Onondaga County hotels continue business rebound in June

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Onondaga County hotels saw another substantial surge in guests this June compared to a year ago as the travel and leisure industry continued to recover from the pandemic, according to a recent report. The hotel occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county jumped 84.7 percent to […]

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Saab wins Navy contract worth more than $32 million

Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only, Technology

DeWITT, N.Y. — Saab Inc. in DeWitt was recently awarded a $32.2 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the MK 9 Tracker Illuminator System Replacement Continuous Wave Tracking Illuminator development and production effort. This firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed fee, and cost-only contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of the pact to

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CNY Biotech Accelerator’s Medical Device Innovation Challenge begins fifth year

Health Care, Nonprofits, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Six companies are participating in the Medical Device Innovation Challenge (MDIC), a program of Upstate Medical University’s CNY Biotech Accelerator (CNYBAC). The initiative is supported through a grant from Empire State Development. The committee selected the teams from a pool of 33 applicants, the largest batch of applications for the competition to

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Six companies are participating in the Medical Device Innovation Challenge (MDIC), a program of Upstate Medical University’s CNY Biotech Accelerator (CNYBAC).

The initiative is supported through a grant from Empire State Development.

The committee selected the teams from a pool of 33 applicants, the largest batch of applications for the competition to date.

The participants selected for 2021 Medical Device Innovation Challenge include Oratel Diagnostics, Rubitection, Dancing Eyes, JelikaLite, DB Therapeutics, and MindTrace.

“We are very excited about the six selected teams, three of which are women-founded companies,” Kathi Durdon, executive director of the CNYBAC, said in a release. “Our graduate teams to date have generated significant achievements and we’re confident the latest cohort of innovative teams will achieve similar success.”

Five of the participating teams are from New York state and the other is based in Pennsylvania. Teams taking part may participate from anywhere in the U.S., Upstate Medical said.

Durdon also noted that the pool of applications also included the greatest number of Upstate Medical faculty-founded company applications at four. The committee selected one of those teams and the other three are receiving independent support through the SUNY Research Foundation and the Innovation Law Center at the Syracuse University College of Law.

“We had a great response from mentors this year as well,” Durdon said. “We are able to team up four to five mentors per team. Mentors are aligned based on team needs — regulatory, manufacturing, product design, intellectual property protection, etc.”

Medical Device Innovation Challenge participants receive six months of “intensive” mentorship, Innovation Law Center commercialization research, free workspace, and use of equipment in the CNYBAC Creation Garage, along with access to Upstate academic medical-center expertise and core facilities throughout the six-month program.

Upstate Medical University provided the following brief descriptions of each participating company.

Oratel Diagnostics

Oratel Diagnostics is designing a sensitive and specific, non-invasive test to detect endometriosis to decrease health-care costs and improve the health and wellbeing of girls and women with the disease. Endometriosis affects millions of girls and women of reproductive age globally, who are likely to experience severe pelvic pain and infertility.

Protected by four issued patents, this company has formed a collaborative team with more than 30 years experience in bioengineering, computation biology, and reproductive epidemiology.

Rubitection

Rubitection’s chronic skin-health assessment and care-management system — the Rubitect Assessment System (RAS) — improves the early assessment and management of wounds, dermatological conditions, and vascular conditions with an initial application to bedsore prevention, an $11 billion health-care problem.

The RAS provides a measurement device and care-management platform to monitor the signs of inflammation in the skin to support early detection, prevention, and personalized-care management.

Dancing Eyes

Dancing Eyes works to help health-care providers overcome the “complexity and entanglement” of eye-movement disorders and provide a “more reliable” diagnosis and treatment for common conditions such as vertigo or double vision.

Dancing Eyes is an interactive, virtual-reality-based head-worn device that the company hopes can improve the care of patients with vertigo and other eye disorders, and expedite the treatment of their most serious causes, such as strokes.

JelikaLite

Autism rates are rising across the world. “There is no cure and parents are desperate.” Annual autism costs in the U.S. are expected to reach $450 billion by 2025. JelikaLite is developing Cognilum, an “innovative solution to permanently reduce” children’s autism symptoms, “enabling better integration” into society and reducing lifelong costs.

Cognilum is a data-device integrated system, where a wearable therapeutic medical device is combined with an artificial-intelligence-based learning platform.

