Doug Macmillan expressed the same sort of cautious optimism, noting that activity is up, yet economic uncertainly remains high, somewhat dampening the progress visible in various sectors, from industrial to retail to office space.

Marcos Marrero remembers that there was about a month between when he received the phone call from Mayor Alex Morse telling him he was being offered the job of planning and economic development director for Holyoke (which he quickly accepted) and when he actually moved into his office at One Court Plaza.

Tony Maroulis says Amherst offers the cultural sophistication of a big city with the charm of a small town.  “It’s a pretty unique place where you can walk past a rock star and a Nobel laureate in one day — and that really does happen here,” said the executive director of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce.

The Class of 2013 probably accomplishes both goals as well, if not better, than any group of Difference Makers honored by the magazine.  Indeed, this year’s class includes the man almost personally responsible for keeping professional hockey in Springfield over the past 40 years — Bruce Landon — as well as the state and local police responsible for creating a unique counter-insurgency program that could become a model for cities battling gang violence. It boasts the Sisters of Providence, who have been adding new ministries of caring since they first arrived in Holyoke 140 years ago, and the group Soldier On ...

The development of good relations with producers and agents has enabled her to secure popular acts for both venues, and keep the Springfield Performing Arts Development Corp. on solid financial ground. There have also been relationship-building efforts with city officials and the public at large, she said, work that has been helped by several years of effective listening to what demanding audiences want — and delivering what she believes is a quality product.

In fact, while MassMutual boasts 85 agencies around the country, including large markets such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Charter Oak — which used to center solely on the Greater Springfield market before merging with a Hartford-based agency, and now blankets much of Western Conn. as well — consistently finishes second in annual sales, trailing only a Manhattan office.

There are several other intriguing — and often large — numbers involved with UMass Amherst’s 150th-anniversary celebration, or sesquicentennial, a word organizers have mastered pronouncing through serious repetition.

There is a small, carved wooden turtle that sits on Michael Bissonnette’s desk in Chicopee City Hall. It’s been there since early 2007, near the end of his first full year as mayor of this city of just over 55,000 residents.  As of yet, the turtle has no name, said Bissonnette, adding that it won’t until the so-called River Mills Project, a 65-acre brownfield site along the Chicopee River involving the former Uniroyal and Facemate manufacturing complexes, is fully ready for redevelopment. The initiative, marked by lengthy court fights and the complicated process of acquiring property ...

Indeed, instead of going into business together and operating a single franchise of a growing national chain of urgent-care centers called Doctors Express — which was one of the options they discussed at that lunch — they decided instead to become what’s known as master franchisees, overseeing not a location of this chain, which offers an alternative to crowded emergency rooms and the primary-care physician’s office when it’s closed, but a region, in this case most of New England.

Warwick has been on the job since last July, and his goals are lofty, given the fact that 85% to 90% of the city’s students come from low-income families, which creates a host of academic, social, and emotional challenges. But his deep commitment and history of success prove that he knows what it will take to fulfill what he calls “The Springfield Promise: A Culture of Equity and Proficiency to Raise the Bar and Close the Gap.”

Minkarah was not a total stranger to Springfield when he saw the postings for his latest career stop. Through his membership with the Urban Land Institute (ULI), which conducted an extensive study on the city several years ago as it struggled with extreme economic hardship, he had read extensively about redevelopment efforts in the city, especially efforts in the South End prior to the tornado. He also took part in a ULI-organized symposium on riverfront-redevelopment initiatives while working in Nashua.

It now boasts more than 500 individual members and 50 corporate members. Meanwhile, its e-mail list has grown to more than 2,000. And there have been other forms of validation: BusinessWest chose the group as one of the first recipients of its Difference Makers award in 2009, and state Sen. James Welch (D-West Springfield) is sponsoring legislation to develop a ‘Young Professional Commission,’ which would give the 11 YP organizations across the Commonwealth a voice on Beacon Hill.

“It was painfully slow,” Delude, president of Westmass Area Development Corp., recalled, looking back (although he alternated between the past and present tenses) on that time when the phone literally didn’t ring for weeks and sales of industrial-park parcels were extremely few and very far between. “I’ve seen many downturns in the economy, but nothing as broad-based as that, nothing that severe.”

Specifically, as the entrepreneurs behind Valley Malt in Hadley since 2010, they are among maybe a half-dozen enterprises in the U.S. dedicated to malting barley on a small scale. Longtime home brewers who dreamed of opening a brewery featuring local hops and grain, they were surprised to find there was no local supplier for the ingredients they needed, so they decided to fill a market niche.

Karl Petrick, an assistant professor of Economics at Western New England University, agreed. He told BusinessWest that, to get the economy moving again, businesses need to hire more aggressively, and consumers need to open their wallets more liberally — two things that won’t happen if unemployment benefits are reduced, payroll tax cuts are eliminated, and other cliff-related measures come to pass.

Although paths to entrepreneurship differ, the number of woman-owned businesses is on the rise. According to the American Express OPEN “State of Women-Owned Businesses” report, between 1997 and 2011 the number of women-owned firms increased by 50%, at a rate of 1.5 times the national average. And today, there are more than 7.8 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. that generate $1.2 trillion in sales each year.

It was during the 2011 Woman of the Year event, which honored Kate Kane, managing director of Northwestern Mutual, that a young mother in her early 20s, with three small children at home, took the stage, grabbed the mic, and explained with the confidence of a seasoned presenter how the scholarship was a turning point in her decision to go back to school to finish her nursing degree or not go back at all.

Paul Kozub says that, since the day he started his ambitious business venture, people haven’t been shy about asking him for a job.  “It’s understandable — this is the vodka business, and people think it’s sexy,” said Kozub, who took his brand, V-One, to the marketplace through Valley Vodka Inc. in 2005. “And what’s better than going into bars and buying people drinks and being out all the time?”

Rick Lord was talking about the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, how it got its start nearly a century ago, and how things have certainly changed for an organization originally charged with representing the interests of the Commonwealth’s many manufacturers on Beacon Hill.

Take Western Massachusetts Electric Co., for example. Although it has not announced specifics yet, the energy company will soon unveil plans for a third large-scale solar installation following successful launches of similar projects in Pittsfield and Springfield. And other area communities have been busy readying large solar projects of its own.

People call it “the wedge.”

That’s the name that’s historically been attached to the oddly shaped building within the former D. Mackintosh & Son textile complex off Gatehouse Road in Holyoke, which Steve Porter decided to make the home to his company, Porterhouse Media, in 2009.

eff Sattler says he feels an attachment to the small-business owners sitting across the conference room table from him, a bond that most commercial-lending officers probably wouldn’t understand.

Dan Moen, president and CEO of the Sisters of Providence Health System (SPHS), is rather proud of the new silver ceremonial shovel in his office.

The MassMutual Center in downtown Springfield came alive on Oct. 11, as the Western Mass. Business Expo 2012 put the region’s business community on center stage. More than 2,000 visitors turned out during an event-filled day that featured 140 exhibitors, dozens of educational seminars and Show Floor Theater presentations, co-located events, thought-provoking breakfast and lunch programs, and a day-capping Expo Social, a premier networking event.