of Ironman triathlons, it had been a while, seven years by his estimation, since he had taken part in one of those competitions. Thus, he admits to being a little sore after that 60-mile trial run.

“It was a reality check when I came off the bike that day,” he explained. “I said, ‘whoa … that was 60 miles; I have to do that twice plus another 30 miles.’ This will be a good challenge for me; there was about 3,500 feet of climbing for one loop — that’s like going up half of Mount Washington.”

Monson Savings Ba

Monson Savings Bank has retained its original name and home city for 150 years, a rarity in the banking world.

He’s presently training with long-time friend and Ironman coach Kevin Moloney, who took the 60-mile ride with him. He’s also mapping out a course, one that will essentially take him on the 60-mile loop twice, with an additional loop, totaling 30 miles, tacked on.

As he said, it’s a work in progress when it comes to planning the ride, choosing a beneficiary, and filling in other details. And this ride will, as noted, will be a capstone — along with a formal gala in September to be attended by employees, board members, and plus-ones (total guest list of … you guessed it, 150) — to what has been a full year of activities marking the bank’s milestone.

Recapping them, Caitlin O’Connor, vice president and Marketing officer, said there has been a wide variety of events and programs, from the burying of a time capsule to the commissioning of a painting of the bank’s first president, Charles Merrick; from a traveling historical display featuring antique currency to monthly $150 cash prizes; from the placing of a marker where the original bank building stood at the corner of Main and State streets in Monson to several build-a-bike initiatives, whereby bank employees have assembled and donated $15,000 worth of bicycles to several nonprofits in the area, including I Found Light Against All Odds, Educare Springfield, and the South End Community Center.

“We had a ‘Cheers to 150 Years’ event starting on March 19 to really kick things off; that’s was an employee event and the starting point,” O’Connor told BusinessWest. “And from then on, it just grew and took on a life of its own. We had very big ideas, and I’m happy to say that we made most of them happen — and very successfully.”

Collectively, these events and programs have punctuated the bank’s place in the community — literally, as with the marker placed at the original bank location, but also figuratively, as a community bank that is very much involved in the cities and towns where it has locations, and the region as a whole, Rouette noted, adding that the 150th anniversary has been a great vehicle for making introductions, forging new relationships, and reinforcing existing ones.

“What a great way to walk into a nonprofit that you’re hoping to bring into the bank or a commercial or residential customer,” he said of the celebration and everything that it conveys about the bank, its history, its stability, and a future that will look very much like the present and the past.

“It’s an opportunity to give them your story — who you are, what you’re about, and your overall legacy,” he went on. “People want to do business with people that have been around, that are part of the community — not just here today and gone tomorrow, but institutions that are truly the cornerstone, the bedrock of the area.”

 

The Ride Stuff

That word ‘area’ has taken on new meaning for MSB since its last major anniversary — its 100th, in 1972 — and especially since 1998.

It was during that year that the bank opened its first location outside of Monson, a branch in Hampden. Five years later, a third branch was opened in Wilbraham, and new locations were added in Ware in 2103 and East Longmeadow in 2020. During that same memorable year, MSB’s Loan and Operations Center moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Wilbraham.

‘Build a Bike,’ where employees assemble bikes and donate them to area charities

The 150th celebration has featured a number of programs and events, including ‘Build a Bike,’ where employees assemble bikes and donate them to area charities, in this case, I Found Light Against All Odds.

With these moves, the bank is now serving a much broader area and becoming more involved in the region’s unofficial capital, Springfield, and serving a broader demographic mix of commercial and residential customers, said Dina Merwin, senior vice president and chief risk and senior compliance officer for the bank.

“We’ve well beyond the towns in which we have branches, and so we recognize that we want to reach all potential customers in our market,” she explained. “We recognize also our desire to include financial inclusion in reaching all potential customers in our market, whether that cuts across lines of income levels, race, ethnicity, and any other basis.

“Many of our recent events were focused in the Springfield area,” she went on, “while we continue to support and celebrate all the communities in which we are committed. We also recognize that there have been some demographic shifts in our market area in age and different types of population, so it’s important for us to recognize that and make sure we’re inclusive in all our efforts.”

While the area being served by the bank has changed, the name over the growing number of doors hasn’t, said Moriarty, noting that his institution, unlike many others, has chosen to keep the name of the community where it began as part of the brand, as well as that word ‘Savings.’

