We broke daily record highs both yesterday, January 30th and today, January 31st, with temperatures reaching into the upper 50s.

Unofficially we hit 57 yesterday and 59 this morning, out at the Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee were the official temperatures are kept.

Have a great month!  Dan Brown

Many of us spent time enjoying the fall foliage, and many more of us made the annual trek to the Village of Shelburne Falls.

What a difference seven short weeks can make.  Especially when you get people motivated and mobilized, and a date circled on the calendar.

Residents of Shelburne Falls know how important the Columbus Day weekend is to the local economy.  And residents put there sense of community to work big time.

“Shelburne Falls has a history of being a gathering place for people all the way back to the days of the Native Americans,’ said Kathlene Pew, owner of the Shelburne Booksellers.
“People are really drawn to this place for reasons sometimes they don’t even know.  They feel a deep sense of peace when they come here.”

Rebuild and they will come.  Residents of the picture perfect village of Shelburne Falls want everyone to know that they’re open for business.

Monday the Iron Bridge was busy with holiday traffic.  Tourists and locals strolled tree line street, and the Deerfield River provided its familiar backdrop to the seasonal fall foliage.

At the Moca Maya coffee shop Chris King was busy serving his customers.  As President of the Shelburne Falls Small Business Association, he was well aware of how far the village has come.

“Considering everything we went through, and the fact that it caught a lot of people off guard,” said King.  “People are back up and running a lot sooner than we thought.”
“There’s still a long way to go, but I think people are really optimistic.”

And that sense of optimism was contagious.   Kathleen Pew’s Shelburne Booksellers, was nearly wiped out by Tropical Storm Irene.

“We’re five inches higher at our new location, Pew said with a big laugh.

Kathy was able to laugh because  she reopened her book store in time for Columbus Day.  Just in time for the visitors who keep coming back year after year.

“We’ve been coming here for 42 years now,” said Steve Reardon of West Brookfield.    “We brought our kids here and we’re bringing our grand kids.

The villages recovery can be credited to the spirit of its business community.  Kathy Young owns the Young and Constantin Gallery, and Jeff Grader is a local graphic artist.

They wanted to raise money for the West County Relief Fund, while giving residents a chance to show their support.  They teamed to deign a T-Shirt entitled, ‘The Heart of 10 Communities’.

“I’ve lived here all my life growing up in Buckland,” said Grader.  “I wanted to do something that people would connect with and realize that because it’s out of sight, out of mind, people are still needing a lot of help after August 28th”.

“It’s hard when you see things happen around the world and all of a sudden something really happens in our community,” said Young.  “I called Jeff and said lets do something to let people know that we’re thinking about them.  That we’re trying to help them.”

“I like the idea of something tangible where you can really see it.  It’s a sense of community that we’re here for you, and it’s visual.  We’re both artists, so something visual really works for us.”

We’ve spent a good deal of time in Shelburne Falls and Buckland over the past seven weeks.  Residents talked about how important this weekend was, what a milestone it would be in the towns recovery.

Judging by what was happening on Columbus Day it appears they’re way ahead of schedule.  And there are many more meaningful milestones still to come.

The June 1st tornado did heavy damage to the roof, siding, windows and doors of Margarita’s home. The last few months have been tough for her, but Margarita says, “Now that Rebuilding Together is coming home to the rescue, I’m feeling a little bit better and more comfortable and kind of getting ready for winter.”

Colleen Loveless is the executive director. She says Rebuilding Together came to the rescue of homeowners who’d run out of options, homes where the homeowners may not have had insurance or had inadequate insurance. Rebuilding Together fills the unmet needs of the low income homeowners.
The rebuild means Margarita’s home is all buttoned up for winter, something she wasn’t sure would happen a few weeks ago. She says, “To see volunteers, let alone people that aren’t even getting paid, and FEMA having the duty to help me wasn’t there, to see Rebuilding Together there for me just meant a great deal.”

A great deal for Margarita and twenty-five other homeowners in Springfield.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) — Abc40 and fox6 are teaming up with “Rebuilding Together Springfield” to help build 25 homes in 5 days. Everything kicks off Saturday morning.

Friday night dozens of volunteers attended a rally in advance of this weeks big build. It was once last chance for them to get some final information, meet with organizers and the families who will be helped by the project.

Delores Culp is one of the home owners getting help this week. Her house received roof and chimney damage, broken windows and doors plus she has a lot of downed trees. She is thankful for the kindness and generosity of others helping her return to a normal life.

