YORKVILLE — AX Enterprize, LLC — a Yorkville company specializing in hardware, software and systems engineering, and light electro-mechanical manufacturing — was recently honored with a 2018 Small Business Excellence Award.

The business was recognized during National Small Business Week at the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) 20th Annual Small Business Excellence Awards luncheon in Syracuse on May 2. Small businesses are selected for the Excellence Awards based on their company’s longevity, innovation, sales growth, increased employment, ability to overcome adversity, or community contributions, according to an SBA news release.

From starting as a two-person operation in 2011, AX Enterprize has grown to include several divisions with 26 employees. 

AX Enterprize owners Mary Carol Chruscicki and Patricia Baskinger are recognized as “national leaders in cyber and information technology research,” the SBA said in its release. The company conducts research and development of advanced communications, signal processing, networking and information technology, along with cybersecurity research and development for the U.S. Armed Forces and commercial clients. As the lead developer and maintainer of the New York unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) test site in Rome, AX Enterprize works closely with Griffiss International Airport and the NUAIR Alliance to support NASA. 

“We are pleased the SBA has recognized AX Enterprize for their extraordinary efforts in business, as well as contributions to the community,” Mohawk Valley SBDC Director Roxanne Mutchler said in the release. “Their hard work and dedication helped them achieve success and accomplish their goals, while at the same time making a positive impact in our region.”

SYRACUSE — Central New York’s largest cable-television provider has returned local anchors to its news channel.

Spectrum, the company created when Charter Communications purchased Time Warner Cable in 2016, is reversing a move made by Time Warner in 2005. Then, Time Warner moved anchoring operations to its station in Albany. (At the same time, it moved its meteorologists to Syracuse.)

From that point, local news broadcasts were anchored from Albany with reporters based in Central New York doing the newsgathering.

“It was done to make all our stations more efficient,” says Ron Lombard, news director for Spectrum Networks in Central New York, Northern New York, and the Southern Tier. “It’s a very efficient model.”

However, by 2017, Lombard and his fellow news directors in Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany proposed bringing back a locally anchored news show. The idea got the OK from Spectrum management and starting in March 2017, Iris St. Meran began anchoring a 4:30 newscast from Spectrum’s facility on Erie Boulevard East in Syracuse.

“That was just an experiment,” Lombard says. “The workflow worked out very well.”

So starting May 29, the day after Memorial Day, Central New Yorkers began seeing locally anchored newscasts from midday until 5 a.m.

To meet the expanded hours, Lombard brought in Tammy Palmer, a veteran newscaster who was with what is now Spectrum News — then News 10 Now — as it was just getting on the air. She was the reporter who delivered the first story on the fledgling channel.

“It was about a woman who was missing,” she recalls, 15 years later. She remembers the woman’s name and that after days of searching, the woman was found alive.

Palmer rose to an anchor position and was one of those transferred to Albany. 

A native of Central New York, she graduated from Fulton High School and SUNY Oswego and traces her ancestry to some of the first settlers in Lysander — Palmer was offered a job in 2011 by WSYR, Channel 9. She moved back and worked at the station until this spring. 

At Spectrum News, she is returning to the same studio and the same anchor desk she left 13 years ago to go to Albany.

As for her work desk, Lombard explained that Palmer is working at the desk at which Bill Carey had worked for years. Carey, a legend in local broadcast news, died in 2015. Since that time, his desk had been left vacant out of respect.

Lombard decided that it was time for the desk to be put back to work and that Palmer was the right person to sit at it. 

While ownership has changed, much has remained the same at the station, Palmer says. “There are quite a few charter members,” she says of staffers who have been with the station since the beginning — including Lombard. “It’s a little like stepping back in time.”

Some things have changed, like some of the computer equipment. And, Palmer notices, “people are a little younger across the board.”

Lombard agrees, adding that news people are younger and “are able to move up more quickly than in years past.”

Another change Lombard and Palmer note, is that social media plays a much larger role today. “Social media changed the way we gather news,” Lombard says.

