Category Archives: Business News

By Ann Donnelly

The Conkling Center, which offers senior-directed programs and services for community members 55+, is preparing for its 125th anniversary celebrations in 2024. The organization started as The Glens Falls Home and was incorporated in 1899 to provide residential services for aging women. In 1999, the adult home closed. The Glens Falls Home partnered with The Eddy, the residential division of Northeast Health (currently the Continuing Care division of St. Peter’s Health Partners), and founded the Glen at Hiland Meadows in the Town of Queensbury. The Glens Falls Home relocated the remaining residents to lovely new quarters at the Terrace in the Glen complex. 

After the Glen at Hiland Meadows opened in the early 2000’s, The Glens Falls Home began operating and providing senior directed programs and services, including On-The-Go Transportation that started up on November 1, 2012. In 2014, the board decided to change the name to The Conkling Center in honor of Mary Conkling, who contri buted her family home for the original Glens Falls Home.

“Our mission is to enhance the quality of life of seniors in the community directly and indirectly by providing services, programs, and opportunities to meet their ever-changing needs,” says Executive Director Joan K. Tarantino.

By Ann Donnelly

2023 was an eventful year for the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council, more commonly known as LARAC, whose mission is to enrich the quality of life in Warren, Washington, and Northern Saratoga Counties by supporting arts and culture through promoting, developing, sponsoring, networking, coordinating, and providing arts activities and services. The organization undertook a revamp of its branding and the development of a more user-friendly website and had significant additions to its offerings.

In June 2023, LARAC held its 52nd annual Arts Festival, featuring local, regional, and national artists offering various products such as jewelry, home goods, food items, fine art, textiles, etc., and live entertainment by local musicians. The 2023 show included 165 artists, compared to the five to ten artists participating in the first festival in 1972. That year, Executive Director Phil Casabona says, “A group of people passionate about the community and understood the importance of art and the number of artists in the area founded the organization.” 

LARAC introduced a new arts festival for local artists under 40 in August 2023. According to Casabona, 

By Paul Post 

The area’s oldest, most well-known car wash company is suddenly facing stiff competition from a Georgia-based firm that’s entered the market as part of a campaign to double in size, with 500 locations in nearly two dozen states by the end of 2025.

Family-owned Hoffman Car Wash, founded in 1965, currently has 30 centers including a new one on Route 9 near Exit 17 in Moreau and plans to add more sites in Glens Falls, Halfmoon and Bennington, Vermont, this year.

Each new site costs about $7 million to develop including property purchase.

But Tidal Wave Auto Spa recently opened a new facility on Quaker Road, Queensbury, a short distance from a Hoffman Car Wash. And in July 2022 it launched a South Glens Falls site and plans to add another one on Route 9 in Queensbury, where Uno Pizzeria & Grill is currently located.

Founded in 1999 in Thomaston, Ga., Tidal Wave plans to add 19 new sites in New York state including five now under construction at Colonie Center, Poughkeepsie, New Hartford near Utica, Auburn and Niagara Falls.

By Paul Post

 Washington County has a great deal of untapped tourism potential that could boost the local economy with more comprehensive, strategic promotional planning.

 That’s what officials told local business and civic leaders during a presentation hosted by the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce at Sandy Hill Arts Center’s fifth-floor event space in Hudson Falls.

 “Tourism may look a little different for us, but it exists and it’s definitely impacting the county,” said Laura Oswald, county director of economic development, planning and tourism. But a recently-obtained grant will fund a separate, new full-time tourism director’s position that’s expected to be filled in the coming weeks.

 Washington County doesn’t have a world-class race track, performing arts center, theme park or popular summer resort town like Saratoga and Warren counties. There isn’t a single hotel and there are less than 100 motel units.

By Paul Post

 Co-owners Spencer and Sara Montgomery, and financial backers, have spent nearly $20 million on capital upgrades since purchasing West Mountain 10 years ago.

 In preparation for this winter they’ve added a $500,000 Winch Cat to the large fleet of grooming machines and covered base lodge floors with safe, clean carpeting.

 But the biggest investment is in personnel with a new food and beverage director, rental shop manager, snow sports person, full-time ski tuner and a larger, more skilled snowmaking crew.

 “It feels like we’re getting some really good professional people in here,” Spencer Montgomery said. “Hiring has been really tough the past three years. Now we’ve got a good overnight snowmaking crew. Really robust, hardworking guys. That makes all the difference because nights are when you get all your production. Someone always has to be watching the pumps, pressure and guns.”

 “Hiring and mild weather were very challenging last year,” he said. “We got through it and this year feels good. We’re looking forward to an awesome season.”

 The Queensbury resort plans a Dec. 16 opening to get all the kinks out and be ready for Christmas week.

