Page 11 - BusinessWest May 15, 2023

“The reconfiguration addresses the concerns of people who
don’t want a huge operation. I think it’s a good way to use this industrially zoned parcel.”
service and better support.”
Heather Kies, marketing manager for Whalley, called its evolu-
tion “a great story of a company that’s growing but still staying in its hometown.”
The Southwick Select Board and the Massachusetts Office of Business Development worked with Whalley to secure a tax-incre- ment financing (TIF) agreement.
Russell Fox, chair of the Select Board and a selectman for most of the past 40 years, said the TIF was well worth the effort to keep the project in Southwick. Under the agreement, Whalley has agreed to add to the 200 workers it currently employs. “The Whalley proj- ect is all positive news for Southwick,” Fox said.
In another part of town, the Planning Board is now consid- ering a reconfiguration of the site where a Carvana facility was once proposed but then shot down by residents over concerns of increased traffic along College Highway. Now the same area has been redrawn as five separate lots, with some facing the road and smaller lots positioned in the back of the parcel. Fox sees the new plan as a great compromise.
“The reconfiguration addresses the concerns of people who don’t want a huge operation. I think it’s a good way to use this industrially zoned parcel,” Fox said, adding that, when new busi- nesses occupy that parcel, it will help the town make its case to add a traffic light at the Tannery Road intersection.
Moving forward, the town’s goal is to continue decades of work to create an attractive balance. Fox noted that, while Southwick is known as a recreational community — it is home to the Congamond Lakes, a successful motocross track, and two golf courses — it is also a town that wants and needs to continually grow its business community.
Overall, it strives to be a community where people can play, work, and live, with new housing developments under construction and others set to come off the drawing board, as we’ll see later.
For this, the latest installment of its Community Spotlight series, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Southwick and how this community on the Connecticut border is building momentum — in all kinds of ways.
Diane DeMarco has a special trade-show display room to help clients pick the right materials for their needs.
Getting Down to Business
A key agenda item at the upcoming Southwick town meeting in May involves bringing fiber optics into town to handle its cable-TV and internet services.
The process involves forming a municipal light plant, which vot- ers approved at a special town meeting last fall. A second vote for the plant will be taken at the May meeting. Fox pointed out that the municipal light plant is an entity in name only. If the second vote is successful, Southwick will begin interviewing firms to install and maintain the fiber-optic network. Whip City Fiber in Westfield will be among the companies under consideration.
“We’re telling all bidders that they must cover the entire town and not just the densely populated neigh-
Southwick
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Michael Barbara-Jean James Michael Henry “Hank” Joe Doug Candace Lynch DeLoria Montemayor Davey Downey Kulig Gilbert Pereira
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