“This is a blessing for me. I would never think something like this would happen, but I’ve been a hard worker all these years, all my life now I usually help people now people are helping me,” said Culp.

One thousand volunteers from all over New England will work thru Wednesday to restores more than 25 homes. One hundred of those volunteers are part of the Springfield area TD Bank team.

“We take a look at the tragedy of the tornado and we look at the efforts of everybody from big business to small business government. The end result is a strong community it’s a good thing,” Simon Hong, TD Bank.

For the recipients like Delores Culp the outpouring of support is encouraging her to continue paying it forward to others.

“Sometimes you have to give back and volunteer and that’s been a part of my life volunteering,” said Culp.

Rebuild Together Springfield is still looking for donations. To find out how you can help check out: www.rebuildtogetherspringfield.org.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) — Construction got underway Saturday for Rebuilding Together Springfield. The project’s goal is to fix up more than 25 homes hit hard by the storm in just five days.

More than a hundred volunteers were doing their part rebuilding Delores Culp’s house. Her Amanda Street home and yard both received heavy damage from the June first tornado, but thanks to volunteers she’ll have a whole new house inside and out.

“Every room is filled with volunteers. They are painting putting tape around the windows and it’s a good feeling to see people in your house it’s like a makeover,” said Delores Culp.

“This is really the grass roots and to have Rebuild Together with all the corporate sponsors TD Bank and look at all the volunteers,” said Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno.

Despite rain Saturday volunteers were still doing what they could to get Delores’ home back to normal.

“We are moving forward. We have to go rain or shine so get it done. Some things you can’t for safety reasons painting will have plenty of workers at a later point to do that if we have to,” said Colleen Loveless, Rebuilding Together Director.

More than a thousand volunteers are set to work on the 25 homes over the next five days. Volunteers already working hard Saturday were happy to be making a difference.

“It’s just wonderful to see the volunteers help come it’s really great,” said Evie Gore, volunteer.

“Humbling makes you glad you can give back to your community and rebuild Springfield makes you feel good,” said Kare LeFleche, volunteer.

The project is still in need of donations to find out how you can help check out – www.rebuildtogetherspringfield.org.

Why Area Businesses Need a Disaster Recovery Plan

There’s no doubt that the summer of the tornado, hurricane, and earthquake in Western Mass. got more businesses thinking about the importance of a disaster-recovery plan. But the truth is, it doesn’t take a natural disaster to suddenly shut a company down; a freak fire or flood will do the trick, too. Employers who have developed business-continuation strategies in case of an adverse event — and those who wish they had done so sooner — agree that there’s plenty of value in preparing for the worst.

No one goes to work expecting the roof to come off. Gretchen Neggers certainly didn’t.
She’s the town administrator in Monson, and she recalls the fateful late afternoon of June 1, when a tornado cut a path right through downtown.
“It passed right over our town offices and police station, causing significant damage to that structure,” she told BusinessWest. “It essentially blew the roof off.”
The initial concern, of course, was to see if anyone was physically hurt. The next was how to keep municipal services running at a time when residents would need them more than ever.
“Obviously, that facility houses critical operations,” she said. “All the town’s vital data, our permanent records, everything was housed in that building, and all the essential functions we perform as a town happen there. So it was a challenge to respond to the needs of residents in the community, and at the same time deal with the disaster within our own building.”
One of the town’s first calls was to CMD Technology Group in East Longmeadow, which handles a variety of information-technology services for Monson.
“We said, ‘we need to get our servers out of here,’” Neggers said. In the meantime, someone had the sense to do what they could to protect them before CMD was able to move them — in this case, covering the equipment with a tarp and setting up a fan to blow cool air at it.

Charlie Christianson says disaster-recovery plans should have many facets, from IT to relocation to communication plans if the phones go down.