The 37th annual Stewart’s Holiday Match Campaign kicked off on Thanksgiving Day and runs through Christmas Day at all shop locations. The program supports nonprofit organizations benefiting children. To date, the program has raised over $36 million for children’s charities.

Last year, customers donated over $1 million to the program, doubling to more than $2 million with the Stewart’s match. The funds were able to support 1,939 local children’s organizations across the 32 counties where Stewart’s Shops are located.

“Sharing is a central focus of everything we do at Stewart’s. Holiday Match takes those efforts to another level by supporting children in the communities that we serve,” said Stewart’s Shops Director of Corporate Philanthropy Jennifer Frame.

Local organizations benefiting children are encouraged to apply for funding online beginning Thanksgiving Day. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2024. All groups applying must be locally based, benefit children, and be a qualified charitable 501c3 organization. 

By Ann Donnelly

New York’s State University Board of Trustees has appointed Dr. Kelli Borgos-Hatin as SUNY Distinguished Professor. Dr. Borgos-Hatin has been a Business Professor at SUNY Adirondack for over 23 years, starting when the college was known as Adirondack Community College, and has taught and mentored hundreds of students during that time. While building the next generation of business leaders is a great passion, she is also an entrepreneur highly regarded entrepreneur. Throughout her career, Borgos-Hatin had also worked in event catering and saw frequent issues with staffing the bar, so in 2011, she founded Mixaritas, mobile bartending services, with Jenn Berry-Youngs, who had been a student in Borgos-Hatin’s Hospitality Management Classes. Since then, the business has seen great success, leading to another business opportunity for Borgos-Hatin. Many event guests asked to purchase the flavored simple syrups she uses in her cocktails. 

In 2019, Borgos-Hatin launched Mixa-Fusion, making syrups with pure cane sugar and natural ingredients with no added preservatives, powders, or extracts. In addition to the syrups, Mixa-Fusion makes and sells hot cocoa bombs in various flavors and scented hand sanitizer that they started producing when there was a significant demand early on during the pandemic.

Early in her career, Borgos-Hatin worked with two strong businesswomen from the region who she cites as role models: Maureen Monahan Chase of Monahan Chase Caterers and Catherine Fisher, who owned a Carvel Ice Cream franchise. Her parents were also significant influences: her mother, JoAnn Borgos, showed her how to manage a busy yet happy household successfully, and her father, Stephen Borgos, who was Professor of Business Emeritus at Adirondack Community College (SUNY Adirondack), working there from 1966-2001.

As a child, Borgos-Hatin would accompany her father to the school, sit in on classes, and help him in the office, so it was no surprise when she decided to attend and received her first degree there, an Associate of Science in Business, in 1992. She then went to Sienna College, earning a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and Management in 1994.

By Ann Donnely

Ryan Holderman, owner of The Gym in Aviation Mall in Queensbury, was always an athlete in high school and college. After college, in 2009, he moved to New York City, where he completed a program for personal trainers and worked as a trainer and manager in some large “corporate” gyms.

In 2014, Holderman decided to return to the Glens Falls area. “I came home and realized I wanted to open a gym,” he said. 

His first gym, in the Midtown Shopping Center in South Glens Falls, was 3,000 square feet. After three years, he expanded to the Queensbury Plaza in a space measuring 6,000 square feet and ran the business there, as much as was allowed, through the pandemic.

In July 2023, The Gym relocated to its current site in Aviation Mall in space that was formerly TJ Maxx. “It’s a larger space. The mall, for me, was a big space to take on. Four times the biggest space I had before, so now we have so many other fitness sectors,” Holderman said. 

In addition to the areas with equipment for training, there are areas for yoga, batting cages, indoor cycling, physical therapy, massage therapy, and more. 

There are five to seven coaches, including two to three cycling instructors, a physical therapist, and a yoga instructor.  People cannot just come in as an individual and work out on their own. The Gym provides private training, semi-private training, group training, and kids’ camps for 8-12 year olds. 

“We are a balls, bands, and bungees kind of place. I don’t believe in machines. Our big thing is biomechanics, studying your body and how it moves. If your body moves the same way, it won’t be like mine or somebody else’s,” Holderman noted.

Ninety-six percent of the members are women between 25 and 75 years old. They also work with people with special conditions, such as COPD, undergoing chemotherapy, and pre- and post-natal.

 “We hold a meet-and-greet with each prospective member to sit down and talk about injuries, nutrition, goals, what their workout history is like, and get to know them. From there, we do a movement assessment and teach them basic movement patterns like squats, lunges, sit-ups, etc., to see their fitness level,” Holderman explained. Clients then receive a free 30-minute workout.