Page 50 - BusinessWest March 20, 2023

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Garrity
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months — a 28-year low nationwide, in fact — as a result of rising interest rates and low inventory.
Bottom Line
Garrity said he’s spent his first few months at Flor- ence engaging with his team at the bank, looking for opportunities to engage in the community, and “learn- ing the bank,” as he put it.
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“I’m asking a lot of questions and listening for the answers,” he noted, adding that what he’s heard so far is that this institution is well-positioned to take advan- tage of the opportunities that will present themselves in the months and years to come.
“We have a great team, and we have a really good bank in a very good position,” he said. “And we’ll plenty of opportunity to continue to do great things
industries, incentives are becoming a more crucial part of attracting customers or, in this case, tenants. And just because a space was previously used for one purpose, that doesn’t have to remain the case. Repur- posing is an exciting and risky but sometimes neces- sary option.
Taking an empty office building and converting it to multi-family apartments or mixed-use commercial space is a large undertaking. But the strong demand for housing seems likely to continue, while office space continues on a more uncertain path.
While interest rates and the cost of construction materials both remain high, supply-chain issues are easing, and real-estate profits from the past decade have some property owners’ war chests well-stocked. It’s also likely that property values will begin to fall in the coming months and years.
It’s anyone’s guess how the current confusing
non-military consumers ($163). Active-duty mili- tary reported losing significantly more money ($490) than military spouses ($248) and veter- ans ($200).
“Home-improvement scams, #4 on our list of riskiest scams, also had a median dollar loss of $1,500.”
The five most impersonated organizations reported to BBB Scam Tracker in 2022 were Amazon, Geek Squad, Publishers Clearing House, the U.S. Postal Service, and Norton.
For more report highlights, visit bbbmarket- placetrust.org/riskreport. Go to bbb.org/scam- tracker to report a scam and learn more about other risky scams on bbb.org/scamtips.
BBB Scam Tracker is an online platform that enables consumers and businesses to report attempted and successful acts of fraud. The platform also enables people to search the scam reports to help determine if a scam is targeting them. The platform was upgraded in 2022 with support from Amazon and Capital One. BW
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Market
here and great things for our customers, so I’m excited; 150 years is a great accomplishment for this organization — and for this community that has sup- ported us. We have more than 50,000 customers that support this bank in the communities we serve, and we want to continue to serve them for another 150 years.” BW
climate of high inflation, low unemployment, rising interest rates, and massive tech layoffs will shake out in the coming years. Some say a recession is inevi- table; others are optimistic one will be avoided. One thing we do know for sure is that we’re not in elemen- tary school anymore. And this is not a drill. BW
Brion Kirsch and Jim Martin are attorneys at the law firm Pullman & Comley, which has offices
in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, as well as Springfield. Kirsch co-chairs the firm’s real estate, energy, environmental, and land use practice and practices in both Massachusetts and Connecticut; Jim Martin is located in the firm’s Springfield office and is a recognized practitioner in the areas of commercial real estate and real- estate planning.
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for the new tenant’s subleased space. To be up to code, this new area will also need proper access, exits, and restrooms, in addition to other possible requirements, such as a kitchen or metered utilities.
Depending on the terms of the lease, there may even be an express option that simply allows for the reduction in the total area being occupied and would prevent the need to sublease.
Options for Landlords
There’s an opportunity now for landlords to make a long-term play by allowing tenants to make modi- fications to their original lease. The value in this cir- cumstance arrives in the form of an early renewal or extension of the current lease, in exchange for allow- ing the tenant to sublease a portion of their space or shrink their footprint.
As many business owners have discovered in other
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Books
Scams
bookstore,” said Tannenbaum, who cut his teeth at the famous (and now-closed) Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan, adding that facilities that do fall into that category, like his, provide value in many differ- ent ways.
There are tangibles and intangibles, all of which come out in the documentary, and also in Business- West’s talk with Tannenbaum, during which he said nothing pleases him more than being able to con- nect a customer with a book.
He is still able to do that because of a GoFund- Me campaign, which not only gave him the capital to remain open and actually expand his business, but generated more material for that documentary, which was originally inspired by Tannenbaum’s book My Years at the Gotham Book Mart.
Indeed, filming for that production continued all through the spring and summer of 2020, the height of the pandemic, he said, adding that it captures not just the struggles of trying to do busi- ness at that time, but the connection he had cre- ated between his store and the community — and that community’s refusal (that’s the best word to describe it) to let the story end there.
He added that the film has been good for busi- ness in many respects, but especially because it has put his store on the map.
“After the movie came out, I’ve had people visit- ing from all over the country,” he said. “I’m on the list of places to go; you come to the Berkshires, you go to the Norman Rockwell Museum; you come
to New England, you have to go the Bookstore in
Lenox, because they’re the ones they made the movie about.”
The Last Word
As she talked with BusinessWest, Grenier repeatedly flipped through a few file folders full of materials on the history of the Odyssey Bookshop — photos, newspaper clippings, and other archival material, including, she believes, a copy of that let- ter she sent out all those years ago — GoFundMe before GoFundMe.
She’s pulling all this together for 60th-anniversa- ry celebrations that will begin around commence- ment time at Mount Holyoke and continue for the rest of the year.
There were many times during its history when a 60th anniversary seemed a long shot, and at times, maybe a really long shot.
But the store, which has certainly lived up to its name, has preserved, through fires, new and daunt- ing competition, technology, and, yes, a pandemic.
When asked why hers wasn’t one of those book- stores that closed in the ’90s, or even more recent- ly, Grenier said simply, “because my community supported me — people wanted a bookstore here.”
And it is this simple formula that will determine how many of these landmark facilities get to write new chapters in their intriguing stories. BW
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