“We were very fortunate that our data survived,” she told BusinessWest. “There was some blessing in that; had we lost our data, the recovery would have been much harder. We did have some limited backup, but we didn’t have any off-site backup, which is something I now strongly recommend. It was a lesson learned.”
The town offices were relocated, and the town undertook what she called “an intense effort” to get operations up and running in a few days. Importantly, no municipal employees had any paychecks delayed.
“It was something you say, ‘that’ll never happen,’” Neggers said. “Unfortunately, what we learned is that the unthinkable can happen, and you do have to be prepared for it.”
After a summer when Western Mass. was hit with a tornado, the remnants of a hurricane (and plenty of flooding), and even a minor earthquake, companies, municipalities, and nonprofit agencies are looking more seriously at having a plan in place to keep their business operating even if their place of business is no longer usable.
Joan Kagan knows what that’s like. The president and CEO of Square One, whose Springfield headquarters was demolished by the tornado, did indeed have a disaster-recovery plan in place, meaning luck was less of a factor than it was at Monson’s town hall.
“We had completed the first phase of our plan, which was focused on our financial data, which we backed up every night on computer servers down in Connecticut, far from any of our facilities,” she said. “All our our financial data was backed up every night. That allowed us to get back into business right away, and we didn’t lose any of our data. That was critical to us.”
Why? For one thing, “we bill the state electronically for 1,200 kids every month,” Kagan said. “What if we had to go back and recreate the ID numbers and what the services are that we provided that month, so we could bill the state for it? We’d probably still be working on it now. Instead, we were able to get back in business right away.”
For a business like child care, where so many clients depend on those services every day, that continuity is particularly important, she added.

Joan Kagan (center, with Sarah Smith, vice president of Finance, and Phil Klimoski, director of IT) says Square One not only had a disaster plan, but actively practiced it.

“These are critical services for families, and also, our employees depend on us for their paychecks,” she said. “Some are single or heads of household. You’re talking about hundreds of people who could be impacted if they go without paychecks. But we were able to get payroll out three days after the tornado because we had a backup system. A lot of people lost jobs because of that storm, but we were able to keep everyone employed.”
In this issue, BusinessWest examines the issue of disaster response, and how having a plan — and, just as important, making sure employees understand it and train on it — can make the difference between being helpless and staying in business when there’s no longer a physical business to go to.

Banking on Trouble
Paul Scully knows a little about disaster planning. That’s because Country Bank, of which Scully is president and CEO, has long had such a plan, and trained on it often — which turned out to be extremely fortunate the day a fire broke out at its main office in Ware in 2008, causing no injuries but significant smoke damage.
“It doesn’t matter what the size of your company is; if you could potentially have an interruption in cash flow and business, you have a problem,” Scully said. “You should never think you’re too small to prepare, even if you’re just a two-person company.”
With 44,000 square feet of space rented nearby, stocked with dozens of spare computers, and plenty of server redundancy, every bank office except the one affected by the fire (which had to be cleaned and renovated) was open for business the following morning (a Saturday), with no loss of data for any customer.
“The real key to having a plan is testing it — on an annual basis at mininum — but, in addition to testing it, updating it,” he said. “We do a mock disaster drill every year; we literally make the switch over as if we had just had a disaster. Not only do we switch the operating system over to backup, but we have people come in and do testing at the backup site that day.”
The reasons for repeating the training often are obvious, he said.
“A lot of folks wear different hats, their job responsibilities might change, or they might leave the organization,” he explained. “If Joe was in charge of making sure everyone is accounted for, and suddenly Joe’s gone, then who is the person responsible for that?”
Kagan also stressed the importance of having staff trained in disaster-recovery procedures — “particularly, in our case, with safety measures, evacuating children, which allowed us to avoid any tragedies or having anyone injured. We practice that in our centers and have fire drills once a month, so the staff are trained in how to safely evacuate, and children know how to go to a safe place. That worked to our advantage.”
She emphasized the need for a communication plan after an event. “We make sure that people have their cell phones, that people are in communication and identifying what the needs are,” she explained. “We were able to do that, and the next morning we were able to use our contacts in the community to help us identify space [to set up shop]. The community was very responsive, and from day one people offered us space.”
Dave Delvecchio, president of Innovative Business Systems in Easthampton, recently opened a data center in Marlborough that acts not only as a remote office, but as a disaster-recovery suite for clients. If a customer’s place of business is suddenly rendered unusable, IBS can transfer the contents of the client’s entire network to the Marlborough office, which is equipped with four workstations, in effect providing a location for that customer to continue to operate.
It’s not just disasters business owners should worry about, he said, but everyday mishaps. For tenants in a mixed-use, multi-tenant building, he explained, the odds of a localized disaster — anything from a candle fire to a knocked-out sprinklerhead — go up by a factor of 10. But the past summer’s weather events have really got clients talking.
“We’ve definitely received some cold calls from a few folks about disaster response this year,” he said — as well as a humorous moment the day the Valley trembled. “I was talking with a client one day about potential solutions, and he said, ‘is the floor moving?’ As soon as the earthquake ended, he said, ‘all right, you’ve made the earth move — I’ll sign anything!’”
On a serious note, though, sometimes it takes a disaster for people to realize the importance of their computer infrastructure.
“They don’t have paper-based forms to fall back on anymore. A hotel can’t make a reservation without going online. Insurance companies can’t process claims without going online. Whether you’re a large, regional bank, a single-location business with 10 employees, or a nonprofit agency, we’re finding that disaster planning is meaningful to businesses.”

