Page 50 - BusinessWest December 26, 2022

Year
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Civic Center Parking Garage Comes Down — Finally
After years of talking about and working with state leaders to assemble the financing to build a replace- ment, the city tore down the crumbling Civic Cen- ter Parking Garage this fall. As the demolition crews began their work, workers in downtown office build- ings paused to watch.
An architect’s rendering of the new parking-garage facility at the MassMutual Center.
It wasn’t a landmark that was coming down, but rather a decaying structure that had become a sym- bol of all that Springfield was trying to put behind it — the hard economic times, aging infrastructure, and a downtown of another era.
While the long-awaited demise of the parking garage was news, the more exciting news is what’s going up in its place — a new, state-of-the-art, envi- ronmentally friendly, 1,000-space facility, and activa- tion of abutting property, acquired by the city, that will enable Springfield to create an atmosphere that officials say will be similar to the scene at Fenway Park on game nights.
Court Square Transformation Project Proceeds
When Dave Fontaine Jr. talks about work to reno- vate the former Court Square Hotel into market-rate apartments being a “generational project,’” he means it. Indeed, when he talked with BusinessWest about the initiative this past summer, he said he believes his father and grandfather were both involved in bids on projects to transform the property going back more than 30 years.
It’s taken decades of effort, but the transformation
The transformation of the old Court Square Hotel is a long time coming.
of the property is now well under way. The project is expected to not only bring new life to that historic property — in the form of 71 units of housing as well as retail on the ground floor — but also create more vibrancy in the city’s downtown and possibly be a catalyst for new hospitality and service-sector businesses.
The Court Square project is a true public-part- nership, with funding support from several parties, including Winn Development, Opal Development, the state, the city, and MGM Springfield. And it will make sure that an important part of the city’s past is now a vital cog in its future.
Navigating Challenges in Auto Sales
This past year was another wild ride, if that’s the right term, for the region’s auto dealers. Indeed, the trends that emerged in 2020 and 2021 — from histori- cally low levels of inventory to sky-high prices and low inventory of used cars — continued in 2022.
Matters improved to some degree for area dealers, but there were still many challenges to face — and still a number of used cars taking up space on the showroom floors.
But perhaps the biggest news in 2002 involved electric vehicles, with many dealers reporting huge increases in the sales of such models. There are sev- eral reasons why, but simple math is perhaps the biggest, with drivers of electric vehicles — after the initial investment, anyway — spending far less to get from here to there than those with gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs.
That trend is expected to continue into next year, say area dealers, as more makers introduce electric- vehicle lines.
Live Music Scene Expands
When the Drake opened in downtown Amherst
“And if you’re a dollar over — if you’re a cent over — the income threshold, almost all of it turns off auto- matically. What that means is, over time, people have to decline work, decline promotions. If they go from $15 an hour to $17 an hour, and it triggers losing their housing voucher, the logical and necessary decision is to decline that raise.”
Laura Sylvester, Public Policy manager at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, noted that “many of the households who receive emergency food at any of our 164 independent, local member food pantries and meal sites are directly impacted by the cliff effect. Fear of losing benefits prevents people from advanc- ing in their careers, keeping them trapped in a cycle of poverty. It is a major cause of food insecurity and economic instability.”
Advocates for the legislation hope it’s a meaningful first step toward addressing the cliff effect on a much broader scale in Massachusetts.
“This pilot is a tremendous victory for workers and
in April, it became the town’s first-ever dedicated music venue, hosting everything from jazz and rock to funk and world music. And it opened at a time when demand for live music in the region is on the rise, and an increasing number of spaces are meeting the need.
With Eric Suher’s Iron Horse Music Hall, Pearl Street Nightclub, and Mountain Park shuttered to concerts these days and the Calvin Theatre hosting a bare trickle of tribute bands, others have picked up the slack.
They include not just the Drake, but Race Street Live, which hosts national touring acts in the Gate-
way City Arts complex in Holyoke; Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in downtown Greenfield, which schedules a robust slate of events across four spaces; MASS MoCA, which hosts concerts inside the museum and festivals outside it; Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence, which opened in October
2021 in a converted 1861 church; and many more. It’s clear that people are enjoying live music again, and a new generation of venues — and some venera- ble ones as well — are stepping up to meet that need.
Moving On from COVID
President Biden declared COVID over in Septem- ber. With a winter setting in in which doctors are warning of a ‘tripledemic’ of flu, RSV, and COVID, that’s ... well, not quite the truth, not with about 350 people still dying from COVID each day in the U.S., about 85% of them unvaccinated.
What is true is that, even as some people are still overcoming COVID, just about everyone is over it — and especially over the disruptions the pandemic caused to the global economy.
Still, moving on is easier said than done, as is shift- ing back to something resembling business as usual pre-2020. Construction firms still face challenges with scheduling and cost, knowing that the supply chain can be wildly inconsistent. Families still struggle
with inflation, and are getting hit hard by the tonic being poured on it: higher interest rates for loans. As noted earlier, real-estate owners wonder whether a slowed market will remain so as tenants decide they need less space for a workforce that has gone largely remote and may remain so.
In short, moving on from COVID is a slow process, and its effects will continue to reverberate, no matter how much anyone — even the president — wishes it would just go away. u
George O’Brien can be reached at obrien@busin: esswest.com
Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]
families throughout the Commonwealth,” said Anne Kandilis, director of Springfield WORKS. “To create economic opportunity, we must remove obstacles for people as they work to earn a livable wage by mak- ing sure that we do not strip away public benefits too rapidly.”
Fortunately for Whitfield 30 years ago, she was referred to a United Way program that helps low- income families pay for childcare. Not only did she keep her job, she was promoted, and eventually pur- chased a house.
“And if it wasn’t for me telling my story, if it wasn’t for me just being blunt and being honest, I wouldn’t be a city councilor right now because I wouldn’t have gotten that job that empowered me to buy a house, that empowered me to learn more in my workforce career to advance and to become a city councilor, and give me the courage to do all that I do today.” u
—Joseph Bednar
Cliff
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cally decline. There’s no
incentive to work.”
The cliff-effect legislation, which was introduced
seven years ago, is an effort to hold people harmless for moving up in the workplace.
“This is not charity work. This is not a handout. This is a hand up,” Sullivan went on. “It recognizes the importance of every individual in our region because if they’re doing better, then everyone is doing better, including the businesses.”
In short, the cliff effect discourages individuals from advancing in their careers for a higher wage due to the sudden loss of critical services, which ultimate- ly leads to a decline in the standard of living, keeping individuals and families stuck in a cycle of poverty.
“Almost every public benefit we have, whether it’s childcare, housing, food vouchers, or direct financial assistance, is predicated upon income reporting and income requirements,” state Sen. Eric Lesser said.
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