UTICA — Growing up in the Mohawk Valley, Sean Farrell knew there were lots of wonderful things to offer, but it took years of living elsewhere for him to realize his home region was truly where he wanted to be. After graduating from Whitesboro High School in 1987 and Utica University in 1992 (then called […]
UTICA — Growing up in the Mohawk Valley, Sean Farrell knew there were lots of wonderful things to offer, but it took years of living elsewhere for him to realize his home region was truly where he wanted to be.
After graduating from Whitesboro High School in 1987 and Utica University in 1992 (then called Utica College), Farrell was ready to spread his wings. As a speech communications and dramatic arts major, he planned to take Hollywood by storm.
“I drove across the country to L.A.,” he recalls and got set up in a studio apartment just a block away from Hollywood Boulevard. That very night, someone broke into his car, stealing everything inside.
“That was my welcome to California,” Farrell quips.
He spent just over a year living in California before heading back east — living in the Hamptons on Long Island for a time before heading south to Atlanta, Georgia, and eventually to Florida. He had been working in retail but entered the vendor side of retail while in Florida working for various designers.
A job with Calvin Klein sent Farrell back to California, followed by a job with Macy’s that sent landed him in the Big Apple for six years.
In 2010, a friend of his lost her child to cancer and Farrell returned to the Mohawk Valley to help his grieving friend.
“I only intended to stay for two years maximum,” he says. During that time, Farrell helped his friend and also started a nonprofit called Anjali’s Army in memory of the child she lost. The organization raised money for children with cancer.
Over the two years he was operating the nonprofit, Farrell found his views of the area had changed and he wasn’t so eager to leave. Instead, he had a better idea for using his years of experience outside the region.
“Everything that I learned, I should maybe put to use in my own back yard,” he recalls thinking. That led to a job in marketing at the House of the Good Shepherd in Utica.
“Personally, I became reinvested back in the area,” Farrell says. He rediscovered so many wonderful things that he appreciated while growing up in the Mohawk Valley but had forgotten about along the way.
Today, Farrell is the special projects officer for the Greater Utica Chamber of Commerce, where it’s now his job to tell everyone about why the area is so great.
“It really dawned on me that there’s no place else like it,” he says of the Mohawk Valley. Housing is affordable and you can’t beat the traffic, he says.
From mountains to beaches, there is plenty for outdoor lovers, and with venues like the Stanley Theatre and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, the area offers numerous cultural opportunities for art lovers like himself, Farrell says.
The growing diversity in the region has brought in new people, new cultures, new foods, and new opportunities to learn about all of them.
Farrell highlights all of it on his latest project with the chamber called “What’s Upstate.” With a website full of stories from people like him who left and came back, and plenty of stories from people who never left, What’s Upstate is Farrell’s way to entice people, especially those like him who moved away, to give the Mohawk Valley another chance.