Category Archives: Business News

By Paul Post

Athletes from across the country are converging on Gore Mountain this month, setting the stage for one of the world’s largest sports spectacles a year from now.

The Holeshot Cross Tour (held Feb. 5-11) and USASA Futures Tour ( held Feb. 11-18) give the nation’s top junior freestyle skiers and snowboarders a chance to earn points in their quest to race professionally.

“These are two types of events, ski cross and slope style, we’ll be hosting for next year’s World University Games as well as big air,” said Stephanie Backes, Gore Mountain marketing director. “It’s putting Gore on the map for this caliber of competition and exposing us to people from around the country who have never been here before. It definitely helps lodging and restaurant business.”

World University Games are surpassed in size only by the Olympics, with about 1,600 athletes from 50 nations expected for next year’s competition based in Lake Placid. But Gore will host all freestyle skiing and boarding events, further enhancing its already prominent role as an economic engine in Warren County’s winter tourism industry.

Gore hosted 217,000 guests last winter, up significantly from the 189,000 who visited in 2019/20. Backes attributed this to the COVID-19 pandemic that sparked a major rise in all types of outdoor activity as many other forms of entertainment weren’t available.

In addition, the pandemic gave people working from home more opportunities to take time off. Last year, Gore saw a huge rise in midweek, non-holiday period visits, which have leveled off a bit this winter, but are still higher than pre-COVID attendance.

Through Jan. 31, the state-owned center had welcomed 101,000 visitors this year, with more than two full months to go.

By Susan Elise Campbell

A new Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, a southern style chicken restaurant, opened in Halfmoon, the latest franchise to be launched by Liberty Restaurants Holdings of Albany LLC.

According to company president and CEO Laddi Singh, the Clifton Park area “has been one of our top markets since we opened our first franchised restaurant, a Burger King, in 2013.”

Singh and his brother Rana Kaknia have opened three franchises thus far in 2022, the most recent of which is the one located at 483 Route 146, Halfmoon.

“At least 10 more Popeyes restaurants will follow in the upstate New York and Connecticut markets this year,” said Singh. “We are always open to exploring new opportunities if they make sense.”

The Saratoga area will be part of that.

“We want everyone to be able to try us out without having to drive too far, so this is just the beginning for us in and around Saratoga County,” Singh said.

LRH currently owns and operates 26 Popeyes, six Burger Kings, and five Arby’s, Singh said. “Through investment in top-notch operations, we have been able to expand at a rapid pace.”

Many more franchises are in various stages of planning. Singh said the company has signed a large-scale development agreement in upstate New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania to build more than 30 restaurants over the next few years.

Sunrise Management & Consulting in Latham has grown its multifamily apartment portfolio with the purchase of Halfmoon Garden Apartments in Clifton Park and Canfield Apartments in Gansevoort. 

The sale was brokered by Dean and Ryan Taylor of Continuum Commercial Realty, and SEFCU financed the transaction. 

Sunrise will manage the communities.

“Halfmoon Garden Apartments and Canfield Apartments are valuable assets that fit nicely into our portfolio,” said Jesse Holland, president of Sunrise Management & Consulting. “We were impressed with the way the longtime owners cared for the properties and wish them well in their retirement. We look forward to getting to know the residents.”

The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College has reopened  and will host a series of upcoming tours that are free and open to the public.

Tang guide tours, Sundays at 2 p.m. during the spring semester through May 1, provide visitors with an overview of the museum and what’s on view. The tours are given by Tang Guides, Skidmore College students and visitor services associates who are part of a program that introduces them to the Tang and the museum world, trains them how to be gallery ambassadors and tour guides, provides guidance in how to talk about art, and gives them valuable experiences interacting with visitors.

Curator’s tours feature the organizing curator or curators providing in-depth information of an exhibition. They are set for:

Thursday, Feb. 17, noon: assistant director of curatorial affairs and Malloy curator Rachel Seligman; assistant professor of art history Nancy Thebault, and students from the Scribner Seminar; “Outsiders? Folk and Self-Taught Artists in the United States” give a tour of On Their Own Terms. 

Thursday, March 24, noon: associate curator Rebecca McNamara give a tour of Radical Fiber: Threads Connecting Art and Science, which includes the community-created crochet coral reef Saratoga Springs Satellite Reef.

Thursday, April 14, noon: Dayton director Ian Berry gives a tour of Opener 34: Ruby Sky Stiler—New Patterns.

SkillsUSA has awarded a grant to the SkillsUSA chapter at the F. Donald Myers Education Center in Saratoga Springs, thanks to its longtime partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement. 

SkillsUSA and Lowe’s have teamed up for 16 years to support career and technical education (CTE) classrooms across the nation. 

