JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL’S NEW BUILDING FOUR SEASONS’ …

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While a federal mandate for large companies to require COVID-19 vaccinations or weekly testing plays out in court, there are things employers can do to be prepared, according to Greg Rouchell, partner and employment team leader at New Orleans-based Adams and Reese.

“Once vaccines became readily available in spring 2021, employers had a decision to make,” Rouchell told New Orleans CityBusiness. “Some employers implemented their own mandatory vaccination policies. Others did not want to force their employees to get vaccinated; instead, they

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New MarketsRegions Bank expands tax credit investment services PAGE 28

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INSIDE

Construction CentralFormer BellSouth building to become brewery PAGE 20

News by the numbers .........4

Quick Hits ............................6

Leadoff Spot .....................10

Construction Central .........16

Opinion ............................22

M&A report ......................26

Lists: Banks ......................29

People ..............................32

Women of the Year & Nonprofit OrganizationsProfiles of the 2021 honorees INSIDEsponsored by

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Q&A: Federal vaccine mandate

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MILLING BENSON WOODWARD, L.L.P. 125 years young and still going strong

Milling Benson Woodward’s roots run deep in Louisiana. The law firm was founded in Franklin, Louisiana, in 1896. The firm began to grow almost immediately, adding several attorneys, including former Governor Murphy J. Foster who joined the firm in 1900. Milling soon thereafter opened its New Orleans office in 1901, where it has continued to serve the Louisiana business community ever since. The New Orleans office is currently led by senior partner, Hilton Bell, a corporate and tax attorney who has been with the firm since 1972 after having returned from serving his country in Vietnam. In 2018, former Milling partner, and most recently President and Vice Chairman of the Board of Whitney National Bank, R. King Milling, rejoined the firm in the New Orleans office.

Milling opened its Baton Rouge office in 2000 when former Louisiana Commissioner of Administration,

Stephanie Laborde, joined the firm. Stephanie was also the firm’s first female managing partner, having served in that capacity through 2020.

In 2010, Normand Pizza and Chadwick Collings opened Milling’s Northshore office, which has now grown to include nine other attorneys. On January 1, 2021, Mr. Collings became the firm’s managing partner and looks forward to helping lay the foundation for the firm’s next 125 years. Chadwick is focused on growing the firm by adding legal talent that will continue to meet the needs of Louisiana’s business community. “Milling has a well-respected name, and just like with any other name brand, we must continue to protect it by doing what we do best, which is offering the finest legal services possible to our clients” said Chadwick Collings.

Milling Benson Woodward, LLP is best described as a local

firm with regional, national and international impact. Its stellar reputation has its foundation in its tenacious commitment to the development and maintenance of client relationships. With its three offices and diverse talent pool of attorneys, Milling works as a team to provide each client with the highest level of legal representation. The firm provides solutions to issues ranging from litigation, environmental and maritime law, natural resource law, insurance coverage and defense, healthcare law, intellectual property, labor and employment law, taxation and estate law, banking, corporate law, and governmental relations and regulatory matters. Milling looks back with pride on the past 125 years and looks forward to many more years of providing prompt, efficient and the highest quality legal representation possible.

Seated, (L to R): Sheila L. Moragas, Hilton S. Bell, Shannon Howard-Eldridge, James K. Irvin, Jay Corenswet, An-drew C. Wilson | Standing, (L to R): Lauren A. Williams, Chadwick W. Collings, Juan J. Lizarraga, R. King Milling, Chris Burge, Henry M. Weber, Richard E. Santora

Milling’s managing partner, Chadwick W. Collings

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

No-bid contracts awarded by Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade

Brumley to a newly-formed consulting firm run by Sharmayne Rutledge, former assistant superintendent for curriculum

and instruction with the East Baton Rouge Parish school system.

$342,000

New jobs expected from Atlanta-based software company Rural Sourcing’s new development

center in downtown Baton Rouge.

150

$5.63 millionUncashed state income tax refunds received by the Louisiana Treasury as of early November. The list includes nearly 22,000 residents and businesses.

900 Workers at the Alliance Refinery owned by Phillips 66 in Plaquemines Parish. The company is closing the facility after it was flooded during Hurricane Ida. It will be turned into a storage terminal.

$10.6 billionAmount that insurance companies are paying to cover Louisiana claims for damage caused by Hurricanes Laura, Delta and Zeta in 2020, according to Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.

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QUICK HITS | Analyzing the week’s top news and what you can expect to happen next

What happened: Covington-based Pool Corp. said it will acquire Porpoise Pool & Patio, Inc. of Florida. Porpoise is the parent company of Pinch A Penny, Inc., the nation’s largest franchised provider of swimming pool and outdoor living products to specialty retail stores, and Sun Wholesale Supply, Inc., a wholesale distributor of swimming pool and outdoor living products and a specialty chemical packaging operation, primarily serving Pinch A Penny franchisees. Founded in 1975, Pinch A Penny Pool Patio Spa has grown from one store to over 260 locations across the southeastern U.S. and Texas.

What’s next:The project will create 30 new direct jobs with average salaries of $55,000, plus benefits, Louisiana Economic Development said. LED estimates 45 indirect jobs and 150 construction jobs at peak activity. The company has received a $430,000 award from the state’s Economic Development Award Program and is expected to use its Enterprise Zone program for the expansion.

What happened: Hammond-based S&W Wholesale Foods said it will build a $12 million distribution center near the city. The company said it will move its current operations into a new 100,000-square-foot building near the Pumpkin Center exit on Interstate 10. It will have 30,000 square feet of office space, a culinary test kitchen and a training facility with stadium-style seating. The company distributes meats, seafood, produce, dairy, canned goods, cleaning supplies, paper products, plasticware and more. S&W Wholesale services restaurants, convenience stores, bakeries and multi-unit operations across southeast Louisiana. It was able to continue supplying restaurants and convenience stores in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, resulting in a 45% increase in sales, a news release said.

What’s next:The acquisition includes both subsidiaries. Pool Corp. expects the net revenue growth contribution to be similar to that realized from other recently completed acquisitions and plans to use borrowings available from its newly expanded revolving credit facility and cash on hand to fund the acquisition. The addition of the Pinch A Penny franchise network to POOLCORP’s North American distribution business “brings substantial growth and operating synergies for both existing independent retail customers and independent franchisees,” Pool Corp. president and CEO Peter Arvan said. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

—CityBusiness staff reports

What happened: New Orleans beverage manufacturing company Big Easy Bucha was acquired by Latin American-based beverage company Beliv. Launched in 2014 by Austin Sherman and Alexis Korman, the company sells kombucha – a natural probiotic tea – and also produces juice shots. It recently debuted its tepache, a prebiotic pineapple soda.

What’s next:Big Easy Bucha will expand its local operations, with plans to retain 47 employees and create 50 new direct jobs locally, a news release said. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the project will result in 119 indirect jobs, and the firm plans to fill many of the 50 new jobs with participants of local job readiness programs, the release said. The transaction will expand Beliv’s footprint in the market and become the first probiotic product in its portfolio. The company also offers juices, soft drinks, water and energy drinks. Beliv has 28 brands in 30 countries.


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simply encouraged employees to get vaccinated but left the ultimate decision to the employee.”

On Nov. 5, the element of choice changed for many employers when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration officially published its Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on Vaccination and Testing, which requires employ-ers with 100 or more employees to either imple-ment mandatory vaccination policies or require weekly testing in lieu of vaccination. Several days later, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the mandate after at least 27 states filed lawsuits challenging it.

What are the key takeaways employers need to know?

Unless the ETS is successfully challenged in court, there are two compliance deadlines that covered employers need to be mindful of. First, covered employers must fully comply by Dec. 6, 2021, with all sections of the ETS except for provi-sions requiring COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated workers. Second, covered employers must comply with the COVID-19 test-ing provisions for those workers by Jan. 4, 2022. In other words, the covered employer must adopt a policy and confirm the vaccination status of all employees by Dec. 6, and then, if the employ-

er’s policy allows, begin mandatory testing for COVID-19 for unvaccinated or partially vaccinat-ed workers by Jan. 4, 2022.

What are the questions still to be answered? The biggest question is whether the ETS’s Dec.

6 deadline is the real deadline. On Nov. 6, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a nationwide temporary suspension of the ETS. For now, we are in a holding pattern until things play out in the court system. It’s not likely that the judicial process will have completely run its course by Dec. 6.

Do smaller companies need to be pre-pared, since the federal government isn’t ruling out a mandate for them?

OSHA has concluded that the ETS is economically and technological-ly feasible for businesses with 100 or more employees. OSHA has solicited public comment and is seeking addi-tional information to assess the ability of smaller employers to implement and follow the ETS. Thus, any small businesses that have concerns about the economics and feasibility of complying with the ETS should express those concerns to OSHA during the public comment period. It is possible that OSHA will conclude that the ETS can be extended to smaller businesses once the public comment period ends.

What are the chances of the mandate being struck down permanently?

The answer to this question varies depending on whom you ask in the legal punditry. There are compelling arguments on both sides of the constitutionality question. There are also intan-gible factors at play, including venue for the legal challenges and the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court. In briefing before the U.S. Fifth Circuit,

the government took the position that because there are challenges pending in other circuit courts, all of the various legal challenges must be consolidated into one proceeding and heard by a court that will be randomly selected by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). According to the government, the MDL should be in place by November 16.

Should employers make preparations anyway while the legal cases play out?

One thing employers can be doing now is determining whether the ETS

even applies to their business. As a best prac-tice, employers may want to begin preparations in case the courts ultimately uphold the ETS. Otherwise, employers may find themselves scrambling to meet deadlines in order to avoid the risk of hefty government fines for non-com-pliance.

MANDATECONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Rouchell


Fines for non-compliance will vary based on a company’s size and other factors. A company might have to pay up to $13,653 per individual violator or up to $136,532 for willful violation of the rules.


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LEAH CLARKCONTRIBUTING WRITER

One is a successful hip hop artist from New Orleans, the other a for-mer science teacher-turned-entre-preneur who grew up in the country. Together, the two women are giving New Orleans musicians and creators fewer reasons to leave to pursue their careers. They also are part of a growing hub of activity that aims to revitalize New Orleans East.

Samantha Davon James, who go e s by he r s t age name “ 3 D Na’ Tee ,” and Roxanne Moray cut the ribbon on 3D Studios on Oct. 20, marking the opening of

Louisiana’s first women-owned and operated entertainment studios. Housed on a penthouse floor in the Executive Plaza on Lake Forest Boulevard, the studios provide a one-stop shop with workspaces and resources for local recording artists, videographers, photogra-phers, podcasters and other con-tent creators.

“I had heard several artists speak of leaving the city; several speak about going to [Los Angeles], New York, Atlanta or all these other plac-es because they feel that they don’t have a resource,” said James, who co-owns the studio with Moray. “So understanding that (3D Studios)

could become that .. I was like ‘Yeah, this is something we need here in New Orleans, especially New Orleans East.’”

James and Moray first joined forc-es in September 2019 when Moray, property manager of the Executive Plaza building, was challenged with attracting tenants for the top floor. The owner of the building wanted drone footage of the 11th floor, so Moray reached out to James’ compa-ny Already Legendary Media.

It was only after the job that Moray realized that she had been working with a successful local rap-per that had caught the attention of industry legends such as Timberland

and Russell Simmons. After a quick Google search, Moray reached back out to James to apologize for not recognizing her.

The partnership grew when Moray needed help completing a recording studio that fell through for another potential tenant.

“I thought of [3D] Na’Tee auto-matically just because of her energy, her vibrations were so positive, and I was like, ‘I know she’s really busy, but hopefully she can help me fin-ish out the recording studio,’” said Moray. “We talked. We vibed, and I’m like, ‘There’s some connection. You know what? You’re the face of this city. You’re an ambassador for

‘We learn from each other’The partnership behind the new, women-owned 3D Studios

Founders and owners 3D N’Tee (left) and Roxanne Moray opened 3D

Studios in October.

The studio offers clients a hair and makeup lounge.

Two recording studios are available for artists and creators.

The conference room overlooks New Orleans East from the 11th floor of the Executive Plaza building.

A green screen sound stage has been used for some of 3D Na’Tee’s music videos.


New Orleans. Why don’t we do this together?’”

James joined Moray as a consul-tant for the project in October 2020 and later became a full partner, with Moray wanting her to be the face of the company. The two officially founded the studios in January 2021 and began renovating the penthouse floor to become what it is today: a podcasting studio, photography stu-dio, editing suite, conference room, green screen sound stage, hair and makeup lounge and two recording studios. The studio also plans to offer training and classes for up-and-com-ing talent and businesses.

Leading up to the opening, Moray and James shared that the journey was not without challenges. Not only did the two women start a business during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also they renovated a space that — like much of the New Orleans East area — had not been occupied since Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago.

Even with contractors coming in and out of the space, for months the two found themselves doing work as well. Moray took creative direc-tion with much of the space’s decor, and James did various do-it-your-self projects to make pieces such as sound insulation panels that can be viewed on her YouTube channel.

“It’s been a lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears. We were delayed a little bit by (Hurricane) Ida,” said Moray. “But we were happy

to have the grand opening.”Throughout this process and

partnership, both said they relied on each other. They have since hosted community events such as profes-sional development sessions and open-mic nights in the space. They said their deep admiration for what they bring to the table has grown in the process.

“Even though she’s younger than I am, and I’m a country mouse, she’s city mouse…I think we come with a humble heart, and we learn from each other. We grow. We push each other,” said Moray.

With 3D Studios now open for business, the two have shifted their focus to bringing in clients. Artists and creators can rent the various studios and suites, and the business also offers monthly memberships. These memberships allow clients to not be limited to only one resource that 3D Studios offers and will allow them access to members-only com-munal workspaces. Sign-ups for monthly memberships begin Nov. 1, but those that attended the grand opening were able to enter a raf-fle that gave away memberships as prizes.

“It’s not just about, you know, professionals who have done this and that,” James said. “It’s about peo-ple who are just starting as well as the professionals. Every end of the spectrum, they can come and use this space, be excited about it, and feel like this is a creative hub.”

P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y 3 D S T U D I O S

NEWORLEANSCITYBUSINESS.COMNew Orleans CityBusiness November 19 - December 2, 2021 11

LEADOFF SPOT Donald Link’s Chemin à la Mer joins Four Seasons Hotel

Four Seasons Hotel & Private Residences is opening its second restaurant, named Chemin à la Mer and helmed by New Orleans chef Donald Link.

The restaurant opens Nov. 26 on the fifth floor of the hotel with a menu that includes an oyster bar, specialty steaks and Gulf sea-food. The restaurant will be open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner, a news release said. Its name is French for “pathway to the sea,” with dishes inspired by Link’s travels.

Diners will find strip steak, filet mignon, cast iron-seared coulotte and a Côte de Boeuf for Two, carved tableside. There is also salmon with French lentils, pan-seared jumbo shrimp with white peans and pistou, lamb with olive tapenade and garlic rosemary, and charcuterie and foie gras. The oyster bar has Gulf Coast oys-ters, snapper ceviche, steamed Louisiana shrimp and a jumbo crab salad.

Link worked with southern artist John Alexander to include artwork in the restau-rant, such as two mural-sized paintings in the main dining area and another anchor-ing the bar. CambridgeSeven served as architect of the space, and Bill Rooney handled interior design.

Floor-to-ceiling windows offer pan-oramic views of the Mississippi River, and there is outdoor seating on the deck.

The hotel opened its other restaurant, Miss River, and its Chandelier Bar in August inside the renovated 34-story tower at the foot of Canal Street that was once the World Trade Center. Hotel availability started Sept. 1.

Led by New Orleans chef Alon Shaya, Miss River is on the lobby level. Signature dishes include whole carved buttermilk fried chicken; dirty rice with seared duck breast, duck egg yolk and scallions; Louisiana oyster patty with flaky puff pas-try, caramelised shiitake mushrooms and citrus zest; and salt-crusted Gulf red snap-per.

The Four Seasons Hotel includes 341 rooms and suites, a fitness center, spa, outdoor pool deck, event spaces and pri-vate gardens and 92 private residences on its upper floors. A cultural exhibition in the space where the World Trade Center’s signature bar was located is still under construction.


P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y F O U R S E A S O N S N E W O R L E A N S

Southern artist John Alexander’s work hangs on the walls of the restaurant.

Located on the fifth floor of the former World Trade Center, Chemin à la Mer is open

daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Salmon with French lentils

The grand oyster bar has Gulf Coast oysters, snapper ceviche, Louisiana

shrimp and a jumbo crab salad.

Lamb with olive tapenade and

garlic rosemary

Some menu items, like the foie gras, were inspired by Link’s travels.

Côte de Boeuf for Two, carved tableside.


by Kelcy Wilburn

Jessica Brandt, Chief Executive Officer of the Ray Brandt Auto Group, says the com-pany is poised for success, and she believes 2021 will be the Auto Group’s most success-ful year-to-date.

Brandt moved into her role as CEO just a few months before she faced her first sig-nificant challenge: the initial big wave of the COVID-19 crisis.

“As the pandemic unfolded, I had to con-sider how this crisis impacted our business strategy and what the path to business re-newal and growth would be,” says Brandt. “I also needed to be prepared to make high-quality, high-velocity decisions.”

Brandt proved that she was more than prepared. Instead of taking a passive, wait-and-see approach, she jumped into action to ensure her entire team and 19 business-es continued to thrive. She worked with community leaders, including Gov. John Bel Edwards, in her role on the Louisiana Auto Dealers Board of Directors to have the automotive industry deemed an essen-tial business, as only essential businesses would remain open. Brandt was successful in her efforts, and all locations were able to meet the public’s needs.

While businesses rarely make changes to their entire model, Brandt knew that a strategic overhaul was in order. Undeterred by uncertainty, she used this time as an op-portunity to have collaborative discussions with her management team about innova-tive business strategies centered on becom-ing more efficient and effective. Suffice to say, she was determined to emerge from the crisis stronger.

Overseeing over 600 employees across 13 dealerships and six collision centers, Brandt decided to use her position atop the Ray Brandt Auto Group as an opportunity to serve her team, her customers, and her community.

As subsequent supply chain issues contin-ue to affect the automotive industry, Brandt credits her management team with help-ing develop new and creative solutions to challenges. Customers began taking a new approach to buying vehicles, and her team took note.

“Custom orders were once reserved only for luxury brands, but we now proudly offer pre-orders across all of our brands, allow-ing our audience to customize their vehicles and get exactly what they want,” she says.

Brandt’s strategic shift in philosophy—fo-cusing on the customer experience instead of high volume—has resulted in the overall value of the Ray Brandt Auto Group in-creasing exponentially. Known as a hands-on, day-to-day decision-maker, Brandt is driving transformational change.

“We are excited and prepared for all that the future holds,” she says.

In addition to her mission and commitment to providing exceptional and innovative customer experiences, Brandt remains committed to strengthening her commu-nity. Brandt and her late husband, Ray Brandt, both New Orleans natives, founded

the Ray and Jessica Brandt Family Founda-tion. The Foundation supports the commu-nity through fundraisers for schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the American Heart Association, the National WWII Muse-um, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, New Orleans City Park, UNCF, East Jeffer-son General Hospital, and LCMC Children’s Hospital.

The Foundation awards The Raymond J. Brandt Legacy Scholarship annually, hon-oring families within the Brandt Family Companies who have school-aged children or grandchildren with exemplary skills in leadership and conduct as well as a nota-ble desire to learn. This year, 15 students received scholarships.

“Ray and I have always been committed to education,” says Brandt. “When we started the Foundation, we wanted to make sure that money was never a barrier to someone getting an education.”

The Ray Brandt Auto Group will team up with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for the second consecutive year by donat-ing two “Dream Cars” to the 2022 Dream Home Giveaway. Two lucky supporters will receive the keys to a brand-new 2022 INFINITI Q50.

As CEO, Brandt continues to seek out charitable causes that strengthen the com-munity—her leadership, while focused on steering the ship, is also on partnering the Ray Brandt Auto Group with organizations and institutions that uplift the people of her community, the Gulf South.

“Working with charitable organizations connects us with like-minded individuals who are also driven to meet our communi-ties’ needs,” she says. “These partnerships contribute to the success of the region and, consequently, our business as well,” says Brandt.

Ray Brandt Auto Group Continues Growth of Brand & Community Under CEO Jessica Brandt

Jessica Brandt

Sponsored Content

LEADOFF SPOT

New Orleans startups are making substantial gains in attracting invest-ment funding while also adopting more flexible work options and scaling back their office expansion plans, according to the latest findings from Tulane University’s 2021 Greater New Orleans Startup Report.

The report, compiled by the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business, is based on a survey of approximately 200 startups in the 10-parish region from the first quarter of 2021, a full year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Now in its third year, the annual report has become the benchmark for tracking entrepre-neurial activity throughout the New Orleans region.

“We can divide takeaways from this report into two broad categories,” said Lepage Center Executive Director Rob Lalka. “First, the data helps us understand what our businesses have experienced since the onset of the pandemic. Second, we saw important developments in early-stage venture financing, which prompt new questions about what the changing landscape of angel investing and venture capital will mean for our region.”

Area startups reported a marked increase in equity financing activity, such as venture capital, angel investing and convertible debt across the region. There was a 21% increase in companies reporting access to ven-ture capital. The amount they have raised also grew, with 57% of survey respondents raising more than $1 million, compared to 42% last year.

Roughly half of survey respondents said they are raising at least 70% of their capital from investors outside the Greater New Orleans area — a 17% increase from last year.

The report’s release comes in a year that has seen record exits for successful New Orleans ventures with local research technology company Lucid selling for $1.1 billion and construction software firm Levelset for $500 million.

“Given our ecosystem’s recent blockbuster exits — the two largest for venture-backed companies in Louisiana’s history — we have reasons to be optimistic about the future of our startup ecosystem,” Lalka said. “Hopefully, these hometown success stories will be a prelude to many more, as investors look for the next Lucid or Levelset, while the experi-enced and accomplished teams who launched these companies mentor and support the next generation of great ventures.”

The report found a large increase in companies shifting to remote work, reflecting national COVID-era trends. Almost half offered remote work options in early 2021, as opposed to only 33% in early 2020.

