Liberty Gardens’ renovation moves onto second phase

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ROME — The first phase of revitalization at the Liberty Gardens housing development in Rome is just about complete, with work set to begin on

Couple launches floor-cleaning business in Holland Patent

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Aspen Athletic continues growth with new Fairmount club

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Health Care, Small Business, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

CAMILLUS — Aspen Athletic Clubs’ pursuit of a location in Fairmount has been a marathon, not a sprint. “We’ve actually been looking at the Fairmount–Camillus area since back before our Liverpool location opened,” says Nichole Polos, who owns and manages Aspen with her husband, Brent Polos. “2006 is when we opened the Liverpool location.” Aspen

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CAMILLUS — Aspen Athletic Clubs’ pursuit of a location in Fairmount has been a marathon, not a sprint.

“We’ve actually been looking at the Fairmount–Camillus area since back before our Liverpool location opened,” says Nichole Polos, who owns and manages Aspen with her husband, Brent Polos. “2006 is when we opened the Liverpool location.”

Aspen finished its long race toward Fairmount on Sept. 17, when it opened a club at 3504 W. Genesee St. (town of Camillus). The 30,000-square-foot club is Aspen’s largest.

It contains 70 pieces of cardiovascular equipment, three 12-piece lines of resistance-training machines, a 17-piece line of plate-loaded weight machines, and free weights totaling 10,000 pounds. The new club also features a functional training room, which is a 30-yard-long, 2,500-square-foot room with NFL-grade turf that gives athletes a chance to work on attributes like agility.

The Fairmount location is Aspen’s fourth club. It joins a 6,000-square-foot downtown Syracuse club at 125 E. Jefferson St. that opened earlier this year and a 28,500-square-foot Cicero club at 5863 E. Circle Drive doubling as the company’s headquarters. The Cicero club, Aspen’s first, has been at its current location since 2008, when it moved from space leased at nearby Driver’s Village.

And, it joins the location Aspen calls its Liverpool club at 8015 Oswego Road — that club, which stands at just under 20,000 square feet, has a Liverpool mailing address but is technically situated in the town of Clay.

Before space opened at 3504 W. Genesee St. in Fairmount, Aspen struggled to find a spot in the area that met its square footage and parking needs, Nichole Polos says.

“Those are the two biggest issues for our suburban clubs,” she says. “The Fairmount area, as far as commercial real estate goes, is very limited. A couple places had the parking but didn’t have the square footage.”

Aspen’s interest in the space at 3504 W. Genesee St. stretches back for years. It looked at the location before it opened its Liverpool club six years ago, but an OfficeMax moved into the building, Polos says. That OfficeMax was eventually replaced in the space by a MaineSource Food & Party Warehouse.

Then in November 2011, MaineSource announced it would close its Fairmount store. Aspen didn’t wait for the location to become vacant before inquiring about it, Polos says.

“The day they announced they were closing the store, we contacted the real-estate person at Maines,” she says. “It’s on a highly traveled road with lots of shopping, restaurants, and grocery stores nearby. The area had a Bally Total Fitness a few years ago
but that closed down. Nothing replaced it.”

Aspen leased the location from Cicero–based Rocklyn Cos., according to Polos. Next it spent about $500,000 renovating the building and an additional $550,000 filling it with fitness equipment.

Syracuse–based CBD Construction, LLC oversaw renovations, Polos says. She declined to name the banks that helped finance the work.

“It was a grocery store,” she says of the space. “It was a very nice grocery store, but it was a grocery store. We had to tear down a lot of walls. We had to get rid of loading docks and revamp the layout.”

Aspen also had to hire new employees to staff the location. The Fairmount club will have nearly 50 employees, with about 12 being full time, she says. That’s on par with the company’s other three suburban locations. Its downtown club has 25 employees.

Polos declined to disclose revenue totals or growth projections for Aspen.

Companywide, Aspen has about 170 total employees. About 25 of them are full time. Polos did not share its total number of club members.

