Unplugged Gaming leases nearly 14,000 square feet in Manlius

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MANLIUS, N.Y. — Unplugged Gaming recently leased 13,860 square feet of retail space in the Manlius Mart Plaza at 315 Fayette St. in the village of Manlius. Bill Evertz and Chris Savage from Cushman & Wakefield/Pyramid Brokerage Company helped arrange the transaction, representing the landlord. Manlius Realty LLC owns the shopping center, according to Onondaga […]

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Syracuse Builders Exchange names 2022-2023 officers

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Syracuse Builders Exchange (SBE) recently announced that its board of directors approved officers for 2022-2023. The following officers will each serve a two-year term, effective Jan. 10, 2022: President: Lisa Brownson — president of Safety Source Consultants, Ltd. in Cicero. The firm provides construction-industry employers with professional education and safety-training consulting

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Syracuse Builders Exchange (SBE) recently announced that its board of directors approved officers for 2022-2023.

The following officers will each serve a two-year term, effective Jan. 10, 2022:

President: Lisa Brownson — president of Safety Source Consultants, Ltd. in Cicero. The firm provides construction-industry employers with professional education and safety-training consulting services.

First Vice President: Karen Bellows — president of Bellows Construction Specialties, LLC, a full-service general-contracting firm located in Syracuse.

Second Vice President: Eli Smith — president of E. Smith Contractors, LLC, which is a full-service construction company specializing in general contracting and construction-management services. E. Smith Contractors is located in Syracuse.

Secretary: Steve Perry — president of Airside Technology Corp., located in DeWitt. Airside Technology is a full-service HVAC contractor specializing in commercial and industrial HVAC service and maintenance, and sheet-metal contracting.

Treasurer: David Bowles — a certified public accountant and former partner of Syracuse Builders Exchange member firm Dermody, Burke & Brown, CPAs, LLC, based in Syracuse.

Additionally, Earl R. Hall, executive director of the Syracuse Builders Exchange, also serves as a board officer. Hired in 1992, Hall has been executive director since 2006, and will be celebrating his 30th anniversary working for SBE.

“The new class of officers brings significant industry-related experience and expertise and will greatly help in evaluating initiatives or making governance decisions that are in the best interest of the membership and the regional construction industry,” Hall said in a statement.

The Syracuse Builders Exchange is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit trade association, serving the construction industry throughout Central New York’s 16-county region. It is the largest construction-industry association in New York, and the nation’s oldest builders’ exchange.

New York milk production falls nearly 2 percent

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New York dairy farms produced more than 1.27 billion pounds of milk in December, down 1.7 percent from nearly 1.3 billion pounds in the year-prior month, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) recently reported. Milk production per cow in the state averaged 2,055 pounds in December, off 0.7 percent from 2,070 pounds in the

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Uncle, nephew team up to operate Brewerton Ace Hardware store

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CICERO, N.Y. — With spring right around the corner, the Brewerton Ace Hardware is gearing up for its first full year in business. The 9,400-square-foot store opened its doors last June at 9655 Brewerton Road in Brewerton (town of Cicero). Jeff Parzych and his nephew Austin Parzych operate the store in a family effort. The idea

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CICERO, N.Y. — With spring right around the corner, the Brewerton Ace Hardware is gearing up for its first full year in business.

The 9,400-square-foot store opened its doors last June at 9655 Brewerton Road in Brewerton (town of Cicero). Jeff Parzych and his nephew Austin Parzych operate the store in a family effort.

The idea first came about when a family member was approached about a similar type of investment, Jeff Parzych says. While that family member passed on the investment, it got the family thinking about options and opportunities, he says. “That sort of sparked it.”

Owning a hardware store wasn’t a completely foreign idea to Parzych. His grandparents operated Alpar Hardware in the Eastwood neighborhood of Syracuse. After doing his due diligence, Parzych settled on Ace Hardware, which is a retailer-owned hardware cooperative.

“Ace is a solid business,” he says, and owners benefit from Ace’s national marketing efforts and distribution network. Ace also worked with Parzych through the entire process from helping to find a suitable location to setting up the store and training employees.

The Brewerton location is a good one with a definite need for a hardware store, he says. To create the store, they leased the space formerly occupied by the antique store One the Farm and an empty 2,000-square-foot storefront next door in the same shopping center.

“We did quite an extensive remodel,” Parzych says, including taking out the wall connecting the two spaces, installing new flooring and lighting, and painting the entire area. He declined to provide specifics on the investment but noted it was substantial.