Space usage saw some significant changes from 2020 to 2021. Firms planning to move to a larger space decreased by 7.3 percentage points in 2021, and there was a slight increase in companies planning to reduce their current office size. Use of home offices increased by 14% while use of leased commercial space decreased by the same amount.

More companies also reported offering employee benefits, including paid time off, medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance and 401k matching.

For this year, researchers added questions to see how many compa-nies were able to access COVID-19 relief funding, such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL). They found that 95% of white applicants received PPP funding compared to only 77% of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) applicants.

“The Lepage Center’s 2020 Greater New Orleans Startup Report showed that BIPOC-founded firms were less likely than white-founded firms to receive traditional bank loans (8% vs. 16%). Since a similar gap exists in this year’s data, the lack of established banking relationships could have exacerbated challenges in PPP access in our region,” Lalka said.

This year’s report did see some improvements for BIPOC-founded firms in access to equity investment since last year, with 13% increases in access to angel investment and venture capital and an 8% jump in access to convertible debt.

The Lepage team also looked at investment in female-founded compa-nies, finding that while women receive traditional bank loans at similar rates as men, they lag greatly behind men in angel investment, convertible debt and venture capital. Women founders utilized equity financing at approximately half the rate of their male counterparts.

“From a business standpoint, the Greater New Orleans business commu-nity needs to face what these inequities cost us. In a community that is full of incredible female entrepreneurs and BIPOC companies, we are surely missing out by not funding them, especially since studies have shown that diverse teams perform better than homogenous ones,” Lalka said.

The full 2021 Greater New Orleans Startup Report is available at gnos-tartupreport.com.

The above article was written and distributed by Tulane University and appears on the university’s website, news.tulane.edu.

Entrepreneurs in Propeller’s 2021 Impact Accelerator

venture program.

Report shows investment gains for local startups

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ANDREW [email protected]

Jesuit High School in 2019 under-took an ambitious fundraising cam-paign in an effort to modernize its Mid-City facilities.

A crowd of benefactors, alum-ni and others gathered in early November at the campus to see the latest results: a newly-constructed, 23,800 square-foot administrative building at the corner of South Solomon and Banks streets.

The four-story building blends in seamlessly with the rest of the school and will serve as the new entrance for visitors, replacing the one fur-ther down Banks Street, closer to Carrollton Avenue. In addition to administrative space, the new build-ing includes a reception area, volun-

teer office, the Blue Jay Spirit Shop, admissions office, a maintenance workshop and finance and athletics archives.

The facility frees up space on the first floor of the adjacent 1920s-era structure that will eventually house the student council, student clubs and activities, student ministry, the school’s newspaper and its yearbook. Renovation of this space and the remainder of the building will be the next step in the school’s capital improvement plan, Jesuit president Fr. John Brown said.

“This will now essentially become the hub of student life,” he said.

The new structure was dedicated and named in honor of Madonna Della Strada, a painting of the Virgin Mary enshrined at the Church of the Gesù in Rome. She is the patron

P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y J E S U I T H I G H S C H O O L

Jesuit High School’s new administrative building

Lobby of the building at the corner of South Solomon and Banks streets in Mid-City.

Exterior of the 23,800-square-foot structure.


saint of the Jesuit religious order, and Ignatius of Loyola, the order’s founder, was said to have been pro-tected by the intercession of the Virgin Mary during battle in his ser-vice as a soldier.

Construction projects locally and across the U.S. have seen delays and increased costs resulting from sup-ply chain problems and rising prices of building materials because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brown said this project was no different, but the general contractor, Ryan Gootee General Contractors, did a “great job” of not making the school feel the pain from those issues.

“As long as we were patient, they found a way to make it work,” he said.

Mathes Brierre Architects was listed as the architect for the project. A total cost was not disclosed, but a permit summary of the work val-ues the construction at nearly $12 million.

The idea and long-term vision for the “Minds & Hearts Enlightened Campaign” came from former school presidents Fr. Anthony McGinn and Fr. Raymond Fitzgerald about a decade ago. Fr. Christopher Fronk took over as president at the end of 2016, when the silent giving portion of the campaign first started.

The initiative went public at the

beginning of 2019. Brown took the mantle as president in January 2020 and oversaw the culmination of the campaign and the on-campus con-struction.

Frank Stewart Jr., a local busi-nessman and Jesuit alumnus, gave a combined $7 million, and New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson donated another $5 million to improve the school’s ath-letics facilities. Pledges for the cam-paign totaled $30 million, according to Jesuit’s website, and also increased the school’s endowment by $5 mil-lion.

Funds were used to renovate all of the classrooms, build a pedestrian bridge over Banks Street that con-nects the athletic facilities with the rest of the school and modernize the gym, now called the Gayle & Tom Benson Arena. Work wrapped up right before students returned to school in August to renovate the caf-eteria, and construction is expected to start soon on renovating the adja-cent structure.

Ryan Gootee General Contractors performed all work at the campus.

“It’s such a great feeling to see all this work come to a finish,” Brown said. “The best part is still to come, and to see the changes that are com-ing to the building next to us. This new building makes all that possible.”

Balcony outside Jesuit president Fr. John Brown’s office.

Conference room

My name is Whitley. I am a single mother of four girls. While my twins receive a high-quality early childhood education from Kingsley House, I am enrolled in a Community Health Worker Apprenticeship, a program that covers my tuition and pays a living wage as I train. Thanks to Kingsley Connections and its partners, I have been supported in ways I never have before. This place makes it possible for me to write a new chapter of my life, one that comes with an exciting, new ending.

We are all this place: the people and services, and everything like our Whole Family Approach which makes educating children, strengthening families, and building community possible. In anticipation of a new name that reflects our mission, vision, and values, we move forward with purpose and optimism for our legacy of service. Share, support, and join us in shaping our future as we commemorate 125 years in service to the community and beyond at kingsleyhouse.org.

Whitley


A $300 million, four-year expan-sion of Children’s Hospital ended this month.

Officials celebrated the completion with a grand opening and tours of the campus’ transformation on Nov. 6. It is the most significant expansion project in the hospital’s history, increasing its footprint by more than 50%.

The expanded campus includes 230,000 square feet of new clinical care space, family housing, gardens, playgrounds and green space.

Projects since breaking ground in 2017 have included a parking garage and skybridge, Lauricella Pavilion, Hogs House Family Housing, reno-vation/expansion to pediatric cardiac ICU, emergency care, surgical ser-vices, a comprehensive cancer center, a new ear, nose and throat clinic, a new neurosciences clinic, entry plaza; and a newly-constructed walkway connecting the hospital and State Street campus with rain gardens.

In 2020, the hospital opened a $25 million, 51-bed behavioral health

hospital for children and adolescents adjacent to its campus. It’s one of the largest behavioral health facilities for children in the country.

As one of the final projects in the expansion, the hospital this year opened a new 46-bed emergen-cy department on its Uptown cam-pus. The 32,000-square-foot facility

has fast track and rapid assessment rooms, dedicated trauma bays and a private behavioral health pod. There were previously 29 emergency rooms and 14,000 square feet of space. The project puts the department on one floor instead of the two it was housed in before.

EYP served as architect on the

expansion, and Lemoine led con-struction.

Children’s provides emergency care for more than 50,000 annually, from birth through age 21. It has added 10 pediatric emergency medi-cine providers since August 2020.



Children’s Hospital completes $300M expansion

I M A G E S C O U R T E S Y C H I L D R E N ’ S H O S P I T A L

The expanded campus has 23,000 square feet of clinical care space, housing, gardens playgrounds and green space.

A 51-bed Behavioral Health Canter was added in 2020.

Imaging center

Infusion center



Good Shepherd School plans to expand to a second location, with a campus in the Desire-Florida community.

The school is partnering with the Giving Hope Foundation on the project, and the new school will be named Giving Hope Campus. Built by Ryan Gootee General Contractors, it will be located at 3601 Desire Parkway across the street from the Giving Hope Community Center and next to a green infrastructure academy run by the nonprofit Thrive New Orleans.

The three entities plan to provide summer camps, after-school programming, wellness and education opportunities and job train-ing. The Thrive academy will provide train-ing for community members for jobs in the green industry and will serve as an educational resource for the GSS Giving Hope Campus, a news release said.

The new campus will temporarily be housed in more than 24,000 square feet of modular class-rooms acquired by Troy and Tracy Duhon, found-ers of the Giving Hope Foundation, the release

said. The modular classrooms will be delivered to the new campus site this fall.

Good Shepherd School opened in 2001 to serve pre-K and elementary lower-income students, and in recent years moved from downtown New Orleans to a new campus in Gentilly to accommo-date a growing enrollment.

The school has graduated 189 students and currently serves 275. There are 122 graduates now attending local Catholic, private, public and char-ter high schools.


Good Shepherd School expanding to second campus

NORF Companies, a New Orleans-based real estate company that redevelops properties in federal Opportunity Zones, has begun dem-olition on its latest project, located in down-town New Orleans.

The site at 380 S. Liberty St. is across from City Hall and was purchased by the company in 2019. It was acquired through two of NORF’s investment funds which focus on Opportunity Zones across the U.S. The program was created through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and provides tax incentives for developers to invest in economically distressed areas.

The building, formerly used as a mechan-ical building for the Warwick Hotel, has sat vacant since Hurricane Katrina. Preliminary plans call for the development of a 12-story, 58,000-square-foot vertical building. NORF is negotiating with several groups interested in becoming tenants and investing in the down-town medical district, a news release said.

The property is part of NORF’s marquee project,1315Gravier, which includes the rede-velopment of the former Warwick Hotel into housing for some of Tulane University’s stu-dents and faculty. Work was also expected to begin at some point this year on redeveloping the former Charity Hospital into a mixed-use facility, where Tulane is expected to lease 350,000 square feet of space for laboratories, classrooms and offices.

Most recently, NORF completed its first Opportunity Zone project in New Orleans, a 25,115-square-foot structure with apartments and commercial space in Mid-City.

In September, the company said it has acquired the former Carlton Hotel in Tyler, Texas, as part of its plan to redevelop historic properties.

—CityBusiness staff reportsDemolition has begun at 380 S.

Liberty St. in downtown New Orleans.

NORF Companies’ latest Opportunity Zone projectP H O T O C O U R T E S Y N O R F C O M P A N I E S



Former BellSouth building to become brewery

The Mid-City building that once served as a base of opera-tions for BellSouth is set for another new chapter.

New Orleans Beverage Group LLC, a company that makes a brand of bitters, syrups and mixers known as El Guapo, plans to start brewing in the building at 3300 Gravier St.

Owned and operated by Christa Cotton, El Guapo’s clients include Total Wine, Whole Foods, World Market, Neiman Marcus and can be found locally at restaurants and bars. The products are sold in 42 states and three countries currently.

Cotton said her company is renting the 32,500-square-foot building, with the right to purchase. A contractor and architect for the project have not been named; she said those details will be shared in 2022.

The building was an operations base for BellSouth before it merged with AT&T in 2006. Cotton said many of the struc-ture’s original features, including the doors once used by horse and carriage, are still intact. For the past few years, the build-ing has been used as a prop and wardrobe warehouse for the film industry, she said. It is located in an Opportunity Zone, a federally-created program that offers developers incentives in state-designated economically distressed areas.

Cotton, a 2021 graduate of The Idea VillageX accelerator program, said her company has been brewing and bottling in a 3,000-square-foot building on Tchoupitoulas Street and has dou-bled its workforce since the COVID-19 pandemic. As it moves into its new location, the company plans to hire 30 employees for sales, manufacturing, shipping and operations, Cotton said.

A news release said El Guapo has contracts underway in Georgia and Tennessee and “is poised for rapid expansion in 2022.” The brand is distributed by Uncorked, also based in New Orleans, and partners with regional farmers producing products made with Ponchatoula strawberries, satsumas, pecans, chicory and more.

Its brewery will be the first to create a brewing process for 100% alcohol-free bitters and build to scale with brewing tech-nology, the release said.

A resident of Uptown, Cotton got her start in the spirits industry by helping her father start Georgia’s first legal distill-ery since Prohibition, 13th Colony, while in college at Auburn University, the release said.


P H O T O C O U R T E S Y N E W O R L E A N S B E V E R A G E G R O U P L L C

3300 Gravier St. is the new home of El Guapo, a locally-grown brand of bitters,

syrups and mixers.

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www.CPBJ.com

• Central Penn Business Journal

• 717-236-4300

JUNE 14, 2019

FOOD BUSINESS

Craft-beer boom spurs local hops farmers

By Jason Scott

[email protected]

Pennsylvania leads the nation in craft-

beer production.

But while more beer is being brewed in

places like Carlisle, Harrisburg and York,

brewers here must rely on some key in-

gredients that often travel long distances.

One is hops, which are not widely

grown in Pennsylvania, or on the East

Coast in general.

In fact, most hops come from Washing-

ton, Oregon and Idaho, which account for

the majority of the country’s hop produc-

tion. Washington alone has about 40,000

acres of hops.

Two Cumberland County hop farmers

are hoping to claim a piece of that market

and inspire other Pennsylvania farmers to

consider cultivating the crop for breweries

in Pennsylvania.

“It’s a niche thing. Not too many peo-

ple do it,” said Michael Reifsnyder, who

planted 3,400 hop plants on his 15-acre

West Pennsboro Township property in

2017.

A big reason for the lack of new hop farm-

ers is difficulty in getting started and com-

peting with larger established operations.

“These local houses are up against com-

panies that can reach a better economy

of scale, plus have quality control proce-

dures and logistics plans that have been

in place for decades,” said Brandalynn

Armstrong, co-owner of Zeroday Brewing

in Harrisburg. “It makes it harder for the

small producer to compete.”

Hop growing requires a large trellis for

the twining vines and an irrigation system.

Farmers also need special equipment to

harvest, process and package the hops.

Hops, which take three years to reach

full harvest, also are prone to pests and

diseases and can be difficult to grow in

certain soil types and climates.

But Reifsnyder, who retired in 2011

from the U.S. Navy after 22 years of service,

took a chance on hops after experiment-

ing with grapes and asparagus on his

Carlisle-area farm, dubbed GEMS Farm.

He also saw success at nearby hop yard

Sunny Brae Farms and thought his farm

could provide complementary varieties of

fresh local hops to small breweries.

He and his wife, Sharon, along with

their two teenage daughters, maintain

the hop yard, which is entering its second

year of harvest. GEMS currently grows five

varieties of hops on 3.25 acres, but the plan

is to eventually grow to seven acres, plant

a wider variety of hops and reach more

breweries.

“Expansion is on our radar,” he said.

Local thirst

In preparation for hop harvest later

this summer and early fall, the Reifsny-

ders recently purchased equipment that

will allow them to pelletize dried hops

— meaning to grind them into powder

and press them into small pellets. Pellet-

ized hops have a longer shelf life and are

what many brewers rely on throughout

the year.

The farm’s hop yard could yield about

5,000 or 6,000 pounds of hops this year.

GEMS expects to pelletize the majority

of its hops this year after selling almost

all of its harvest last fall to local breweries

making wet-hopped beers — also known

as fresh-hop beers that use hops fresh off

the vine.

Wet-hop batches of beer can use five

to 10 times as many hops as pelletized

batches.

Local brewers say they are eager to buy

more local ingredients, including hops,

but purchasing decisions come down to

quality, price and availability.

Jeff Musselman, head brewer at the

Millworks in Harrisburg, said the local

market has struggled to check all three

buckets. Most local hop farms are growing

on one or two acres and not pelletizing.

“The vast majority of local hops are

brewed in late summer or early fall for

wet-hop beers,” he said. “That has been

the big limitation.”

The Millworks and other breweries said

they would like to buy more local hops

year round, especially pelletized hops, to

support farmers.

“I think brewers absolutely want to use

it,” Musselman said, noting the differences

in smell and taste between East and West

Coast hops.

But Musselman said he expects local

hops would cost more than those from

larger West Coast suppliers, given the

lower hop volumes at local farms. Nev-

ertheless, he said he would still buy local

hops for special PA Preferred brews, i.e.,

beers made with Pennsylvania-produced

agricultural commodities, like hops or

grain.

Victor Shaffer and Andrew Lyons start-

ed growing an acre of hops outside of

Mechanicsburg last year. Their company,

called Lion Bines Hop Farm, is expected to

produce a partial harvest of hops this year

and a full harvest next year.

But the partners are investing now in

processing equipment to pelletize their

hops, with an eye on making extra money

by pelletizing hops for other farmers.

“In the future, we would love to process

for other farms so there is less of a cost

barrier,” Shaffer said.

Both Cumberland County hop farms

acknowledged the hops business in Penn-

sylvania is not much more than a seedling.

But through trial and error, they are opti-

mistic hop farms will begin to sprout.

“I hope we see more hop growers,” Rei-

fsnyder said. <

Lancaster County is continuing to draw

more people, with 2018 as the ninth consec-

utive year that the county saw increases in

visitors, visitor spending and tourism jobs.

The nine-year uptick is the result of a

diverse group of businesses and continued

changes in the perception of the county,

the county’s tourist information center, Dis-

cover Lancaster, wrote in a recent report.

Visitors to the county spent $2.24 billion in

2018, up 4.6 percent from $2.14 billion in 2017.

Of that total, $482 million of went to wages and

salaries for the 16,968 people working in the

Lancaster County tourism industry, accord-

ing to the report by Discover Lancaster, which

is based in East Lampeter Township.

The number of visitors to the county also

increased, rising from 8.64 million in 2017

to 8.85 million people in 2018, an increase

of 2.5 percent.

The report’s data was provided by Oxford,

England-based Tourism Economics and

based on hotel-tax collections reported by

the county, average hotel-room rates and

trends in visitor spending.

Lancaster County has had a long tradi-

tion of enticing tourists to its Pennsylvania

Dutch dining, outlet shopping and family

attractions like the Strasburg Railroad in

Strasburg Township and Dutch Wonder-

land in East Lampeter Township.

Those attractions have continued to pull

in tourists from across the globe but now

share the market with new businesses and

destinations.

They include popular restaurants and

bars, revitalized downtowns in places like

Lititz and Columbia, and outdoor activities

like Refreshing Mountain Retreat in Clay

Township, according to Joel Cliff, director

of communications for Discover Lancaster.

“We have worked on broadening our

brand for the last five or six years to expand

people’s expectations of what Lancaster is

all about,” Cliff said. “There are eight or 12

reasons to come to Lancaster not just the

three you already knew.”

The tourism increases also mirror the

economic growth in the U.S. as a whole, ac-

cording to Cliff.

“Clearly the economy has continued to

build itself back after the Great Recession,”

Cliff said. “It was building steam in 2017 and

certainly last year.” <

— Ioannis PashakisLancaster County tourism sees gain in visitors

Mike and Sharon Reifsnyder stand in the hop yard of their West Pennsboro Township

farm. They began growing the crop in 2017 in a bid to make locally grown hops more

available. PHOTO/MARKELL DELOATCH

6

www.CPBJ.com

Central Penn Business Journal

JUNE 21, 2019

OPINION

GUEST VIEWAt risk: A win for health care over big tobacco

A lot has changed since 1998, the year

that Pennsylvania and 45 states stood up

to big tobacco and helped create the To-

bacco Settlement Fund, or TSF. We may

have moved on from CD-

ROMs, dial-up internet

and the Y2K-bug frenzy.

But a few things have

stood the test of time:

Pokémon, “Toy Story”

and Pennsylvania’s com-

mitment to keeping the

core mission of the TSF

dedicated to health care.

It took the 46-state co-

alition years of fighting with major tobacco

companies in order to come to the 1998

Master Settlement Agreement; the funds

weren’t distributed in Pennsylvania until

the Tobacco Settlement Act of 2001.

Throughout that process, The Hospital

and Healthsystem Association of Pennsyl-

vania and the commonwealth’s hospitals

played a big role in ensuring that money

was preserved for health care — not to fill

one-time budget holes or fund other proj-

ects. We worked with health educators, re-

searchers and provider groups to find the

right balance for everyone.

Since Pennsylvania hospitals first began

receiving this money, it has been used to:

• Help people quit using tobacco prod-

ucts• Provide access to health care for ev-

eryone, regardless of their insurance or

health status• Fund research to cure diseases like

cancer, and improve the health of all

Pennsylvanians• Support financially fragile rural hos-

pitals, which serve large proportions of

vulnerable patients

• More recently, help hospitals address

the opioid crisisSpecifically, during fiscal year 2017–

2018, Pennsylvania’s hospitals received

$28.5 million through the TSF at the state

level, which is then matched by the federal

government to total approximately $60

million. This money goes to cover the cost

of caring for the uninsured and underin-

sured.Pennsylvania also received more than

$44 million for CURE grants during the

fiscal year 2014–2015. The grants help

universities, hospitals and research orga-

nizations partner to unlock solutions for

cancer, ways to improve the quality and

outcomes of health care, and how to ad-

dress community health issues.

This year, these hospital dollars and re-

search funds could be at risk.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget plan kept the

TSF whole, but we are concerned that this

year some lawmakers want to use tobacco

dollars to pay state debt. You see, during

the 2017–2018 state budget process, the

General Assembly authorized borrowing

against $1.5 billion in future TSF payments

to balance the state’s budget. The bond

payments now are due, to the tune of $115

million during this budget.

Some of the reasons that TSF money

went directly to hospitals to fund uncom-

pensated care is because they are under-

paid by the safety-net payer, Medicaid,

which a recent analysis indicates reim-

burses at 81 cents on the dollar.

There are no hospitals or hospital staff

that treat only the uninsured or patients

insured by Medicaid, and Pennsylvania

doesn’t have a public hospital system. As

a result, the hospital community treats all

patients, regardless of the type of insur-

ance they have — and serves as the safety

net for the underinsured and uninsured.

Even with the improvement in the insured

rate through the Affordable Care Act and

Medicaid expansion, we still have people

who are uninsured and need help.