Aspen competes with other fitness offerings like the YMCA, Gold’s Gym, and Planet Fitness in a variety of ways, according to Polos. Many members appreciate that Aspen is a local company, rather than being a franchise or large organization headed elsewhere, she says. And it has a range of offerings, from childcare to aerobics. Also, its rates are lower than a number of its competitors, she says.

Aspen’s current membership rates range between $9 a month and $19.99 per month. It charges a rate-guarantee fee every July of $29.

The Fairmount club’s other features include a Kid’s Korner that provides child care for parents while they work out, as well as a 16-bike group cycling room and a 2,500-square-foot aerobic room for Yoga and Zumba groups. It also has five tanning rooms and a cinema cardio room with equipment in front of a 120-inch screen playing classic movies.

“Most people aren’t going to do cardio the entire length of a movie,” Polos says. “But they’re classic movies where you could lose yourself for 20, 30, 40 minutes.”

A unique touch at the Fairmount location is J&C Sports Nutrition, a juice and snack bar that offers supplements, protein bars, smoothies, and energy drinks. J&C is a separate company leasing about 500 square feet of space within the Fairmount club. Polos’ father, Jim Frezza, owns J&C.

J&C had operated at Syracuse’s regional market and made weekly visits to Aspen’s other two suburban locations, Frezza says. Opening a permanent space in the Fairmount club made sense, he adds.

“This worked out perfectly,” he says. “We carry over 60 supplements, nutritional products, vitamins, and protein products. We carry products for people that need to lose weight, people that need to maintain weight, people that need to gain weight, and also for people that had gastric bypass surgery.”

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com

CNY Regional Economic Development Council submits 1-year report

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SYRACUSE — The Central New York Regional Economic Development Council couldn’t quite claim a perfect record in a recent one-year progress report to the state, but it posted a high success rate nonetheless, the council’s co-chair contends. The one-year report, which the council submitted Sept. 14, showed that nearly all of the capital projects approved

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The one-year report, which the council submitted Sept. 14, showed that nearly all of the capital projects approved for state funding in Central New York under last year’s regional-council initiative are proceeding as planned. The state awarded funding packages totaling $103.7 million to 74 projects in Central New York — Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, and Oswego counties — last year. That was the largest amount sent to any of the state’s 10 economic-development regions.

Of the 74 Central New York projects receiving funding, 69 have executed contracts with New York State, according to the report. Among those projects, 51 have started and are on track for completion by the end of 2013.

That leaves two projects that have yet to begin but are still in the pipeline, along with three whose applicants declined to accept funding.

United HealthCare Services, Inc. decided not to accept $1.9 million in aid for relocating its regional center to 30,000 square feet in downtown Syracuse. Huhtamaki, Inc. opted not to take $152,741 to purchase new cup-forming machines for its facility in Fulton, and Grassman Performance Energy, LLC of Port Byron chose to turn down $716,500 earmarked for supporting the development and manufacturing of wind turbines.

“We would have loved to have been 74 out of 74, but when you have companies whose plans change, and they decide to turn down funding for one reason or another, it’s beyond our control,” says Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO and co-chair of the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council. Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor is the other co-chair.

“We feel positive about the fact that such a high percentage of our projects are on track,” Simpson says. “I think it is a reflection of the way that our council here in Central New York has taken ownership of these projects. We check in with the project sponsors on a regular basis. We troubleshoot. The different state agencies understand that these are priorities.”

Projects given the state’s thumbs-up for funding last year completed a Consolidated Funding Application, putting their names in for assistance from a range of state agencies. They competed for $785 million in economic-development aid New York spread across the state.

The Central New York Regional Economic Development Council reviewed applications from Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, and Oswego counties. It then scored the projects and sent recommendations to the state, which had the final say in doling out funding.

New York continued the Consolidated Funding Application and regional-council initiative for a second year, putting a total of $750 million in aid up for grabs. Consolidated Funding Applications were due in July.

Central New York’s regional council has reviewed projects applying for funding this year and sent its recommendations to the state, Simpson says. The council received 99 applications seeking a total of nearly $28 million this year, according to its one-year report. It recommended 51 projects looking for a total of $16.7 million, the report said.