In Touch and in Business
Charlie Christianson, president of CMD and its sister company, Peritus Security, which offers risk-management services to businesses, echoed the importance of backing up data off-site.
“A lot of people just plug a USB drive into the server and create another hard drive — but all the hard drives are sitting on one site,” he said. “What if the building gets crushed? It’s great on a day-to-day basis if a file gets lost, but it certainly doesn’t protect against catastrophic failures. If a catastrophic event comes through, or an electrical event occurs, you run the risk of losing it all.”
And that means possibly losing business — permanently. After the tornado, the CMD/Peritus offices had no phone connections or Internet access; even cellular service wasn’t active. So the team “triaged,” Christianson said, at a local coffee shop where service was available.
“We started going down the customer list and calling our clients, letting them know how to get hold of us, finding out what they needed, and we started slapping priorities on things,” he said. “You could have people who have been customers for years, and when they can’t get hold of you during an event like this, instead of thinking, ‘maybe there’s a problem with the phones,’ it’s ‘oh, we hope you’re not out of business.’ That’s how quickly people turn nowadays.
“You have to have systems in place on the technology side,” he added, “and it’s equally important to have this stuff written down. Because as calm and cool as people think they’re going to be when stuff hits the fan, that’s not a good time to be figuring things out.”
Scully agrees with the importance of a business-continuity plan. “What do you do if the building isn’t accessible for months? How would you operate? Sure, you may have business insurance, and that may help with cash flow, but what it doesn’t do is satisfy your customer base, and that’s a risk you can’t quantify.”
Some customers would go elsewhere, he said, while competitors would have no problem exploiting the situation and reaching out to welcome them. “I don’t think you can underestimate the the impact of not having a disaster-recovery plan or a business-interruption plan. It’s worth its weight in gold.”
That goes for all kinds of operations, Neggers said.
“A lot of business are regulated — like banking — and are required to have disaster-recovery plans, but I can see why it’s something that everyone should put a lot more attention into,” she told BusinessWest. “It’s not something you want to develop after a disaster happens.”
And just having a plan isn’t enough, she said. “Your plan needs to be precise, it needs to be comprehensive, and you need to train on it. What are you going to do if you can’t go to the office tomorrow, if you don’t have your computer, don’t have your files, don’t have your phone? How are you going to perform the essential functions of your business?
“I hope our experience is something that other entities can learn from,” she continued. “We were lucky in many ways because we didn’t lose our server, but you can’t have your critical functions reliant on luck. It’s something I know we’ll take a lot more seriously moving forward.”

Shelter from the Storm
Christianson still marvels at the sudden outburst by Mother Nature.
“Western Mass. never used to have such radical swings in weather. Maybe once in a great, great while,” he said. “But during the course of the summer, we had a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, multiple borderline tornadic events — it seemed like every two weeks we were having a windfall of activity.
“It certainly kept us busy,” he added. “You don’t like to see it happen to people, of course. But no sooner than we’d get one mess cleaned up, the next thing you know, another storm ripped through, causing damage or flooding.”
It shouldn’t take a natural disaster to get employers preparing for the worst, he said, but it’s an effective reminder.
“You need to step back and think outside your box,” he said. “You can’t just say, ‘oh, it’ll never happen,’ because we saw it happen.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

In Its New Home, EcoBuilding Bargains Models Its Mission

For the past decade, the ReStore has been an increasingly popular source of recycled building materials, saving money for professional contractors and do-it-yourselfers alike, all while easing the burden on landfills. The store, now renamed EcoBuilding Bargains, has outgrown that space and will soon move into a much larger building nearby. And the way that structure is being renovated provides an effective case study in the value of green construction and energy efficiency.

John Majercak wants to lead by example.
And when EcoBuilding Bargains — formerly the ReStore — opens its vastly expanded retail center in Springfield later this fall, he’ll have the ideal showcase to demonstrate how homeowners and contractors can make profitable use of recycled materials and save money through energy efficiency.
Because that’s how the new store is being built.