Our hospitals rely on these funds to

make sure they can stay open and contin-

ue to treat everyone. The state has options

to balance its budget — options that don’t

jeopardize the already stressed financial

situations of many of Pennsylvania’s hos-

pitals.More than a third of Pennsylvania’s

hospitals operated in the red last fiscal

year. Among that group, more than three-

quarters have been operating in the red

for the last three fiscal years. Now, more

than ever, these hospitals are relying on

the enduring promise that the TSF will be

there to help them continue to stay open,

remain financially stable and treat every

patient who walks through their doors.

Trends may come and go, but the Penn-

sylvania hospital community’s mission

remains focused on health care. We call on

the legislature to make sure it remains the

mission of the TSF, too. Don’t rob patient

care to fill budget gaps.•

Andy Carter is president and CEO of The

Hospital and Healthsystem Association of

Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

AndyCarter

A strong wellness program can be a

differentiator for recruitment, reduce the

cost of health care benefits and help build

a team atmosphere based around healthy

choices. However, communicating the

benefits and program elements of a well-

ness initiative can be hard to navigate. Hu-

man resources and cor-

porate leadership need to

walk a fine line – avoiding

sounding paternal, mor-

alistic or even too per-

sonal while empowering

employees and spurring

participation.How a company com-

municates can make a big

difference. It can boost

enrollment in the wellness strategy and

create more engagement among employ-

ees. Those who are engaged at work will go

the extra mile and demonstrate increased

productivity, which shows up in a compa-

ny’s profitability, turnover numbers, safety

incidents and quality.

Communication is key for an employee

health and wellness program and for a

business overall. Looking to a professional

communicator for ideas and best practices

will help streamline communications sur-

rounding such a program and lead to more

engaged, healthier employees.

What can you do?

• See things from the employees’ per-

spective. How will the wellness program

components benefit them? Why should

they care? Does it affect their work life or

home life? Zero in on key factors affecting

employees and highlight the benefits of

healthy choices.

• Avoid communicating to staff as if

they are marketing targets. Trust them

and communicate with them as if they

are “one of us,” instead of “one of them.”

Use “we” and communicate from a team

perspective, rather than a top-down

standpoint. • Talk about the rewards – not only for

their personal lives, but rewards of the

program. What’s in it for them can be a

powerful motivator to expand participa-

tion. That participation, in turn, can build

a team atmosphere and lead to higher

engagement. • Consider health and wellness ambas-

sadors. Peer-to-peer communication is

powerful and partnering with passionate

team members to communicate can re-

move the paternalistic factor.

• Connect the dots for employees to the

bigger corporate picture. Participation in

wellness programs has the potential to de-

crease company health benefit costs over-

all, which in turn could make a difference

in employees’ premium or out-of-pocket

health care costs.

• Remove jargon, whether health care

or HR wording that might not be easily un-

derstood. Remember, when jargon is used,

it may mean the employees are unlikely to

understand the message.

• Avoid populating emails or messages

with large amounts of information. People

digest details in small chunks, so consider

an ongoing campaign to share bits and

pieces of information, or a web page to

view the full information when employees

are interested and have time.

• Have a sense of humor when commu-

nicating. Loosening up a formal approach

can go a long way to creating engagement

with the communication and getting on

board with the program.

• Make it a two-way conversation. Ask

employees what program components

they’d like to see. Find out what might mo-

tivate them to participate. Ask for ideas on

communicating the details to staff.

• Use social channels to help spread

the word. Whether its an internal social

tool such as Slack or Yammer or a closed

group on Facebook or LinkedIn, encour-

age employees to share pictures of their

healthy choices and/or program partici-

pation. Build a little competition between

company segments and offer content

meant to engage the group – ask ques-

tions, post a quiz or host a ‘meet this goal’

challenge.

• Bring creative ideas to the effort.

Consider interesting program elements to

up the ante of interest and participation.

Think about bringing in a local chef to of-

fer a cooking class, having a local farm

stand bring in their fresh produce regu-

larly or bring in a gardening expert to offer

a hands-on workshop for growing veg-

etables or herbs. At GRIT, team members

in the wellness program are walking miles

(via a step tracker) to earn a free airplane

ticket to anywhere in the world. The more

creative and out-of-the-box the program,

when paired with easy ways to participate,

the more people will want to take part.

• Stay diverse with your communica-

tions focus. If there is a large subset of

staff who bike to work, that’s great, but if

that’s all communications are about, the

company risks losing support from other

parts of the employee base. The same goes

for any topic: if it’s strictly about one thing,

the business might lose the interest of its

whole audience.

Internal communications centered around

health and wellness can make or break pro-

gram participation. Get together with HR,

leadership and a few employees to brain-

storm the best ways to get the message out.

•

Julie Lando is the owner and president of GRIT

Marketing Group, a marketing and communica-

tions firm with offices in York and Lancaster.

GUEST VIEWHealth and wellness communications can be engaging

JulieLando

6 www.CPBJ.com • Central Penn Business Journal • 717-236-4300 JUNE 14, 2019

By Stacy WescoeBridgeTower Media

Stefanie Angstadt started making cheese as a hobby soon after graduating from col-lege in 2008.

After a few years she knew it was some-thing she wanted to do full time.

She opened Valley Milkhouse in a former dairy farm in Oley in 2014 and began to manufacture and sell her cheeses profes-sionally.

Not a dairy farmer, herself, she partnered with other small Berks County dairies to buy fresh warm milk “straight from the udder.”

Her cheeses — mostly a mix of softer and aged styles — were a hit.

“We make everything by hand. It’s very good cheese so there is a demand,” Angstadt said.

In fact, demand often outpaced her sup-ply. Nonetheless, she struggled with the lo-gistics of getting the cheese she was making to the people who wanted it.

While around 80 percent of the cheese she makes is sold wholesale to markets and restaurants, profits were much higher on the 20 percent of the product she was selling at her farm stand and the two farmers markets she attends, the Easton Farmers Market in downtown Easton and one in Philadelphia.

“The question was, how do we reach these people who want to buy our cheese without standing there at a farmers market all day — sometimes in the rain — hoping the right people will come buy it?” she said.

Organizing principalIn 2016, as fate would have it, an old

friend of Angstadt’s, Alex Jones, a prominent organizer of commu-nity-supported agri-culture programs in the Greater Philadel-phia area, had just left a job with a CSA.

In a typical CSA, a group of farmers connect with a group of consumers who want to buy fresh, local produce. They sell shares of their fu-ture crop to the con-sumers, who then pick up weekly or monthly boxes of the farmers’ latest crops, sharing both the risk and the rewards of the farmers’ season and giving those farmers a more reliable source of income.

“My job was to buy products from dozens of local farmers,” Jones said.

She was looking to take her CSA skills and use them in a new way. She thought of Angstadt and another cheesemaker she had met in her old job: Sue Miller of Birchrun

Hills Farm in Chester County.Jones pitched the idea of using the CSA

format to develop a new way of selling craft cheese to cheese fans. That led Jones, Ang-stadt and Miller in 2016 to create the Collec-tive Creamery CSA, based out of Angstadt’s Oley creamery, with Jones as the operations manager and Angstadt and Miller as the two primary cheese makers.

“We thought between the three of us, we could pool our resources and move beyond farmers markets,” Angstadt said.

According to Jones, the trio didn’t invent the idea of a cheese-based CSA. But, she said, “A cheese CSA is still pretty unique.”

Jones said it also makes sense.“You can get subscriptions for anything

today — dog products, beauty products —why not cheese?” she said.

A profitable boostThe Collective Creamery is now heading

into its third year. And while it is still just a small part of each of the cheesemakers’ business, it is an important one.

By eliminating the middleman, the chee-semakers get more of the profit.

Angstadt said her profit margin is gener-ally about 15 percent to 20 percent on the roughly $150,000 in gross sales she has in a year. That makes it a challenge to maintain a capital-intensive operation. Anywhere she can improve the profit margin is a boost.

Profits on the CSA vary from month to month, but she said they tend to average at the higher end of her overall profits.

The current CSA package from the Col-lective Creamery ranges from $180 for a once-a-month pickup of two pounds and four varieties of cheese for four months

to $280 for a twice-monthly pickup of one-and-a-half pounds and three varieties of cheese for four months. CSA packages gen-erally run from five to six months. The current package is shortened since the current CSA season has already begun.

Customers pick up their orders at participating loca-tions. Most are busi-nesses that focus on

local craft foods and products like farm stands or craft brewers, which support “buy local” efforts.

Having a variety of pickup locations in the region helps the Collective’s members spread their cheese sales farther than they could on their own.

Subscriptions can be picked up in two Berks County locations — Hidden River

Brewing Co. in Douglasville and Covered Bridge Farmstand in Oley — and at one location in the Lehigh Valley — Bonn Place Brewing Co. in Bethlehem. Other pickup locations are in the Chester County and Philadelphia areas.

By having a wider client base, the chee-semakers also are able to offer more variety. Angstadt and Miller rotate between six varieties of cheese, including Angstadt’s Witchgrass, her version of a French Valen-cay cheese, and Miller’s Clipper, an aged raw-milk cheese. They also reach out to other cheesemakers in other regions, hop-ing to include their specialty craft cheeses in the CSA to give customers more options.

For example, Miller is currently work-ing with a sheep farmer to blend sheep and cow milk together to make a creamy Camembert-style cheese.

Ultimately, their goal is to turn cheese lovers into die-hard cheese fans.

“We want to cultivate the cheese culture in this area like it is in Europe. We don’t want people to see cheese as a guilty pleasure, but as a food you eat every day,” Angstadt said. “This is a way to grow the cheese community.

“People don’t see fine cheese as a neces-sity,” added Jones. “When they go to the gro-cery store they feel they have to get produce and bread … we want them to think of fine cheese like that, not as a luxury.”

Miller sees the craft cheese industry growing in much the same way the craft beer industry has developed and grown, with those in the industry working cooperatively instead of competitively to boost the entire industry by sharing tips and efforts.

“It’s the whole ‘a rising tide raises all ships’ kind of thing,” she said. “We all benefit from a stronger cheese industry.”

Jones said the trio is focused on being a regional leader in the craft cheese industry. They aren’t planning any major expansion.

But they are on the lookout for more pickup locations along their current route and for pockets of cheese lovers who may want to get in on their offerings.

“We have to be lean and use the resources we have,” Jones said.

One secondary benefit to the women’s local craft cheese making is the small boost it gives to the region’s dairy farmers, which Angstadt said are struggling with low prices on the commodities market.

She said there is a dairy crisis across the nation.

According to the National Family Farm Foundation, America has lost over half its dairy farmers in just the last 16 years, as wholesale dairy prices have dropped below 1970 prices.

“Because of the quality I demand, I pay a premium for the milk,” she said.

Her sources include Spring Creek Farm in Wernersville, an organic dairy farm.

Greg Stricker, a partner in Spring Creek, said he pays special attention to the milk he produces for Angstadt.

“I always try to make the highest-quality milk, but we try to concentrate on making a milk that is higher in protein and butter fat to make her cheeses,” Stricker said.

Stricker said the extra money a cheese-maker like Angstadt is willing to pay repre-sents a needed boost for small farms like his.

“It’s a huge benefit to us when a local business like that uses our product,” he said. “It’s essential to find someone making a higher-end product to compete.” <

DAIRY GODMOTHERS

Specialty cheese biz taps into local dairies

From left, Sue Miller, Stefanie Angstadt and Alex Jones brought together their collective talents to form the Collective Creamery CSA in 2016. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

Honey-Bell is a brie-style cheese made by Stefanie Angstadt in her Oley creamery. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

“You can get subscriptions for anything today — dog

products, beauty products — why not cheese?”

— Alex Jones, Collective Creamery CSA

JUNE 21

, 2019

717-23

6-430

0

•

Cent

ral Pen

n Bus

iness

Journ

al

•

www.CPBJ.c

om

7

Accord

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to th

e as

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nes

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offer

$82

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illio

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onomic

ben

efits

and c

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e U

nited

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es a

lone

by 202

5. Th

e as

soci

atio

n’s go

al

is to

enco

urage

sta

te l

eader

s to

support

the

devel

opmen

t of a

dro

ne in

dustry

– o

r

unman

ned a

ircra

ft sy

stem

s, as

they

are

more

form

ally

know

n – bec

ause

other

stat

es

alre

ady a

re d

oing

so.

For exa

mple

, New

York

is p

utting

up $30

mill

ion to

pay

for a

50-

mile

unm

anned

air

corr

idor b

etw

een S

yrac

use a

nd Rom

e, th

e

asso

ciat

ion sa

id. O

ther

stat

es h

ave

becom

e

feder

al t

est

sites

for

the

drone

indust

ry,

while

oth

ers

have

been j

oinin

g re

gional

partn

ersh

ips t

o dev

elop in

itiat

ives

. As e

ach

day p

asse

s, Pen

nsylv

ania

seem

s to be f

allin

g

furth

er b

ehin

d in d

evel

oping

a dom

estic

drone

indust

ry, o

bserv

ers s

aid.

For now

, th

e as

soci

atio

n isn

’t as

king

Pennsy

lvan

ia’s

lead

ers

for

much

– e

xcep

t

to b

e aw

are

of what

is g

oing

on and to

offer

support

as i

deas

devel

op, se

vera

l peo

ple

said

. One

goal

is to

cre

ate

a w

orkin

g gr

oup

with

in th

e st

ate

avia

tion c

aucu

s –

a le

gis-

lativ

e gr

oup – to

dev

elop a

road

map

that

would

“id

entif

y fu

nding

opportuniti

es t

o

support

criti

cal d

rone

infra

stru

cture

,” th

e

asso

ciat

ion sa

id in

a fa

ct sh

eet.

The a

ssoci

atio

n isn’t

aski

ng for n

ew re

gu-

latio

ns, poin

ting o

ut that

dro

nes ar

e reg

ulat-

ed b

y th

e Fed

eral

Avi

atio

n Adm

inist

ratio

n,

or FAA, w

hich c

ontrols

U.S. a

irspac

es a

nd

alre

ady

require

s co

mm

erci

al d

rone

opera-

tors

to g

et a

lice

nse.

But that

does

n’t m

ean th

ere

is no ro

om

for

actio

n on t

he st

ate

leve

l. In

Oct

ober

2018

, Pen

nsylv

ania

law

mak

ers

passe

d Act

78, w

hich li

mits

the

abili

ty o

f munic

ipal

i-

ties

to r

egula

te u

nman

ned a

ircra

ft unle

ss

auth

orized

by t

he st

atute

.

Local

juris

dictio

ns ofte

n move

to p

ass

ordin

ance

s that

can in

terfe

re w

ith co

mm

er-

cial

oper

ators

, sai

d Dav

id D

ay, e

xecu

tive

vice

pre

siden

t at

Key

stone

Aeria

l Surv

eys

based

in P

hiladel

phia. Th

at m

akes

educa

-

tion cr

itica

l, he

added

.

Keyst

one does

work

nat

ionw

ide

and h

as

found th

at so

me

offici

als i

n stat

es –

such

as

New

York

and N

ew Je

rsey

– ar

e m

ore aw

are

of iss

ues f

acin

g th

e dro

ne in

dustry

than

those

in P

ennsy

lvan

ia. Th

e ad

voca

cy d

ay

was

an e

ffort to

chan

ge th

at, t

oo, h

e sa

id. I

t

also

is h

oped th

at P

ennsy

lvan

ia’s

gove

rn-

men

t age

ncies

will

incr

easin

gly

adopt t

he

tech

nologi

es,

as a

genci

es i

n oth

er s

tate

s

have,

Day

added

.

The

asso

ciat

ion m

ainta

ins t

hat 3

6 out o

f

the

50 s

tate

s hav

e tra

nsporta

tion d

epar

t-

men

ts t

hat f

und cen

ters

or

progr

ams

for

drone

operat

ions.

PennD

OT,

it s

aid, i

s not

among

those

that

hav

e in

itiat

ed o

utsid

e

progr

ams.

Alexi

s Cam

pbell,

PennD

OT p

ress

secr

e-

tary

, sai

d Pen

nDO

T has

an a

ctiv

e in

tern

al

drone

progr

am a

nd has

bee

n flyi

ng dro

nes

for s

ever

al ye

ars.

“We’

ve r

ecen

tly a

dvance

d our

operat

or

train

ing

and c

ertifi

catio

n pro

gram

and a

re

curr

ently

enga

ged w

ith a

pilo

t pro

gram

as-

sess

ing e

ffici

enci

es fo

r the u

se o

f dro

nes fo

r

3D m

odelin

g of s

tock

piles,

exca

vatio

ns and

road

way

slid

e ar

eas,”

she

said

in a

writ

ten

resp

onse to

ques

tions.

Flyin

g into

new ro

les

Seve

ral a

ttendee

s at

the

June

11 e

vent

said

they

thin

k st

ate

lead

ers

will

be

sup-

portive

of i

deas t

o exp

and d

rone

progr

ams

both w

ithin

sta

te a

genci

es a

nd with

com

-

mer

cial

applic

atio

ns once

they

under

stan

d

the

potentia

l.

Task

s such

as b

ridge

insp

ectio

ns or a

eria

l

surv

eys

that

once

took

wee

ks t

o conduct

can n

ow b

e done

in a

day

or s

o, D

ay s

aid.

Farm

ers,

utiliti

es an

d oth

ers h

ave s

een h

ow

drones

can re

duce th

e cost

s of p

roje

cts a

nd

insp

ectio

ns. Th

ey a

lso h

ave

wei

ghed

the

li-

abili

ty ri

sks a

nd real

ized

they

are

bet

ter o

ff

using

drones

.

Gove

rnm

ents

, how

ever

, see

m to

hav

e a

higher

hurd

le t

o ove

rcom

e w

hen li

abili

ty

conce

rns a

re ra

ised

, Day

said

.

Seve

ral e

xper

ts n

oted th

e co

ncern

s ca

n

be ea

sed o

nce t

he optio

ns ar

e ca

refu

lly

wei

ghed

. For e

xam

ple, t

he ris

ks to

surv

ey a

utility

line t

raditi

onally

would

invo

lve w

ork-

ers

using

ladder

tru

cks

to e

xam

ine

high-

volta

ge w

ires,

whic

h is d

ange

rous w

ork th

at

could

take

wee

ks. N

ow, d

rones

with

cam

-

eras

can

insp

ect t

he sa

me

line

in a

frac

tion

of the

time

– an

d with

out putti

ng peo

ple in

harm

’s w

ay.

As peo

ple b

ecom

e m

ore a

war

e of h

ow

drones

can b

e use

d, the

indust

ry h

as ta

ken

off, Day

and o

ther

s sai

d.

Keega

n Flahiv

e is a

rem

ote p

ilot f

or Arg

os

Unm

anned

Aer

ial S

olutio

ns bas

ed in

Liti

tz.

When

the

com

pany

was

founded

in 2

015,

it did

a lo

t of w

ork w

ith re

al e

stat

e co

mpa-

nies t

hat w

ante

d aer

ial v

iew

s of p

roper

ties,

Flahiv

e sa

id. Th

e co

mpan

y now

does

work

for a

num

ber o

f diff

eren

t clie

nts, i

ncludin

g

const

ruct

ion c

ompan

ies,

utiliti

es a

nd gov-

ernm

ent a

genci

es.

The

opportuniti

es fo

r cre

atin

g new

jobs

and busi

nesse

s ar

e va

st,

said

Alber

t R.

Sarv

is, a

n ass

istan

t pro

fess

or of g

eosp

atia

l

tech

nology

at H

arris

burg U

niver

sity

of Sci

-

ence

and T

echnolo

gy. H

U h

as a

dapte

d its

geosp

atia

l pro

gram

s to

incl

ude th

e use

of

drones

and h

as sp

onsore

d sum

mer

cam

ps

for

studen

ts i

n hig

h sch

ool an

d mid

dle

school t

o enco

urage

inte

rest

in th

e tec

hnol-

ogy, S

arvi

s sai

d.

Oth

ers p

ointe

d out that

drones

have b

een

used in

the fi

lm an

d tele

visio

n indust

ries,

as

wel

l as i

n surv

eyin

g ra

il lin

es a

nd in p

olice

and e

mer

gency

applic

atio

ns, su

ch a

s riv

er

resc

ues. O

ne st

ory to

ld d

uring

the

June

11

even

t was

how

cattl

e had

ruin

ed a

portion of

a fa

rmer

’s cr

ops. A d

rone w

as ab

le to

ass

ess

the

tota

l dam

age,

whic

h hel

ped ju

stify

the

insu

rance

clai

m.

Then

ther

e ar

e th

e sp

in-o

ff busin

esse

s.

Ryan B

oswel

l is

the

Philadel

phia-b

ased

sale

s m

anag

er fo

r Phas

eOne

Indust

rial,

a ca

mer

a co

mpan

y bas

ed in

Colora

do.

PhaseO

ne ca

mer

as ca

n be outfi

tted on

vario

us dro

nes to

do a

var

iety

of w

ork fo

r

gove

rnm

ents

, quar

ry o

perat

ors a

nd util

ity

com

panie

s, am

ong oth

ers,

Boswel

l sai

d.

Day

sai

d the

drone

indust

ry i

s co

m-

petiti

ve in

that

anyo

ne ca

n buy

a dro

ne fo

r

around $

500

and s

et u

p shop.

How

ever

,

com

mer

cial

oper

ators

are

require

d to ta

ke

FAA tr

ainin

g to

bec

ome

a lic

ense

d rem

ote

pilot,

he an

d oth

ers s

aid.

At Key

stone,

Day

sai

d, pric

es c

an ra

nge

depen

ding

on the

job a

nd the

loca

tion. A

day of a

eria

l cam

era w

ork w

ith a

licen

sed re

-

mote

pilo

t mig

ht cost

about $

2,00

0 in

som

e

high-d

ensit

y ar

eas i

n New

York

or N

ew Je

r-

sey a

nd per

haps a

bout $1,

000 e

lsew

here.

