With every New Year, the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce thanks the outgoing volunteer Chair of the Board for their service to our Chamber and the community. We then simultaneously recognize and celebrate the new volunteer Chair who takes on this role. So today, I want to thank Kevin Hedley, of Hedley and Company, for his extraordinary leadership in 2020. I also want to recognize Skip Carlson, of the Saratoga Casino Hotel, who is now the Chair of the Chamber’s Board, a leadership role that will span all of 2021.

I’d like to think that Skip Carlson’s year will be simpler than Kevin Hedley’s. I suspect we all hope that 2021 will be better than 2020. I, for one, believe that 2020 might have been the Chamber’s finest hour. When faced with a pandemic, we moved immediately to help everyone ­— members and non-member. We joined forces with Discover Saratoga, the DBA, Prosperity Partnership and the City Center to help everyone. We relentlessly communicated via email and social media to share the most important local information we had about loans, reopening protocols, special promotions, health metrics, and how everyone could help save our locals.

Looking forward, Skip Carlson asked the 27 volunteers who will serve on the Chamber’s Board of Directors to take a brief survey. We asked these leaders that represent small and large businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions, to rate what we had done in 2020 and to suggest what new initiatives should be added for this year. From this survey, we developed this list of five goals to help guide our work this year:

1. Get as many Saratoga County residents vaccinated as possible. This may seems like a strange goal for a predominantly business focused organization. The reality, however, is that until we achieve some form of herd immunity that many of our local businesses will remain closed or substantially restricted. We started work right after New Year’s on this goal. First, we were a visible and vocal advocate for local vaccination sites across Saratoga County and for a mass vaccination site at the Saratoga Springs City Center. To get people vaccinated, we need local sites and a place in Saratoga where we can do them in bulk. Second, we will soon announce a new partnership to help people celebrate getting the vaccination shot and hopefully inspiring others to follow their lead.

2. Relentless communication to share timely, locally focused, useful information to those in our email database and those who follow us on social media. Last year under Kevin Hedley’s leadership, there were times where we sent an email every day to everyone in our database. Nearly 500,000 people opened one or more of our emails in 2020. The number of emails opened — which means they were read — was ten times higher than in 2019. You know an email is valuable if the email open rate is high. Our open rate skyrocketed in 2020.

3. Promote. Promote Promote. We’re going to continue to promote locally all businesses and nonprofits in Saratoga County as long as they need help. We’re going to expand our promotion of all of the Villages, Towns, and Cities across Saratoga County and beyond. We’ll also ready to promote Saratoga County as a great place to visit, to live, to work as well as to start, grow or expand your business.

4. SAVE OUR LOCALS – This campaign has worked. Look us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. We’re promoting locally owned businesses via social media every day. In any given week on Facebook alone, we’re doing 75 to 100 individual posts. We’re boosting many of them to expand the reach to even more prospective customers or clients. Local businesses that need more than just promotion can also access free small business counseling via SCORE. You can also call or email the Chamber to share whatever it is you need or to ask any question. We’ll do our best to respond with the best information or ideas we have.

5. Personal, impactful outreach. In 2020, we delivered recovery kits filled with PPE as businesses reopened. We distributed posters this past year that said “Stronger Together” and pumpkins etched with our Save Our Locals logo. We continue to distribute posters reminding people to “Mask Up.” As employees at local businesses and nonprofits get vaccinated, we will be distributing posters that will say #IGotTheShot. We hope you will see these everywhere. It will be a sign that we are all stronger together and that healthier more prosperous days are ahead of us.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — After 42 years of helping his patients recover from aches and pains, physical therapist Anthony DeMatteo has retired from the practice he founded – Saratoga Physical Therapy Associates – to focus on family and fun. 

DeMatteo leaves the practice in the hands of his long-time partners, Michael Cudahy, PT, in Saratoga Springs, and Matthew O’Neil, PT, in Malta, as well as other clinicians and staff associated with SPTA who work in both locations. 

DeMatteo established the first private PT practice outside the hospital in Saratoga and has been such an icon in the field that people would refer to “going to Tony” as a synonym for “going to PT.” 