The new Lowe’s grants provide eligible SkillsUSA chapters with additional programming resources including tools and equipment and construction materials for students’ hands-on learning projects, officials said. The support can also be used for materials and supplies for local community service projects SkillsUSA chapters would like to conduct but need additional support to launch. 

Each eligible school applied for a grant up to $15,000. Schools are asked to focus on outcomes and the quantifiable impact data of their projects. The grants are intended for construction trades programs to prepare our future skilled workforce, as well as for lab improvements or community service. 

The grant obtained by the SkillsUSA chapter at the F. Donald Myers Education Center will be used to provide the HVAC lab with upgrades and state of the art industry equipment.

“This amazing opportunity through Lowe’s provides our SkillsUSA chapters with more resources to support CTE and hands-on learning. All SkillsUSA projects are student-led and center around the development of personal skills, workplace skills and technical skills grounded in academics through the SkillsUSA Framework, so every member has an opportunity for career success,” said SkillsUSA executive director Chelle Travis. “These grants remove financial barriers to excellence and ensure that SkillsUSA chapters have quality resources for the betterment of our CTE programs and projects.” 

By Paul Post

Only a week after opening, more than 75,000 tickets had already been sold to a major new winter attraction that officials hope can contrubute to transforming Lake George into true year-round tourist destination.

Visitors to Ice Castles—a 1.5-acre man-made sculpture with frozen 25-foot-high archways, tunnels and slides—are expected to spend more than $4 million for lodging, meals, fuel and similar services.

Located at Charles R. Wood Park’s Festival Commons, 17 West Brook Road, it coincides with this year’s 60th annual Lake George Winter Carnival, featuring a slate of fun activities each weekend in February.

“This is big, really big,” said long-time Mayor Robert Blais, who has worked  to promote winter tourism for many years. “All the businesses that have been open all these years, that have struggled through the winter and supported the Winter Carnival, I say thanks to them. Now you’re going to be rewarded. To the ones that don’t stay open and take advantage of it, I say, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing’.”

In addition to Utah, where Ice Castles is based, the company has similar attractions in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. This is its first time in upstate New York.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Saratoga Eagle Sales & Service is in the process of acquiring two companies that will expand its reach distributing beer, wine, soft drinks and water to an additional eight counties upstate, according to president and chief operating officer Jeff Vukelic. 

With roots stretching back to Buffalo in 1928 with parent company Try-It Distributing, what started as a beverage bottling business by the late Stephen Vukelic is now a multi-generational family company. With the most recent acquisitions the company will hold exclusive distribution rights to such brands as Budweiser, Rolling Rock and Michelob in a total of 21 counties in upstate New York. 

According to Vukelic, the new acquisitions are Northern Eagle Beverages Inc. out of Oneonta and Seneca Beverage Corp. of Elmira, both Anheuser-Busch distributors. Both will operate under the Saratoga Eagle name.

Saratoga Eagle has been in a growth-through-acquisition model since 2004-2005. This is the time frame when Try-It expanded into the Saratoga and Glens Falls areas with a new distribution hub subsidiary out of Saratoga Springs and grandson Jeff Vukelic took on the role of COO.

“Typically we are purchasing the rights to distribute beverages in the territories of the companies we acquire,” said Vukelic. “Occasionally we acquire a brick and mortar facility, but it is more typical to lease the space where the trucks are loaded for delivery to customers.”

The company will take on 60 stakeholders, which is what the company calls their employees, who have jobs in warehousing, delivery, sales and administration. Total staff will be around 260 once the transactions are finalized and the new companies absorbed.

By Sen. Jim Tedisco

There’s a creature from the deep that’s just waiting to strike our towns and cities.

New York’s aging water and sewer infrastructure some dating back to the Civil War is like a lurking monster which will not go away if we just closed our eyes and wished it away. 

On the contrary, these trolls of the sub-level can catastrophically attack at any time the safety of our drinking water, sewer and gas lines and the ability of taxpayers to afford repairs. 

Recently, a 100-plus-year-old water main broke in Gloversville, paralyzing half the city with no water. We’ve seen similar water main and sewer breaks recently in Amsterdam, Niskayuna, Saratoga Springs and other localities. 

New York has a great CHIPS (Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program) that provides a formula-based annual funding source for all municipalities to maintain and repair local roads and bridges.  However, we will only continue to put good money after bad if we keep filling potholes and repaving roads while the sublevel infrastructure that’s underneath continues to deteriorate and collapse with the weight of newly minted roads and bridges. 

After talking with Clifton Park Supervisor Phil Barrett and other local leaders, I authored and introduced legislation, Senate Bill S.3968A, to create the New York State Safe Water infrastructure Action Program (S.W.A.P.) to repair and maintain vital local drinking water, sewer, storm water management, gas line and water tower infrastructure to protect lives and save tax dollars by avoiding costly repairs when systems break.