<

DRONEco

ntinu

ed fr

om pa

ge 1

David H

eath, d

irect

or of t

he PA D

rone A

ssocia

tion, p

repare

s to m

ake rem

arks a

t Dro

ne Advoca

cy D

ay June 11

in H

arrisb

urg. H

eath and o

ther

supporte

rs hope to

encoura

ge state

leaders

to su

pport th

e growin

g drone in

dustry

. P

HOTO/T

HOMAS A

. BARST

OW

“We’v

e rec

ently

advan

ced

our oper

ator t

rain

ing an

d

certi

ficatio

n progra

m an

d

are c

urrently

engag

ed w

ith

a pilo

t pro

gram

asse

ssin

g

efficie

ncies f

or the u

se of

drones

for 3

D modeli

ng of

stock

piles,

exca

vatio

ns and

road

way sl

ide a

reas

.”

Alexis

Cam

pbell

, Pen

nDOT p

ress

se

creta

ry

JUNE 14, 2019

www.CPBJ.com


13

NEWSMAKERSPromotions, appointments, hires

ACCOUNTINGChambersburg-based Rotz and

Stonesifer named Dennis Shindle

senior manager. He provides tax,

consulting and financial state-

ment services to closely held

companies. He is a CPA and a graduate of Shippens-

burg University. ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

Lancaster-based RGS Associ-

ates named Jake Krieger proj-

ect landscape architect. He has

a bachelor’s degree from Temple

University. Matthew Fauth was

named a computer aided drafting

and design designer. He also is a

sergeant in the National Guard. He

has an associate degree from York

Technical Institute. Upper Dublin Township, Mont-

gomery County-based McMahon

Associates Inc. named Christo-

pher K. Bauer an associate. He is

general manager of the Camp Hill

office. He has more than 20 years

of project management and trans-

portation engineering experience

and has helped municipalities

through their responsibilities as

local project sponsors on state

and federally funded projects. He

also serves municipalities’ day-

to-day traffic consulting needs.

He is a professional engineer and

professional traffic operations

engineer. Swatara Township-based Skelly

and Loy named LeShelle Smith

marketing spe-cialist. She will be

responsible for graphics coordi-

nation, including preparation of

brochures, charts and exhibit ma-

terials. She will assist with the development of

special marketing and public rela-

tions programs, communications

and media plans and ensuring

that the website is current and

consistent. She has a degree from

Elizabethtown College.

BANKING/FINANCE

Lower Paxton Township-based

Centric Bank named Patricia A.

Kuhn assistant manager of the

Silver Spring

Township Finan-cial Center. She

will cultivate new

customer rela-tionships, man-

age the internal

sales process,

maintain the

branch’s operational proficiency

and mentor her financial center

team. Most recently, she was a cor-

porate social responsibility super-

visor and head teller II with First

National Bank. She has a bach-

elor’s degree from York College.

Lower Allen Township-based

Members 1st Federal Credit

Union named

Alma Jimenez

branch manager

of the location

inside the Gi-ant Foods store

on East Market

Street, York. She

was a branch

manager for PNC Bank. Manheim Township-based

Ambassador Advisors LLC named

Christopher R. Coolidge chief

investment of-ficer. He leads

the wealth man-agement depart-

ment and works

with various oth-er departments.

He is a chartered financial analyst

charterholder. Manheim Township-based

RKL Wealth Management LLC

named William M. Onorato a

senior wealth

strategist. He will

advise high-net-worth families

on multigenera-tional planning,

legacy planning,

business succes-sion and estate

planning. He has 25 years of es-

tate planning and wealth strategy

experience. He has a bachelor’s

degree and an MBA from Loyola

College and a law degree from the

University of Baltimore. Millersburg-based Mid Penn

Bank named Julie A. Bramlitt

financial adviser for Mid Penn

Financial Services. She will help

clients prioritize, organize and

simplify their financial matters

with customized financial solu-

tions. She has 25 years of banking

and financial services experience

and was a financial adviser with

Smoker Wealth Management.

She has bachelor’s and master’s

degrees from Ashford University.

Laura J. Melfi was named senior

vice president and cash manage-

ment officer with Mid Penn’s First

Priority Bank division. She will be

based in Chester County and con-

tribute to deposit growth through

business development activities.

She will also generate fee income

through cash management prod-

ucts and services, and expand and

retain customer relationships. She

has 43 years of financial services

experience. CONSTRUCTIONLancaster-based

Wohlsen

Construction Co. named Manuel

Maza project

manager and es-timator. He was

project engineer.

He has a bache-lor’s degree from

Millersville Uni-versity.

York-based Wagman Construc-

tion Inc. named Joe Corson direc-

tor of business development for

Maryland. He will

expand the firm’s

participation in

o p p o r t u n i t i e s

and enhance

client relation-ships throughout

Maryland. He has

30 years of con-struction industry experience. He

has a bachelor’s degree from the

University of Baltimore. EDUCATIONMillersville University named

John Cheek director of web and

creative services. He will over-

see the creative

production op-eration and serve

the university’s

marketing needs,

focusing on un-dergraduate and

graduate admis-sions, advance-

ment and the president’s office.

He will also oversee design aspects

of the school’s website. He was

creative director of Schiffer Pub-

lishing. He has a bachelor’s degree

from Millersville. GOVERNMENT Harrisburg-based Pennsyl-

vania Public Utility Commis-

sion named Amy S. Goldman

of Philadelphia and Matthew

Hrivnak of Cumberland County

members of the Pennsylvania

Telecommunications Relay Ser-

vice Advisory Board. Goldman

has been a public member of the

board. She is a speech-language

pathologist, has conducted

trainings on the importance of

telecommunications for those

with disabilities and has been

involved with the administra-

tion of Pennsylvania’s telecom-

munications device distribution

program. Hrivnak will represent

the PUC’s Bureau of Consum-

er Services on the board. He

is manager of compliance and

competition in the bureau’s pol-

icy division. Harrisburg-based State Civil

Service Commission named Te-

resa Osborne of Lackawanna

County a commissioner. She was

secretary of the Pennsylvania De-

partment of Aging. HEALTH CARE East Pennsboro Township-

based Geisinger Holy Spirit

named Dr. Ming Jang a member

of Geisinger Ho-ly Spirit Primary

Care. He will see adult patients

and specialize in geriatric care.

He was a clinical assistant profes-

sor of medicine in the division of geriatric medi-

cine at the University of Pennsyl-

vania’s Perelman School of Medi-

cine. He has a medical degree

from Drexel University College

of Medicine. HOSPITALITYAbbottstown, Adams County-

based Hanover Country Club

named John Danehy manager.

LAW East Hempfield Township-

based Russell, Krafft & Gruber

LLP named Ju-lia G. Vanasse a

member of the family law prac-

tice group. For nearly 20 years,

she was a Lan-caster County

divorce master, and she has 30 years of combined

family law experience. She has a

bachelor’s degree from the Col-

lege of William and Mary and a

law degree from Dickinson School

of Law.

Susquehanna Township-based

Mette Evans & Woodside named

Matthew D. Co-ble a sharehold-

er. He represents

insurance com-panies, fraternal

benefit societies,

insurance pro-ducers and third-

party administra-tors in insurance regulatory, trans-

actional and litigation matters.

MARKETINGLancaster-based Godfrey

named Luke Weidner an asso-

ciate creative director. He will

oversee message unification and

brand consisten-cy and align cre-

ative resources with project and

account needs to ensure efficien-

cy. Most recent-ly, he was the

design manager for Artisanal Brewing Ventures.

Weidner has a bachelor’s degree

from Penn State. NONPROFITSPhiladelphia-based Pennsyl-

vanians for Modern Courts named

retired Judge Lawrence

F. Stengel a board

member. He is a shareholder

with Manheim Township-based

Saxton & Stump and former chief

judge for the Eastern District of

Pennsylvania. PUBLIC AFFAIRSHarrisburg-based Triad Strate-

gies LLC named Rob Ghormoz

a senior associate in the govern-

ment affairs practice. He was a

senior adviser to Gov. Tom Wolf’s

re-election campaign and led his

2019 inauguration. He has a bach-

elor’s degree from Penn State.

SENDING NEWSMAKERS

Send announcements concerning

promotions and newly hired

personnel to [email protected].

Save photos at 300 dpi as TIFF

or JPG files. Please do not embed

photos in word documents. Photos

sent through the mail will not be

returned. Releases should include

the municipality in which the

company is located.

Shindle

Krieger

Fauth

Smith

Kuhn

Jimenez

Coolidge

Onorato

Bramlitt

Melfi

Maza

Corson

Cheek

Jang

Vanasse

Coble

Weidner

Stengel

8

www.CPBJ.com


JUNE 7, 2019

OPINION

If yours is like many of the

small businesses I’ve studied, the

price you quote

for your prod-

ucts or services

is determined

by a simple for-

mula, based on

your estimated

costs. Feed in

your costs and

your desired

gross margin

and presto, out comes the price.

There’s just one problem

: price

has nothing to do with cost.

When I tell m

y clients their

prices should have nothing to do

with their costs, they usually look

at me as if I have suddenly sprout-

ed a third eye in my forehead. Af-

ter all, they’ve been doing that for

(fill in the blank) years and it has

worked, for the most part.

That m

ay be true, but in do-

ing so they are probably missing

opportunities to increase profits

on some products or services, or

to gain market share with others.

Those two things are what pricing

strategy is about.

When a business creates a

budget, it estimates sales rev-

enue, costs, and a desired gross

margin that will cover overhead

and produce a budgeted profit.

Looking at the budgeted profit

and loss statement, it is easy to

fall into a trap of thinking, “If we

can just get every sale for the es-

timated cost plus gross m

argin,

we’ll be right on target.” It sounds

simple and scientific, doesn’t it?

The problem

is that what buy-

ers are willing to pay has nothing

to do with the sellers’ costs. You

don’t believe that? I’ll give you

two scenarios.

I wear a Timex Ironm

an

watch that I can buy for about

$35 from a num

ber of retailers.

It is a very accurate watch with a

quartz movem

ent and some very

nice features. “Casual” quartz

watches from Gucci m

ade with

similar m

aterials sell for $275 to

$350. Trust me – I know m

anufac-

turing – there is no possible way

to explain that price differential

based on manufacturing costs.

That’s why you can buy fake

Gucci watches for less than my

Timex on the street. Th

e differ-

ential is totally due to the cachet

of the Gucci brand. The price

is what the market will bear,

the value the buyer puts on the

product. Suppose you have two identi-

cal machines, except one is paid

for and you took out a big loan

for the second one. The per-

son who runs it is a long-time

employee, who m

akes a higher

wage than the guy running the

paid-off machine. Th

e cost of the

second machine is higher than

the cost of the first. Do you be-

lieve you can get a different price

for a product based on which

machine you decide to use? Of

course you can’t.

Pricing is both strategic and

tactical. Working with com

pa-

nies to improve profitability, we

have adopted a strategy of slowly

raising prices above what we

get with the magic form

ula until

customers push back. W

e often

end with prices at a higher, more

profitable level for many, but not

all customers. It’s the custom

er,

not the formula that determ

ines

the best price.

We have experim

ented tactically

with what the market will bear for

change notices, usually much high-

er margins than for the original

orders. In that case the customer is

a captive audience. But sometim

es

we ease up on the change adjust-

ment, and let the custom

er know it

to build good will.

We have som

etimes reduced

prices below the magic form

ula

to build market share or capture

a new account. If the new busi-

ness is incremental, it is all good

on the bottom line.

The m

agic formula gives you

a nice target, but don’t fall into

the trap of thinking that is your

best price.

•

Richard Randall is founder and

president of management-con-

sulting firm New Level Advisors

in Springettsbury Township, York

County. Email him at info@newleve-

ladvisors.com.

In his budget address, Gov. Tom W

olf

stated to applause, “This proposal asks for no

new taxes. Not one dime. Not one penny.”

Yet, as the General Assembly com

bs through

the governor’s proposal, we find that there

are, in fact, tax increases.

One specific tax being proposed by the ad-

ministration is a “double tax” on am

bulatory

surgical centers (ASCs) like

the ones in my district.

ASCs are convenient

health care facilities run

by physicians that provide

same-day surgical and di-

agnostic care for focused

care needs, such as eye

surgeries, colonoscopies,

spine and joint procedures,

and more. Th

ere are 234

Medicare-certified ASCs in Pennsylvania.

The governor expects to take $12.5 m

illion

from these innovative surgical centers, which

is income they would otherwise put toward the

incredible services they provide at lower costs

to patients. ASCs already pay income, sales

and property taxes, as opposed to general hos-

pitals, which do not pay these same taxes.

The governor is correct when he says there

are no “new” taxes in his proposal, as he tried

and was unsuccessful in getting this ASC tax

passed through the General Assembly last

year. It is my hope that the House Republican

Caucus, along with the Pennsylvania Medical

Society and other medical-service advocates,

will prove once more that this tax would be

detrimental to Pennsylvania surgery patients.

First, this tax would cause ASCs to be un-

able to afford state-of-the-art equipment.

Such equipment allows them

to have higher

productivity and healthier patients, but under

this tax plan, this customer care m

ight no lon-

ger be possible.

Another advantage of surgical centers is

that their nurse-to-patient ratios are generally

lower than at general hospitals. These nurses

are trained in one or a few specialized surgical

procedures. This system

ensures that patients

receive the best care possible with the same

nurses caring for them throughout their treat-

ment.Smaller facilities also help surgical hospi-

tals protect patients from spreading infections

among each other. Th

is large reduction in

nosocomial infections is critical in a surgical

environment.

Not only are patients better cared for at

ASCs, but they face lower costs at these cen-

ters than they do at general hospitals. Medic-

aid patients face 50 percent lower costs and

patients with comm

ercial insurance plans

pay as low as 25 percent the costs of a hospi-

tal-based visit.

In addition to saving patients money, these

practitioners also save Medicare $2.3 billion

a year on just the 120 most-com

mon proce-

dures that Medicare patients receive, accord-

ing to UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley noted in a recent study that

in 2015, Pennsylvania ASCs saved Medicare

$32.6 million on cataract procedures, $1.3

million on upper GI procedures and $6.9 m

il-

lion on cystoscopy procedures.

If the Wolf adm

inistration’s tax proposal

were to be enacted, the Pennsylvania Am-

bulatory Surgery Association, along with a

coalition of state medical societies, warn that

up to 25 percent of these centers may need

to close – pushing thousands of patients into

costly general hospitals and forcing centers to

withdraw from M

edicaid.

This is the very problem

that ASCs were at-

tempting to solve.

This ASC tax would be a blow to com

peti-

tion and innovation in health care. By tying

the invisible hand of the free market in health

care with burdensome taxes, we get less

health and less care.

Another tax on these ASCs would not only

cost the state Medicaid system

, it may even

cost lives.I urge m

y colleagues in the Pennsylvania

House and Senate to vote against this proposal

and I urge Gov. Wolf to visit an ASC like W

est

Shore Endoscopy in Cumberland County to

learn about the progress that is being made by

these entrepreneurial physicians and nurses.

As I meet with physicians and patients in

my district, such as those at W

est Shore En-

doscopy, I have been amazed at the benefits

of their innovative approach.

We all can relate to the phrase, “Surgery is

only minor if it happens to som

eone else.”

Nobody wants to be told they need surgery

and they especially do not want an unpleas-

ant surgery experience.

Thanks to ASCs, thousands of Pennsyl-

vanians have been given a convenient and

quality outpatient experience with positive

outcomes and speedy recovery in the com

fort

of their own homes. A double tax on these

centers would not only be devastating to the

many hardworking physicians in our com

-

monwealth but their patients as well.

For the sake of the health and wellness of

our comm

onwealth, I hope my colleagues in

Harrisburg listen to our physicians and their

patients and reject this tax. •

State Rep. Greg Rothman (R) represents the 87th

House District, which is in Cumberland County.

Proposed tax could harm specialty surgical centers

A formula for profit – or for missing out?

GUEST VIEW

THE WHITEBOARD

Richard

Randall

State Rep.

Greg Rothman

If there’s one constant in health

care, it’s change. UPMC’s invest-

ment in southcentral Pennsylvania

has brought positive change to

our region, including new, highly

specialized services, thousands of

new providers and leading-edge

technology to treat the most

advanced diseases. However, even

positive change can cause confu-

sion. I’d like to take a moment to

clarify a question involving health

insurance plans accepted at UPMC

Pinnacle. UPMC Pinnacle hospitals and

outpatient clinics continue to

accept most major insurance

plans, including Aetna, Capital Blue

Cross, Highmark and UPMC Health

Plan for all services. Changes in the

relationship between Highmark

and UPMC in the greater

Pittsburgh and Erie areas will not

affect the relationship between

UPMC Pinnacle and Highmark.

We look forward to continuing

to care for all of our patients in

2019 and beyond. To learn more

about full, in-network access to

UPMC doctors and hospitals, call

our toll-free help line at 1-833-

879-5013 or visit UPMC.com/

Choice2019. Philip W. Guarneschelli,

President and CEO

UPMC Pinnacle

TO THE EDITOR

8 www.CPBJ.com Central Penn Business Journal MAY 31, 2019OPINIONGUEST VIEW

Latest census data reveals trends to watchThe U.S. Census Bureau recently re-

leased new population estimates that account for and compare the resident population for counties between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2018. The outcome? There are shifts in population taking place across the nation that may differ from what you might assume. Here are the highlights at a national and local level.

What’s happening locally?Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster and

York experience consis-tent growth. The most notable trend between 2010 and 2018 in Central Pennsylvania is that these counties all experienced consistent growth year-over-year. Moreover the growth was fairly even over the last eight years.

Another trend worth noting is that the counties have main-tained the same order of ranking based upon population for eight-plus years. For example, in 2010 the counties in order of smallest population to largest were Cum-berland, Dauphin, York and Lancaster. This is the same ranking we see in 2018,

and every year in between.Lancaster remains the largest and fast-

est-growing county. At 984 square miles, it also is the largest of the four counties. Between 2010 and 2018 it experienced the largest numeric growth at 24,112 people. No. 2 in numeric growth was actually the smallest of the four counties, Cumberland County, which grew by 16,017 people. York County grew by 13,301 people and Dauphin County grew by 8,997 people.

What’s happening nationally?The census data confirmed that coun-

ties with the largest numeric growth are located in the south and the west. In fact, Texas claimed four out of the top 10 spots. Looking at population growth by metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas had the largest numeric growth, with a gain of 131,767 people, or 1.8 percent in 2018. Second was Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona, which had an increase of 96,268 people, or 2.0 percent. The cause of growth in these areas is migration, both domestic and international, as well as natural increase. In Dallas, it was natural in-crease that served as the largest source of population growth. For Phoenix it was

migration.The fastest growth occurred outside

of metropolitan areas. Surprisingly, no new metro areas moved into the top 10 largest areas. Of the 390 metro areas in the U.S., (including the District of Co-lumbia and Puerto Rico), 102, or 26.2 percent experienced population decline in 2018. The five fastest-shrinking metro areas (excluding Puerto Rico) were Charleston, West Virginia (-1.6 percent); Pine Bluff, Arkansas. (-1.5 percent); Farmington, New Mexico (-1.5 percent); Danville, Illinois (-1.2 percent); and Watertown-Fort Drum, New York (-1.2 percent). The population decreases were primarily due to negative net domestic migration.

North Dakota was home to the fastest-growing county. Among counties with a population of 20,000 or more, Williams County, North Dakota, claimed the top spot as the fastest-growing by percent-age. This county’s population rose by 5.9 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from 33,395 to 35,350 people). The rapid growth Williams County experienced was due mainly to net domestic migration of 1,471 people in 2018. The county also ex-perienced growth between 2017 and 2018

by natural increase of 427 people and in-

ternational migration of 52 people.

There is more growth than decline. Out

of 3,142 counties, 1,739 (or 55.3 percent)

gained population between 2017 and 2018.

Twelve counties (0.4 percent) experienced

no change in population, and the remain-

ing 1,391 (or 44.3 percent) lost people.

Between 2010 and 2018, a total of 1,481 (or

47.1 percent) counties gained population

and 1,661 (or 52.9 percent) lost popula-

tion. Though there has been more growth

than decline overall, the numbers indicate

that this can easily shift year over year.

A deeper dive into the census data

reveals several demographic changes

impacting commercial real estate develop-

ment: household formations, aging baby

boomers, growing millennials, women

in the workforce and migration toward

the South. Today’s demographic changes

present challenges for commercial real

estate developers, but they also offer lu-

crative opportunities to firms creatively

adapting to new demands.•

Mike Kushner is the owner of Omni Realty Group, a real estate firm in Harrisburg. He can be reached through www.omnirealtygroup.com.

Mike Kushner

2018 was a banner year for mergers and acquisitions. Global M&A activity was the second highest on record, with deals totaling $2.72 trillion. Looking ahead, 76 percent of top executives at U.S. compa-nies expect to close more deals this year than last, and a majority predict these deals will be larger, according to a report from Axios. These compa-nies, and others around the globe, turn to M&A deals to increase market share and improve their business models.

Throughout the M&A process, executives are hyper-focused on company synergies and big-picture goals. As a result, one very important fac-tor often goes overlooked – the employer’s retirement plans. There are many details to consider when acquiring a company. Understanding the seller’s retirement plan and how it will fit within the current ben-efit structure is vital to success.

If retirement plans are not considered upfront, executives may learn that the ac-quired company has an underfunded pen-sion plan – which can be a deal breaker – or that the seller’s 401(k) plan does not meet compliance standards.

So, if you’re planning a merger or acqui-sition, consider the retirement plans now to avoid a headache later on.

If the transaction is a stock acquisi-tion – where the buyer takes full owner-ship of the selling company – the buyer then assumes all of the seller’s liabilities, including its retirement plan. The buyer has three options for how to handle the acquired company’s retirement plan. It can either maintain its own plan and the seller’s plan separately, terminate the seller’s plan, or merge the seller’s plan into its own plan.

If the buyer decides to maintain both plans, the newly acquired employees can either be offered the same benefits they had previously, or a new formula for their employer benefits. Maintaining both plans can provide employees continuity of ben-efits with no impact to the buyer’s retire-ment plan. However, operating multiple plans can be burdensome and expensive, and nondiscrimination testing is needed if employees are receiving different benefit packages.

If the buyer is going to terminate the seller’s plan, this decision should be made and the process initiated before the com-panies merge. If the acquired company’s 401(k) is terminated after the transaction, the seller’s employees will face a one-year

restriction before being able to join the buyer’s 401(k) plan, losing out on a full year of tax-efficient savings and employer contributions.