“I think the recession will be short and challenging, but I think Monson Savings and other banks are positioned well to weather, manage, and help customers through this period.”

“We’re going against the grain on that in some respects,” he noted. “Mike and I met with the board of directors during a strategic planning session, and we feel that the reputation that the bank has built the past 150 years does mean something, and we believe it’s recognizable in the community. We want to leverage that from a standpoint of legacy — Monson itself, where it all began — and then ‘Savings’ connoting security and trust, even though we feel we are a commercial player in the market.”

Indeed, while celebrating its 150th anniversary in all those ways mentioned above, MSB has also been carrying on with business, said Moriarty, noting that it has been a solid year in many respects, despite a sagging economy, with continued growth in commercial lending and, overall, a $30 million increase in total assets, bringing the bank near the $650 million mark.

“We’re working to strengthen existing relationships while also fostering new ones across the board, from individuals to businesses,” he said. “We’re trying to help them navigate where this challenging environment is going.”

On the commercial-lending side of the ledger, an already competitive landscape has become even more so as rates start to edge up, said Rouette, adding that many businesses are being more cautious amid general uncertainty about where the economy is headed and, overall, a decline in confidence.

“You’re seeing a bit of a slowdown, especially as people hear of the inflationary environment we’re in,” he went on. “People are pushing back potential projects that they have; maybe they were going to start in the third quarter or fourth quarter of this year, and now they’re saying, ‘let’s pump the brakes a little bit and possibly look at next year and see where we land from a rate standpoint and with the economic environment.’

“We had a great first and second quarter,” he went on. “But when you’re out talking to customers, you can hear the apprehension and cautious tone of voice that business owners are using right now.”

Moriarty concurred, and noted that a recession is now more likely than not, in his opinion, and this will add to the many challenges business owners and managers are currently facing.

“I think the recession will be short and challenging,” he said, “but I think Monson Savings and other banks are positioned well to weather, manage, and help customers through this period. And once the Fed gets control of inflation and the employment market evolves a little bit, we’ll see some improvement.”

Looking ahead, and toward creation of a new strategic three-year plan for the bank, Moriarty said a number of topics will be considered, including the need to be more “customer-centric versus product-centric,” as he put it.

“That means that we have to make sure we’re creating frictionless opportunities and delivery systems that make it easy for customers to manage their banking,” he explained. “That includes digital banking; we know we have cutting-edge products now, but we know things are going to change drastically in the next three to five years, so we have to make sure we’re positioned to give those offerings to our customers.

“Artificial intelligence will come more into play in the next three to five years,” he went on. “The usefulness or the quickness with which we can do data analysis of what our customers have and what they need will be important. Customers want to have things at their fingertips; they want to maximize and analyze their financial situation and be able to look forward and make good decisions.”

As for possible geographic expansion, Moriarty said there are many possibilities, and he’s not ready to talk about any of them.

He did say that the consensus among experts in the industry is that the recent pattern of consolidation within the sector will continue, leaving opportunities for smaller, community banks like Monson Savings.

“We feel that we benefit from other mergers and acquisitions because we’ve been around for so long, and we know that where there’s shakeup, there’s also opportunity,” he said. “We’re going to keep an open mind to that.”

 

Going the Last Mile

Returning to the subject of his planned bike ride, Moriarty joked that now that he’s started to talk about it, he’s pretty much committed to doing it.

He’s training two or three times a week with Moloney and looking at a number of options for which charity or charities (probably the latter) he will be fundraising for.

It’s been a while since he’s taken part in an Ironman competition or even a marathon — he’s run in several of those as well, including Boston a number of times. But he said it’s like … well, riding a bike. Not really, but close.

In any case, like the institution he now leads, he’s proven that he’s in it for the long haul — as in the very long haul: 150 miles for him, 150 years for the bank.

They’ve both put the pedal to the mettle.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Features

Plane Speaking

Bill Hogan

Florence Casket Co. has been making its mainstay products, wooden caskets, for nearly 150 years now. And it’s making them pretty much the same way, as well — by hand. But while this business seems frozen in time in some ways, this unique industry has seen change and evolution — and the company has more than kept pace.

There’s a good amount of history on display at the Florence Casket Co. plant in Florence, as one might expect at a company that’s been making the same product in the same building since 1873, as the plaque mounted near the front entrance proclaims.