A city of Saratoga Springs native who graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1974, DeMatteo, who will be 65 years old this year, played many sports as a student. He learned about PT the hard way, as a young patient, after serious baseball and football injuries. “I enjoyed helping people, I enjoyed sports, and I was thinking about a career, so I knew from the time I was in high school that I wanted to be a physical therapist,” he recalls, citing the time he broke his hip playing baseball, which put him in the hospital for several weeks, as a turning point.

For now, he’s going to get vaccinated and continue to work per diem for SPTA, and, in fact, has found a reason to go into the office every day since his official retirement, the last day of 2020. “I can’t wait to get back to life like it was pre-pandemic,” he says. “Meanwhile, I suggest that people don’t let their guard down, find safe ways to stay busy, and stay strong.” 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Stewart’s Shops have acquired the assets of Red-Kap, which include eight convenience stores, four car washes and their fuel distribution to more than 75 dealers.

Stewart’s Shops will maintain the branding of the Mobil, Citgo, and Sunoco stations and will convert two of the Red-Kap locations into traditional Stewart’s Shops. The remaining six locations will become ‘Stewart’s Express’ shops. These smaller shops will have limited product offerings and will not serve hand-scooped ice cream. 

 “Stewart’s Shops has always respected and admired the integrity of the family-owned Red-Kap organization. This is primarily a fuel distribution transaction, and we look forward to extending our support to the distributor and dealer network,” Stewart’s Shops president Gary Dake said in a statement.

The eight convenience stores are located in Albany, Baldwinsville, Berne, Hudson, Rensselaer, Saratoga Springs, Castleton, and Loudonville and are already undergoing conversions into Stewart’s Shops and ‘Stewart’s Express’ locations and will be completed in 2021. 

Founded in 1945, Stewart’s Shops is an employee and family-owned convenience store chain based in Saratoga Springs, with over 345 Stewart’s Shops located in 31 counties across upstate New York and southern Vermont. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS ­­— The Downtowner, a reimagined mid-century motor lodge located on Broadway is closed for the winter to undergo extensive exterior renovations and an interior refresh. 

Saratoga-based architecture and design company, Phinney Design Group, will lead the $1.5 million exterior renovation project while Massachusetts-based creative studio Elder & Ash enhances the interiors. 

Since reopening after a redesign in 2018, The Downtowner has been operated by Lark Hotels, a hotel brand and operating company with properties on both the East and West Coasts. The Downtowner anticipates reopening in 2021.

 “In our view, there’s no better location, from which to experience all that Saratoga Springs has to offer than the corner of Broadway and Division streets, which is essentially the 50-yard line of Broadway,” said Lark Hotels CEO, Peter Twachtman, in a statement.  “We look forward to revealing the hotel’s new look, and reopening our doors to locals and visitors in the spring.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Dr. Zachary Criswell, a fellowship-trained foot and ankle surgeon, has joined Saratoga Hospital Medical Group – Surgical Podiatry.

 Criswell comes to Saratoga Hospital from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where he was a clinical instructor in the Department of Medicine. He also was an attending physician at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center, a Rutgers clinical affiliate in Paramus, NJ.

Criswell earned his Doctor of Podiatric Medicine degree from Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine in Pennsylvania and completed an internship and residency at University Hospital in New Jersey. He went on to complete a surgical fellowship, with an emphasis on lower extremity sports medicine and arthroscopy, at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California. Criswell is board certified by the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. He sees patients at Saratoga Hospital Medical Offices – Wilton Mall. 

Last week, Saratoga Hospital was designated a Center of Excellence for Antimicrobial Stewardship, in recognition of its best practices in prescribing antimicrobials and fighting drug resistance. It is the first in the region—and one of 109 organizations nationwide—to earn this designation from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. 

Saratoga Hospital Saratoga Hospital recently completed a $5 million expansion of its central sterile processing department to accommodate significant growth in complex surgical procedures at the hospital and its Saratoga Surgery Center in Wilton.

The renovations increased the central sterile processing space by about 80% and added the latest disinfection and sterilization equipment.

BALLSTON SPA ­— Nourish Designs, an appropriately named small business which calls Ballston Spa its home, creates apparel and gift items featuring original hand-drawn mandala designs by Betsy Phelps Seplowitz.  Every purchase made through Nourish provides meals for kids through the Regional Food Bank of Northeast New York. 