The main advantages of termination are that employees can be integrated into the buyer’s plan with one benefit structure for all; there is only one plan to maintain; and the risk of any liability transfer into the buyer’s existing plan is avoided. The downside is that the employee accounts become immediately accessible. So, if not rolled over into an IRA or other retirement plan, employees could squander retire-ment assets and face penalty taxes for early distribution.

The final option – merging the seller’s and buyer’s plans – requires that both plans be the same type and have a similar plan design. This option can be efficient and cost-effective – one benefit structure, one plan to operate – and it also avoids the negatives of plan termination.

The risk associated with merging are the unknown factors of the seller’s plan. Has it always operated in compliance with all the complex rules associated with retirement plans? If not, the buyer’s plan would be at risk.

Before deciding how to handle the sell-er’s retirement plan, the buyer will need to perform exhaustive due diligence. This

includes confirming past operational and procedural compliance, making sure all plan documents are up-to-date, and con-firming general compatibility between the plans. Examples include reviewing non-discrimination testing results from recent years, the seller’s fiduciary oversight prac-tices, administrative operations such as distributions, payroll and loan processes, and fulfillment of government reporting requirements.

Many companies partner with an out-side consultant to conduct a thorough benefit plan review and help determine the best option. When experts are engaged from the start, they can help ensure the transition is smooth and employees have a clear understanding of the benefits with their new employer.

An organization’s retirement plan should be a consideration from the early stages of an M&A. Though the evaluation process can be lengthy, it’s better to an-ticipate issues that could arise, instead of realizing them in the midst of the merger when it might be too late.

•John Jeffrey is a consulting actuary, specializing in retirement plan consulting and post-employ-ment health care benefits, for Conrad Siegel, which is based in Susquehanna Township, Dauphin County.

GUEST VIEW

Retirement plans should be piece of M&A puzzle

JohnJeffrey

JUNE 7, 2019

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Central Penn Business Journal •

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By Jason Scott

[email protected]

Expecting a record year for lending and

more growth, the Lancaster-based Commu-

nity First Fund has been adding staff and

restructuring its executive team.

The nonprofit economic development or-

ganization recently hired Michael Carper, the

former CEO of the Housing Development

Corp. MidAtlantic, to be its chief credit officer.

Community First Fund also contracted with

a finance expert from Chicago to serve as CFO

until it hires someone to the post full-time.

“We’re adding and growing dramatically,”

said Dan Betancourt, the organization’s presi-

dent and CEO.

Community First Fund provides financ-

ing for small businesses, affordable housing

projects and nonprofit organizations located

in low-income communities and serving dis-

advantaged groups, including Latino and Af-

rican-American entrepreneurs. And the need

for services is rising.

The organization, which started out serving

Lancaster, now covers 15 counties in Central

Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley and suburban

Philadelphia. Its staff has grown from 20 to 40

over the past five years and it is making more

direct loans to businesses, with volume rising

from about $10 million to $30 million in the

past three years.

The nonprofit also has opened new loan offic-

es in Allentown and Philadelphia where it would

like to add more people to expand lending.

“We expect to go deeper into markets we are

in,” Betancourt said.

But depth, he said, requires a bigger team.

That starts at the executive level.

In addition to adding new execs, the non-

profit has made some internal promotions.

COO Joan Brodhead was recently named se-

nior executive vice president and chief strategic

initiatives officer, while senior vice president of

lending James Buerger was elevated to execu-

tive vice president and chief lending officer.

Community First also has hired staff to work

under each of the C-suite executives.

The growth comes at a time when Commu-

nity First has been positioning itself as a go-to

resource for investors and developers inter-

ested in the federal opportunity zone program,

in which investors can get a tax break on capi-

tal gains by investing in projects in qualified

distressed areas, dubbed opportunity zones.

The investments typically will flow through

what are known as qualified opportunity funds.

Community First has been working to develop

such funds, which could work in combination

with other state and federal incentives.

Among the most notable of those is the

New Markets Tax Credit program, a federal tax

credit program operated by the U.S. Treasury

Department that helps support large urban

redevelopment projects.

Community First is one of two local orga-

nizations that can apply for those federal tax

credits.

The other — Harrisburg-based Common-

wealth Cornerstone Group, a subsidiary of

the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency

(PHFA) — recently was awarded $55 million

in the latest round of funding.

Community First was shut out but hopes

its clients still can take advantage of the in-

centives.

“We plan to work with clients and try to

help them find an allocation through another

organization,” Betancourt said.

Community First and Commonwealth Cor-

Pictured, clockwise from bottom left, is Community First Fund’s executive team: Dan

Betancourt, president and CEO; Mike Carper, chief credit officer; James Buerger, executive

vice president and chief lending officer; and Joan Brodhead, senior executive vice president

and chief strategic initiatives officer. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

Tax credit plan

After being shut out in the last fund-

ing round in 2017, Central Pennsylvania will

receive a share of 2018 tax credits under a

new round of funding from a federal program

designed to support large urban redevelop-

ment projects: the New Markets Tax Credit.

The U.S. Treasury Department last month

awarded $55 million in tax credits to the

Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s

Commonwealth Cornerstone Group, based in

Harrisburg.

Commonwealth Cornerstone’s executive

director Charlotte Folmer said the funding

will help the nonprofit tackle a hefty pipeline

of projects seeking funding.

“We have over 40 projects requesting

over $700 million,” she said, noting that the

requests come from across the common-

wealth.

Folmer said she hopes the tax credits will

be able to support about seven projects this

year — likely mixed-use, commercial and

community service projects — with a focus on

those that exceed $5 million.

Developers often have to spend more

money to buy and fix up vacant and blighted

properties than they can expect to get back

in rental rates once construction is complet-

ed. The New Markets program takes private

equity from investors, usually banks, and

turns that money into gap financing to help

developers offset some of the construction

costs and keep rents in line with what a local

real estate market can support.

The investors receive tax credits in return,

which count against their federal income

taxes.Investors can receive credits totaling 39

percent of their investment. They can use the

credits over seven years as such: 5 percent

per year for the first three years and 6 per-

cent for the next four years.

Folmer said it will be several weeks until

Commonwealth Cornerstone receives its

federal allocation, the organization’s eighth.

The previous seven allocations have helped

fund 38 developments in the state, including

the Hamilton Health Center in Harrisburg,

Lancaster’s Keppel Building and the renova-

tion of Gettysburg’s Schmucker Hall.

In the meantime, officials are narrowing

down mixed-use and commercial projects

across the state that could receive the tax

credits. Part of that selection process could

include working with Lancaster-based

Community First Fund, which did not receive

tax credits this year but has its own backlog

of projects.

The two midstate nonprofits have part-

nered on tax-credit projects in the past,

including the redevelopment of the former

Bulova building in Lancaster. Commonwealth

Cornerstone poured $10 million in tax cred-

its into the project, while Community First

added another $8 million.

Folmer said project announcements could

come this fall.

Community First Fund

expanding executive team

please see EXPANDING page 7

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www.CPBJ.com

• Central Penn Business Journal

• 717-236-4300

JUNE 14, 2019

FOOD BUSINESS

Craft-beer boom spurs local hops farmers

By Jason Scott

[email protected]

Pennsylvania leads the nation in craft-

beer production.

But while more beer is being brewed in

places like Carlisle, Harrisburg and York,

brewers here must rely on some key in-

gredients that often travel long distances.

One is hops, which are not widely

grown in Pennsylvania, or on the East

Coast in general.

In fact, most hops come from Washing-

ton, Oregon and Idaho, which account for

the majority of the country’s hop produc-

tion. Washington alone has about 40,000

acres of hops.

Two Cumberland County hop farmers

are hoping to claim a piece of that market

and inspire other Pennsylvania farmers to

consider cultivating the crop for breweries

in Pennsylvania.

“It’s a niche thing. Not too many peo-

ple do it,” said Michael Reifsnyder, who

planted 3,400 hop plants on his 15-acre

West Pennsboro Township property in

2017.

A big reason for the lack of new hop farm-

ers is difficulty in getting started and com-

peting with larger established operations.

“These local houses are up against com-

panies that can reach a better economy

of scale, plus have quality control proce-

dures and logistics plans that have been

in place for decades,” said Brandalynn

Armstrong, co-owner of Zeroday Brewing

in Harrisburg. “It makes it harder for the

small producer to compete.”

Hop growing requires a large trellis for

the twining vines and an irrigation system.

Farmers also need special equipment to

harvest, process and package the hops.

Hops, which take three years to reach

full harvest, also are prone to pests and

diseases and can be difficult to grow in

certain soil types and climates.

But Reifsnyder, who retired in 2011

from the U.S. Navy after 22 years of service,

took a chance on hops after experiment-

ing with grapes and asparagus on his

Carlisle-area farm, dubbed GEMS Farm.

He also saw success at nearby hop yard

Sunny Brae Farms and thought his farm

could provide complementary varieties of

fresh local hops to small breweries.

He and his wife, Sharon, along with

their two teenage daughters, maintain

the hop yard, which is entering its second

year of harvest. GEMS currently grows five

varieties of hops on 3.25 acres, but the plan

is to eventually grow to seven acres, plant

a wider variety of hops and reach more

breweries.

“Expansion is on our radar,” he said.

Local thirst

In preparation for hop harvest later

this summer and early fall, the Reifsny-

ders recently purchased equipment that

will allow them to pelletize dried hops

— meaning to grind them into powder

and press them into small pellets. Pellet-

ized hops have a longer shelf life and are

what many brewers rely on throughout

the year.

The farm’s hop yard could yield about

5,000 or 6,000 pounds of hops this year.

GEMS expects to pelletize the majority

of its hops this year after selling almost

all of its harvest last fall to local breweries

making wet-hopped beers — also known

as fresh-hop beers that use hops fresh off

the vine.

Wet-hop batches of beer can use five

to 10 times as many hops as pelletized

batches.

Local brewers say they are eager to buy

more local ingredients, including hops,

but purchasing decisions come down to

quality, price and availability.

Jeff Musselman, head brewer at the

Millworks in Harrisburg, said the local

market has struggled to check all three

buckets. Most local hop farms are growing

on one or two acres and not pelletizing.

“The vast majority of local hops are

brewed in late summer or early fall for

wet-hop beers,” he said. “That has been

the big limitation.”

The Millworks and other breweries said

they would like to buy more local hops

year round, especially pelletized hops, to

support farmers.

“I think brewers absolutely want to use

it,” Musselman said, noting the differences

in smell and taste between East and West

Coast hops.

But Musselman said he expects local

hops would cost more than those from

larger West Coast suppliers, given the

lower hop volumes at local farms. Nev-

ertheless, he said he would still buy local

hops for special PA Preferred brews, i.e.,

beers made with Pennsylvania-produced

agricultural commodities, like hops or

grain.

Victor Shaffer and Andrew Lyons start-

ed growing an acre of hops outside of

Mechanicsburg last year. Their company,

called Lion Bines Hop Farm, is expected to

produce a partial harvest of hops this year

and a full harvest next year.

But the partners are investing now in

processing equipment to pelletize their

hops, with an eye on making extra money

by pelletizing hops for other farmers.

“In the future, we would love to process

for other farms so there is less of a cost

barrier,” Shaffer said.

Both Cumberland County hop farms

acknowledged the hops business in Penn-

sylvania is not much more than a seedling.

But through trial and error, they are opti-

mistic hop farms will begin to sprout.

“I hope we see more hop growers,” Rei-

fsnyder said. <

Lancaster County is continuing to draw

more people, with 2018 as the ninth consec-

utive year that the county saw increases in

visitors, visitor spending and tourism jobs.

The nine-year uptick is the result of a

diverse group of businesses and continued

changes in the perception of the county,

the county’s tourist information center, Dis-

cover Lancaster, wrote in a recent report.

Visitors to the county spent $2.24 billion in

2018, up 4.6 percent from $2.14 billion in 2017.

Of that total, $482 million of went to wages and

salaries for the 16,968 people working in the

Lancaster County tourism industry, accord-

ing to the report by Discover Lancaster, which

is based in East Lampeter Township.

The number of visitors to the county also

increased, rising from 8.64 million in 2017

to 8.85 million people in 2018, an increase

of 2.5 percent.

The report’s data was provided by Oxford,

England-based Tourism Economics and

based on hotel-tax collections reported by

the county, average hotel-room rates and

trends in visitor spending.

Lancaster County has had a long tradi-

tion of enticing tourists to its Pennsylvania

Dutch dining, outlet shopping and family

attractions like the Strasburg Railroad in

Strasburg Township and Dutch Wonder-

land in East Lampeter Township.

Those attractions have continued to pull

in tourists from across the globe but now

share the market with new businesses and

destinations.

They include popular restaurants and

bars, revitalized downtowns in places like

Lititz and Columbia, and outdoor activities

like Refreshing Mountain Retreat in Clay

Township, according to Joel Cliff, director

of communications for Discover Lancaster.

“We have worked on broadening our

brand for the last five or six years to expand

people’s expectations of what Lancaster is

all about,” Cliff said. “There are eight or 12

reasons to come to Lancaster not just the

three you already knew.”

The tourism increases also mirror the

economic growth in the U.S. as a whole, ac-

cording to Cliff.

“Clearly the economy has continued to

build itself back after the Great Recession,”

Cliff said. “It was building steam in 2017 and

certainly last year.” <

— Ioannis PashakisLancaster County tourism sees gain in visitors

Mike and Sharon Reifsnyder stand in the hop yard of their West Pennsboro Township

farm. They began growing the crop in 2017 in a bid to make locally grown hops more

available. PHOTO/MARKELL DELOATCH

6

www.CPBJ.com


JUNE 21, 2019

OPINION

GUEST VIEWAt risk: A win for health care over big tobacco

A lot has changed since 1998, the year

that Pennsylvania and 45 states stood up

to big tobacco and helped create the To-

bacco Settlement Fund, or TSF. We may

have moved on from CD-

ROMs, dial-up internet

and the Y2K-bug frenzy.

But a few things have

stood the test of time:

Pokémon, “Toy Story”

and Pennsylvania’s com-

mitment to keeping the

core mission of the TSF

dedicated to health care.

It took the 46-state co-

alition years of fighting with major tobacco

companies in order to come to the 1998

Master Settlement Agreement; the funds

weren’t distributed in Pennsylvania until

the Tobacco Settlement Act of 2001.

Throughout that process, The Hospital

and Healthsystem Association of Pennsyl-

vania and the commonwealth’s hospitals

played a big role in ensuring that money

was preserved for health care — not to fill

one-time budget holes or fund other proj-

ects. We worked with health educators, re-

searchers and provider groups to find the

right balance for everyone.

Since Pennsylvania hospitals first began

receiving this money, it has been used to:

• Help people quit using tobacco prod-

ucts• Provide access to health care for ev-

eryone, regardless of their insurance or

health status• Fund research to cure diseases like

cancer, and improve the health of all

Pennsylvanians• Support financially fragile rural hos-

pitals, which serve large proportions of

vulnerable patients

• More recently, help hospitals address

the opioid crisisSpecifically, during fiscal year 2017–

2018, Pennsylvania’s hospitals received

$28.5 million through the TSF at the state

level, which is then matched by the federal

government to total approximately $60

million. This money goes to cover the cost

of caring for the uninsured and underin-

sured.Pennsylvania also received more than

$44 million for CURE grants during the

fiscal year 2014–2015. The grants help

universities, hospitals and research orga-

nizations partner to unlock solutions for

cancer, ways to improve the quality and

outcomes of health care, and how to ad-

dress community health issues.

This year, these hospital dollars and re-

search funds could be at risk.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget plan kept the

TSF whole, but we are concerned that this

year some lawmakers want to use tobacco

dollars to pay state debt. You see, during

the 2017–2018 state budget process, the

General Assembly authorized borrowing

against $1.5 billion in future TSF payments

to balance the state’s budget. The bond

payments now are due, to the tune of $115

million during this budget.

Some of the reasons that TSF money

went directly to hospitals to fund uncom-

pensated care is because they are under-

paid by the safety-net payer, Medicaid,

which a recent analysis indicates reim-

burses at 81 cents on the dollar.

There are no hospitals or hospital staff

that treat only the uninsured or patients

insured by Medicaid, and Pennsylvania

doesn’t have a public hospital system. As

a result, the hospital community treats all

patients, regardless of the type of insur-

ance they have — and serves as the safety

net for the underinsured and uninsured.

Even with the improvement in the insured

rate through the Affordable Care Act and

Medicaid expansion, we still have people

who are uninsured and need help.

Our hospitals rely on these funds to

make sure they can stay open and contin-

ue to treat everyone. The state has options

to balance its budget — options that don’t

jeopardize the already stressed financial

situations of many of Pennsylvania’s hos-

pitals.More than a third of Pennsylvania’s

hospitals operated in the red last fiscal

year. Among that group, more than three-

quarters have been operating in the red

for the last three fiscal years. Now, more

than ever, these hospitals are relying on

the enduring promise that the TSF will be

there to help them continue to stay open,

remain financially stable and treat every

patient who walks through their doors.

Trends may come and go, but the Penn-

sylvania hospital community’s mission

remains focused on health care. We call on

the legislature to make sure it remains the

mission of the TSF, too. Don’t rob patient

care to fill budget gaps.•

Andy Carter is president and CEO of The

Hospital and Healthsystem Association of

Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

AndyCarter

A strong wellness program can be a

differentiator for recruitment, reduce the

cost of health care benefits and help build

a team atmosphere based around healthy

choices. However, communicating the

benefits and program elements of a well-

ness initiative can be hard to navigate. Hu-

man resources and cor-

porate leadership need to

walk a fine line – avoiding

sounding paternal, mor-

alistic or even too per-

sonal while empowering

employees and spurring

participation.How a company com-

municates can make a big

difference. It can boost

enrollment in the wellness strategy and

create more engagement among employ-

ees. Those who are engaged at work will go

the extra mile and demonstrate increased

productivity, which shows up in a compa-

ny’s profitability, turnover numbers, safety

incidents and quality.

Communication is key for an employee

health and wellness program and for a

business overall. Looking to a professional

communicator for ideas and best practices

will help streamline communications sur-

rounding such a program and lead to more

engaged, healthier employees.

What can you do?

• See things from the employees’ per-

spective. How will the wellness program

components benefit them? Why should

they care? Does it affect their work life or

home life? Zero in on key factors affecting

employees and highlight the benefits of

healthy choices.

• Avoid communicating to staff as if

they are marketing targets. Trust them

and communicate with them as if they

are “one of us,” instead of “one of them.”

Use “we” and communicate from a team

perspective, rather than a top-down

standpoint. • Talk about the rewards – not only for

their personal lives, but rewards of the

program. What’s in it for them can be a

powerful motivator to expand participa-

tion. That participation, in turn, can build

a team atmosphere and lead to higher

engagement. • Consider health and wellness ambas-

sadors. Peer-to-peer communication is

powerful and partnering with passionate

team members to communicate can re-

move the paternalistic factor.

• Connect the dots for employees to the

bigger corporate picture. Participation in

wellness programs has the potential to de-

crease company health benefit costs over-

all, which in turn could make a difference

in employees’ premium or out-of-pocket

health care costs.

• Remove jargon, whether health care

or HR wording that might not be easily un-

derstood. Remember, when jargon is used,

it may mean the employees are unlikely to

understand the message.

• Avoid populating emails or messages

with large amounts of information. People

digest details in small chunks, so consider

an ongoing campaign to share bits and

pieces of information, or a web page to

view the full information when employees

are interested and have time.

• Have a sense of humor when commu-

nicating. Loosening up a formal approach

can go a long way to creating engagement

with the communication and getting on

board with the program.

• Make it a two-way conversation. Ask

employees what program components

they’d like to see. Find out what might mo-

tivate them to participate. Ask for ideas on

communicating the details to staff.

• Use social channels to help spread

the word. Whether its an internal social

tool such as Slack or Yammer or a closed

group on Facebook or LinkedIn, encour-

age employees to share pictures of their

healthy choices and/or program partici-

pation. Build a little competition between

company segments and offer content

meant to engage the group – ask ques-

tions, post a quiz or host a ‘meet this goal’

challenge.

• Bring creative ideas to the effort.

Consider interesting program elements to

up the ante of interest and participation.

Think about bringing in a local chef to of-

fer a cooking class, having a local farm

stand bring in their fresh produce regu-

larly or bring in a gardening expert to offer

a hands-on workshop for growing veg-

etables or herbs. At GRIT, team members

in the wellness program are walking miles

(via a step tracker) to earn a free airplane

ticket to anywhere in the world. The more

creative and out-of-the-box the program,

when paired with easy ways to participate,

the more people will want to take part.

• Stay diverse with your communica-

tions focus. If there is a large subset of

staff who bike to work, that’s great, but if

that’s all communications are about, the

company risks losing support from other

parts of the employee base. The same goes

for any topic: if it’s strictly about one thing,

the business might lose the interest of its

whole audience.

Internal communications centered around

health and wellness can make or break pro-

gram participation. Get together with HR,

leadership and a few employees to brain-

storm the best ways to get the message out.

•

Julie Lando is the owner and president of GRIT

Marketing Group, a marketing and communica-

tions firm with offices in York and Lancaster.

GUEST VIEWHealth and wellness communications can be engaging

JulieLando

6 www.CPBJ.com • Central Penn Business Journal • 717-236-4300 JUNE 14, 2019

By Stacy WescoeBridgeTower Media

Stefanie Angstadt started making cheese as a hobby soon after graduating from col-lege in 2008.

After a few years she knew it was some-thing she wanted to do full time.

She opened Valley Milkhouse in a former dairy farm in Oley in 2014 and began to manufacture and sell her cheeses profes-sionally.

Not a dairy farmer, herself, she partnered with other small Berks County dairies to buy fresh warm milk “straight from the udder.”

Her cheeses — mostly a mix of softer and aged styles — were a hit.

“We make everything by hand. It’s very good cheese so there is a demand,” Angstadt said.

In fact, demand often outpaced her sup-ply. Nonetheless, she struggled with the lo-gistics of getting the cheese she was making to the people who wanted it.