Much of it is captured in the photographs hanging in the lobby, the conference room, and Bill Hogan’s spacious and somewhat cluttered office — testimony to the fact that the third-generation president wears quite a number of hats at this venture.

Many of those photos, including those in Hogan’s office, are portraits of first- and second-generation leaders of this unique business, including his maternal grandfather, Russell Christenson, who bought the company with a few of his siblings in the mid-’50s. In the conference room, meanwhile, there are several photos of the vintage horse-drawn hearses the company loans out to area funeral homes for special services — as well as framed newspaper accounts of those funerals, with the hearses featured prominently.

And in the lobby, hanging not far from a framed receipt — dated 1898 and given from the Florence Furniture Co., Manufacturers of Burial Caskets and Undertakers Supplies, to a Joseph Belanger for “boxes” and other materials — are two aerial photos of the factory.

One is relatively recent, maybe a decade or so ago. The other one, a black and white shot … Hogan isn’t quite sure, although he thought he could determine the date if he did a little research. There are a few clues, including an old rail line that’s been gone for decades, and a few cars — compared with the full parking lot of today — that look like they might be from the late ’20s or early ’30s.

Whatever the date is, the building certainly looks different on the outside than it does today — there have been several expansions. On the inside, though, most areas — from the lobby to most of the manufacturing spaces — probably look very much the same as they did back then.

Indeed, to walk into this factory, wedged between houses in a decidedly residential neighborhood, is to almost step back in time. While some of the equipment, including a CNC machine, are new, most everything else in this building is old — as in old world. Which is one way of saying they’re pretty much making caskets here the same way they did when the building was opened, when Ulysses S. Grant was in the White House, and when that picture was taken — whenever that was.

“We could buy machines that would do most of this mechanically, but we do it all by hand.” said Hogan, adding that, on a typical day, roughly two dozen caskets will be shipped out to funeral homes across a territory that covers most of the Northeast.

While in many ways time seems to have stood still at this company, the reality is that it hasn’t. Times have changed in some ways, from the amount of competition — there are far fewer companies doing this now, although some are national and even international giants — to the increasing popularity of cremation, which has certainly impacted demand for the wooden caskets this company specializes in — although demand is still steady.

“As much has cremation has crept in and become more and more popular, there are still a fair number of families that want to have a traditional funeral,” he explained, adding that this is especially true in the Northeast.

Craftsmen at Florence Casket assemble models the same way they were built in 1873 — by hand.

Overall, Florence Casket, while in some respects still doing business the way it did nearly 150 years ago, is also adapting to changing times by diversifying into everything from supplying cremation urns and metal caskets to making specialty caskets, such as oversized models, and even those for pets.

But its bread and butter remains fine wooden caskets, which are in many ways custom-made for each customer. The company’s strategy has been to generate more of the remaining business for such caskets in its territory by “going into untouched corners to find new customers,” as Hogan put it.

For this issue, BusinessWest visited this unique business to learn about a business where demand may be constant, but so too is change and the need to adapt to it.

Going with the Grain

Hogan began his extensive tour of Florence Casket — something he enjoys and does fairly often — in the shipping area, where several caskets, covered by protective wrapping, sat waiting to be delivered to one of dozens of funeral homes in the company’s client portfolio. He spent the next 40 minutes or so explaining the many processes involved with getting them ready for delivery.

He began by rolling open a large wooden door and pointing to a separate building in which vast stores of kiln-dried lumber — everything from pine to poplar; maple to mahogany — are kept. He then took BusinessWest on a journey that covered three floors — the top floor is essentially for storage of finished product — and more steps than one could likely imagine when looking at the final product. Steps that include planing, cutting, gluing, shaping, assembling, painting (staining), lacquering, sanding at many stages along the way, and installation of the interior fabric.

He also introduced some industry terms of a sort, such as ‘ears,’ the wooden pieces affixed to the side of the casket, to which the handles are mounted, and the ‘piece of pie,’ the wedge-shaped (hence the name) piece glued and then stapled into the front of the top of the casket.

Finished caskets are stored on the third floor of the company’s headquarters in Florence and then customized to meet the specific needs of clients.

The craftsmen making and assembling pieces are doing things pretty much the way they’ve been done for decades, said Hogan, as he pointed to some equipment that’s been in use from the very beginning, or so he’s been told.

Again, he knows much more about the chapter in the company’s story that began when his family bought it nearly 70 years ago — but through research and stories passed down, he’s been able to gain an appreciation of its full and long history.