Last fall, Nourish designed custom mandalas featuring Scotty paws and Scotty dogs – the school mascot – for each of the elementary schools in the Ballston Spa Central School District.  Nourish designed spirit-wear collections for each of the four schools in a partnering with a local silk-screening business. 

“I was a stay-at-home mom for about 10 years, figuring what my next move would be and it just kind of happened. I started drawing and doodling, started drawing mandalas. People were responding positively to them and thought I should do something positive with this,” says Seplowitz who grew up in Hoosick and eventually made her way to Ballston Spa. 

“I’ve always been fascinated with patterns in nature. They’re all around us and a mandala, a circle with repetitive patterns, just spoke to me as my form of meditation,” she says. 

A few years ago, Seplowitz had been asked to help with a new Backpack Program at her kids’ elementary school. Seplowitz has two children who are in the Ballston Spa School District.  “I had no idea what it was,” she says. She learned the program helped kids who don’t have reliable access to food over the weekends. 

“There is a program organized by the Food Bank that supplies non-perishable, easy to make food which can be discreetly distributed in backpacks to children so they aren’t without food over the weekend.  The school just needed some volunteers to go down to the foodbank and pick up the food. I’ve been doing it ever since,” she says. 

Nourish works with the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York and provides funding specifically to programs which serve children.  One such program is the BackPack Program which provides weekly food to school-aged children who otherwise may not have sufficient access to nourishing meals.

Her website – nourishdesigns.com – features dozens of wearable products for sale featuring the mandala design, and each purchase provides nourishing meals to kids in need. The meals provided to date number more than 25,000, Seplowitz says. 

For more information on how these mandalas are feeding kids, or to see the current line of available products in the online store, visit www.nourishdesigns.com

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga’s long-standing popular Parting Glass pub will live to fight another day, after receiving a much-needed financial boost from Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports. Portnoy launched an online fundraising drive to assist small business owners in need of help due to the impacts of COVID. The fund has thus far raised more than $23 million and has supported more than 120 businesses. 

“Safe to say that 2021 has not gotten off to the best start. That’s why a phone call today from Joan Desadora, owner of the Parting Glass Pub, made my day and my year so far,” Saratoga County Chamber President Todd Shimkus reported in a social media posting. “Thanks to David Portnoy – El Presidente with Barstool Sports this local business will be saved. I smiled during our phone conversation. Joan was so excited. She wants everyone to be hopeful. There are people out there who want to help. I’m still smiling now. She was so happy. We are so happy. The Parting Glass is an institution in Saratoga Springs.”

The Parting Glass, which is located on Lake Avenue,  was formerly known as the “Royal Spring Tavern,” and first opened a century ago as a full bar that served Italian food and thin crust pizza – a local favorite. In 1981, the property was purchased by Joan Desadora and family and established as The Parting Glass — Saratoga’s Original Irish Pub and Restaurant, expanding its space into the back room where live music takes the stage. 

According to NewsChannel 13, the Parting Glass’ 81-year-old owner Joan Desadora was designing “we’re closing” signs when she got the call from Barstool founder Dave Portnoy that they’ve committed about $200,000 to help the restaurant stay in business through the pandemic.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Advertising, marketing, social media channels, public relations, press releases, web design…it never ends. Media options are changing as rapidly as the technology that feeds them and keeping up with it is a full-time job. Unfortunately hiring a dedicated employee just isn’t in most budgets, especially during a global pandemic.

A new Saratoga focused marketing agency aims to help business owners cut through the clutter and reach their
potential customers.

Spa City Digital launched on January 1 with a mission of delivering robust digital marketing solutions to small businesses in what they call “Value Add Marketing.” Owners Chad Beatty and Michael Nelson partnered up after working together on several local projects.

“Mike had the vision and digital background, and I had the established company (Saratoga Publishing) and assets. It was really a no-brainer” said Chad Beatty. “By combining Spa City Digital under the same roof as Saratoga TODAY, Simply Saratoga magazine, Saratoga Bride and all our affiliated websites, we have a one-stop shop for customers.”

Spa City Digital will focus on digital marketing which includes social media management, video production & editing, website design & hosting as well as overall media planning.