While around 80 percent of the cheese she makes is sold wholesale to markets and restaurants, profits were much higher on the 20 percent of the product she was selling at her farm stand and the two farmers markets she attends, the Easton Farmers Market in downtown Easton and one in Philadelphia.

“The question was, how do we reach these people who want to buy our cheese without standing there at a farmers market all day — sometimes in the rain — hoping the right people will come buy it?” she said.

Organizing principalIn 2016, as fate would have it, an old

friend of Angstadt’s, Alex Jones, a prominent organizer of commu-nity-supported agri-culture programs in the Greater Philadel-phia area, had just left a job with a CSA.

In a typical CSA, a group of farmers connect with a group of consumers who want to buy fresh, local produce. They sell shares of their fu-ture crop to the con-sumers, who then pick up weekly or monthly boxes of the farmers’ latest crops, sharing both the risk and the rewards of the farmers’ season and giving those farmers a more reliable source of income.

“My job was to buy products from dozens of local farmers,” Jones said.

She was looking to take her CSA skills and use them in a new way. She thought of Angstadt and another cheesemaker she had met in her old job: Sue Miller of Birchrun

Hills Farm in Chester County.Jones pitched the idea of using the CSA

format to develop a new way of selling craft cheese to cheese fans. That led Jones, Ang-stadt and Miller in 2016 to create the Collec-tive Creamery CSA, based out of Angstadt’s Oley creamery, with Jones as the operations manager and Angstadt and Miller as the two primary cheese makers.

“We thought between the three of us, we could pool our resources and move beyond farmers markets,” Angstadt said.

According to Jones, the trio didn’t invent the idea of a cheese-based CSA. But, she said, “A cheese CSA is still pretty unique.”

Jones said it also makes sense.“You can get subscriptions for anything

today — dog products, beauty products —why not cheese?” she said.

A profitable boostThe Collective Creamery is now heading

into its third year. And while it is still just a small part of each of the cheesemakers’ business, it is an important one.

By eliminating the middleman, the chee-semakers get more of the profit.

Angstadt said her profit margin is gener-ally about 15 percent to 20 percent on the roughly $150,000 in gross sales she has in a year. That makes it a challenge to maintain a capital-intensive operation. Anywhere she can improve the profit margin is a boost.

Profits on the CSA vary from month to month, but she said they tend to average at the higher end of her overall profits.

The current CSA package from the Col-lective Creamery ranges from $180 for a once-a-month pickup of two pounds and four varieties of cheese for four months

to $280 for a twice-monthly pickup of one-and-a-half pounds and three varieties of cheese for four months. CSA packages gen-erally run from five to six months. The current package is shortened since the current CSA season has already begun.

Customers pick up their orders at participating loca-tions. Most are busi-nesses that focus on

local craft foods and products like farm stands or craft brewers, which support “buy local” efforts.

Having a variety of pickup locations in the region helps the Collective’s members spread their cheese sales farther than they could on their own.

Subscriptions can be picked up in two Berks County locations — Hidden River

Brewing Co. in Douglasville and Covered Bridge Farmstand in Oley — and at one location in the Lehigh Valley — Bonn Place Brewing Co. in Bethlehem. Other pickup locations are in the Chester County and Philadelphia areas.

By having a wider client base, the chee-semakers also are able to offer more variety. Angstadt and Miller rotate between six varieties of cheese, including Angstadt’s Witchgrass, her version of a French Valen-cay cheese, and Miller’s Clipper, an aged raw-milk cheese. They also reach out to other cheesemakers in other regions, hop-ing to include their specialty craft cheeses in the CSA to give customers more options.

For example, Miller is currently work-ing with a sheep farmer to blend sheep and cow milk together to make a creamy Camembert-style cheese.

Ultimately, their goal is to turn cheese lovers into die-hard cheese fans.

“We want to cultivate the cheese culture in this area like it is in Europe. We don’t want people to see cheese as a guilty pleasure, but as a food you eat every day,” Angstadt said. “This is a way to grow the cheese community.

“People don’t see fine cheese as a neces-sity,” added Jones. “When they go to the gro-cery store they feel they have to get produce and bread … we want them to think of fine cheese like that, not as a luxury.”

Miller sees the craft cheese industry growing in much the same way the craft beer industry has developed and grown, with those in the industry working cooperatively instead of competitively to boost the entire industry by sharing tips and efforts.

“It’s the whole ‘a rising tide raises all ships’ kind of thing,” she said. “We all benefit from a stronger cheese industry.”

Jones said the trio is focused on being a regional leader in the craft cheese industry. They aren’t planning any major expansion.

But they are on the lookout for more pickup locations along their current route and for pockets of cheese lovers who may want to get in on their offerings.

“We have to be lean and use the resources we have,” Jones said.

One secondary benefit to the women’s local craft cheese making is the small boost it gives to the region’s dairy farmers, which Angstadt said are struggling with low prices on the commodities market.

She said there is a dairy crisis across the nation.

According to the National Family Farm Foundation, America has lost over half its dairy farmers in just the last 16 years, as wholesale dairy prices have dropped below 1970 prices.

“Because of the quality I demand, I pay a premium for the milk,” she said.

Her sources include Spring Creek Farm in Wernersville, an organic dairy farm.

Greg Stricker, a partner in Spring Creek, said he pays special attention to the milk he produces for Angstadt.

“I always try to make the highest-quality milk, but we try to concentrate on making a milk that is higher in protein and butter fat to make her cheeses,” Stricker said.

Stricker said the extra money a cheese-maker like Angstadt is willing to pay repre-sents a needed boost for small farms like his.

“It’s a huge benefit to us when a local business like that uses our product,” he said. “It’s essential to find someone making a higher-end product to compete.” <

DAIRY GODMOTHERS

Specialty cheese biz taps into local dairies

From left, Sue Miller, Stefanie Angstadt and Alex Jones brought together their collective talents to form the Collective Creamery CSA in 2016. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

Honey-Bell is a brie-style cheese made by Stefanie Angstadt in her Oley creamery. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

“You can get subscriptions for anything today — dog

products, beauty products — why not cheese?”

— Alex Jones, Collective Creamery CSA

JUNE 21

, 2019

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U.S. a

irspac

es a

nd

alre

ady

require

s co

mm

erci

al d

rone

opera-

tors

to g

et a

lice

nse.

But that

does

n’t m

ean th

ere

is no ro

om

for

actio

n on t

he st

ate

leve

l. In

Oct

ober

2018

, Pen

nsylv

ania

law

mak

ers

passe

d Act

78, w

hich li

mits

the

abili

ty o

f munic

ipal

i-

ties

to r

egula

te u

nman

ned a

ircra

ft unle

ss

auth

orized

by t

he st

atute

.

Local

juris

dictio

ns ofte

n move

to p

ass

ordin

ance

s that

can in

terfe

re w

ith co

mm

er-

cial

oper

ators

, sai

d Dav

id D

ay, e

xecu

tive

vice

pre

siden

t at

Key

stone

Aeria

l Surv

eys

based

in P

hiladel

phia. Th

at m

akes

educa

-

tion cr

itica

l, he

added

.

Keyst

one does

work

nat

ionw

ide

and h

as

found th

at so

me

offici

als i

n stat

es –

such

as

New

York

and N

ew Je

rsey

– ar

e m

ore aw

are

of iss

ues f

acin

g th

e dro

ne in

dustry

than

those

in P

ennsy

lvan

ia. Th

e ad

voca

cy d

ay

was

an e

ffort to

chan

ge th

at, t

oo, h

e sa

id. I

t

also

is h

oped th

at P

ennsy

lvan

ia’s

gove

rn-

men

t age

ncies

will

incr

easin

gly

adopt t

he

tech

nologi

es,

as a

genci

es i

n oth

er s

tate

s

have,

Day

added

.

The

asso

ciat

ion m

ainta

ins t

hat 3

6 out o

f

the

50 s

tate

s hav

e tra

nsporta

tion d

epar

t-

men

ts t

hat f

und cen

ters

or

progr

ams

for

drone

operat

ions.

PennD

OT,

it s

aid, i

s not

among

those

that

hav

e in

itiat

ed o

utsid

e

progr

ams.

Alexi

s Cam

pbell,

PennD

OT p

ress

secr

e-

tary

, sai

d Pen

nDO

T has

an a

ctiv

e in

tern

al

drone

progr

am a

nd has

bee

n flyi

ng dro

nes

for s

ever

al ye

ars.

“We’

ve r

ecen

tly a

dvance

d our

operat

or

train

ing

and c

ertifi

catio

n pro

gram

and a

re

curr

ently

enga

ged w

ith a

pilo

t pro

gram

as-

sess

ing e

ffici

enci

es fo

r the u

se o

f dro

nes fo

r

3D m

odelin

g of s

tock

piles,

exca

vatio

ns and

road

way

slid

e ar

eas,”

she

said

in a

writ

ten

resp

onse to

ques

tions.

Flyin

g into

new ro

les

Seve

ral a

ttendee

s at

the

June

11 e

vent

said

they

thin

k st

ate

lead

ers

will

be

sup-

portive

of i

deas t

o exp

and d

rone

progr

ams

both w

ithin

sta

te a

genci

es a

nd with

com

-

mer

cial

applic

atio

ns once

they

under

stan

d

the

potentia

l.

Task

s such

as b

ridge

insp

ectio

ns or a

eria

l

surv

eys

that

once

took

wee

ks t

o conduct

can n

ow b

e done

in a

day

or s

o, D

ay s

aid.

Farm

ers,

utiliti

es an

d oth

ers h

ave s

een h

ow

drones

can re

duce th

e cost

s of p

roje

cts a

nd

insp

ectio

ns. Th

ey a

lso h

ave

wei

ghed

the

li-

abili

ty ri

sks a

nd real

ized

they

are

bet

ter o

ff

using

drones

.

Gove

rnm

ents

, how

ever

, see

m to

hav

e a

higher

hurd

le t

o ove

rcom

e w

hen li

abili

ty

conce

rns a

re ra

ised

, Day

said

.

Seve

ral e

xper

ts n

oted th

e co

ncern

s ca

n

be ea

sed o

nce t

he optio

ns ar

e ca

refu

lly

wei

ghed

. For e

xam

ple, t

he ris

ks to

surv

ey a

utility

line t

raditi

onally

would

invo

lve w

ork-

ers

using

ladder

tru

cks

to e

xam

ine

high-

volta

ge w

ires,

whic

h is d

ange

rous w

ork th

at

could

take

wee

ks. N

ow, d

rones

with

cam

-

eras

can

insp

ect t

he sa

me

line

in a

frac

tion

of the

time

– an

d with

out putti

ng peo

ple in

harm

’s w

ay.

As peo

ple b

ecom

e m

ore a

war

e of h

ow

drones

can b

e use

d, the

indust

ry h

as ta

ken

off, Day

and o

ther

s sai

d.

Keega

n Flahiv

e is a

rem

ote p

ilot f

or Arg

os

Unm

anned

Aer

ial S

olutio

ns bas

ed in

Liti

tz.

When

the

com

pany

was

founded

in 2

015,

it did

a lo

t of w

ork w

ith re

al e

stat

e co

mpa-

nies t

hat w

ante

d aer

ial v

iew

s of p

roper

ties,

Flahiv

e sa

id. Th

e co

mpan

y now

does

work

for a

num

ber o

f diff

eren

t clie

nts, i

ncludin

g

const

ruct

ion c

ompan

ies,

utiliti

es a

nd gov-

ernm

ent a

genci

es.

The

opportuniti

es fo

r cre

atin

g new

jobs

and busi

nesse

s ar

e va

st,

said

Alber

t R.

Sarv

is, a

n ass

istan

t pro

fess

or of g

eosp

atia

l

tech

nology

at H

arris

burg U

niver

sity

of Sci

-

ence

and T

echnolo

gy. H

U h

as a

dapte

d its

geosp

atia

l pro

gram

s to

incl

ude th

e use

of

drones

and h

as sp

onsore

d sum

mer

cam

ps

for

studen

ts i

n hig

h sch

ool an

d mid

dle

school t

o enco

urage

inte

rest

in th

e tec

hnol-

ogy, S

arvi

s sai

d.

Oth

ers p

ointe

d out that

drones

have b

een

used in

the fi

lm an

d tele

visio

n indust

ries,

as

wel

l as i

n surv

eyin

g ra

il lin

es a

nd in p

olice

and e

mer

gency

applic

atio

ns, su

ch a

s riv

er

resc

ues. O

ne st

ory to

ld d

uring

the

June

11

even

t was

how

cattl

e had

ruin

ed a

portion of

a fa

rmer

’s cr

ops. A d

rone w

as ab

le to

ass

ess

the

tota

l dam

age,

whic

h hel

ped ju

stify

the

insu

rance

clai

m.

Then

ther

e ar

e th

e sp

in-o

ff busin

esse

s.

Ryan B

oswel

l is

the

Philadel

phia-b

ased

sale

s m

anag

er fo

r Phas

eOne

Indust

rial,

a ca

mer

a co

mpan

y bas

ed in

Colora

do.

PhaseO

ne ca

mer

as ca

n be outfi

tted on

vario

us dro

nes to

do a

var

iety

of w

ork fo

r

gove

rnm

ents

, quar

ry o

perat

ors a

nd util

ity

com

panie

s, am

ong oth

ers,

Boswel

l sai

d.

Day

sai

d the

drone

indust

ry i

s co

m-

petiti

ve in

that

anyo

ne ca

n buy

a dro

ne fo

r

around $

500

and s

et u

p shop.

How

ever

,

com

mer

cial

oper

ators

are

require

d to ta

ke

FAA tr

ainin

g to

bec

ome

a lic

ense

d rem

ote

pilot,

he an

d oth

ers s

aid.

At Key

stone,

Day

sai

d, pric

es c

an ra

nge

depen

ding

on the

job a

nd the

loca

tion. A

day of a

eria

l cam

era w

ork w

ith a

licen

sed re

-

mote

pilo

t mig

ht cost

about $

2,00

0 in

som

e

high-d

ensit

y ar

eas i

n New

York

or N

ew Je

r-

sey a

nd per

haps a

bout $1,

000 e

lsew

here.

<

DRONEco

ntinu

ed fr

om pa

ge 1

David H

eath, d

irect

or of t

he PA D

rone A

ssocia

tion, p

repare

s to m

ake rem

arks a

t Dro

ne Advoca

cy D

ay June 11

in H

arrisb

urg. H

eath and o

ther

supporte

rs hope to

encoura

ge state

leaders

to su

pport th

e growin

g drone in

dustry

. P

HOTO/T

HOMAS A

. BARST

OW

“We’v

e rec

ently

advan

ced

our oper

ator t

rain

ing an

d

certi

ficatio

n progra

m an

d

are c

urrently

engag

ed w

ith

a pilo

t pro

gram

asse

ssin

g

efficie

ncies f

or the u

se of

drones

for 3

D modeli

ng of

stock

piles,

exca

vatio

ns and

road

way sl

ide a

reas

.”

Alexis

Cam

pbell

, Pen

nDOT p

ress

se

creta

ry

JUNE 14, 2019

www.CPBJ.com


13

NEWSMAKERSPromotions, appointments, hires

ACCOUNTINGChambersburg-based Rotz and

Stonesifer named Dennis Shindle

senior manager. He provides tax,

consulting and financial state-

ment services to closely held

companies. He is a CPA and a graduate of Shippens-

burg University. ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

Lancaster-based RGS Associ-

ates named Jake Krieger proj-

ect landscape architect. He has

a bachelor’s degree from Temple

University. Matthew Fauth was

named a computer aided drafting

and design designer. He also is a

sergeant in the National Guard. He

has an associate degree from York

Technical Institute. Upper Dublin Township, Mont-

gomery County-based McMahon

Associates Inc. named Christo-

pher K. Bauer an associate. He is

general manager of the Camp Hill

office. He has more than 20 years

of project management and trans-

portation engineering experience

and has helped municipalities

through their responsibilities as

local project sponsors on state

and federally funded projects. He

also serves municipalities’ day-

to-day traffic consulting needs.

He is a professional engineer and

professional traffic operations

engineer. Swatara Township-based Skelly

and Loy named LeShelle Smith

marketing spe-cialist. She will be

responsible for graphics coordi-

nation, including preparation of

brochures, charts and exhibit ma-

terials. She will assist with the development of

special marketing and public rela-

tions programs, communications

and media plans and ensuring

that the website is current and

consistent. She has a degree from

Elizabethtown College.

BANKING/FINANCE

Lower Paxton Township-based

Centric Bank named Patricia A.

Kuhn assistant manager of the

Silver Spring

Township Finan-cial Center. She

will cultivate new

customer rela-tionships, man-

age the internal

sales process,

maintain the

branch’s operational proficiency

and mentor her financial center

team. Most recently, she was a cor-

porate social responsibility super-

visor and head teller II with First

National Bank. She has a bach-

elor’s degree from York College.

Lower Allen Township-based

Members 1st Federal Credit

Union named

Alma Jimenez

branch manager

of the location

inside the Gi-ant Foods store

on East Market

Street, York. She

was a branch

manager for PNC Bank. Manheim Township-based

Ambassador Advisors LLC named

Christopher R. Coolidge chief

investment of-ficer. He leads

the wealth man-agement depart-

ment and works

with various oth-er departments.

He is a chartered financial analyst

charterholder. Manheim Township-based

RKL Wealth Management LLC

named William M. Onorato a

senior wealth

strategist. He will

advise high-net-worth families

on multigenera-tional planning,

legacy planning,

business succes-sion and estate

planning. He has 25 years of es-

tate planning and wealth strategy

experience. He has a bachelor’s

degree and an MBA from Loyola

College and a law degree from the

University of Baltimore. Millersburg-based Mid Penn

Bank named Julie A. Bramlitt

financial adviser for Mid Penn

Financial Services. She will help

clients prioritize, organize and

simplify their financial matters

with customized financial solu-

tions. She has 25 years of banking

and financial services experience

and was a financial adviser with

Smoker Wealth Management.

She has bachelor’s and master’s

degrees from Ashford University.

Laura J. Melfi was named senior

vice president and cash manage-

ment officer with Mid Penn’s First

Priority Bank division. She will be

based in Chester County and con-

tribute to deposit growth through

business development activities.

She will also generate fee income

through cash management prod-

ucts and services, and expand and

retain customer relationships. She

has 43 years of financial services

experience. CONSTRUCTIONLancaster-based

Wohlsen

Construction Co. named Manuel

Maza project

manager and es-timator. He was

project engineer.

He has a bache-lor’s degree from

Millersville Uni-versity.

York-based Wagman Construc-

tion Inc. named Joe Corson direc-

tor of business development for

Maryland. He will

expand the firm’s

participation in

o p p o r t u n i t i e s

and enhance

client relation-ships throughout

Maryland. He has

30 years of con-struction industry experience. He

has a bachelor’s degree from the

University of Baltimore. EDUCATIONMillersville University named

John Cheek director of web and

creative services. He will over-

see the creative

production op-eration and serve

the university’s

marketing needs,

focusing on un-dergraduate and

graduate admis-sions, advance-

ment and the president’s office.

He will also oversee design aspects

of the school’s website. He was

creative director of Schiffer Pub-

lishing. He has a bachelor’s degree

from Millersville. GOVERNMENT Harrisburg-based Pennsyl-

vania Public Utility Commis-

sion named Amy S. Goldman

of Philadelphia and Matthew

Hrivnak of Cumberland County

members of the Pennsylvania

Telecommunications Relay Ser-

vice Advisory Board. Goldman

has been a public member of the

board. She is a speech-language

pathologist, has conducted

trainings on the importance of

telecommunications for those

with disabilities and has been

involved with the administra-

tion of Pennsylvania’s telecom-

munications device distribution

program. Hrivnak will represent

the PUC’s Bureau of Consum-

er Services on the board. He

is manager of compliance and

competition in the bureau’s pol-

icy division. Harrisburg-based State Civil

Service Commission named Te-

resa Osborne of Lackawanna

County a commissioner. She was

secretary of the Pennsylvania De-

partment of Aging. HEALTH CARE East Pennsboro Township-

based Geisinger Holy Spirit

named Dr. Ming Jang a member

of Geisinger Ho-ly Spirit Primary

Care. He will see adult patients

and specialize in geriatric care.

He was a clinical assistant profes-

sor of medicine in the division of geriatric medi-

cine at the University of Pennsyl-

vania’s Perelman School of Medi-

cine. He has a medical degree

from Drexel University College

of Medicine. HOSPITALITYAbbottstown, Adams County-

based Hanover Country Club

named John Danehy manager.

LAW East Hempfield Township-

based Russell, Krafft & Gruber

LLP named Ju-lia G. Vanasse a

member of the family law prac-

tice group. For nearly 20 years,

she was a Lan-caster County

divorce master, and she has 30 years of combined

family law experience. She has a

bachelor’s degree from the Col-

lege of William and Mary and a

law degree from Dickinson School

of Law.

Susquehanna Township-based

Mette Evans & Woodside named

Matthew D. Co-ble a sharehold-

er. He represents

insurance com-panies, fraternal

benefit societies,

insurance pro-ducers and third-

party administra-tors in insurance regulatory, trans-

actional and litigation matters.

MARKETINGLancaster-based Godfrey

named Luke Weidner an asso-

ciate creative director. He will

oversee message unification and

brand consisten-cy and align cre-

ative resources with project and

account needs to ensure efficien-

cy. Most recent-ly, he was the

design manager for Artisanal Brewing Ventures.

Weidner has a bachelor’s degree

from Penn State. NONPROFITSPhiladelphia-based Pennsyl-

vanians for Modern Courts named

retired Judge Lawrence

F. Stengel a board

member. He is a shareholder

with Manheim Township-based

Saxton & Stump and former chief

judge for the Eastern District of

Pennsylvania. PUBLIC AFFAIRSHarrisburg-based Triad Strate-

gies LLC named Rob Ghormoz

a senior associate in the govern-

ment affairs practice. He was a

senior adviser to Gov. Tom Wolf’s

re-election campaign and led his

2019 inauguration. He has a bach-

elor’s degree from Penn State.

SENDING NEWSMAKERS

Send announcements concerning

promotions and newly hired

personnel to [email protected].