Both Palmer and St. Meran celebrated the return of local anchors with posts on social media. One, from St. Meran, noted, “You may have noticed something different today about @SPECNewsCNY & @SPECNewsSTier. I’ll be on for longer than the 4:30 show. Happy to share I’ll be the midday anchor. That’s not all, I get to share the desk w/ @TammyPalmerNews. It’s a homecoming as she helped launch the channel!”

In addition, Palmer has been finding a lot of warm reaction on social media. She said the “supportive feedback and well wishes,” help her feel she had made the correct move. “This is right. This is how it was meant to be,” Palmer says.

Palmer will be seen on Spectrum News from late afternoons until 5 a.m., Lombard says, with the newscasts in the wee hours being pre-recorded — except when news is breaking. St. Meran has the midday newscasts and, Lombard says, another person will join the staff to anchor local newscasts in the morning.

Lombard declined to say who the morning anchor would be, but expected the person to be at the anchor desk before the State Fair starts.

Having local anchors allows them to focus more on local issues, Palmer says. As an example she points to local elections as an subject that benefits from local focus. 

Likewise, she says that being a local anchor gives her more opportunities to take part in events in the region, something that was difficult when she had to drive the more than two hours from Albany.

Plus, viewers like it. “They seem genuinely happy for us,” Lombard says. 

“Everybody likes to see more local reporters and anchors on the ground,” Palmer says.   

SYRACUSE — Galaxy Communications has a new name and new investors.

CEO Ed Levine says the company is now Galaxy Media and is bringing aboard up to 10 new investors to buy out the shares that had been owned by a private investment firm and help the company reduce debt. Those investors are local people, Levine says, including his long-time friend Syracuse University basketball coach Jim Boeheim.

“We’re thrilled to have Coach Boeheim as a part of the team,” Levine tells CNYBJ in a phone interview, noting the two have done business together since the late 1990s and are personal friends.

Boeheim is one of seven investors who are buying the portion of Galaxy Media that had been owned by Atalaya Capital Management, Levine notes. As many as three more individuals may join them.

Levine has used private investments in his company to build it from a single station in Utica in 1990, to 14 stations around Central New York today, as well as an events-management business that operates around the state and recently began providing services in North Carolina and South Carolina.

In addition to the investors, Levine says he secured a 10-year Small Business Administration-backed loan. When that loan is paid off, the company will have no senior debt, he says. “At that point the company functions as an annuity,” he says.

Regardless of whether he ends up with seven or 10 new investors, Levine says he intends to keep for himself ownership of the lion’s share of the company, at least 73 percent. Investors will get preferred equity, he says, meaning they get paid even before he does.

Reflecting on his career in radio, first as a disc jockey whose dream was to one day manage a major-market station or, “maybe own a single station – so I could work for myself,” Levine says he never saw himself in the position he is today.

Galaxy Media has 100 employees. “I’ve got 100 families that are depending on me to make the right decisions,” he says.

The events business

One decision that has worked out is Galaxy’s push into events and promotions. The company’s events division is growing rapidly. Levine’s wife, Pam, is the division’s CEO. It runs several marquee events in Central New York, including Taste of Syracuse, Lights on the Lake, and the Leon Festival. 

Galaxy runs events around New York state and recently expanded into the Carolinas where it is working on events in Myrtle Beach and Columbia, South Carolina as well as Raleigh, North Carolina. “The economy down there is very robust,” Levine notes.

Levine says events make up a growing piece of the company’s revenue. “Events are about 40 percent of overall cash flow. Once we get the Carolinas going, they could be more than 50 percent of cash flow,” he estimates.

Having worked with angel investors, private-equity firms, and individual investors, Levine has seen the radio industry gyrate through economic cycles and business fads — competitor Cumulus Media emerged from bankruptcy just last week. Levine says that the SBA loan and local investors represent a return to something like normalcy. 

“We’re going old school and running it like a real business,” he says. “To me that’s the best bet on the next 10 years.”

ITHACA — With 10 community solar farms built and an 11th soon to get underway, Renovus Solar is looking to bring the concept to a wider market.

The company has built residential solar-power systems in the area, says Ryan McCune, Renovus’ head of marketing, but until now has only built community solar farms in areas served by New York State Electric and Gas Corporation.

