Page 12 - BusinessWest August 18, 2025

Mayor Michael McCabe says it’s important to expand the tax
rolls with both new businesses and housing growth.
Staff Photo
people walking around downtown.”
Amanda Waterfield, who has been executive director of the
Greater Westfield Chamber of Commerce for just over two years,
echoed the mayor’s focus on hospitality businesses, noting that the
chamber is planning a Restaurant Week this Nov. 4-9, featuring
menu specials, unique promos, and other activities aimed at raising
the profile of participating eateries just before the start of the holi-
day retail season.
Noting about 70 restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, and other
culinary businesses in Westfield and Southwick, Water-
field said she’d like to see at least a third of them partici-
pate, and then grow the event from there in subsequent
years.
“And I really would like to reach out beyond Westfield,”
she added. “I’d like everybody in the Valley to think of
Westfield as a destination.”
On the Right Track
Westfield Gas & Electric (WG&E) adopts the same
philosophy on the importance of growth, which partly
explains its launch, a decade ago, of Whip City Fiber,
which has now completed wiring the entire city for high-
speed internet, and also serves 23 other communities,
including the region’s hilltowns as well as East Long-
meadow and, most recently, West Springfield, where it
has begun to build out infrastructure.
That has brought in significant revenue, and the
WG&E is using some of it — $15 million over 15 years,
in fact — to pay the city’s bond (with interest) for an $11
million athletic complex at Westfield High School, which
broke ground last month.
“It’s a stadium with a full collegiate track, lights, and
turf fields,” said Tom Flaherty, general manager of WG&E, noting
that the field will be used for football, men’s and women’s soccer
and lacrosse, field hockey, and more, while a second multi-purpose
field, without lights, is being developed behind the school for over-
flow events; the softball field is being turfed as well.
“We’re really planning for the future with something all of West-
field can use — people of all ages, including senior citizens, who can
walk on the track at night safely,” he noted. “I see that all the time
in Southwick; a great deal of people use the track they put in about
10 years ago.”
In addition, Flaherty noted, “the fields are for everyone, from
youth soccer and youth football all the way to potentially having a
revenue stream for the school athletic department by leasing it out
to private club teams.”
“I’d like
everybody in the
Valley to think
of Westfield as a
destination.”
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