Category Archives: Business News

By Rod Bacon

Saratoga County is poised to be the home of a full service medical facility.

Plans call for the Saratoga Regional Health Center to have a soft opening in July. 

Spearheaded by Rich Paulsen, founder of Albany-based Paulsen Development, and his sons, Matthew and Ryan, the two-phase project will consolidate a wide range of medical specialities in a single location.

According to spokesman Dr. Lenny Goldstock, an orthopedic surgeon at OrthoNY, Phase I, located at 612 Maple Avenue in Wilton, will house a branch of his practice as well as those of EyesNY, Albany ENT & Allergy Services, Saratoga Schenectady Gastroenterology Associates, and St. Peter’s Hospital.

“I’ve been partners with Rich for twenty years doing medical development,” said Dr. Goldstock. “He has a history of sharing in the success of his projects by offering tenants ownership to develop ancillary revenue to the physician groups, and that’s part of the appeal of this project.”

He noted that Paulsen Development has been involved in nearly all of OrthoNY’s buildings in Albany, Schenectady, Wilton and hopefully Glens Falls.

By Paul Post

Local government and civic officials took part in a recent event at Saratoga Springs City Hall to welcome upstate New York’s fastest-growing internet provider to the city.

St. Lawrence County-based SLICFiber already serves Geyser Crest and expects to have full coverage in the Spa City within a year.

“We’re not a new company, we’re just new to your neighborhood,” SLICFiber CEO Kevin Lynch said.

Fiber optics is considered vital to future growth because it has almost unlimited capacity and much greater speed. A key element of modern economic development strategy involves attracting highly talented, skilled people who can work wherever and whenever they want to, but need to be sure they are connected to the rest of the world.

“Fast and reliable electronic communication in the 21st century is essential to economic development,” said Greg Connors, Saratoga Economic Development Corporation president and CEO. “It is among the top questions asked by investors contemplating their next capital investment when considering Saratoga County. SLIC’s expansion in the City of Saratoga Springs with plans to expand into Saratoga County is considered a ‘next generation’ fiber. It will replace legacy technology, provide pricing stability for its users and create full-time job opportunities.”

The 2026 Saratoga Showcase of Homes Committee has announced this year’s dates and list of builders as of this date. Celebrating 30 years of exceptional homes, the annual tradition will be presented over four fall days, Oct. 3-4 and Oct. 10-11. The lineup will include some of the region’s finest builders for the area’s premier new-home tour event.

The award-winning builders committed to this year’s event so far are Amedore Homes, Barbera Homes, Belmonte Builders, Kodiak Construction, Kohler Homes, Malta Development, Spa City Builders, Trojanski Builders, Urvalek Builders and Witt Construction, with a few more to come.

Last year, $66,000 was raised, and over the past 29 years, the community event has contributed nearly $1.7 million to two local charities. Proceeds from the Showcase of Homes benefit Rebuilding Together Saratoga County, www.rtsaratoga.org, and Habitat for Humanity of Northern Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties, www.glensfallshabitat.org. For more details on the 2026 Saratoga Showcase of Homes event, visit www.saratogashowcaseofhomes.com. Follow the event on Facebook and Instagram for updates.

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The Manufacturing Institute, the workforce development and education affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, honored two GlobalFoundries leaders at its annual STEP Ahead Awards.

Dr. Isabelle Ferain, vice president of product development engineering, based in Malta, New York, was recognized as a 2026 Champion. Kylee Coffey, senior director of integration, yield and controls engineering, based in Burlington, Vermont, was recognized as a 2026 Honoree.

The STEP Ahead Awards recognize leaders in manufacturing who are driving impact from the shop floor to the C-suite.

The Champion category recognizes individuals who support others by fostering supportive cultures, opening doors and modeling leadership. GlobalFoundries said Ferain, the global executive sponsor of the company’s GlobalWomen employee resource group, supported growth and engagement across a network of more than 2,100 employees and expanded the group to eight chapters worldwide. The company said she helped launch a six-month group mentoring program with its Inclusion & Engagement team and worked with human resources to reform the company’s technical career ladder promotion process to improve transparency and standardization.

By Carol Ann Conover

Joyce Locks said a bad hair day at the racetrack helped launch Hatsational Haberdashery in Saratoga Springs.

Locks was in Florida watching her horse race at Gulfstream Park when she realized she had forgotten her hat and could not find a store that sold one. Back home, she said, she found the same gap in Saratoga Springs.

“I started this business because I was having a bad hair day in Florida and I was at a horse race and I couldn’t find a hat anywhere,” Locks said. “And I came home and realized there were no hat stores. So that’s what started this. And now I just make people happy.”

Locks founded Hatsational Haberdashery in 2007 as a home-based business, hosting hat salons and pop-up events before earning an invitation from the New York Racing Association to sell at Saratoga Race Course. In 2013, she opened her first brick-and-mortar storefront on Broadway. The business now operates at 506 Broadway and keeps a seasonal presence on Artist Row at the racetrack.

