The award, presented by the Workforce Solutions Group, cited the company's leadership in securing resources that enabled the Machine Technology lab at Franklin County Technical School to be revamped.
Solid plans for a University of Massachusetts satellite campus in downtown Springfield, plans including a specific location and an outline of the course and degree offerings and how the facility would be funded, should be out in about four weeks, university president Robert L. Caret told reporters Tuesday on a visit to Springfield Technical Community College.
It's not on the list, but Brennan pointed to the May grand opening of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.'s 125,000-square-foot , $23-million maintenance hangar at Westfield Barnes Regional Airport. That facility, designed to service the next generation of larger corporate jets, meant about 100 added jobs in Westfield.
"People don't realize there are private companies making investments and adding jobs," Brennan said. "It's going on all over the valley. People just don't always see it."
A program run by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston called Working Cities Challenge could provide much as $700,000 in grant money on the table to help Springfield develop a full-line supermarket and bring fresh produce to the "food desert" neighborhoods surrounding Mason Square.
"We are also hoping to do some workforce development if we get the Working Cities grant," said A. John “Jay” Minkarah, president and CEO of DevelopSpringfield, a public-private group focused on economic development in the city.
'The new bill is more highly textured. you can almost count them blindfolded,' said Sue Fearn, assistant vice president for client sales at Nuvo Bank & Trust Co. in Springfield. Even the U.S. Department of the Treasury's website www.newmoney.gov asks people to run their finger along Benjamin Franklin's shoulder when they get a new bill.
The Westfield base has an economic impact of $53 million a year. Westover's economic impact is $238 million a year. Like Westover, the 104th postponed regular training exercises this past weekend pending more information from the Pentagon.
The 260 furloughed technicians at the Air National Guard's 104th Fighter Wing, normally based at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, return to work ON Tuesday said Major David Mendoza, executive officer of the wing. The Units f-15 fighters are at Westover while work goes on the Barnes runway.
Bay Path is hosting a Cybersecurity summit 7:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 11 at the Blake Student Commons on campus. it is free and co-sponsored by the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts. More information is available at www.graduate.baypath.edu.
Franklin Hampshire Career Center demonstrates effective collaboration and applies innovative resources to better serve the veteran community. As a 2012 Jobs for Veterans State Grant Incentive Award winner, Franklin Hampshire Career Center used a portion of its award to purchase flash drives for their veteran customers to facilitate storage for discharge documents, resumes, and other documents and pre-loaded the flash drives with Job Search tools and veteran specific support information, a best practice recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Western Massachusetts Electric Co. will close its headquarters in the Springfield Technology Park and its service center depot on Shelburne Road in Greenfield.
The 31 office and dispatch workers from the headquarters will move to office space in the WMECo service center at 300 Cadwell Drive by June, said Priscilla Ress, senior media relations specialist for the utility. The 25 maintenance and support workers responsible for maintaining and repairing lines throughout rural Franklin County will move to the WMECo service depot at 55 Russell St., also known as Route 9, in Hadley
The old manufacturing technology center at Franklin County Technical School looked like the kind of workshop that would have laid off the grandfather of today's high school students 30 years ago. It was manual, hand-adjusted technology with oil and dirt, said Valley Steel Stamp owner Steve Capshaw, who spearheaded the $717,000 renovation, updating and re-equipping the program in an effort to help his industry grow by providing more qualified workers for his business and others in the valley.
PeoplesBank has literally found a way for customers to get a charge out of their banking. They will need an electric vehicle, however, to take advantage of the free EV charging station at the newest office at 300 King Street in Northampton.
Just looking at the applications for this year's Super 60 awards showed Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield president Jeffrey Ciuffreda that the local economy is, in fact, improving. 'There were seven or eight new entrants,' Ciuffreda said this week, admitting that he is frustrated by slow growth in the job market. 'We've got a lot of stalwart companies we have always had with some new names. We have manufacturing, service, retail. I think a lot of companies are just waiting before they hire.'