The state expects to announce projects receiving funding sometime this fall. An exact date is not known, according to Simpson.

“There’s a committee, a review team of experts that the governor empowers to review these applications,” he says. “They will probably be here in Central New York sometime in the next couple of weeks. We’ll have a chance to make a presentation for our projects.”

The Central New York Regional Economic Development Council has also submitted priority projects to the state for second-round funding. This year, priority projects vie for up to $25 million in capital funding per region, along with an additional $10 million in Excelsior Tax Credits.

A total of 34 priority projects received the Central New York Council’s endorsement. If they receive all of the recommended funding, those 34 projects would be in line for $33.3 million in aid.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were excited about all the projects that got put out there,” Simpson says. “One thing that the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council has done really well, and one thing we got positive feedback on from the governor’s office last time around, is we rejected the silver-bullet approach to economic development. We’ve taken a
more strategic and holistic approach by trying to identify a lot of projects that are realistic in nature.”

Priority projects the council recommended for funding this year include a new 20,000-square-foot agricultural and brewing facility in Cazenovia called Empire Farmstead Brewery, Inc. The council asked for a grant of just over $1 million for that undertaking, which has an estimated total project cost of $5.3 million.

Other priority-project funding requests the council marked included $100,000 for an expansion at Bo-Mer Plastics, LLC of Auburn and $500,000 toward revamping the former Camillus Cutlery Co. plant into a mixed-use medical center to be known as Camillus Mills. The Camillus Mills project has a total cost of $8.8 million, while the Bo-Mer expansion’s total cost is $560,000.

The council’s one-year report, which contains a list of all projects recommended for funding, is available online at http://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/themes/nyopenrc/rc-files/centralny/centralny_2012progressreport.pdf

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com

Federal grant to support manufacturing training at area community colleges

Health Care, Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only

OCC will receive $1.2 million; CCC will receive $629,000 SYRACUSE — A federal grant will pump more than $14.6 million into New York’s community colleges for new training in advanced manufacturing. The colleges’ Training and Education in Advanced Manufacturing Educational Pathways Project was one of the initiatives chosen to share $500 million in grants to expand

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OCC will receive $1.2 million; CCC will receive $629,000

SYRACUSE — A federal grant will pump more than $14.6 million into New York’s community colleges for new training in advanced manufacturing.

The colleges’ Training and Education in Advanced Manufacturing Educational Pathways Project was one of the initiatives chosen to share $500 million in grants to expand job training around the country. The grants are part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training initiative, which promotes skills development and employment in fields like advanced manufacturing, transportation, health care, and more, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which is running the program with the Department of Education.

Locally, Onondaga Community College (OCC), Cayuga Community College (CCC), Broome Community College, and Mohawk Valley Community College are all involved in the project. The Manufacturers Association of Central New York is also heavily involved, according to OCC.

Among other things, the effort will help community colleges communicate more effectively with employers and learn what skills and attributes companies want in their work force, says Margaret O’Connell, interim OCC president. Despite job losses over the years, New York still has a significant manufacturing industry.

“We need to say that and take the lead in trying to have better intertwining and interfacing between community colleges and employers,” she says.

There’s often a disconnect between what skills are available in the work force and what manufacturers need, O’Connell notes. OCC’s $1.2 million portion of the federal grant will go toward developing a core curriculum for training in advanced manufacturing.

The result could be used not only at OCC, but also at colleges throughout the state, O’Connell says. The partnership with MACNY will be critical in helping the college learn exactly what employers are seeking in workers, she adds.

The curriculum needs to be relevant today, but also several years from now, O’Connell says. The work could lead to new certificate programs or courses at OCC, she adds.

CCC will use $629,000 to develop a training program focused on the plastics industry, the school said. The program could prepare students for work at growing companies in the area like Currier Plastics, Tessy Plastics, and Bo-Mer Plastics, according to the college.

The funding will allow the school to add a new advanced manufacturing lab focused on plastics technologies and pay for the development of new noncredit and credit programs in plastics. CCC will also use the money to develop a new one-year technical certificate program in precision machining.