The building in question — a century-old structure on Warwick Street that was originally home to the National Biscuit Co., then Steiger’s, and most recently a warehouse for Kavanagh Furniture — is being expanded and renovated from top to bottom, eventually tripling the retail space of the ReStore’s original Albany Street site and quadrupling its total area.
“When we purchased this property,” said Majercak, executive director of the Center for EcoTechnology in Northampton, which operates EcoBuilding Bargains, “we undertook an environmental remediation process. It was built at a time when energy costs were not a big deal, but were an afterthought. Now, it’s a modern building that’s going to use, by the time we’re done, about a third of the energy a building this size would normally use.”
That feat will be accomplished with an array of improvements — encompassing roofing and siding materials, insulation, and the systems that heat, cool, and illuminate the space — that promote cost savings through energy efficiency. Those strategies, combined with the copious use of recycled materials throughout the building, effectively turn it into an educational model of the store’s very mission.
At the Center for EcoTechnology, a 65-employee, 35-year-old nonprofit that provides practical solutions for going green at home and work, “our motto is, ‘we make green make sense,’” Majercak said. “And this is one example of that. By lowering our own operating costs and teaching people who come through here why we made these green improvements — and what they can do in their own homes — we’ve made this a teaching store as well.”

Do It Yourself

John Majercak says the store will be lined with cutting-edge insulated panels that seal in air, one of many facets of the building’s energy retrofit.

In the decade since it opened, the ReStore — which, at its core, trades in recycled building materials, with the twin goals of saving contractors and do-it-yourselfers money and reducing the burden on landfills — has become increasingly popular, to the point where it has outgrown its space on Albany Street.
“The store sells low-cost building materials so people can fix up their homes,” Majercak said. “We get all kinds of stuff from other people’s homes and remodeling jobs; they donate it or hire us as a contractor to do the deconstruction ourselves.
“Over the years, we’ve just seen an incessant demand for what we do,” he continued. “Our store is now so stuffed, you can barely walk through. We know we can serve more people in a bigger facility and do more of our mission. Customers are going to be much better served by this building, which will have more parking and wider aisles. And with a new, computerized inventory system, we know what we have; it’s much easier for the customers and donors who work with us.”
The efficiency improvements — part of a $900,000 energy retrofit, a significant portion of the total $3.1 million project cost — begin on the exterior of the building, including a white roof to deflect heat and insulated panels lining the building that interlock in a way that seals out all air leakage. EcoBuilding Bargains will also “superinsulate” its roof, Majercak explained, using insulation donated from MassMutual when that company installed a solar array on its roof.
“They took their old insulation off because they needed to use a different system, but it’s fine, and they donated that to us, saving us at least $40,000 in insulation costs, and it’s helping us save a lot of energy,” he said. “There are all kinds of different details that all tie together to make the building really well-insulated.”
In addition, the 3 million-BTU, oil-fired boiler in the basement is being replaced with a 500,000-BTU gas unit, while infrared tube heaters located throughout the structure will heat building occupants but not the air.
“Say you’re in the sun, with the radiant heat — that’s what this feels like, the sun hitting you,” Majercak said. “For a big, open space, it’s very efficient because it allows the air temperature to be lower even though you feel comfortable. And in the offices, we’re using heat pumps to take advantage of the difference between outside and inside air.”
That model of efficiency extends to lighting as well; much of the store will feature sensor-controlled lights that maintain a low level when no one is around them, but become brighter when someone walks in. “That saves energy, too,” Majercak said.
In addition, “we’re using reused materials everywhere — we reused timbers, sliding glass door panels, the flooring is recycled … these are all examples of reuse, and that’s what we’re all about.”
The goal, besides reducing costs while greatly expanding floor space, is to demonstrate the types of changes people who visit the store can make in their own homes.
“It’s been a lot of fun, actually,” Majercak said. “We can walk around and talk to people and show them it is possible, and there are benefits to it. We use household examples, too — no one uses infrared tube heaters, but for homeowners, we have workshops and examples of products they can use in their homes, as opposed to stuff used at the commercial level.”

