Page 75 - BusinessWest February 19, 2024

>>
>>
Five
Continued from page 19
with faculty members moving into retirement who wanted to stay involved and wanted to help each other, but the membership has gone beyond that,” Clark said.
• Five Colleges also received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support an upgrade of six museum collections and cataloging systems — five from the member colleges and also Historic Deerfield.
“This effort will help the museums to better their collections, and allow them to share their collections with the world,” Kennedy said. “People will be able to research thousands, even tens of thousands of muse- um objects that aren’t nearly as accessible to them with the current system.”
Those are just a few of the ongoing initiatives. While some of these programs exist for the long run, others — like the museum project — will eventually meet a goal and then end. Meanwhile, ideas for new
Continued from page 20
collaborations continue to be generated by the col- leges themselves.
“For the most part, the campuses come here with a project they’d like to undertake: ‘can you help us find funding for this one?’” Pfatteicher explained. “Or one campus might come forward and say, ‘we’ve been talking to a funder about a program, and it occurred to us it might be more powerful to do it collectively.’ So they hand over that conversation with the funder to Five Colleges, and we seek funding.”
And new concepts — and discussions — are always emerging, Clark said. “Ideas can come from one campus, and we help bring it to the full group.”
Strength in Numbers
Pfatteicher emphasized that many valuable pro- grams, especially of the collaborative nature, couldn’t be accomplished without a central convener like the
book and obtaining a window into the wider world.” He also shared how he feels a responsibility to sus-
tain and expand the collaborative’s effort to guarantee that today’s young people have the same right and ability to read.
After all, he noted, as Springfield’s own Dr. Seuss once wrote, “the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
And he’s appreciative that the Elms and other col- leges can be key partners in that effort through the Western Massachusetts Literacy Collaborative.
indoors in preferable.
The Planet Fitness facility is in a different cat-
egory, she went on, but it is also doing very well in this mall’s location. “It’s easily accessible ... people go there before work and after work. Their membership is very comparable to their off-mall locations, and you can walk by there on a Tuesday afternoon and see lots of people there.”
Overall, the mall is in a better place than it has been in terms of square footage currently occupied, she said, adding that policies set by mall owner Pyra- mid Corp. did not permit more detail on that subject. And, by and large, it is in a good place when it comes to taking on the many challenges facing malls today, for those reasons mentioned earlier.
“We’re easily accessible off of 90 and 91, and we’re in a position to tap a much larger market than some of the regional properties that were or still are in the market,” she said. “And then having differentiators, like the only Macy’s, the only Apple, the only Best Buy in the market, that really sets us apart for retailers, restaurants, and entertainment venues looking for a new home. Having those traffic draws is very attrac- tive to potential new tenants.”
Looking ahead as far as she can, Gray said the mall is positioned as well as any mall can be to absorb the many changes to the retail landscape.
Five College Consortium.
“Campuses in theory can run these things on their
own, but the more complicated, detailed collabora- tions are harder,” she noted, adding that even help- ing students on one campus find what courses are offered on another, and helping them access those resources, is a much-improved process when Five Colleges is involved.
“Something as simple as cross-registration has
a whole set of things you need to accomplish,” she added. “We happen to specialize in being the glue in the middle that helps pull it all together.”
Kennedy agreed. “The three campuses, individu- ally, are overextended; they simply don’t have the funding to do all these programs. Five Colleges gives them an opportunity to access things they may not be able to access otherwise as a group.” BW
“Education really changed the trajectory of my life, and I believe it has the power to do that for every kid, for every young adult,” he told BusinessWest. “I see what is happening — in our schools, in the region,
in K-12 schools, in community colleges, and in the four-year colleges — that is allowing every student
to reach their potential so that they can contribute
to society, so that we can all be a better society. I’ve never stopped being truly optimistic about the power of education.” BW
Indeed, data shows that those who come to the mall — and she said it is still a good mix of young and old — are actually coming more often, because of all that now exists under that collection of roofs.
“People are coming more frequently because of the entertainment offerings and lifestyle offerings,” she told BusinessWest. “Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a Planet Fitness at your local shopping mall. Now that there is that option, people are visiting the property more.
“Those types of facilities are bringing a more eclectic mix of shoppers — all ages, all groups,” she went on. “And then, you have places like Altitude and Round1 and Billy Beez, where your families, your teens, they’re coming out for birthday parties, tourna- ments, or the different types of events they have going on. They’re coming, and they’re staying for a while.”
When asked about what the landscape will look like in five or 10 years, Gray said change will remain a constant — in retail and in entertainment — with up-and-coming chains in the former, and new experi- ences, such as next-level escape rooms, in the latter.
The goal at the Holyoke Mall is to be at the fore- front of all of that, she said, adding that the facility has been there for the first 45 years of its existence, and she intends to keep it there. BW
Literacy
to move beyond a damaging pandemic, he expects the benefits to be measurable.
“There has been some recovery from the pandem- ic, but what really hurt was the early-literacy part — missing early instruction, doing it online, missing key pieces. This really helped us attack that.”
Knowledge Is Power
During his remarks at last fall’s town hall, Dumay recalled spending many summer mornings at a school run by the Brothers of Christian Education in his hometown of Ouanaminthe, Haiti, “reading book after
Continued from page 29
>>
Mall
been successfully filled, she went on, adding that this was the case with the departure of Christmas Tree Shops (which went to Holyoke Crossing and then eventually closed that location), with that space now occupied by Bob’s Stores, and the former Sports Authority space, now occupied by Dick’s Warehouse Sale.
Still, increasingly, these spaces are going to more entertainment-related uses, said Gray, noting the arriv- al over the past several years of several such ventures that have taken rather large footprints at the mall.
For example, Planet Fitness and Altitude have each claimed 20,000 square feet in space formerly occupied by Babies R Us, she said, noting that both arrived just prior to the pandemic. Round1, which arrived around that same time, is also a large tenant, with 20 bowling lanes and a number of arcade games, as is Billy Beez.
What’s in Store
And these new ventures are thriving in these spac- es, she said, adding that the mall’s location makes them easy to get to, and together, they make the mall a more attractive destination for families, who can package a visit to one or a few of those facilities,
and then a stop for lunch, into a day at the mall dur- ing February vacation or any other time when being
BusinessWest
<< CONTINUED >>
FEBRUARY 19, 2024 31