Save photos at 300 dpi as TIFF

or JPG files. Please do not embed

photos in word documents. Photos

sent through the mail will not be

returned. Releases should include

the municipality in which the

company is located.

Shindle

Krieger

Fauth

Smith

Kuhn

Jimenez

Coolidge

Onorato

Bramlitt

Melfi

Maza

Corson

Cheek

Jang

Vanasse

Coble

Weidner

Stengel

8

www.CPBJ.com


JUNE 7, 2019

OPINION

If yours is like many of the

small businesses I’ve studied, the

price you quote

for your prod-

ucts or services

is determined

by a simple for-

mula, based on

your estimated

costs. Feed in

your costs and

your desired

gross margin

and presto, out comes the price.

There’s just one problem

: price

has nothing to do with cost.

When I tell m

y clients their

prices should have nothing to do

with their costs, they usually look

at me as if I have suddenly sprout-

ed a third eye in my forehead. Af-

ter all, they’ve been doing that for

(fill in the blank) years and it has

worked, for the most part.

That m

ay be true, but in do-

ing so they are probably missing

opportunities to increase profits

on some products or services, or

to gain market share with others.

Those two things are what pricing

strategy is about.

When a business creates a

budget, it estimates sales rev-

enue, costs, and a desired gross

margin that will cover overhead

and produce a budgeted profit.

Looking at the budgeted profit

and loss statement, it is easy to

fall into a trap of thinking, “If we

can just get every sale for the es-

timated cost plus gross m

argin,

we’ll be right on target.” It sounds

simple and scientific, doesn’t it?

The problem

is that what buy-

ers are willing to pay has nothing

to do with the sellers’ costs. You

don’t believe that? I’ll give you

two scenarios.

I wear a Timex Ironm

an

watch that I can buy for about

$35 from a num

ber of retailers.

It is a very accurate watch with a

quartz movem

ent and some very

nice features. “Casual” quartz

watches from Gucci m

ade with

similar m

aterials sell for $275 to

$350. Trust me – I know m

anufac-

turing – there is no possible way

to explain that price differential

based on manufacturing costs.

That’s why you can buy fake

Gucci watches for less than my

Timex on the street. Th

e differ-

ential is totally due to the cachet

of the Gucci brand. The price

is what the market will bear,

the value the buyer puts on the

product. Suppose you have two identi-

cal machines, except one is paid

for and you took out a big loan

for the second one. The per-

son who runs it is a long-time

employee, who m

akes a higher

wage than the guy running the

paid-off machine. Th

e cost of the

second machine is higher than

the cost of the first. Do you be-

lieve you can get a different price

for a product based on which

machine you decide to use? Of

course you can’t.

Pricing is both strategic and

tactical. Working with com

pa-

nies to improve profitability, we

have adopted a strategy of slowly

raising prices above what we

get with the magic form

ula until

customers push back. W

e often

end with prices at a higher, more

profitable level for many, but not

all customers. It’s the custom

er,

not the formula that determ

ines

the best price.

We have experim

ented tactically

with what the market will bear for

change notices, usually much high-

er margins than for the original

orders. In that case the customer is

a captive audience. But sometim

es

we ease up on the change adjust-

ment, and let the custom

er know it

to build good will.

We have som

etimes reduced

prices below the magic form

ula

to build market share or capture

a new account. If the new busi-

ness is incremental, it is all good

on the bottom line.

The m

agic formula gives you

a nice target, but don’t fall into

the trap of thinking that is your

best price.

•

Richard Randall is founder and

president of management-con-

sulting firm New Level Advisors

in Springettsbury Township, York

County. Email him at info@newleve-

ladvisors.com.

In his budget address, Gov. Tom W

olf

stated to applause, “This proposal asks for no

new taxes. Not one dime. Not one penny.”

Yet, as the General Assembly com

bs through

the governor’s proposal, we find that there

are, in fact, tax increases.

One specific tax being proposed by the ad-

ministration is a “double tax” on am

bulatory

surgical centers (ASCs) like

the ones in my district.

ASCs are convenient

health care facilities run

by physicians that provide

same-day surgical and di-

agnostic care for focused

care needs, such as eye

surgeries, colonoscopies,

spine and joint procedures,

and more. Th

ere are 234

Medicare-certified ASCs in Pennsylvania.

The governor expects to take $12.5 m

illion

from these innovative surgical centers, which

is income they would otherwise put toward the

incredible services they provide at lower costs

to patients. ASCs already pay income, sales

and property taxes, as opposed to general hos-

pitals, which do not pay these same taxes.

The governor is correct when he says there

are no “new” taxes in his proposal, as he tried

and was unsuccessful in getting this ASC tax

passed through the General Assembly last

year. It is my hope that the House Republican

Caucus, along with the Pennsylvania Medical

Society and other medical-service advocates,

will prove once more that this tax would be

detrimental to Pennsylvania surgery patients.

First, this tax would cause ASCs to be un-

able to afford state-of-the-art equipment.

Such equipment allows them

to have higher

productivity and healthier patients, but under

this tax plan, this customer care m

ight no lon-

ger be possible.

Another advantage of surgical centers is

that their nurse-to-patient ratios are generally

lower than at general hospitals. These nurses

are trained in one or a few specialized surgical

procedures. This system

ensures that patients

receive the best care possible with the same

nurses caring for them throughout their treat-

ment.Smaller facilities also help surgical hospi-

tals protect patients from spreading infections

among each other. Th

is large reduction in

nosocomial infections is critical in a surgical

environment.

Not only are patients better cared for at

ASCs, but they face lower costs at these cen-

ters than they do at general hospitals. Medic-

aid patients face 50 percent lower costs and

patients with comm

ercial insurance plans

pay as low as 25 percent the costs of a hospi-

tal-based visit.

In addition to saving patients money, these

practitioners also save Medicare $2.3 billion

a year on just the 120 most-com

mon proce-

dures that Medicare patients receive, accord-

ing to UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley noted in a recent study that

in 2015, Pennsylvania ASCs saved Medicare

$32.6 million on cataract procedures, $1.3

million on upper GI procedures and $6.9 m

il-

lion on cystoscopy procedures.

If the Wolf adm

inistration’s tax proposal

were to be enacted, the Pennsylvania Am-

bulatory Surgery Association, along with a

coalition of state medical societies, warn that

up to 25 percent of these centers may need

to close – pushing thousands of patients into

costly general hospitals and forcing centers to

withdraw from M

edicaid.

This is the very problem

that ASCs were at-

tempting to solve.

This ASC tax would be a blow to com

peti-

tion and innovation in health care. By tying

the invisible hand of the free market in health

care with burdensome taxes, we get less

health and less care.

Another tax on these ASCs would not only

cost the state Medicaid system

, it may even

cost lives.I urge m

y colleagues in the Pennsylvania

House and Senate to vote against this proposal

and I urge Gov. Wolf to visit an ASC like W

est

Shore Endoscopy in Cumberland County to

learn about the progress that is being made by

these entrepreneurial physicians and nurses.

As I meet with physicians and patients in

my district, such as those at W

est Shore En-

doscopy, I have been amazed at the benefits

of their innovative approach.

We all can relate to the phrase, “Surgery is

only minor if it happens to som

eone else.”

Nobody wants to be told they need surgery

and they especially do not want an unpleas-

ant surgery experience.

Thanks to ASCs, thousands of Pennsyl-

vanians have been given a convenient and

quality outpatient experience with positive

outcomes and speedy recovery in the com

fort

of their own homes. A double tax on these

centers would not only be devastating to the

many hardworking physicians in our com

-

monwealth but their patients as well.

For the sake of the health and wellness of

our comm

onwealth, I hope my colleagues in

Harrisburg listen to our physicians and their

patients and reject this tax. •

State Rep. Greg Rothman (R) represents the 87th

House District, which is in Cumberland County.

Proposed tax could harm specialty surgical centers

A formula for profit – or for missing out?

GUEST VIEW

THE WHITEBOARD

Richard

Randall

State Rep.

Greg Rothman

If there’s one constant in health

care, it’s change. UPMC’s invest-

ment in southcentral Pennsylvania

has brought positive change to

our region, including new, highly

specialized services, thousands of

new providers and leading-edge

technology to treat the most

advanced diseases. However, even

positive change can cause confu-

sion. I’d like to take a moment to

clarify a question involving health

insurance plans accepted at UPMC

Pinnacle. UPMC Pinnacle hospitals and

outpatient clinics continue to

accept most major insurance

plans, including Aetna, Capital Blue

Cross, Highmark and UPMC Health

Plan for all services. Changes in the

relationship between Highmark

and UPMC in the greater

Pittsburgh and Erie areas will not

affect the relationship between

UPMC Pinnacle and Highmark.

We look forward to continuing

to care for all of our patients in

2019 and beyond. To learn more

about full, in-network access to

UPMC doctors and hospitals, call

our toll-free help line at 1-833-

879-5013 or visit UPMC.com/

Choice2019. Philip W. Guarneschelli,

President and CEO

UPMC Pinnacle

TO THE EDITOR

8 www.CPBJ.com Central Penn Business Journal MAY 31, 2019OPINIONGUEST VIEW

Latest census data reveals trends to watchThe U.S. Census Bureau recently re-

leased new population estimates that account for and compare the resident population for counties between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2018. The outcome? There are shifts in population taking place across the nation that may differ from what you might assume. Here are the highlights at a national and local level.

What’s happening locally?Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster and

York experience consis-tent growth. The most notable trend between 2010 and 2018 in Central Pennsylvania is that these counties all experienced consistent growth year-over-year. Moreover the growth was fairly even over the last eight years.

Another trend worth noting is that the counties have main-tained the same order of ranking based upon population for eight-plus years. For example, in 2010 the counties in order of smallest population to largest were Cum-berland, Dauphin, York and Lancaster. This is the same ranking we see in 2018,

and every year in between.Lancaster remains the largest and fast-

est-growing county. At 984 square miles, it also is the largest of the four counties. Between 2010 and 2018 it experienced the largest numeric growth at 24,112 people. No. 2 in numeric growth was actually the smallest of the four counties, Cumberland County, which grew by 16,017 people. York County grew by 13,301 people and Dauphin County grew by 8,997 people.

What’s happening nationally?The census data confirmed that coun-

ties with the largest numeric growth are located in the south and the west. In fact, Texas claimed four out of the top 10 spots. Looking at population growth by metropolitan area, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas had the largest numeric growth, with a gain of 131,767 people, or 1.8 percent in 2018. Second was Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona, which had an increase of 96,268 people, or 2.0 percent. The cause of growth in these areas is migration, both domestic and international, as well as natural increase. In Dallas, it was natural in-crease that served as the largest source of population growth. For Phoenix it was

migration.The fastest growth occurred outside

of metropolitan areas. Surprisingly, no new metro areas moved into the top 10 largest areas. Of the 390 metro areas in the U.S., (including the District of Co-lumbia and Puerto Rico), 102, or 26.2 percent experienced population decline in 2018. The five fastest-shrinking metro areas (excluding Puerto Rico) were Charleston, West Virginia (-1.6 percent); Pine Bluff, Arkansas. (-1.5 percent); Farmington, New Mexico (-1.5 percent); Danville, Illinois (-1.2 percent); and Watertown-Fort Drum, New York (-1.2 percent). The population decreases were primarily due to negative net domestic migration.

North Dakota was home to the fastest-growing county. Among counties with a population of 20,000 or more, Williams County, North Dakota, claimed the top spot as the fastest-growing by percent-age. This county’s population rose by 5.9 percent between 2017 and 2018 (from 33,395 to 35,350 people). The rapid growth Williams County experienced was due mainly to net domestic migration of 1,471 people in 2018. The county also ex-perienced growth between 2017 and 2018

by natural increase of 427 people and in-

ternational migration of 52 people.

There is more growth than decline. Out

of 3,142 counties, 1,739 (or 55.3 percent)

gained population between 2017 and 2018.

Twelve counties (0.4 percent) experienced

no change in population, and the remain-

ing 1,391 (or 44.3 percent) lost people.

Between 2010 and 2018, a total of 1,481 (or

47.1 percent) counties gained population

and 1,661 (or 52.9 percent) lost popula-

tion. Though there has been more growth

than decline overall, the numbers indicate

that this can easily shift year over year.

A deeper dive into the census data

reveals several demographic changes

impacting commercial real estate develop-

ment: household formations, aging baby

boomers, growing millennials, women

in the workforce and migration toward

the South. Today’s demographic changes

present challenges for commercial real

estate developers, but they also offer lu-

crative opportunities to firms creatively

adapting to new demands.•

Mike Kushner is the owner of Omni Realty Group, a real estate firm in Harrisburg. He can be reached through www.omnirealtygroup.com.

Mike Kushner

2018 was a banner year for mergers and acquisitions. Global M&A activity was the second highest on record, with deals totaling $2.72 trillion. Looking ahead, 76 percent of top executives at U.S. compa-nies expect to close more deals this year than last, and a majority predict these deals will be larger, according to a report from Axios. These compa-nies, and others around the globe, turn to M&A deals to increase market share and improve their business models.

Throughout the M&A process, executives are hyper-focused on company synergies and big-picture goals. As a result, one very important fac-tor often goes overlooked – the employer’s retirement plans. There are many details to consider when acquiring a company. Understanding the seller’s retirement plan and how it will fit within the current ben-efit structure is vital to success.

If retirement plans are not considered upfront, executives may learn that the ac-quired company has an underfunded pen-sion plan – which can be a deal breaker – or that the seller’s 401(k) plan does not meet compliance standards.

So, if you’re planning a merger or acqui-sition, consider the retirement plans now to avoid a headache later on.

If the transaction is a stock acquisi-tion – where the buyer takes full owner-ship of the selling company – the buyer then assumes all of the seller’s liabilities, including its retirement plan. The buyer has three options for how to handle the acquired company’s retirement plan. It can either maintain its own plan and the seller’s plan separately, terminate the seller’s plan, or merge the seller’s plan into its own plan.

If the buyer decides to maintain both plans, the newly acquired employees can either be offered the same benefits they had previously, or a new formula for their employer benefits. Maintaining both plans can provide employees continuity of ben-efits with no impact to the buyer’s retire-ment plan. However, operating multiple plans can be burdensome and expensive, and nondiscrimination testing is needed if employees are receiving different benefit packages.

If the buyer is going to terminate the seller’s plan, this decision should be made and the process initiated before the com-panies merge. If the acquired company’s 401(k) is terminated after the transaction, the seller’s employees will face a one-year

restriction before being able to join the buyer’s 401(k) plan, losing out on a full year of tax-efficient savings and employer contributions.

The main advantages of termination are that employees can be integrated into the buyer’s plan with one benefit structure for all; there is only one plan to maintain; and the risk of any liability transfer into the buyer’s existing plan is avoided. The downside is that the employee accounts become immediately accessible. So, if not rolled over into an IRA or other retirement plan, employees could squander retire-ment assets and face penalty taxes for early distribution.

The final option – merging the seller’s and buyer’s plans – requires that both plans be the same type and have a similar plan design. This option can be efficient and cost-effective – one benefit structure, one plan to operate – and it also avoids the negatives of plan termination.

The risk associated with merging are the unknown factors of the seller’s plan. Has it always operated in compliance with all the complex rules associated with retirement plans? If not, the buyer’s plan would be at risk.

Before deciding how to handle the sell-er’s retirement plan, the buyer will need to perform exhaustive due diligence. This

includes confirming past operational and procedural compliance, making sure all plan documents are up-to-date, and con-firming general compatibility between the plans. Examples include reviewing non-discrimination testing results from recent years, the seller’s fiduciary oversight prac-tices, administrative operations such as distributions, payroll and loan processes, and fulfillment of government reporting requirements.

Many companies partner with an out-side consultant to conduct a thorough benefit plan review and help determine the best option. When experts are engaged from the start, they can help ensure the transition is smooth and employees have a clear understanding of the benefits with their new employer.

An organization’s retirement plan should be a consideration from the early stages of an M&A. Though the evaluation process can be lengthy, it’s better to an-ticipate issues that could arise, instead of realizing them in the midst of the merger when it might be too late.

•John Jeffrey is a consulting actuary, specializing in retirement plan consulting and post-employ-ment health care benefits, for Conrad Siegel, which is based in Susquehanna Township, Dauphin County.

GUEST VIEW

Retirement plans should be piece of M&A puzzle

JohnJeffrey

JUNE 7, 2019

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By Jason Scott

[email protected]

Expecting a record year for lending and

more growth, the Lancaster-based Commu-

nity First Fund has been adding staff and

restructuring its executive team.

The nonprofit economic development or-

ganization recently hired Michael Carper, the

former CEO of the Housing Development

Corp. MidAtlantic, to be its chief credit officer.

Community First Fund also contracted with

a finance expert from Chicago to serve as CFO

until it hires someone to the post full-time.

“We’re adding and growing dramatically,”

said Dan Betancourt, the organization’s presi-

dent and CEO.

Community First Fund provides financ-

ing for small businesses, affordable housing

projects and nonprofit organizations located

in low-income communities and serving dis-

advantaged groups, including Latino and Af-

rican-American entrepreneurs. And the need

for services is rising.

The organization, which started out serving

Lancaster, now covers 15 counties in Central

Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley and suburban

Philadelphia. Its staff has grown from 20 to 40

over the past five years and it is making more

direct loans to businesses, with volume rising

from about $10 million to $30 million in the

past three years.

The nonprofit also has opened new loan offic-

es in Allentown and Philadelphia where it would

like to add more people to expand lending.

“We expect to go deeper into markets we are

in,” Betancourt said.

But depth, he said, requires a bigger team.

That starts at the executive level.

In addition to adding new execs, the non-

profit has made some internal promotions.

COO Joan Brodhead was recently named se-

nior executive vice president and chief strategic

initiatives officer, while senior vice president of

lending James Buerger was elevated to execu-

tive vice president and chief lending officer.

Community First also has hired staff to work

under each of the C-suite executives.

The growth comes at a time when Commu-

nity First has been positioning itself as a go-to

resource for investors and developers inter-

ested in the federal opportunity zone program,

in which investors can get a tax break on capi-

tal gains by investing in projects in qualified

distressed areas, dubbed opportunity zones.

The investments typically will flow through

what are known as qualified opportunity funds.

Community First has been working to develop

such funds, which could work in combination

with other state and federal incentives.

Among the most notable of those is the

New Markets Tax Credit program, a federal tax

credit program operated by the U.S. Treasury

Department that helps support large urban

redevelopment projects.

Community First is one of two local orga-

nizations that can apply for those federal tax

credits.

The other — Harrisburg-based Common-

wealth Cornerstone Group, a subsidiary of

the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency

(PHFA) — recently was awarded $55 million

in the latest round of funding.

Community First was shut out but hopes

its clients still can take advantage of the in-

centives.

“We plan to work with clients and try to

help them find an allocation through another

organization,” Betancourt said.

Community First and Commonwealth Cor-

Pictured, clockwise from bottom left, is Community First Fund’s executive team: Dan

Betancourt, president and CEO; Mike Carper, chief credit officer; James Buerger, executive

vice president and chief lending officer; and Joan Brodhead, senior executive vice president

and chief strategic initiatives officer. PHOTO/SUBMITTED

Tax credit plan

After being shut out in the last fund-

ing round in 2017, Central Pennsylvania will

receive a share of 2018 tax credits under a

new round of funding from a federal program

designed to support large urban redevelop-

ment projects: the New Markets Tax Credit.

The U.S. Treasury Department last month

awarded $55 million in tax credits to the

Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s

Commonwealth Cornerstone Group, based in

Harrisburg.

Commonwealth Cornerstone’s executive

director Charlotte Folmer said the funding

will help the nonprofit tackle a hefty pipeline

of projects seeking funding.

“We have over 40 projects requesting

over $700 million,” she said, noting that the

requests come from across the common-

wealth.

Folmer said she hopes the tax credits will

be able to support about seven projects this

year — likely mixed-use, commercial and

community service projects — with a focus on

those that exceed $5 million.

Developers often have to spend more

money to buy and fix up vacant and blighted

properties than they can expect to get back

in rental rates once construction is complet-

ed. The New Markets program takes private

equity from investors, usually banks, and

turns that money into gap financing to help

developers offset some of the construction

costs and keep rents in line with what a local

real estate market can support.

The investors receive tax credits in return,

which count against their federal income

taxes.Investors can receive credits totaling 39

percent of their investment. They can use the

credits over seven years as such: 5 percent

per year for the first three years and 6 per-

cent for the next four years.

Folmer said it will be several weeks until

Commonwealth Cornerstone receives its

federal allocation, the organization’s eighth.

The previous seven allocations have helped

fund 38 developments in the state, including

the Hamilton Health Center in Harrisburg,

Lancaster’s Keppel Building and the renova-

tion of Gettysburg’s Schmucker Hall.

In the meantime, officials are narrowing

down mixed-use and commercial projects

across the state that could receive the tax

credits. Part of that selection process could

include working with Lancaster-based

Community First Fund, which did not receive

tax credits this year but has its own backlog

of projects.

The two midstate nonprofits have part-

nered on tax-credit projects in the past,

including the redevelopment of the former

Bulova building in Lancaster. Commonwealth

Cornerstone poured $10 million in tax cred-

its into the project, while Community First

added another $8 million.

Folmer said project announcements could

come this fall.

Community First Fund

expanding executive team

please see EXPANDING page 7

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For more than 40 years, the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, has been a key benchmark for setting the cost of floating-rate debt around the world. LIBOR also plays a big role in pricing debt issued by corporate borrowers. Following the 2008 financial crisis, the integrity of LIBOR was ques-tioned due to manipulation concerns. A contraction in the unsecured interbank lending market has also substantially reduced the volume of transactions on which to base panel bank estimates. With LIBOR rates a less reliable benchmark, regulatory guidance requires banks to stop making new LIBOR loans by the end of 2021 and shift existing LIBOR loans to other indexes by June 30, 2023.

To help speed the transition, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC), a group of private-market participants, was convened by the Federal Reserve Board and the New York Federal Reserve Bank to seek alternatives to LIBOR. ARRC is leading the transition away from LIBOR and is responsible for publishing recom-mended best practices to outline important transi-tion activities and milestones.