“Receiving this grant validates the college’s planning and hard work in connecting with our industry partners in the community,” CCC President Daniel Larson said in a news release. “We have met with government and business leaders throughout the region to help us develop the academic and work-force development programming that would make the biggest impact on our regional economy.”

In addition to developing new programs, the college will create new prior-learning assessments that allow students to earn academic credits for college-level learning through life or work experience.

The federal funding went to a total of 297 schools. The grants were the second round of funding in a $2 billion, four-year initiative, according to the Labor Department.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

M&T mid-market survey finds both pessimism and optimism

Banks & Credit Unions, Subscriber Only

Many mid-market company leaders continue to feel positive about the prospects for their own businesses, despite ongoing pessimism on the national economy, according to a new survey from M&T Bank. One in five of middle-market respondents in the survey said they expect U.S. economic growth to speed up in the next six months, down from

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Many mid-market company leaders continue to feel positive about the prospects for their own businesses, despite ongoing pessimism on the national economy, according to a new survey from M&T Bank.

One in five of middle-market respondents in the survey said they expect U.S. economic growth to speed up in the next six months, down from more than half in February. And, just 18 percent of those respondents believe the economy has improved in the past six months, down from 46 percent in the previous survey.

More than 28 percent say the economy has weakened, up from 6 percent.

The Buffalo–based bank polled senior managers and owners of privately held businesses, with sales ranging from $5 million to $500 million, throughout its geographic footprint for its third-quarter economic outlook survey. The bank received more than 500 responses.

Businesses in a number of surveys have consistently offered pessimism on big-picture economic matters that are beyond their control, says Gary Keith, M&T’s regional economist for upstate New York. But many of those same companies feel modestly optimistic about their future prospects.

Hiring plans among respondents to M&T’s latest survey remained positive, with 27 percent expecting to add employees in the next six months, down slightly from 32 percent in the previous survey. Just 6 percent expect job cuts, up from 5 percent.

In addition, 40 percent expect capital expenditures to rise in the coming months and just 11 percent expect reductions. Both those numbers were nearly the same as in the previous survey, according to M&T.

“Mid-size companies and commercial real- estate firms are finding ways to navigate and do things to move their businesses forward,” Keith says.

Overall, the economic recovery seems to be plodding along, Keith adds. It will probably continue at a slow, but steady pace.

Upstate New York did not experience many of the same strong headwinds that some other parts of the country did leading up to and during the recession, Keith notes. That means the region is better positioned for recovery.

All businesses will likely be carefully watching the election and the U.S. budget situation. A number of automatic budget cuts and tax increases set to take place early next year would certainly send the economy tumbling, Keith says.

“The economy isn’t strong enough to withstand these ‘fiscal cliff’ issues if they all come to bear,” he says. “I think there will be some recognition of that after the election.

“I think most of us rational folks think we’re going to get an 11th hour deal.”

Regardless of what happens in the policy arena, consumers must start spending again before the economy can recover fully, Keith says. He notes that about 70 percent of the U.S. economy is driven by consumers’ spending decisions.

“Until consumers start consuming at a higher rate, this is what you get,” he says.

Buffalo–based M&T is the leading bank in the Syracuse–area deposit market with 30 branch offices, more than $2.2 billion in deposits, and a market share of more than 21.2 percent. It is number two in the Utica–Rome market with 13 branches, more than

$615 million in deposits, and a market share of about 16.8 percent.

M&T also leads the Binghamton–area market with a deposit market share of 48.7 percent, 16 branches, and more than $1.2 billion in deposits, according to the latest statistics from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The bank has $80.8 billion in total assets and more than 780 branches in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

New York construction employment rises compared to last month, lags behind last year

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Subscriber Only

Despite rising in August, the number of New Yorkers working in construction dropped since summer ended in 2011, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data from the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). The state gained 300 construction jobs between July and August of this year, bringing the total number of construction

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New KeyBank branch opens in Manlius

Banks & Credit Unions, Construction, Design & Real Estate

MANLIUS — KeyBank opened a new branch in Manlius this week. The 3,900-square-foot office, at 7670 Highbridge Road, features four teller stations, five private offices,

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