The 11th farm, to be built on commercial property in Homer, will be the first in National Grid’s service area, McCune says.

Solar farms differ from residential systems in several ways, key among them being that they are built offsite. However, McCune says there are many similarities in how they operate.

A customer would pay for a certain amount of kilowatts of power from the farm. The average home uses about seven kilowatt hours of power. Depending on the particulars of the actual solar farm, purchasing that much power would cost something between $20,000 and $22,000, McCune says. Tax credits cut that cost by about 60 percent for residential users, he adds.

Final costs for small businesses would depend on different tax considerations and grants, he says. “With commercial, it’s a little bit different.” However, the discount should again be around 60 percent. “No one pays sticker price,” he says.

That initial spending would cover the cost of electricity for 25 years, “guaranteed,” McCune says. If those buying into a solar farm finance the purchase over 15 years and continue to use the same amount of electricity, McCune says the final 10 years of electricity are free. 

A dozen interested people attended a question-and-action session held at the end of May at Drumlins Country Club in Syracuse, McCune says. He says that at such sessions many people want to know how a community solar farm works.

Some wonder about the environmental impact of solar farms. McCune says that much of the land used for solar farms is lying fallow and that Renovus uses building techniques that minimize impact on the land. For instance, he says the only concrete poured is a 10-square-foot pad for the transformer. The rest of equipment is built on galvanized I-beams that can be dug up and removed in 25 years when the lease on the property is finished. “We’re not making the area non-viable,” he says.

Renovus has been growing rapidly in recent years, McCune says. Starting with two people in 2003, Renovus grew to a dozen or so employees by 2012. Today, the company has nearly 70 employees, McCune says, most involved in installing and maintaining solar systems. The company has installed more than 10 megawatts of power at residences, commercial installations, and solar farms — more than half of it since 2015, he adds. (For comparison, Nine Mile Point 1 nuclear power plant is rated at 609 megawatts.) Another two megawatts of solar power are scheduled to be installed by year’s end.

In addition to the solar farms, McCune says Renovus has installed more than 700 residential solar-power systems.

While solar power may seem an odd fit in often-cloudy Central New York, McCune explains that community solar farms for this area are built to produce twice as much electricity as needed in the summer months. The extra electricity earns owners power credits that get applied in colder, darker months.

Additionally, he says that solar farms are built at angles and in areas that maximize solar exposure and limit shade — something that isn’t always possible in a residential installation.

Plus, he says that systems built in open fields are less likely to collect snow and more likely to shed it when the wind picks up.       

COLLINS LANDING — Construction continues on the North Country Welcome Center near the Thousand Islands Bridge in Collins Landing in Jefferson County, the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced. 

The welcome center is on track to open this fall. Funding for regional welcome centers was included in the 2018 state budget.

To date, crews have installed underground plumbing and power, finished rough site grading, and have “nearly” completed the foundation. The project involves about 100 construction jobs and all contractors working on the welcome center are New York firms, Cuomo’s office said in a June 1 news release.

Like other welcome centers across the state, the North Country welcome center will include regionally specific elements linked to the “history and natural beauty” of the St. Lawrence River, as well as the history of the area. Tourist attractions in the region include Boldt Castle on Heart Island in Alexandria Bay and the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton. 

The welcome center will include a Taste NY Market with locally grown and sourced products from across the North Country. The state will also place multiple interactive I Love New York kiosks throughout the welcome center, allowing visitors to “design a trip itinerary and test their knowledge of the region,” per the release.

A large screen will promote regional tourism attractions and destinations. A boat from the Antique Boat Museum will “pay tribute” to the region’s boating heritage, and an artifact wall will include regionally specific items. 

Outside the facility, visitors will see a large I Love New York sculpture and a Walk of Fame will recognize famous New Yorkers from the region. It’ll also have a playground for children. 

“The North Country is home to some of the most beautiful natural attractions New York has to offer and this welcome center is perfectly situated to highlight that,” Cuomo said in the release. “From the Thousand Islands to the St. Lawrence River, this welcome center will encourage visitors to venture off the highways and experience these one-of-a-kind attractions.”