According to myace.com, the typical investment to open an Ace Hardware store runs between $650,000 and $1 million, depending on the size of the store. As a cooperative, Ace does not charge a franchise fee or royalties, but does require owners to have $250,000 in unencumbered cash and a net worth of at least $400,000.

Sales have been good so far, Parzych says, adding that the store is hitting Ace’s projected numbers for customer counts and number of transactions.

The biggest struggle has been getting the word out about the store. “We’re very active on social media,” he says. He also has radio ads running on The Dinosaur 94.1, 95.3, 103.9 FM, Fox Sports 92.5 FM, and 1490 AM. “We’re going to be having some TV stuff coming up,” he adds, and the store advertises in Clipper magazine.

Parzych also plans to start a newsletter and recently started working with a marketing firm. The store also benefits from fliers that Ace mails out.

Starting in February, the store will work with the Cicero parks and recreation department to offer kid’s building sessions. Looking ahead to spring, Parzych is excited for what is typically a busy season for hardware stores. He’s hoping to partner with local farmers to bring a weekly farmer’s market to the store.

He says it’s efforts like that, along with extra services such as screen repairs offered onsite, which help set his Ace store apart from big-box stores like Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse or Home Depot. In addition, the Ace store stocks more uncommon items that the big stores don’t routinely carry, Parzych notes. On top of the roughly 20,000 items carried in the store, he has access to more than 200,000 items through the Ace distribution network to help him get whatever his customers need.

The store currently employs 15 people, most of them part-time. Prior to opening the Brewerton Ace, Parzych ran his own lawn and landscaping business.

Headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, the Ace Hardware cooperative has more than 5,300 locally owned and operated stores in about 70 countries.

New York business leaders expect conditions to improve in next 6 months

Banks & Credit Unions, Employee Benefits & Human Resources, New York News, Nonprofits, Regional News, Small Business, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

New York business leaders “generally” expect conditions to improve over the next six months. That’s according to firms responding to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s January 2022 Business Leaders Survey. It’s a survey the New York Fed distributes the day after it distributes the monthly Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The survey’s index for future

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New York business leaders “generally” expect conditions to improve over the next six months.

That’s according to firms responding to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s January 2022 Business Leaders Survey.

It’s a survey the New York Fed distributes the day after it distributes the monthly Empire State Manufacturing Survey.

The survey’s index for future business activity increased nine points to 43.7, while the future business-climate index rose 16 points to 30.6, its “highest level in several months,” the New York Fed said.

Strong gains in employment, wages, and prices are expected in the months ahead, and capital-spending plans remained solid.

Current activity

Business activity increased in the region’s service sector, but at its slowest pace since March of last year, according to the January survey.

The headline business-activity index moved down 5 points to 9.2. The survey found 35 percent of respondents reported that conditions improved over the month, while 26 percent said that conditions worsened.

The business-climate index fell 12 points to -27.9, indicating that on net, firms continued to view the business climate as “worse than normal for this time of year,” the New York Fed said.

Other survey details

Both input prices and selling prices continued to increase at a near record pace in January, though the indexes were marginally lower than last month.

The prices-paid index ticked down 3 points to 77.3, and the prices-received index fell 3 points to 39.4.

The employment index dipped 11 points to 7.6, suggesting that employment growth slowed, and the wages index was unchanged at 52.3, signaling another month of “strong” wage growth.

The capital-spending index held steady at 9.8.

About the survey

The Business Leaders Survey is a monthly survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that asks companies across its district about recent and expected trends in key business indicators.

The district includes New York State, Northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut.

This survey is designed to parallel the Empire State Manufacturing Survey, though it covers a wider geography and the questions are slightly different.

The New York Fed sends the survey on the first business day of each month to the same pool of about 150 business executives, usually the president or CEO, in the region’s service sector. In a typical month, about 100 responses are received by around the 10th of the month when the survey closes.

Oneida County’s hotel occupancy soars nearly 53 percent

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Regional News, Small Business, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels attracted a large increase in guests in December compared to a year prior as they continued to rebound to pre-pandemic levels. The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) jumped 52.6 percent to 43.7 percent in December from the year-ago month. That’s according to a

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Upstate, statewide consumer sentiment rise slightly in Q4

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Consumer sentiment in upstate New York was measured at 64.0 in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 0.6 points from the last reading of 63.4 in the year’s third quarter. That’s according to the latest quarterly survey of Upstate and statewide consumer sentiment that the Siena College Research Institute (SRI) released Jan. 12. The 63.4 reading in

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Consumer sentiment in upstate New York was measured at 64.0 in the fourth quarter of 2021, up 0.6 points from the last reading of 63.4 in the year’s third quarter.