According to Co-owner Mike Nelson “What is really going to set us apart from other agencies is our ability to add value to their marketing efforts. Agencies, especially for small and mid-size businesses cannot just offer social media or Google ads management anymore. We (Agencies) need to be able to offer affordable marketing packages that include everything the business needs from strategy, to content creation, to deployment. Spa City Digital is doing just that and adding digital ad space on local websites to those packages as well.”

It’s no secret that the pandemic changed everything. The last year has forced everyone to take a hard look at their business model and find ways to adjust to a new business environment. 

“We decided the best way for us to move forward was by giving our clients as much value as we possibly could. We have built digital properties with content that locals as well as tourists will want to consume. We have added free and discounted add packages to our already aggressively priced marketing services. We are even going to be offering some freemium services to help local organizations and businesses get the marketing help they need.” Nelson added.

Freemium, a term often used to describe entry level services, is something the small business community certainly can use in the wake of the pandemic. Mr. Nelson said they will make an announcement soon for some of those freemium offerings but he invites anyone looking for help to reach out to them for a free strategy consultation.

To contact or learn more about Spa City Digital please visit: SpaCityDigital.com

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga WarHorse, a not-for-profit organization which uses retired thoroughbred racehorses to work with service members and veterans who are suffering after experiencing trauma while in the military, announced the appointment of veteran and thoroughbred advocate Tina Mott to its Board of Directors.

A longtime supporter and volunteer with Saratoga WarHorse, Mott will work with the organization to further its mission of promoting the physical, mental and emotional health of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress by providing a healing, equine assisted experience exclusively using retired thoroughbreds. 

Mott has more than 35 years of experience in the thoroughbred industry and is the wife of Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott of Mott Thoroughbred Stables. 

Since its inception in 2013, Saratoga WarHorse has helped over 1,300 military veterans and service members move past their trauma by partnering them with retired thoroughbred racehorses and providing a new treatment approach vastly different than equine therapy or any existing treatments. 

Donations to Saratoga WarHorse can be made online at SaratogaWarHorse.org/donate. Saratoga WarHorse is 100 percent funded by private charitable contribution. All donations are 100% tax-deductible.

SARATOGA COUNTY — Wellspring, the domestic violence and sexual assault services resource for Saratoga County residents, welcomes Cerri Banks and Margaret Smith Cassier to their board of directors. 

Cerri Banks is the dean of students and vice president for student affairs at Skidmore College. She received her Ph.D. in cultural foundations of education and a certificate of advanced women’s studies from Syracuse University. She specializes in sociology of education, cultural studies, multicultural education, and qualitative research. 

Banks has an extensive background in higher education and has won an array of honors, awards and scholarships over the course of her career. Her book, Black Women Undergraduates Cultural Capital and College Success, documents the academic and social success of black women undergraduates as they negotiate dominant education and social discourses about their schooling lives. 

Margaret Smith Cassier is the president and owner of Airosmith Development, Inc., a certified woman-owned-business founded in 2004 that specializes in site acquisition and engineering for commercial wireless providers, broadband companies, utility and government entities. In 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, Airosmith Development was awarded the designation as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the United States. 

Smith Cassier is a strong supporter of organizations that advocate for the advancement of women and children. She began her career as an adult educator, which included the development and facilitation of GED and workforce development educational programs. She experienced firsthand the incredible benefits organizations such as Wellspring offer the local community. 

Wellspring’s executive board of directors consists of President Erica Fuller, Vice President Karen Sosler, Treasurer John Pecora and Secretary David Cumming. Additional board members include Jake Behuniak, Stephanie Collins, Andi Dolinsky, Giovanna D’Orazio, Dean Kolligian, Tom Meaney, Kevin Ronayne, Margaret Roohan and Linda Toohey. 

Wellspring’s mission is to support survivors and engage the community to end relationship and sexual abuse. Each year, Wellspring’s crisis intervention and survivor services support more than 1,000 clients—providing safe housing to adults and children either fleeing or homeless because of domestic violence, as well as comprehensive support in the form of counseling, legal advocacy, and case management. Wellspring staff provides prevention and education programs to school-aged youth, as well as training and education programs for parents, faith-based congregations and professional organizations. 

For more information, visit www.wellspringcares.org, call 518-583-0280, or reach their hotline at 518-584-8188.