Dollars and Sense
The simple fact that the ReStore needed a new home testifies to the growing popularity of its ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ model.
“People who shop here do so because of the great deals, or they believe in the mission of keeping stuff out of landfills, or both,” Majercak said. “When we opened this up 10 years ago, there were maybe a dozen or two stores like it in the country. There are about 800 now, and we have our own association; I’m on the board of it.
“It just makes sense on so many levels,” he continued. “People — we Yankees, especially — are frugal and don’t want to throw something out if someone else wants to use it, but they also don’t want it sitting around their basement, either. What’s caught on is the whole concept of going green and the fact that there are societal benefits to doing those things. That’s exciting to me because, at the Center for EcoTechnology, we have a host of green services we can offer people, and now we can showcase them and tell people about them using this facility.”
Majercak expects the business to continue to grow, both through public awareness of the store and in its deconstruction efforts, which have “really taken off” in recent years.
“We’ve worked with Kent Pecoy, R.J. Chapdelaine, Dan Roulier, and some the other big builders around the area. They’ve used us for deconstruction, and we’re working throughout Southern New England and New York now, doing jobs,” he told BusinessWest.
“I think it’s something whose time has come. People shouldn’t just crunch up their house and throw it away. That’s catching on, and will be a big source of material for us over the next couple of years.”
EcoBuilding Bargains is reaping more than just new business, however. About one-third of the $3.1 million building rehabilitation is being funded by a capital campaign, while another third has come in the form of a low-cost mortgage from Westfield Bank; government funding covers a little less than one-third as well.
“The amount of support we’ve gotten to do this project is pretty phenomenal,” Majercak said. “We’ve always tried to operate this store as a self-sufficient nonprofit, so we can cover our costs through the revenue we generate.”
In addition to the capital-campaign support, “a number of businesses have contributed monetary resources or products or in-kind services — lawyers, architects, all kinds of vendors,” he noted. “All the gas pipe was donated from local pipe suppliers. People have been very kind and very supportive.
“When we knew we were going to expand,” he continued, “we chose purposely to stay in Springfield because this is our target market, and it’s also mission-consistent to fix up an older building — but also because we have such great support from the community, the government, and residents. It’s just a great place to do business.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

Nick Riley Builds His First House — in One Week

Nick Riley, president of N. Riley Construction, during the build week at Sirdeaner Walker’s home.

Nick Riley launched his construction company about five years ago, focusing on residential remodels but eager to move into total home builds. He’s not likely to forget the first house he finished from the ground up, because he — and a large crew of volunteer builders and tradespeople — managed to complete it in one week. Riley said the opportunity to tear down and rebuild a house for ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is one he’s glad he didn’t pass up — not only for the experience, but for the chance to impact the lives of a very deserving family.

Kate Riley said her husband had a few goals when he planned his career — “to have his own business, to have his name get big, and to build houses. This is his first house.”
She — along with several other Riley family members and dozens of area builders and tradespeople, all volunteering their time — stood on Springfield’s Northampton Avenue, absorbing what had happened in the first few days since Ty Pennington and his team of designers from ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition knocked on the door of Sirdeaner Walker and informed her she would have a new house by the following week.
“The Extreme Makeover producer contacted me about four weeks before we started the project,” said Riley, president of N. Riley Construction in Chicopee, noting that he was recommended by the Home Builders Assoc. of Western Mass. and other contractors. “I ended up meeting with them the day after. I sat down and spoke with them, and they told me the story of this family.
“That’s when I made my decision,” he continued. “Being able to do this for this family … you never get a chance like this, to be able to do a project like this. It’s not too often that you can say you were able to gather an entire community to help one family.”
Walker is no stranger to the spotlight, but it’s a light she never would have asked for, obviously. Her 11-year-old son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, took his own life in 2009 after being incessantly bullied by peers at the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield.
In the months following the tragedy, Walker became a strong advocate against school bullying, successfully pushing for anti-bullying legislation in Massachusetts, meeting with federal lawmakers and President Obama, and establishing a foundation in her son’s name that raises awareness of the bullying issue and scholarships for area students.

Nick Riley’s wife, Kate, and mother, Lisa, were among many family members pitching in with Extreme Makeover.