That’s according to the latest quarterly survey of Upstate and statewide consumer sentiment that the Siena College Research Institute (SRI) released Jan. 12.

The 63.4 reading in the third quarter represented Upstate’s lowest overall index since 2011.

Upstate’s overall sentiment of 64.0 in the fourth quarter was 9.1 points below the statewide consumer-sentiment level of 73.1, which rose 1.2 points from the third quarter.

The statewide figure was 5.7 points higher than the fourth-quarter figure of 67.4 for the entire nation, which was down 5.4 points from the third-quarter figure, as measured by the University of Michigan’s consumer-sentiment index.

The overall and future indexes for New York each increased in the latest quarter and the future index is above the breakeven point at which optimism and pessimism balance. The current index decreased and is below breakeven. The national indexes all fell. New Yorkers are more optimistic about overall and future economic conditions than the nation as a whole.

After a precipitous fall in the 3rd quarter, consumer sentiment rose by a point as New Yorkers balance an ongoing decline in their current economic situation with an uptick in their long-range outlook, Don Levy, SRI director, said.

“Most noteworthy are concerns over the bite that gas and food are taking out of the budget as inflation has generated concerns over gasoline prices that we haven’t seen since March 2013 and food price worries not matched since July 2011,” Levy said. “These sticker shocks, felt especially hard by Upstaters, women and older residents, have driven New Yorkers’ current outlook back to just about the low we saw at the pandemic’s start. Only faith in a better tomorrow, which rose to equal where we stood a year ago, resulted in the one-point overall index increase,” Levy explained.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, buying plans rose 0.3 percentage points from the third quarter measure to 10.4 percent for homes and inched up 0.8 points to 25 percent for major home improvements. Buying plans fell 2.2 points to 16.9 percent for cars and trucks; slipped 2 points to 43.5 percent for consumer electronics; and dropped 2.1 points to 28.0 percent for furniture.

Gas and food prices

In SRI’s quarterly analysis of gas and food prices, 70 percent of Upstate respondents said the price of gas was having a serious impact on their monthly budgets, up from 58 percent in the third quarter of 2021 and 57 percent in the second quarter.

In addition, 61 percent of statewide respondents said the price of gas was having a serious impact on their monthly spending plans, up from 54 percent in both the third and second quarters of last year.

When asked about food prices, 75 percent of Upstate respondents indicated the price of groceries was having a serious effect on their finances, up from 65 percent in the third quarter and from 64 percent in the second quarter.

At the same time, 72 percent of statewide respondents indicated the price of food was having a serious impact on their monthly finances, up from 66 percent in the third quarter and 63 percent in the second quarter.

SRI conducted its survey of consumer sentiment between Nov. 8 and Nov. 16 by random telephone calls to 395 New York adults via landline and cell phone. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, according to SRI.

VIEWPOINT: New York State’s Eviction Moratorium Has Expired

Business Mentors, Construction, Design & Real Estate, Subscriber Only

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New York State — the state with the highest share of renters in the United States — allowed its eviction moratorium to expire on Jan. 15. State officials enacted the Tenant Safe Harbor Act (TSHA) at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and repeatedly extended it to the point where it became the second-longest statewide moratorium in the nation. The National Equity Atlas estimates that about 591,000 households in New York state are behind on rent. Now that the moratorium has officially expired, many landlords who have been unable to evict holdover tenants or tenants for nonpayment of rent — and, as a result, have lost substantial amounts of rental income during the pandemic — are looking to once again exercise their rights that have been placed on hold for nearly two years.

The Tenant Safe Harbor Act

Under the TSHA, any eviction proceeding against a tenant for the non-payment of rent or for holding over was stayed until Jan. 15, 2022, if the tenant submitted a COVID-19 hardship-declaration form. Initially, the submission of this hardship-declaration form served as conclusive, irrebuttable proof that the tenant suffered from an economic hardship imposed by the pandemic. However, the U.S. Supreme Court held that such conclusiveness raised unconstitutional implications for the due-process rights of landlords, which forced New York State to amend the TSHA to permit landlords to contest a tenant’s assertion of hardship during a hearing.

Under the amended TSHA, a landlord could evict a tenant despite the tenant’s submission of a completed hardship declaration form if the landlord established: (1) that the tenant was intentionally causing significant damage to the property or engaging in persistent and unreasonable behavior that infringed on the use and enjoyment of other tenants; or (2) that the tenant’s purported hardship did not exist. These limited grounds for eviction often failed in practice to provide property owners with the relief that they often sought. However, now that the TSHA’s eviction moratorium has expired, landlords no longer need to resort to the narrow confines of the TSHA’s limited grounds.