DB Therapeutics

DB Therapeutics is an early-stage medical device company poised to commercialize a convenient and cost-effective holmium radiotherapeutic bandage to treat skin-cancer lesions. The radiotherapeutic bandage offers accessibility and patient convenience “like no other skin-cancer therapy currently available on the market.”

MindTrace

MindTrace leverages machine learning to enable neurosurgical teams to simulate a resection plan and predict that patient’s cognitive outcome — all before the first incision, or in real-time during surgery.

MindTrace helps neurosurgeons visualize and understand why some surgical routes are better for certain patients than others, and where you would have an accident “before the accident ever happens”… “all to ensure that patients do not take a ‘hit’ to an important cognitive domain after surgery.”

Community Bank System acquires Boston–area insurance agency

Banks & Credit Unions, Insurance & Financial Services, New York News, Subscriber Only

DeWITT, N.Y. — Community Bank System, Inc. (NYSE: CBU) has recently acquired the assets of Thomas Gregory Associates Insurance Brokers, Inc. (TGA), a specialty-lines insurance broker based in the Boston area. OneGroup, NY, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Community Bank System, acquired TGA’s assets. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. OneGroup is

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OneGroup, NY, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Community Bank System, acquired TGA’s assets. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

OneGroup is Community Bank System’s insurance-agency subsidiary, with a team of more than 200 advisors and specialists providing risk-management services, business insurance, personal insurance, employee benefits, and human-capital consulting, as well as retirement-plan consulting through its affiliated OneGroup Retirement Advisors. It has 18 offices in New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida, and now Massachusetts.

The TGA acquisition not only provides OneGroup with a New England presence, but also brings additional specialty-lines expertise to the subsidiary, which management expects to leverage across the broader Community Bank System customer base. “TGA is expected to give OneGroup a profile of approximately $35 million in annual revenues,” according to a Community Bank System news release.

Thomas Gregory Associates Insurance Brokers describes itself as a boutique insurance-brokerage firm that offers policy coverage and risk-management consultation to “some of the largest and most complex commercial risks in the United States.” Its areas of coverage include personal lines, technology, transportation, private equity, manufacturing, life sciences, aviation, and agriculture. TGA is located in the town of Wakefield, which is about 12 miles north of downtown Boston.

“The transaction will strengthen and complement our existing OneGroup insurance and risk management service offerings and represents an attractive opportunity to expand our insurance business in New England,” Mark E. Tryniski, said Community Bank System president and CEO, said in the release.

Community Bank System operates more than 225 branches across upstate New York, northeastern Pennsylvania, Vermont, and western Massachusetts through its banking subsidiary, Community Bank, N.A. With assets of more than $14.8 billion, the DeWitt–based banking company is among the country’s 125 largest banking institutions. In addition, the company offers comprehensive financial planning, insurance, and wealth-management services through its Community Bank Wealth Management Group and OneGroup NY operating units. It also has the Benefit Plans Administrative Services, Inc. subsidiary, which provides employee-benefits administration, trust services, collective investment-fund administration, and actuarial-consulting services nationally.

New Lansing branch of Cayuga Lake National Bank opens

Banks & Credit Unions, Construction, Design & Real Estate, Insurance & Financial Services, Regional News, Subscriber Only

LANSING, N.Y. — Cayuga Lake National Bank’s (CLNB) third branch is now servicing customers in Lansing in Tompkins County. CLNB worked with D Squared Inc., an Ithaca–based construction company, and architect George W. Breuhaus, on this newly constructed bank branch, CLNB tells CNYBJ. The bank didn’t disclose the project cost. Located at 3077 N. Triphammer

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Parking-deck project at Hancock Airport is underway

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The first phase of a multi-year parking-deck rehabilitation project has started at Syracuse Hancock International Airport. In anticipation of the construction that got underway Aug. 9, the northernmost portion of each level of the parking deck have been closed, the Syracuse Regional Airport Authority (SRAA) said. The closures reduce the parking capacity

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SRC adds to its footprint with new Virginia office

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Manufacturing & Engineering, Regional News, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

CICERO, N.Y. — SRC, Inc. says it has opened an office in Herndon, Virginia and tasked it with providing services to the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community. The services will include information operations, special-program support, information assurance, cybersecurity, communications engineering, and systems engineering. SRC is a nonprofit corporation headquartered in Cicero that

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VIEWPOINT: Ask Rusty: Should I Claim Social Security Family Benefits?