Her house, in the Upper Hill neighborhood close to Springfield College, was run-down and riddled with plumbing and electrical issues, according to ABC producers. She lives there with two daughters, a sister, her mother, and her grandmother.
“We started planning about four weeks before the build week,” Riley said. “I approached a couple of good friends of mine in the trades to help me. I also started planning right away as far as gathering materials, manpower, and tradespeople. The Extreme team sent in a couple of project managers to help us do that, but it was ultimately my responsibility to provide the help.
“I had, at the beginning, some very good responses. I had a lot of people who wanted to participate, but didn’t think they could at the time because of how everything has been” with the economy, he told BusinessWest. “So it was a little bit of both: I had people who were very positive about it, saying, ‘yes, we’ll do it,’ and on the other hand some who wanted to do it but couldn’t afford to at the time, or were just too busy.”
Riley’s glad he wasn’t too busy, though, calling the experience one of the most rewarding of his life.

From the Ground Up
Riley corrected his wife’s first-house assertion to a point, noting that he’s currently building a house in Chicopee, and his company, which he launched about five years ago, has done some major home renovations that were very close to whole-home jobs. But this month’s makeover was, indeed, the first house he has completed from the ground up.
The build week itself was every bit as long and intense as viewers of the show might imagine. “On Sunday, we knocked on the door and surprised the family, and on Monday we ripped the house down. On Tuesday we started the foundation,” Riley said.
By midweek, a newly framed house had gone up in its place, followed by repaving of the driveway, complete landscaping of the yard, and of course, all those personal touches the designers are known for. “On Sunday, they brought the furniture in and surprised the family with their new home.”
The days, not surprisingly, were long. “We had 12-hour shifts set up, but the nighttime shifts started to roll into the daytime shifts,” said Riley. “The demolition of the house went really well, and when we dug out the foundation, that went really well,” he recalled. “Framing went pretty well, too. We had framers there for 40 hours, then we started losing them, and it was a challenge to get people back there.”
Inclement weather, always a concern on these one-week builds, wasn’t a factor; temperatures were mild all week, with a little rain passing through on Wednesday, but nothing to slow down the progress, as the house was weathertight by that point. But the occasional unexpected challenge emerged during construction.
For example, “when we started to set the concrete walls, we noticed that we hit a little bit of water. That caused a bit of a problem; we had to set up a pump and pump out the water while we were setting these concrete walls.”
But any problems encountered during the build paled in comparison to the joy the Walker family felt at receiving so much community support. In addition to the army of volunteers and dozens of companies — in the construction trades, home supplies, marketing, and other fields — who lent their time and resources, Walker had more surprises coming at the reveal. Notably, UMass presented her with four-year scholarships — tuition, room, board, and fees at any of the four campuses — for each of her youngest children, now age 7 and 8.
Details about the home’s interior will have to wait until the show airs, at the request of ABC. But Riley said the designers came up with some special touches to match the work he and his crew did on the house itself.
“Seeing people come together to help other people in such a big way, giving up their days and money to help people they don’t even know, it was an amazing experience,” he told BusinessWest. “It just shows how good people are. And just seeing the faces of the family when they moved that bus — it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
He said he was also fortunate to meet many people from different businesses he might not otherwise have met, and the participation of his own family members was another personal highlight.
“I asked a couple people in my family to help me out with the planning process, and before I knew it, the whole family was helping out in some way,” particularly helping at the various support tents set up around the neighborhood. “That was rewarding.”
His wife agreed. “This is unbelievable,” Kate said that afternoon midway through the project. “It’s amazing to be able to help a family like this.”

Making a Name
If Riley’s goal was to make a name for his business, he’s well on his way. He started out in the construction business working for his uncle, Andrew Crane, president of A. Crane Construction in Chicopee.
“I ended up leaving because I wanted to start my own company, and things have been great the whole time,” Riley said. “I haven’t had one minute of downtime — it’s been amazing.”
That’s a striking account of success in what has been a decidedly downbeat atmosphere for builders, many of whom have struggled to keep employees busy during the past few years of recession and sluggish recovery. But Riley, most of whose work is residential, has focused largely on home remodels and renovation work, one of the few sectors of construction that has consistently shown some life.
“Right now, because of the recent disasters, we’ve done a lot of insurance repairs, from the ice damage from the winter to work from the tornadoes and the microburst.”
And he’s looking forward to plenty more work as the economy improves — with the experience of that one-week build under his toolbelt.
Still, “we don’t want to grow too big,” he said. “We want to stay a smaller company and keep it personal, make sure we continue to provide a quality product.
“I like the hands-on work of going into someone’s home and putting a smile on the face of the owners,” Riley continued. “There aren’t a lot of other jobs where you can do that, where you can go in make an impact by changing their homes.”
Or, in extreme cases, their lives.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com