Hatsational later expanded to three Broadway locations, including separate men’s and women’s shops. During the pandemic, Locks reduced the footprint and consolidated operations.

Matt Jones, senior partner at Jones Steves Grassi LLP, has received the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce’s 2026 Joseph Dalton Community Service Award.

Jones was honored May 7 during the chamber’s Annual Chamber Celebration Night at The 1863 Club at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs.

“Volunteerism is such a huge part of the role of the Chamber of Commerce and making things happen here in Saratoga Springs and Saratoga County,” Jones said during his acceptance remarks.

The award, created by unanimous vote of the chamber’s board of directors in 2017, recognizes an individual who has been faithful and loyal to the Saratoga County community for more than 25 years.

Jones focuses his law practice on land use and development matters in Saratoga County, representing clients involved in major development projects. Over nearly five decades of practice, he has represented GlobalFoundries, Saratoga Hospital, Skidmore College, Regeneron and others.

Pitney Meadows Community Farm has received a three-year grant from The Hortense and Louis Rubin Community Health Fund of The Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region to expand its Food as Medicine: Clinical program with Saratoga Community Health Center.

The partners plan to scale the Nutrition Rx program and further integrate locally grown produce into patient care. The collaboration is entering its seventh year.

Over the next three years, the program is expected to grow from 20 to 40 to 80 participants per year across Saratoga Community Health Center and the Saratoga Backstretch Clinic.

Patients receive weekly prescription produce boxes during a six-month growing season, nutrition education in a group setting and ongoing support. Participants complete pre- and post-program assessments to track changes in food access, health outcomes and behavior.

“This is a turning point for how healthcare shows up for people in our community,” said Brooke McConnell, Executive Director of Pitney Meadows Community Farm. “Over the past seven years, our partnership with Dr. Rodriguez and CHC has proven that when you connect people to fresh, nourishing, local food, health outcomes change. Now, we have the opportunity to scale that work… embedding food not as a supplement, but as a fundamental part of care and overall wellness.

By Rod Bacon

Empire State University was founded with the mission of providing adult student-centered education. 

As New York State’s only online public university, it has graduated 105,000 alumni since it was established as a college in 1971. Currently, there are 18,500 students enrolled from all 50 states. The youngest graduate is 19 and the oldest is 83. The school is growing at 10 percent per year.

According to President Lisa Vollendorf, Ph.D., there are significant challenges facing education today that are addressed by the school. She said there is a lot of questioning around whether there is true value to a college degree. 

“There is a whole generation who have accumulated a lot of debt going to college and are having a difficult time paying down that debt,” she said. 

In addition, there are about 42 million Americans with some college but no credential, meaning they took some college at some point but never graduated. 

“Those two things together have created real challenges in the eyes of the public and policy makers around the true value of college and what the investment should be in college on the part of taxpayers,” she said.

Dr. Vollendorf emphasized that these challenges were not created by Empire State or institutions like it. Undergraduate tuition is less than $7,500 and credit is awarded for prior learning.

“Empire has a long tradition of being committed to full transferability,” she said. “One of the things that happens in education is people attend one college and transfer to another but a lot of the time more than forty percent of credits aren’t transferable. We award up to ninety-three transfer credits.” 

By Carol Ann Conover

Veronica Agama did not arrive in the Capital Region with investors, a business plan or a commercial lease. She arrived with a laundry cart loaded with empanadas, a portable frying pan and a customer base she had built one weekend at a time in a Queens park during the height of the pandemic. Four years later, her company, Viva Empanadas, operates two locations in the Albany area and is preparing to open a third in Saratoga Springs at 26 Congress St., inside Congress Plaza.

Agama, who immigrated to New York City from Ecuador at 18 and spent more than a decade working in restaurant kitchens — from an Argentine steakhouse in Queens to fine dining near Bryant Park in Manhattan — launched Viva Empanadas when COVID-19 shuttered the restaurant industry and left her without income and with two young sons to support. What began as a way to generate extra cash evolved, within a few years, into a multilocation restaurant business that has earned support from city officials and economic development organizations.

“Viva Empanadas is my dream,” Agama said at her Albany grand opening in August 2024. “It was years in the making. I wanted to bring all Latin flavors together under one beautiful roof with an offering that everybody can experience no matter the type of diet restrictions, the circumstance, the budget.”

The brand’s growth has been methodical. Agama first established herself at the Galleria 7 Market in Latham, where she built a following for her empanadas — each variety distinguished not only by its filling but by its dough. A corn-crusted Colombian-style empanada, a cassava-dough version that is both gluten-free and vegan, a plantain-crust offering layered with cheese: The menu reflects Agama’s years of working alongside cooks from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Peru and Ecuador, and her conviction that Latin cuisine, in its full range, deserves a dedicated showcase.