And before giving his tour, Hogan provided an in-depth and quite intriguing inside look at his company and the casket business — which he stressed repeatedly is not the funeral business, although the two have always been intertwined, and were even more so decades ago, as we’ll see.

As for Hogan, he started working in the plant when he was very young; he said his grandfather would put him to work mowing lawns and handling other duties. Later, he worked on the floor during summers and school vacations. After graduating from Castleton College in Vermont, he returned to the family business in 1993, and “I haven’t looked back.”

“When I was kid, I didn’t necessarily picture myself doing this,” he explained. “But it was an opportunity that was presented to me, and it’s the path I chose; it was a good decision.”

Thus, he’s one of several third-generation members of the family involved with the business, and while some from the second generation are still active as well, including a semi-retired uncle who serves as a sales representative in Vermont, most have retired. But they still consult when called upon.

“The whole family has been a great sounding board for me when there’s been problems, questions, cares, or concerns,” he told BusinessWest. “They bring years of experience to the table.”

And there have been a number of matters on which to consult, he said, adding that, while the casket business is steeped in tradition and history, there has been change and evolution and the need to adapt to it.

As evidence, Hogan referenced the ‘showroom’ sign on another door to the building, even though it hasn’t actually served that role in quite some time.

A craftsman finishes ‘painting’ a casket, one of many steps in a very involved process.

“Many years ago — this is before my time, but it’s what I’ve been told — funeral directors would bring families here to look at caskets and choose a model,” he explained. “The funeral director would call down and say, ‘we’d like you to put a polar casket, a maple casket, and a cherry casket into the showroom for the family to see.’”

Later, funeral homes established their own small showrooms, he went on, adding that, when a particular model was chosen, the funeral director would call Florence and order a replacement. More recently, many of those showrooms have been given over to other uses, Hogan noted, and a number of funeral homes are displaying casket options through miniatures or simply photos on the internet, neither of which is ideal, but that’s nonetheless reality.

So after a model is picked, a call will be placed to Florence Casket for that item, he said. While the company has several of each type of casket (meaning the wood it’s made from) in those third-floor storage areas, it essentially makes each item to order, especially with the handles and interior fabric, which separates it from those competitors who stockpile inventory in huge warehouses.

“Our specialty is we manufacture everything as needed,” he explained. “Everything going tomorrow, we’re working on today; you can change colors, interiors, handles — you can customize them more than you can elsewhere.”

Board Meetings

Making things to order brings its own challenges, he went on, adding that, while some times of the year are busier than others — and winter in the Northeast, for whatever reason, probably the weather, is one of those times — work, like death itself, is constant and unpredictable.

“People don’t stop dying because it’s a holiday or because it’s the weekend or because the weather is bad,” he explained, adding that this makes the December holidays, and the time off that comes with them, sometimes difficult to navigate.

It also makes Fridays and Mondays, positioned on opposite sides of the weekend (when the business is closed), more hectic than the other days of the week. “So Mondays are essentially three days all wrapped into one.”

Indeed, BusinessWest visited on a Friday, and Hogan was interrupted several times to advise those making deliveries in time for the weekend.

Those deliveries are made almost exclusively within a Northeast territory that stretches from roughly Atlantic City, N.J. to the Canadian border, a coverage area chosen because it can be served from the Florence location with a fleet of trucks and vans.

As noted earlier, that territory was once home to a number of companies that made wooden caskets, but now there are just two — Florence and a company in Athol called Cambium Corp. There was a third, New England Casket in East Boston, but its factory burned to the ground almost a year ago, and the company is still in a state of limbo, said Hogan.

Meanwhile, there are a few large national players, including Batesville Casket Co. and Matthews Aurora Funeral Solutions, both based in Indiana with additional locations in other states.

New England Casket sold primarily to distributors, while Florence does not, which explains why the company hasn’t picked up much business as a result of that devastating fire, said Hogan. Instead, as noted, it has responded to the impact of cremations and other forces within the industry by working to add new customers within its territory. It has done this by going into those untouched corners that Hogan mentioned, and also stressing what differentiates it from other makers, specifically the quality and customization of the work.

This was on full display during Hogan’s tour, which essentially took the process from start to finish. On a tour that might take 40 minutes, he stops and explains each step. In real time, it probably takes about 40 hours, he noted, with some woods, such as oak and cherry, being more porous, thus needing more time to dry between coats of lacquer.

