Biz Briefs: Fall Foliage Parade Gets $3,000 Boost From MountainOne

Parade help: Kelli Kozak, assistant vice president and community engagement officer for MountainOne, gave Northern Berkshire Fall Foliage Parade director Danielle Thomas of 1Berkshire a check for $3,000 in support of the annual parade. The presentation was made at a 1Berkshire and North Adams Chamber of Commerce event at Community Health Programs in North Adams.

The Fall Foliage Parade is in its 62nd year in 2017. This year the theme is "Magic in the Berkshires," inspired by everything magical going on in the Berkshires from Harry Potter on Mount Greylock to Fairies in Adams, and so much more. The parade kicks off at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1.

 

Good job: Berkshire-based advertising agency Winstanley Partners was honored this month with two ADDY Awards from the American Advertising Federation (AAF), as part of the Albany AdClub's regional competition. The agency took home a silver ADDY for its annual holiday mailer, which this year urged recipients to "Make America Grate Again" and included a tree-shaped cheese grater. A new logo design for Dadanco, a leading manufacturer in the HVAC industry based in Westfield, Mass., also earned a silver ADDY – both projects were completed in 2016.

Awards were presented at Proctors GE Theatre in Schenectady, N.Y. All gold and silver-winning entries are eligible to move on to the national level of competition, sponsored by the AAF. Winstanley Partners, a full-service marketing firm best known for its award-winning work in consumer sporting goods, technology, and creative B2B solutions, celebrated its 30th year in business in the Berkshires in 2016.

While often critical of the bad behavior that plagued much of Wall Street leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, Cohan says he is "alarmed by the vitriol directed at the bankers, traders, and executives who keep the wheels of our economy turning." As an ex-banker, he is considered an expert on the sector's inner workings, and has used this insight to write his books. According to Cohan, "Why Wall Street Matters" "is a timely and trenchant reminder of the good these institutions do…and the dire consequences for us all if the essential role they play in making our lives better is carelessly curtailed."

Cohan is a former senior Wall Street mergers and acquisitions investment banker, working for 17 years at Lazard Freres & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase. He is a New York Times bestselling author of three non-fiction books about Wall Street, "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World," "House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street" and "The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co." He is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has a weekly opinion column for BloombergView. He also writes for The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, ArtNews, The Irish Times, The Washington Post and The New York Times Magazine.

Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. This lecture is sponsored by the Center for Development Economics and the Department of Economics.

Airport Commission Drama Surfaces at North Adams Council Meeting

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:39PM / Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Ashley Shade takes the president's seat after being sworn in again as vice president. Bryan Sapienza, who was attending remotely, was re-elected president. 

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The controversies stewing at the Airport Commission bubbled over to City Council on Tuesday night with a councilor demanding an investigation and the subject of a failed lease agreement claiming conflicts of interest and mayoral tampering.

 

The spark was an agenda item appointing Doug Herrick of Williamstown to fill the term of one of two commissioners who resigned after a vote to enter into a lease agreement with airport user Michael Milazzo and Brian Doyle for the Northeast Hangar back in October. That vote was rescinded in December after a letter from Mayor Jennifer Macksey called the process into question, particularly noting the recommendation by a subcommittee to reject Milazzo's proposal and concerns from the inspector general's office.  

 

Milazzo and Doyle are involved in civil lawsuits around the hangar going back to 2019 as both a plaintiffs and defendents with former hangar owners and Milazzo is accused of damaging the structure, to the point it was taken over by the city and restored at a cost of more than $750,000. 

 

City Councilor Peter Breen repeatedly called for an investigation into the commissioners' resignations, pointing to the reasons given by Michael McCarron in his email in November. Herrick would fill his term. 

 

"It says that it is the unexpired term of Mike McCarron, my understanding, after reading his email, that he said that he's resigning because the city official is telling him how to vote," he said. "I think we should send this to committee to investigate why we would have a commissioner be forced to make a vote."

 

Breen, the council's liaison to the commission, also referred to an email by Airport Manager Bruce Goff describing the situation and raised concerns about federal and state laws being broken. 

 

"There are two investigations going on now. And then there is a third one, because it's $750,000 worth of grant money from the federal government," he said.