Page 10 - BusinessWest July 11, 2022
P. 10

 Editorial
The T-Birds Take a Big Step Forward
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 From the day he took the helm with the fledgling Springfield Thunderbirds hockey team, Nate Costa, now the president of the franchise, talked about the
importance of winning to the ultimate success of a team. Indeed, Costa, who came to Springfield following manage- ment roles with several minor league sports operations, often
spoke about the importance of presentation and the overall experience when it came to how well a team could capture
the hearts and minds of a region or community — and thrive financially. But ultimately, he said there is no real substitute for winning. A team can have endless promotions, bring in big names as guests, and offer special prices on hot dogs and beer, he implied, but in the end, it would have to win to really break through.
The events of the past few several months, and especially the past few weeks, have proven Costa right.
As the Thunderbirds made their way to the Calder Cup finals against the Chicago Wolves, the team moved to a new and much higher level in terms of visibility and presence, for lack
of a better term, in the Greater Springfield area. While T-Birds ultimately lost the series, four games to one, including the last three at home, it was a clear winner on every other level.
Let’s start with the games themselves. The downtown area was electric on game nights. Some fans would arrive an hour or two before the game started. There was some tailgating in some of the parking lots and larger crowds in many of the area restaurants.
The weekend games that closed out the series were sell-outs,
Editorial
An Ominous Projection
and there were high levels of energy in the MassMutual Center. Overall, the Thunderbirds were front of mind for the past
month or so as they progressed in the playoffs to the finals. They were the lead story on local sports pages and the local news shows, but there was more than that.
People were talking about them — at the office, in coffee shops, and at the many events that have been staged in the region over the past several months as the long-awaited return to normalcy from the pandemic has moved to a different level. And they are still talking about them.
And while people were talking about this team, they were reminiscing about championship teams from 30 and 50 years ago. Hockey, for at least a little while, became king.
The best news is that interest in the T-Birds has moved well beyond talk. Season-ticket sales are far ahead of the pace for previous years, and they, as everyone knows, are one of the key cornerstones to success. More corporate support is certain to follow.
While the Thunderbirds have always had a presence in Springfield and the region, they have now officially arrived. And this bodes extremely well for a city that will need this team to play a big role in its full recovery from the pandemic and ongo- ing efforts to make downtown a place to not only work, but live.
The T-Birds did not bring home the Calder Cup in 2022. But they may have succeeded in an even bigger game, if one can call it that.
They have broken through and truly captured the attention of the region. That makes them big winners. v
  Area businesses already battling an intense workforce crisis received an additional dose of sobering news recently when MassINC released a report indicating that the Bay State could lose as much as 10% of its college-educated workforce by the end of the decade, a drop of roughly 129,000 people.
The projected decline stems from a number of factors, said the think tank, including a huge wave of retiring baby boomers, falling numbers of school-aged children in the state, and declining immi- gration. To sum it all up, there are fewer people going to college — certainly not enough to offset the number of boom- ers who are retiring — and fewer people coming into the state — from other countries and from other states, with the latter the result of the exploding cost of living in Massachusetts.
This confluence of factors leads to MassINC’s dire projections, which, if they come to be, will make an already narrow pipeline of qualified talent for jobs in a technology-focused region even smaller, threatening the health and vitality of
many sectors.
There is not much anyone can do at
this point about the birth rates that will lead to this projected talent drain, but there are some steps that can be taken to perhaps lessen the blow, starting with efforts to help more people attain a col- lege degree.
This work starts with easing more people into college, especially through early-college programs in high schools,
a step that the state Department of Ele- mentary and Secondary Education has said is effective in increasing both college enrollment and completion rates, espe- cially for low-income students and stu- dents of color.
Getting more people into and then through college is only part of the equa- tion. As the cost of living in Massachu- setts continues its upward movement, more college graduates will gravitate elsewhere. More housing, especially affordable housing, is one answer to this problem.
Indeed, a recent report on the state of U.S. housing released late last month by Harvard University’s Joint Center for
Housing Studies reveals that, to afford
a typical house in Greater Boston, one will need to earn more than $180,000. The numbers for this region are roughly half — $96,000 for Pittsfield, $83,500 for Greenfield, and $87,412 for Springfield.
With those statistics in mind, the need for high-speed rail becomes even more evident. They show the importance of enabling someone who wants to work in Boston, Cambridge, or Worcester to live in the 413.
The new report from MassINC is certainly sobering. As anyone in busi- ness can tell you, a college education
is increasingly necessary to succeed in today’s high-tech economy. This state, and this region, needs more people with degrees, not 129,000 fewer of them.
The task at hand is to bring more peo- ple into college and then through it, and to then make it possible for more people with degrees to afford to live here. Noth- ing about this assignment is easy, but the stakes are high, and something needs to be done. v
 10 JULY 11, 2022
OPINION
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