One of the last stops on the tour, the third-floor storage area, shows the depth of the customization process. Indeed, for each type of wood there are several different colors, or stains, and a variety of models. In cherry, for example, there’s everything from the Tanglewood to the Monticello to the Washington, each with customizable handles and panels. In mahogany, another of the higher-end options along with cherry, there are four options — Baldwin, Nantucket, Newport, and Simsbury — again, each one customizable.

Hogan said one of the keys to the company’s success is to have options for all tastes and price ranges, with mahogany and cherry at the high end, pine at the lower end, and woods like poplar, perhaps the most popular, in the middle.

Indeed, there are more than two dozen options in poplar, Hogan said. “We sell a lot of them because they’re reasonably priced and the finishes are brilliant.”

Bottom Line

Those models are part of the ongoing story at Florence Casket, which is closing in on 150 years of making both wooden caskets and history.

Those framed photographs in the lobby, conference room, and Hogan’s office reflect this history, but the real story is written on the shop floor, where they’re still doing many things the same way they were done in 1873.

The same way they did in that black-and-white photo — whenever it was taken.

It was Ben Franklin who said that, in this world, “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” For 147 years, this company been a constant as well.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Banking and Financial Services

Past Is Prologue

President and CEO John Howland stands by a display commemorating GSB’s first 150 years. I

Greenfield Savings Bank has marked its sesquicentennial in a number of ways this year — from a party with cupcakes in the spring to presenting elm trees to a number of area communities it serves in the summer, to displaying its proud history, something it’s done pretty much all year long. Overall, though, it has celebrated by doing what it has done since it was founded in 1869 — serving as a rock-solid corporate citizen. And a vital partner to its many types of customers.

John Howland jokingly refers to it as his “high-school history project.”

He was referring to the large display of photographs and other materials that trace the 150-year progression of Greenfield Savings Bank. And it’s quite an exhibition.

Indeed, across two walls just off the main lobby and outside the main conference room hang a number of photos, postcards, and framed advertisements and documents that collectively tell the story of an institution that has changed considerably since Ulysses S. Grant roamed the White House — but also hasn’t changed in many ways, as we’ll see.

There are photos of bank lobbies from several different decades, a host of board presidents, groups of employees, Howland himself, who became GSB president in 2015, and many images of the old Mansion House Hotel.

The bank was relocated within the hotel property roughly a decade after its launch — it was one of several ground-floor retail sites — and was still there when the Mansion House was destroyed in a massive fire in January 1959 (there are pictures of that historic moment as well). The bank built its new headquarters roughly where the front lobby of the hotel once stood.

The historic Mansion House Hotel and GSB’s location within that property.

“So we’ve basically operated in the same location since 1880, and that’s very significant to me,” said Howland, adding that this history project is important, for customers and employees alike, because there has been much to commemorate during what has been a year-long celebration, punctuated by a large party in the spring.

Starting with the name over the door. It was Greenfield Savings Bank all those years ago, said Howland, and it still is. This despite the fact that many banks, as they have expanded beyond their original home and added branches in other counties and sometimes another state, have dropped the city or town from their name, opting for something more global and seemingly less defining. Meanwhile, almost every other institution that had ‘Savings’ in its name has dropped that, too, on the theory that it’s anachronistic and doesn’t convey the full line of services.

GSB has done none of that.

“Why would you want to change a name you’ve had for 150 years?” he asked before answering the question himself. “The idea that we’re somehow different because we’ve changed our name and don’t have ‘Savings’ in it anymore is disingenuous to me.”

But the bank is celebrating more than continuity — although that’s certainly important. There has been growth and expansion into other areas, including Northampton, Amherst, and, most recently, the community in between them, Hadley. There has also been a commitment to remain at the forefront of technology, said Denise Coyne, executive vice president and COO (and 41-year employee of the bank), and as evidence, she pointed proudly to the new interactive teller machines, or ITMs, in the drive-through lane, an initiative GSB calls Teller Connect. Customers can speak with a teller based in Turners Falls who can handle a wide range of transactions from that location.

The bank is also celebrating its work within the community, a commitment that manifests itself in a number of ways and on many different levels, including multi-faceted support of Monte’s March, the trek undertaken by radio station WHMP DJ Monte Belmonte to raise money for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts (Howland himself was to be part of the second leg of the march, from Northampton to Greenfield).