Business Mentors, Insurance & Financial Services, Law, Accounting & Taxes, Subscriber Only

Dear Rusty: I was born in 1956 and my wife in 1961. I’ve got 45 years of Social Security earnings, and I will have income in 2021. We have four minor children, the youngest born in 2012. When is the best time for us to apply for benefits? Are we eligible for family benefits? My

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Dear Rusty: I was born in 1956 and my wife in 1961. I’ve got 45 years of Social Security earnings, and I will have income in 2021. We have four minor children, the youngest born in 2012. When is the best time for us to apply for benefits? Are we eligible for family benefits? My statement infers that we are.

Signed: Older Dad

Dear Older Dad: Born in 1956, your full retirement age (FRA) for Social Security (SS) purposes is 66 years and 4 months. If you claim your SS benefit at any time before your FRA, it will be permanently reduced. If, for example, you claimed your SS benefits now, the amount would be permanently cut by about 14 percent. Your wife’s FRA is 67 and, similarly, she will receive a reduced SS retirement or SS spousal benefit if taken any time before her FRA.

Your wife isn’t normally eligible for benefits until she is 62 years old, but if she is providing full-time childcare to your minor children, she is eligible for spouse benefits sooner. Child-in-care spouse benefits are available at any age for your wife if she is providing care for at least one of your minor children under the age of 16. You must be collecting your own SS benefit for your wife to be eligible for this.

Once you start collecting your Social Security, your minor children will become eligible for benefits also. Minor child benefits are available to any child under the age of 18, or 19 if still in high school. All your children who qualify under that definition would be eligible for benefits based upon your Social Security earnings record. But, because of Social Security’s family maximum, the amount each child receives would be less than half of your FRA-benefit amount.

The family-maximum amount is different for everyone because it is computed using each person’s primary insurance amount (PIA), which is the amount you are entitled to at your FRA. The family-maximum normally computes to somewhere between 150 percent and 180 percent of the primary beneficiary’s PIA, and that amount is shared by all those collecting. So, in your family’s case, your PIA amount is first deducted from your family-maximum amount and the remaining 50 percent to 80 percent is equally apportioned among all those collecting benefits on your record (including your wife if she receives child-in-care benefits). If all four of your children are minors, and your wife is collecting child-in-care benefits, those five individuals would each receive an equal portion of the remaining family-maximum amount after your PIA is deducted.

It’s probable that your family would get the entire family-maximum amount, for as long as your wife and minor children are eligible for benefits. But remember that claiming your own benefit before your full retirement age results in a permanent reduction to the benefit you will receive for the rest of your life. So, you should evaluate which option is financially better considering your life expectancy — claiming now and getting the full family maximum amount in these earlier years or waiting longer (even up to age 70) to receive a higher personal benefit for the rest of your life. You should also consider that if you die first, your wife’s survivor benefit will be based upon the amount you are receiving at your death, so the age at which you claim also affects your wife’s benefit as your widow.

Finally, if you claim before you have reached your full retirement age, Social Security’s earnings limit will apply until you reach your FRA. If you work and exceed the limit ($18,960 for 2021), the Social Security Administration may withhold your benefits for several months, and your dependents won’t receive their benefits while yours are withheld. Note too that your earnings limit will go up by about 2.5 times during the year you attain FRA.

Russell Gloor is a certified Social Security advisor with the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC). The 2.3 million member AMAC says it is a senior advocacy organization. Send your questions to: SSadvisor@amacfoundation.org.

Author note: This article is intended for information purposes only and does not represent legal or financial guidance. It presents the opinions and interpretations of the AMAC Foundation’s staff, trained and accredited by the National Social Security Association (NSSA). The NSSA and the AMAC Foundation and its staff are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other governmental entity.

Pathfinder Bancorp 2nd quarter profit jumps 63 percent

Banks & Credit Unions, Insurance & Financial Services, Regional News, Subscriber Only

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“During the second quarter of 2021, Pathfinder achieved strong increases in earning asset balances, corresponding revenue growth and improved operating margins that collectively contributed to record quarterly results and our exceptional financial performance for the first half of the year,” Thomas W. Schneider, president and CEO, said in Pathfinder’s earnings report issued on Aug. 2. “We remain focused on effectively managing both interest and noninterest expenses to enhance our operating leverage. Our quarterly net income of $3.0 million resulted from both the focused efforts of our management team in overseeing meaningful progress towards the attainment of our strategic objectives and the continued excellent work of our entire staff in meeting the financial services needs of our valued customers.”