What should property owners do now?

If you are a landlord or represent one who attempted to evict a tenant during the moratorium, and that tenant submitted a completed hardship declaration form, you likely received an adjourned, tentative hearing date for Jan. 18, 2022 — the first business day following the moratorium’s then-anticipated expiration date of Jan. 15. Now that Jan. 15 has passed and the moratorium has officially expired, you likely will be contacted by the court in which your eviction petition is pending for the scheduling of your actual hearing date. We expect that such scheduling will occur chronologically, beginning with the landlords who filed their petitions earliest during the moratorium period. We recommend that if you do not hear from the court in the upcoming days, you call the clerk’s office to determine the status of your hearing.

Watch for future developments

As Gov. Kathy Hochul finds herself caught between the competing pressures of landlord groups and a progressive caucus of the state legislature, it is unclear how the future legal landscape in New York will develop regarding the rights of tenants and landlords. In 2019 and 2021, the state legislature tried but failed to enact “good cause eviction” requirements. A good-cause eviction law would limit the range of reasons for which landlords could evict tenants. Efforts to pass this form of legislation will likely be undertaken again this year. While Gov. Hochul has not disclosed her position on these types of requirements, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a new spotlight on the state’s landlord-tenant laws, and the expiration of the eviction moratorium places new pressure for action on elected officials in Albany. This is an area of law that will be closely watched throughout the new year.

Collin M. Carr is an associate attorney in the Syracuse office of Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC. He works in the firm’s litigation practice area and uses his legal research and writing skills to serve a wide array of clients in both state and federal court. Contact Carr at ccarr@bsk.com. This Viewpoint article is drawn and edited from the law firm’s website.

New York home sales slide nearly 15 percent in December

Construction, Design & Real Estate, New York News, Regional News, Small Business, Subscriber Only

ALBANY — New York realtors sold 13,649 previously owned homes in December, down 14.6 percent from the 15,974 homes sold a year ago, as inventory continued to fall. However, pending sales rose 4 percent in December, which points to a rise in closed home sales in forthcoming months. The data comes from the New York

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ALBANY — New York realtors sold 13,649 previously owned homes in December, down 14.6 percent from the 15,974 homes sold a year ago, as inventory continued to fall.

However, pending sales rose 4 percent in December, which points to a rise in closed home sales in forthcoming months.

The data comes from the New York State Association of Realtors (NYSAR)’s December housing-market report issued Jan. 20.

New York sales data

Housing inventory in the Empire State plummeted 30.4 percent to close out 2021. Homes for sale fell to 30,654 units in December 2021 from 44,071 homes available in December 2020.

The months’ supply of inventory fell to just 2.3 months in the final month of 2021, a 30.4 percent drop from 3.7 months of supply available in December 2020. A 6 month to 6.5 month supply is considered to be a balanced market, according to NYSAR.

Pending sales in New York totaled 10,494 homes in December, an increase of 4 percent from pending sales of 10,087 in the same month in 2020, according to the NYSAR data.

Amid the tight supply, house prices continued to chug higher. The December 2021 statewide median sales price rose 8.3 percent to $377,000 from the December 2020 median sales price of $348,000.

Central New York data

Realtors in Onondaga County sold 495 previously owned homes in December, down 16.8 percent from the 595 homes they sold in the same month in 2020. The median sales price jumped 12.1 percent to $185,000 from $165,000 a year prior, according to the NYSAR report.

Realtors sold 210 homes in Oneida County in December, up 4 percent compared to the 202 homes sold in December 2020. The median sales price increased more than 17 percent to nearly $182,000 from $155,000 in the year-earlier month.

Realtors in Broome County sold 186 existing homes in December, up 1.1 percent from 184 in December 2020, according to the NYSAR report. The median sales price fell 3.8 percent to $139,500 from $145,000 a year ago.

In Jefferson County, realtors closed on the sale of 155 homes in December, down 0.6 percent from 156 a year prior, and the median sales price of nearly $194,000 was up almost 7 percent from $181,500 in December 2020, according to the NYSAR data.

All home-sales data is compiled from multiple-listing services in New York state and it includes townhomes and condominiums in addition to existing single-family homes, according to NYSAR.

SUNY Poly’s online cybersecurity master’s program ranked

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Health Care, New York News, Regional News, Subscriber Only, Technology

MARCY, N.Y. — SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) says its online master’s degree program in network and computer security: cybersecurity ranked among the top 50 in U.S. News & World Report’s “2022 Best Online Program” national rankings. The SUNY Poly program came in at number 48 in the listing of the top online colleges and

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