Denise Coyne shows off one of the Teller Connect machines at GSB’s main branch in Greenfield.

But it also includes donating 30 elm trees in communities where the bank has a presence to replace just a few those lost to Dutch elm disease decades ago (these gifts, part of the 150th celebration, are resistant to the disease), and creating a foundation to support an ongoing project whereby students learning each of the trades at Franklin County Technical School collaborate to build a house from scratch (more on those initiatives later).

Mostly, though, the bank is celebrating what Howland called its “infinite horizon.” By that, he meant that this institution isn’t going anywhere, and it can act, and operate, accordingly.

“My job is to hand the keys over to someone else and have the company be better than it was when I got here,” he explained. “At the prior two organizations I worked for, and at many other banks, basically the mission was to figure out how to maximize the value for the shareholders in the shortest period of time and sell the organization; to that extent, our business plan is different than that of most other banks.”

For this issue’s focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest talked at length with Howland and Coyne about GSB’s first 150 years and what will come next for this venerable institution.

Staying on Track

Hanging on a wall inside the conference room is a framed poster hyping the 20th Century Limited — the historic express passenger train on the New York Central Railroad that traveled between New York and Chicago — and its faster time for completing that run: 16 hours.

This might seem like an odd item to find in a bank headquarters building, but Howland offered an explanation that speaks volumes about how this institution celebrates its past but is by no means stuck in it.

“I put that poster up to remind us that we constantly have to be reinventing ourselves, constantly have to be figuring out how to do it better and faster,” Howland explained. “The poster represents the race between the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad to attract customers to this high-profile route. When one company dropped their time, the other matched or exceeded it. They conceived idea after idea to improve service, cut down travel time, and maintain schedules. Banking today is just like that — we are all providing the same products. That’s why we continue to provide our customers with exceptional service, the most up-to-date technology, and offer competitive rates.”

And throughout its long history, the bank certainly has operated with that mindset.

Students at Franklin County Technical School work on the framing for a house they constructed in Erving through a program financed by a foundation created by GSB.

Indeed, while the name over the door hasn’t changed and the street address of the main branch has changed by just a few digits, the bank has evolved with the times and advancing technology, all while remaining a hugely important corporate citizen in a region that never had many and has seen those ranks decline over the past several decades.

Coyne, the bank’s longest-serving employee, has certainly seen this blend of change and continuity in her time.

She recalls doing most tasks by hand when she started as a teller at the Turners Falls branch (the only branch at the time) in 1978, and, in fact, she helped lead the institution into the computer age and a succession of improvements, including Teller Connect.

“The technology is so great that we can extend our hours — from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, you can talk with a teller,” she noted, adding that there are extended hours on Saturday as well. “It’s no different than if you go to a drive-up and talk with someone who’s in the building; we can do almost everything you could if you came into the lobby.”

Over the past four decades, Coyne, who has held a number of titles over the years and handled pretty much every assignment other than commercial lending, has seen the bank greatly expand its footprint, first into other communities within Franklin County, then into neighboring Hampshire County.

There are now five branches in Franklin County — in Greenfield, Conway, Shelburne Falls, South Deerfield, and Turners Falls — and the same number in Hampshire County — two in Amherst, two in Northampton, and the latest addition, the branch on Route 9 in Hadley.

That addition to the portfolio wasn’t exactly planned, said Howland, noting that it came about by circumstance — the closing of a credit union — and was viewed as an opportunity to more conveniently serve customers in that area.

Looking ahead, Howland doesn’t see much, if any, additional expansion. But he does see continuous work to improve customer service, take full advantage of ever-improving technology, and, overall, take full advantage of the infinite horizon he mentioned.

“That’s the biggest challenge we face — the non-bank competitors coming in picking off pieces of our business. It’s kind of like Walmart being able to do an MRI for you; it’s large companies picking and choosing where they can make something work.”

And all those qualities will be needed, he said, because, while the pace of consolidation within the banking industry has slowed somewhat, especially in this region, other threats have emerged, especially from what he called “non-bank competition.”

By that, he referred to Apple, Google, Alibaba, PayPal, and a host of other major companies that are chipping away at traditional bank business by creating services of their own in realms ranging from lending to payments to credit cards.

“That’s the biggest challenge we face — the non-bank competitors coming in picking off pieces of our business,” he explained. “It’s kind of like Walmart being able to do an MRI for you; it’s large companies picking and choosing where they can make something work.