Baystate Health in Springfield and UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester plan to collaborate on specialized medical care, research projects and public health projects championing better nutrition and combating poor health habits
The room has banks of computers and projection equipment as well as a stock-market zipper display along the wall. Of particular benefit, said assistant professor of finance Bryan P. Schmutz, is the room's new Bloomberg terminal. The terminal allows Western New England students to get 'Bloomberg Certified' and aid in their eventual job search. 'We want to teach most of our finance classes here,' Schmutz said. 'I know a lot of students want to get on the Bloomberg terminal.'
The deals, announced Monday by the state of Massachusetts, involve the purchase of 565 megawatts of wind energy by four utilities including Western Massachusetts Electric Co. and National Grid, enough to power about 170,000 homes, at an average weighted price of just less than 8 cents a kilowatt hour.
Peter Clarke has been promoted from Western Massachusetts Electric Co. president and CEO to senior vice president of emergency preparedness for all of Northeast Utilities. The new role gives Clarke responsibility over storm preparation and recovery and preparation for more exotic threats such as cyber terrorism, across not just Western Massachusetts Electric Co. but other Northeast Utilities operations such as NStar in Eastern Massachusetts, Yankee Gas, Public Service New Hampshire and Connecticut Light and Power.
Meredith-Springfield Associates Inc. can churn out 30 million tiny plastic bottles a year for the folks who make Mrs. Dash seasonings, but it can't find enough potential employees with the requisite mechanical skills to grow along with the company.
'We can take a car mechanic and make a blow-mold machine operator,' Meredith -Springfield founder, president and CEO Mel O'Leary said. 'But you need to have the skills and the experience to build upon.'
The Scibelli Center already has three tenant companies engaged in clean energy technologies: Black Island Wind Turbines, which adapts wind power technology orginally developed to power Antarctic expeditions; SolaBlock, which makes solar panels in concrete blocks for stackable vertical use; and Victory Energy Solutions, which helps homeowners save energy. Patrick Quinlan runs both Black Island and SolaBlock. He describes the companies as "graduates "of the Scibelli Enterprise Center, having moved to new, larger quarters in Hadley.
MassINC will honor Armando Feliciano, chairman of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority, and Jay Minkarah of DevelopSpringfield as well as The O’Connell Companies for their efforts at revitalizing Massachusetts cities. Together with leaders from the 26 Gateway Cities, MassINC will celebrate the innovative spirit of Massachusetts’ historic Gateway Cities by honoring five individuals and two organizations that have had a transformative impact on their communities, according to a news release. The awards will be presented at the first annual Gateway Cities Innovation Institute Luncheon, to held on Nov. 12th, at University of Massachusetts at Boston. The event will mark the ...
Games zombies play include 'limb toss' for distance and accuracy, and a version of the beanbag game tossing brains in the zombies' mouth, said Michele Goldberg, director of marketing for the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau. 'I don't know if you have ever done a news conference with a zombie,' said Springfield Business Improvement District Executive Director Donald A. Courtemanche as a zombie hungrily eyed his cranium. 'It's a little disconcerting.'
Seventy-five percent of responding physicians in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties told The Massachusetts Medical Society that the pool of available physicians from which they recruit is inadequate. That makes this the second-most difficult labor market in the state. Half the doctors here said it is difficult to retain staff and 40 percent said it was difficult to fill vacancies.
F.W. Webb is New England's largest plumbing and heating distributor with a 40-year history in Springfield. The company outgrew an older facility in the North End and the new building has room to expand even further. The company, which originally committed to 16 jobs, is already up to 25 employees.
Last week, a board of trustees report outlined a new $3.8 billion five-year capital budget for construction and renovation projects on all five UMass campuses, up from $3.1 billion approved last year. Some $1.4 billion of that funding will be heading to the Amherst campus, including $12.6 million for repairs to Machmer Hall, according to a news release.
Housing markets here and across the country are recovering, and with that recovering comes at least some demand for newly built homes. But rising material costs, interest rates and the high cost of building are acting as drags on that recovery.