Pathfinder’s total interest-earning assets on June 30 stood at $1.19 billion, up 8.7 percent from $1.09 billion a year earlier.

The banking company’s total loans rose 3.6 percent to $835 million at the end of this year’s second quarter from $806 million a year ago. Pathfinder’s total deposits as of June 30, 2021 were $1.03 billion, up 6.3 percent from $970.6 million on June 30, 2020.

Total net-interest income for the second quarter increased by 33.7 percent to $10.2 million from $7.6 million for the prior-year period.

“While new loan originations were somewhat muted in the most recent quarter, we have a strong pipeline of potential new commercial lending opportunities and anticipate a strong third quarter in residential mortgage lending. We have also been active participants in the PPP, helping small business customers access this critically-important funding and navigate the subsequent forgiveness process,” Schneider added. “As of June 30, 2021, we had approximately $53.6 million in PPP loans outstanding, following the forgiveness of $58.1 million since the inception of the PPP, resulting in the recognition of $1.1 million of net deferred PPP loan origination fees in 2021. It should be noted that the Bank has approximately $1.7 million in net deferred PPP origination fees remaining [as of] June 30, 2021 that it expects to recognize as income in future periods.”

Pathfinder Bank is a New York State-chartered commercial bank headquartered in Oswego, which has 10 full-service offices located in its market areas of Oswego and Onondaga counties and one limited-purpose office in Oneida County. Through its subsidiary, Pathfinder Risk Management Company, Inc., the bank owns a 51 percent interest in the FitzGibbons Agency, LLC. ν

SUNY Oswego’s Hewitt Hall to transform into broadcasting, graphic-design facility

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Health Care, Subscriber Only, Technology

OSWEGO, N.Y. — Construction crews are renovating SUNY Oswego’s Hewitt Hall to serve as the new home for the university’s broadcasting and graphic-design programs. The $65 million project will renovate the former Hewitt Union into a hub for Oswego’s School of Communication, Media and the Arts (SCMA). SUNY Oswego has chosen DiPasquale Construction of Spencerport

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OSWEGO, N.Y. — Construction crews are renovating SUNY Oswego’s Hewitt Hall to serve as the new home for the university’s broadcasting and graphic-design programs.

The $65 million project will renovate the former Hewitt Union into a hub for Oswego’s School of Communication, Media and the Arts (SCMA).

SUNY Oswego has chosen DiPasquale Construction of Spencerport to handle the renovation work, an effort that will create 439 jobs over the course of the project. The university has also selected CannonDesign of Buffalo as the project architect.

Developed with input from students, faculty, and other stakeholders, the Hewitt Hall project has a target completion date of fall 2023 to host classes, labs, events, and related activities. The effort seeks to “further elevate” the media-arts programs in Oswego’s School of Communication, Media and the Arts (SCMA), the school said.

Exterior renovations are expected to be completed in 2022.

Financed by the State University Construction Fund, projects such as Hewitt “follow a pattern of strategically deploying” capital funds to support SUNY Oswego’s academic program needs as well as “emergent programs with enrollment growth potential,” per a university news release.

“When complete, Hewitt Hall will become a facility where the very best students and distinguished faculty in the nation will come to find a transformative, state-of-the-art hands-on learning and teaching space,” SUNY Oswego President Deborah Stanley contended. “It adds to a sweeping $850 million renewal program that has made our campus increasingly competitive in our academic programs…”

SUNY Oswego’s goal is to provide the “most technologically advanced facility in the nation” for communication and graphic-design programs. The project will bring the remaining SCMA departments under one roof.

It’s like the college’s renovations of Tyler Hall in 2019 that brought the fine and performing arts programs together, and Wilber Hall in 2018 that brought all School of Education departments under one roof.

The first floor will have a high open area with classrooms, faculty offices, and a skylight. It’ll also feature a television-studio suite that includes a newsroom and control room to “showcase the college’s historic strength in broadcasting.”

The ground level will contain most of the other broadcasting, audio, and podcast studios and technology spaces.

The second floor will focus on graphic design with collaborative workspaces that will “resemble a professional environment more than traditional classrooms,” SUNY Oswego said.

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