“And then we, as an organization, have to provide everything for everyone,” he went on. “And sometimes it can become expensive to provide some products. It’s just capitalism — it’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s a challenge for us as an organization to maintain as much as we maintain and be able to provide an array of services for our customers.”

Saving Graces

To counteract these powerful forces, GSB has to focus on what differentiates it from those non-bank competitors and the larger regional banks so prevalent in this market, said Howland.

These differentiators include both a personalized brand of service and a deep portfolio of services, including a trust department, something most area banks no longer have, he went on.

As just one example, he cited the example of a customer entangled in a fraud situation.

“Unfortunately, the bank on the other side is a huge organization that really doesn’t care — they will not help at all, they won’t talk with us, they won’t do anything,” he noted. “I think the way we differentiate ourselves is the personalized service and the fact that our customers know they can count on us — they know they can call someone who cares and is going to do something about their problem.”

Beyond the brand and scope of services, another differentiator is the bank’s long history of involvement in the community and a commitment to continue that tradition, said Howland.

“As an organization, we’re very proud of our position in the community,” he told BusinessWest. “We’re dedicated to being the best corporate citizen we can be, and we’re involved in our community in many, many different ways.

“Obviously, we’re important in terms of the local economy, but it’s not just the economy that we focus on, it’s just the financial aspect of what we do,” he went on. “It’s striving to improve the conditions in our communities as best we can. We’re one of the larger philanthropic organizations in terms of straight dollar donations, but on top of that, our employees are involved in all kinds of stuff at all kinds of levels.”

And by ‘stuff,’ Howland meant much more than time and energy donated to the boards of dozens of nonprofits — although that’s a big part of it. There’s also volunteerism and the many forms it takes, he said, adding that the bank prides itself on backing up such efforts with dollars and other types of support.

“If an employee comes to me and says, ‘I think this is really important, and I have dedicated myself to volunteering time for it,’ more likely than not, we’ll make a fairly significant financial contribution to that charity on behalf of that employee.”

Overall, the bank is keenly aware of its role and its responsibilities within the largely rural areas it serves, particularly in Franklin County, he went on, adding that it is often asked to step up and, when possible, pitch in. Such was the case with the initiative involving Franklin County Tech and a proposal to have its students build houses.

The bank’s response was to go beyond writing a check and instead do something for the long term.

“I got a phone call from the tech school asking if we would make a donation to this program to build a house,” Howland recalled, adding that the bank eventually created the Franklin Technical School Building Society Inc., a foundation with its own board of directors that essentially finances the home-building project and is replenished when the house is sold.

“They earned a lot of money on the first house, and the second house will hopefully be sold in the spring of 2020, and another house will be started after that,” he went on. “The point of it is to create something that becomes self-sustaining, and ultimately, we hope this grows to the point where it can be a benefactor for other programs at the tech school.”

Long-term thinking was also the motivation for the bank’s decision two years ago to create the Greenfield Savings Bank Foundation. Funded with profits from the bank, it’s an initiative in keeping with GSB’s long-term horizon, said Howland.

“We funded it with $200,000, and our expectation is to continue funding it at some amount per year,” he explained. “My vision, and it will not be in the time that I’m president of the organization, is that, at some point, this foundation will be as large as, if not larger than, the bank, and I think we have the opportunity to do that.

“I’m most proud of where we are as a corporate citizen in our community, and my feelings are a reflection of our board of directors,” he added. “Our board is incredibly committed to making us the best business we can be in Franklin County and Hampshire County.”

Time Passages

There’s some additional 150th memorabilia in the main lobby of GSB’s headquarters.

On one wall, the very first passbook sits in a frame. And a glass display case in the center of the room holds everything from a photocopy of the first mortgage document (a loan issued in 1869 to one Jeremiah Eagan for a building on School Street) to news photos of the Mansion House fire, to a box of fountain pen nibs, a symbol of how things were done more than a half-century ago.

This collection speaks to the two qualities that are really being celebrated with this sesquicentennial — needed change and continuity.

There are plenty of other pieces of evidence outside the bank, from the house built by the technical-school students in Erving to elm trees growing in Look Park in Northampton, Montague center, and a host of other locations, to those branches in Hampshire County.

Together, they speak of a 150-year-old success story — and of many chapters still to come.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]