Additionally, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association (ISDA) is leading the transition of the USD LIBOR derivatives (e.g.,

interest rate swaps) markets away from LIBOR. ISDA and ARRC work closely together to confirm alignment in their objectives.

In 2017, ARRC recommended a new over-night, risk-free benchmark, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), as a replacement bench-mark for U.S. bond and loan market transac-tions. The New York Federal Reserve Bank now publishes SOFR daily, as well as SOFR Averages and a SOFR Index. The Daily Simple SOFR con-vention, also recommended by ARRC, calculates and aggregates interest daily and is being used for many types of business loans.

However, the transition to SOFR is not without its challenges. Because Daily SOFR reflects over-night borrowing rates, borrowers may dislike it because they are less able to predict payments, and their loans wouldn’t reflect expectations of rate changes — one of the key attractions of LIBOR. To address this issue, on July 29, 2021, ARRC for-mally recommended the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group’s forward looking 1-month, 3-month and 6-month term SOFR rates for commercial loans, and the number of SOFR-linked products is growing.

Another issue is that unlike LIBOR, the new

rates fail to capture the credit risk that banks assume when they lend. As a result, some market participants and industry groups advocate for, and in some cases employ, an established bench-mark like Prime, or newly created benchmarks such as the American Interbank Offered Rate (AMERIBOR), Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield Index (BSBY), or ICE Bank Yield Index (BYI).

Whi le a lternat ives to SOFR – includ-ing credit-sensitive rates – continue to be dis-cussed, most market participants are following the ARRC recommendation to use SOFR as the replacement benchmark rate. If you have an adjustable-rate loan based on LIBOR, find out what index your lender will be switching to. If you’re considering new adjustable-rate debt, ask your lender about options. While there might not be set answers now, keep an eye on the situa-tion. A switch to a different index could potentially mean a change in your base rate in the future.

S cot t S ch l ang e i s the Commercial Banking Leader with KeyBank in Idaho.

While billion-dollar corporations and their very public battles with issues such as ransomware attacks typically garner most of the headlines, small businesses are far from immune to cybersecurity troubles. In fact, they’re just as susceptible as their larger counterparts. According to Accenture’s Cost of Cybercrime Study, 43% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. But less than 15% of the business-es that fit that description are prepared to protect themselves should their systems get breached.

Password management, system updates, consis-tent training – those measures may not be enough. Practicing cyber hygiene does better position your business to avoid a cyberattack. But breaches can still happen, and when they do, the fallout is potentially devastating. Cyber insurance is a form of coverage that helps organizations and individu-als remediate issues that arise following a cyberat-tack. With the number of cybercrimes continuing to rise, pairing consistent cyber hygiene with an appropriate cyber insurance plan is an approach more businesses are taking.

If your data is breached, cyber insurance lessens the amount of time it takes to recover. In many cases, it can also help minimize most the financial losses incurred.

If you’re considering cyber insurance for your company, or maybe you just want to learn what it

is, Better Business Bureau outlines the protections it offers and insight for finding a trustworthy policy:

1. Legal defense: Depending on the severity of the attack, you or your business may need to con-nect with some legal help. That type of assistance is typically pretty costly. Cyber insurance covers expenses should you need to utilize lawyers to help put the pieces back together following a breach.

2. Lost income: Data breaches aren’t cheap. If your business has to shut down its operations because of a cyberattack, those disruptions can result in thousands or even millions of dollars in losses. You may need to purchase new hardware as well, in case the attack caused permanent damage to some of your systems.

3. Ransom: Should an attacker hold your data hostage until you pay to get it back, that’s con-sidered extortion. Covering costs associated with those investigations is included in some cyber insurance policies, as well as any expenses incurred when recovering that information.

4. Reputation: False information about your company that’s shared online can permanently impact your business’s credibility. Its why def-amation connected to cyberbullying or other forms of online harassment is insured under some cyber policies. Finding a trustworthy cyber insurance policy may require a bit of leg work.

“Cybersecurity is such a dynamic and changing environment, policies this year have changed com-pletely from where they were last year,” says Derek Gabriel, CEO of Ignite Solutions Group, a BBB Accredited IT services provider. “The require-ments to get those policies and what those policies will protect has really changed dramatically. So, you really want to work with a specialist.”

Gabriel strongly advises businesses to leverage their current insurance contacts to find someone equipped for the job. Insurance companies that specialize in cyber coverage are becoming more common, too.

C onsumers are becoming increas ing ly knowledgeable on the ways their information can be breached. Adding a cyber insurance policy not only demonstrates to customers that you care about safeguarding their pri-vacy, but it also differentiates you from your competitors. The FTC has provided a list of questions to help you make the right call when choosing a cyber insurance policy.

Keylen Villagrana is a Content & PR Specialist for the Better Business Bureau Great West + Pacific.

GUEST PERSPECTIVE4 reasons to invest in small business cybersecurity

Leaving LIBOR – what does it mean for you?


Entries are due by February 25, 2022Nomination forms can be submitted at

bit.ly/NOCB-MM22-Noms

New Orleans CityBusiness is looking for 50 professionals whose fiscal work has set the pace for their company and the region. Honorees will be selected based on industry and community involvement and achievement through their energy and innovative ideas. Their work should provide a model of professionalism to

their peers and go above and beyond the call of duty.

Submit nomination forms online or contact Natalie Chandler at (504) 293-9255 or [email protected]

NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN

Nominate a Money Maker TODAY!

Save the Date - May 17, 2022

Banking: Honors individuals such as mortgage lenders,

bank executives, credit officers and loan officers.

Corporate: Honors company-associated individuals such as chief financial

officers and comptrollers.

Investment: Honors individuals such as

stockbrokers, financial advisers, financial

planners and investment executives.

Professional: Honors individuals such as public

accountants, auditors, financial educators and

financial analysts.

Honorees will be recognized in four categories:

2022

Editor’s Note: Craig Juengling will be responding to your questions in this quarterly feature enti-tled Ask the Executive Coach. Craig will choose questions to respond to which have the broadest appeal to our readers. You can email him at the address [email protected]; please put “Ask the Executive Coach” in the subject line.

Question from Samantha P: Craig, we are struggling with our hiring. We seem to be able to find good prospects, but we can’t seem to make our selections timely and then too many of those we do hire leave within 90 days – many of them by our choice. What insights can you share with us?

Samantha, I hope you don’t make as many mis-takes in hiring as I did in my past professional lives. There were people I couldn’t wait to recruit only to find out later how disappointed I was in their performance and my hiring skills. A general rule of thumb: If a new employee leaves within the first 90 days, it’s the employer who is at fault, regardless of whether they left or you asked them to leave.

Over time, and with some training and experi-ence, three principals helped me to be much more effective and efficient at hiring right, the first time.

First: Hire slowly. Do some homework before you begin the hiring process. Take your time and figure out what you really want to accomplish with this position. Whenever turnover happens, don’t rush and fill the vacancy without revisiting how to improve your outcomes through expanding your employee’s competencies and capabilities. Did you accomplish everything you wanted to in the past? Has the environment changed, and you need to re-think what success in the future looks like? Learn to step back and evaluate what you need to take performance to the next level. Be patient; the cost of future turnover is huge.

Second: Hire the right attitude. “Hire for attitude, train for skills,” is originally attribut-ed to Herb Kelleher, one of the co-founders of U.S.-based Southwest Airlines. Samantha, he was right. Early in my career I frequently felt some-one’s technical skills were crucial to success. No doubt technical skills are important, and perhaps required in some positions. But try to understand what you can do for the future development of that new hire, when you hired someone with the right attitude! Don’t fall into the same trap I did by feeling you are hostage to getting the right degree or license and you settle for something less on the positivity scale. Be patient; the cost of turnover is huge.

Third: Hire using behavioral interview-ing. Behavioral interviewing (BI) is a time-tested methodology to hiring the right person the first time. The premise is simple: An individual’s past behavior is the best predictor of future job per-formance. It works! I learned this skill set late in

my hiring career and it made a tremendous dif-ference for me. Using BI is documented to be 3-5 times more effective than traditional interviewing techniques. Take some time to learn, practice and master the methodology; you will save yourself a ton of time, money, and antacids. I’ve done a high-level overview of the behavioral interviewing methodology for you.

Again, BI is simple in concept – a candidate’s past behavior is the best predictor of their future behavior. The process to conduct a sound BI takes a lot of preparation and you can’t cut this short. The good news is that once you create the questions and forms for a specific job, you can use them over and over again. Consider it this way: your success rate in hiring can go from 30% to 75%. Won’t that save you a lot of time and money?

Step 1 – Determine your interview for-mat. Will you use a team to interview or do a series of interviews with individuals? One of the premises of BI is to objectify a very subjective pro-cess. I recommend having the same interviewers be consistent for all interviewees as it substantially increases the reliability of the data. I know this is a challenge, but if it’s a high risk/level position you are filling, you simply must invest the time to hire the right candidate the first time.

S t e p 2 – D e t e r m i n e t h e i n t e r v i e w focus. Narrow down the criteria critical for suc-cess in the position. I messed this up a couple of times when I tried to make the job fit the candi-date, not the candidate fit the job. Focus like a laser on the behaviors that define success. Does success in the role require collaboration, taking the initia-

tive, being strategic or managing conflict? Look at who was successful in that role before (or who wasn’t) to select the competencies you need for someone to be successful in that job.

Step 3 – Determine the interview ques-tions. Have open-ended behavioral questions ready for the key criteria and hammer it home. Document the candidates’ answers to 1) the inci-dent that occurred, 2) the action/behavior they displayed, and 3) the outcome. Have each inter-viewer choose a numerical score, use the 1 – 5 Likert scale, to rate the answer. If the criterion you choose is crucial for the position’s success, ask 2 or 3 questions to tease out the behavior for that specific criterion.

Hire right the first time. A recent study showed the average manager spends 18% of their time doing day-to-day management of their employees. How much more time would any leader have to be proactive and strategic if they could cut that 18% in half, by getting the right people hired? How much more could you accomplish? Lots, I bet.

Be patient; the cost of turnover is huge.Learn, then lead.Craig S. Juengling, PCC, is a credentialed execu-

tive coach who spent 22 years running hospitals and health care systems and maintains a private executive coach-ing practice in New Orleans. Visit www.neworleansexecu-tivecoach.com for additional information, or email Craig at [email protected].

GUEST PERSPECTIVE

Ask the Executive Coach: HIRE TOP TALENT THE FIRST TIME


The million-dollar question on most employers’ minds: “Are you fully vaccinated?”

This seems to have become a question that employers want to pose to their workers, but confusion abounds regarding the legal contours of this deceptively dangerous question. Many employers continue to wonder about the legal implications of asking an employee’s vaccination status. While the EEOC has confirmed that you can lawfully ask employees for their vaccination status without violating federal anti-discrimina-tion laws (provided the question is limited to a yes-or-no response), what about other privacy laws? Specifically, what about the often-misun-derstood HIPAA, seemingly cited by anyone who disagrees with any sort of COVID-19 safety protocols?

The goal of this article is to untangle myths from reality and provide employers with prac-tical – and legally correct – guidance on this subject.

What is HIPAA and to whom does it apply?The Health Insurance Por tabi l i ty and

Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), was enact-ed on Aug. 21, 1996. Sections 261 through 264 require the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to publicize standards for the electronic exchange, privacy and security of health information. To implement this requirement, the HHS issued what became known as the “Privacy Rule.”

The Privacy Rule addresses the use and dis-closure of individually identifiable health infor-mation, which is referred to as “protected health information” (PHI) by organizations that are subject to the Privacy Rule. Those organizations, which fit into only three categories, are referred to as “covered entities.”

HIPAA has entered popular culture in recent times thanks to misguided individuals who believe the law somehow creates a magic force field exempting them from complying with many pan-

demic-related requirements. Most recently, many employees have incorrectly cited “HIPPA” (as commonly misspelled on the internet) as grounds for withholding their vaccine status from their employers.

The HHS recently issued guidance putting many HIPAA-related pandemic misconceptions to rest. Perhaps the most common misconception about HIPAA is that it applies to all businesses and employers. It does not. As noted above, the Privacy Rule governs only “covered entities.” They are:

• health plans;• health care clearinghouses; and• health care providers that conduct stan-

dard electronic transactions (and, to some extent, certain business associates of covered entities).

If you do not fall into one of these catego-ries, HIPAA does not apply to you at all. And even if you do fall into one of these categories, the Privacy Rule does not apply to employment records, including employment records held by covered entities or business associates “in their capacity as employers.”

What does the HIPAA Privacy Rule protect?The Privacy Rule regulates how and when

covered entities are permitted to use and disclose PHI that covered entities create, receive, main-tain or transmit. The rule does not prohibit an employer or business, including HIPAA covered entities, from asking whether an individual has received a particular vaccine, including COVID-19 vaccines. The rule does regulate, however, how and when a covered entity may use or disclose information about an individual’s vaccination status.

Since most employers are not covered entities under HIPAA, the Privacy Rule does not regulate whether one can ask about an individual’s vacci-nation status or how one can use or disclose that information once obtained.

Isn’t COVID-19 vaccination status confidential information?

Yes. Documentation or other information regarding an individual’s vaccination status is confidential medical information under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and some state privacy laws. This means that you must treat this information as confidential and store it sepa-rately from the employee’s personnel file.

The federal requirement to treat vaccination status as confidential information does not, how-ever, prevent employers or businesses from asking their employees or their visitors whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Can we ask whether employees and customers are vaccinated?

Yes, HIPAA does not prevent employers and businesses from asking their employees and vis-itors whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and for proof of such vaccination. Once an employer has the information, it must be treated as confidential, meaning that it is not shared with others except under limited cir-cumstances and, as noted, is not even kept in an employee’s personnel file.

Ultimately, there are plenty of questions an employer should not ask employees or customers. To list them all would require more space than can be devoted to this article, and likely be as redun-dant as my son explaining a “PAW Patrol” episode. The reality is that most of you know when a ques-tion does not pass the smell test. Despite keyboard warriors arguing otherwise, HIPAA does not pre-vent employers and business-es from asking their employ-ees and visitors whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and for proof of such vaccination.

Stephen Scott is an associ-ate in the Portland, Oregon office of Fisher Phillips.

GUEST PERSPECTIVE

The legality of asking about an employee’s vaccination status


Date Target Buyers/Investors Sellers% Interest Acquired

Price (In US Millions) Target Location

10/01/2021 Louisiana Orthopaedic & SPORTS Rehab Institute, Inc.

IMAC Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqCM:IMAC) F. Allen Johnston, MD 100% 1.6 Baton Rouge, LA

10/01/2021 Medical Practice of F. Allen Johnston, MD

IMAC Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqCM:IMAC) F. Allen Johnston, MD 100% 0.8 Baton Rouge, LA

10/01/2021 Oakbrook Apartments on Nicholson Drive

Oakbrook St., LLC RISE Real Estate 100% 34.7 Baton Rouge, LA

10/11/2021 Daul Insurance Agency, Inc. USI Insurance Services, LLC ND 100% ND Gretna, LA

10/11/2021 Columbia Promenade in Kissimmee, Florida

ND PMAT Real Estate Investments, LLC

100% 12.7 Kissimmee, FL

10/18/2021 1,276,250 Square Foot Industrial Real Estate Portfolio in Wichita, Kansas

Sealy & Company, LLC Murdock Properties, LLC 100% ND Wichita, KS

10/20/2021 Grace Home Health, Inc. Excelin Home Health, LLC, a portfolio company of Corinthian Capital

ND 100% ND Lafayette, LA

CLOSED

October M&A Louisiana merger and acquisition activity in October 2021

Last month’s blockbuster announcement that New Orleans tech startup Lucid Holdings is sell-ing to Swedish software firm Cint Group for $1.1 billion overshadowed the news of other Louisiana startup sales. Also in October, Georgia gas station heavyweight Mountain Express Oil Co. purchased Brothers Food Mart for an undisclosed price.

In the deal, Mountain Express, which owns or controls a national network of over 200 gas stations, purchased most of Brothers Food Mart’s Louisiana locations, their fueling rights and exclu-sive rights to the Brother’s Chicken name. The deal also formed a joint venture between Mountain Express and Brothers Chicken, the chain’s signa-ture fried chicken product.

Palestine-born Imad Faiex “Eddie” Hamdan founded Brothers over 30 years ago, and he has seen the company grow from just a single location on the West Bank into the largest convenience store brand in the New Orleans area, with 50 stores in the region.

Mountain Express also will relocate its retail headquarters to a site on the West Bank. According to that company’s co-CEO Turjo Wadud, the com-pany plans to triple Brothers store count over the next six months, bringing Brothers and its famous fried chicken to new markets in the south, includ-ing North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, as well as Louisiana, by applying the Brothers name to 100 pre-existing gas stations.

The buyers believe the deal could bring as many

as 100 jobs from Georgia to New Orleans before the end of the year. Further, the increased demand for breading and spice manufacturing from great-er fried chicken production will create around 20-25 new food processing jobs in New Orleans, Hamdan estimates.

In the industrial services sector, Baton Rouge-based Bernhard Capital partners agreed to sell its energy service business, Bernhard LLC to DIF Capital Partners, an infrastructure investment firm, for an undisclosed price. Bernhard’s senior management will “retain meaningful ownership” in the company after the deal closes.

Bernhard delivers distributed energy through its unique energy-as-a-service model. In other words, Bernhard enters into long-term, turnkey contracts to upgrade, retrofit and service large existing building energy facilities with the goal of better efficiency and substantial energy savings.

Gijs Voskuyl, partner and head of investments for DIF Infrastructure VI, said, “Bernhard’s approach fits perfectly with DIF’s public-private partnership expertise and ambition to invest in clean energy infrastructure solutions around the globe.”

Founded in 1919, Bernhard is made up of four companies: Bernhard Energy, Bernhard MCC, E.P. Breaux and Bernhard TME. It shifted its focus to an EaaS model in 2014. The company has more than 2,000 employees across the U.S., with more than half of the workforce based in Louisiana.

Berhard has 15 contracts to upgrade, retrofit and service large energy facilities in building com-plexes, mostly for colleges and health care centers. The company built its national headquarters in Metairie in early 2020.

In the tech space, Metairie-based Geocent LLC was acquired by Virginia-based Sev1Tech LLC for an undisclosed price. The two firms specialize in providing IT services to government entities. Geocent specializes in development, security and operations “DevSecOps” and engineering services. Private equity-backed Sev1Tech’s menu of services includes IT modernization, cloud, cybersecurity, engineering, fielding, training and program sup-port services for federal government agencies and major commercial organizations.

According to Geocent’s CEO to Bobby Savoie, the combined companies will enhance the design, development and delivery of innovative solutions to further support federal customers. The acquisi-tion will allow the combined entity to strengthen scalability and solutions for addressing its clients’ emerging demands and the increasing sophistica-tion of government IT needs.

G.F. Gay Le Breton is managing director for Chaffe & Associates Inc., responsible for the merger and acquisition activities of the firm. Ryan Gerton is an associate with the firm.

Investment banking services are provided by Chaffe Securities Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. For more information, visit http://chaffe-associates.com.

Startup transactions top October M&A activity


Date Target Buyers/Investors Sellers% Interest Acquired

Price (In US Millions) Target Location

10/04/2021 Bernhard, LLC DIF Capital Partners Bernhard Capital Partners Management LP

Majority Stake

ND Baton Rouge, LA

10/20/2021 Texas Citizens Bancorp, Inc. Business First Bancshares, Inc. (NasdaqGS:BFST)

ND 100% 53.05 Pasadena, TX

10/27/2021 Lucid Holdings, LLC Cint Group AB (OM:CINT) Patrick Comer, Guidepost Growth Equity, and others

100% 1,053.57 New Orleans, LA

ANNOUNCED

Source: Capital IQ, corporate and other records, staff research; ND - Not Disclosed; Price - Enterprise Value, where availableIncludes Announced or Closed transactions involving a Louisiana Target, Buyer or Seller

10/21/2021 353,559 Square Feet of Seven-Building Portfolio in Houston, Texas

Sealy & Company, LLC ND 100% ND Houston, TX

10/25/2021 Lizard Skins Inc Marucci Sports, LLC, a subsidiary of Compass Diversified (NYSE:CODI)

ND 100% ND Orem, UT

10/26/2021 Geocent, LLC Sev1Tech, Inc., a portfolio company of DFW Capital Partners and Enlightenment Capital

ND 100% ND Metairie, LA

10/26/2021 Brother's Food Mart Mountain Express Oil Company Imad Faiez "Eddie" Hamdan and Ziad Odeh Mousa

100% ND Gretna, LA

CLOSED

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701 Poydras Street | Suite 4700 | New Orleans, LA 70139-7708 Main: 504.528.3001 | Fax: 504.528.3030 | jyplawfirm.com

The law firm of Johnson, Yacoubian & Paysse is pleased to announce the hiring of attorneys, Jonathan L. Brehm

and Marcus K. Pierre as associates with the firm.

Jonathan L. Brehm Marcus K. Pierre


FOCUS Banking/Financial Services

Two banks with branches in the southern U.S. announced that they have completed their merger.

Cadence Bancor porat ion merged into BancorpSouth Bank, and the surviving company, BancorpSouth, was renamed Cadence Bank, the company said in a news release.

BancorpSouth Bank and Cadence Bank will continue operating under their old brands until they finish integrating their systems, which is expected to happen during the final three months of 2022. The company said customers should

not see immediate changes and should continue using their current bank cards, checks and other services.

Cadence becomes the sixth-largest bank head-quartered in its nine-state footprint with $48 billion in assets, and a presence in eight of the top 10 largest metro areas in those states, the company said. It operates in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.

“With the completion of our merger, we’re posi-

tioned to be a stronger banking franchise offering relationship-focused financial services and creat-ing new opportunities to benefit our teammates, customers, communities and shareholders,” the chairman and CEO of Cadence Bank, Dan Rollins, said in the news release.

The merged company has headquarters in Tupelo, Mississippi, and Houston, Texas, with primary operations centers in Tupelo and Birmingham, Alabama.

—The Associated Press

2 banks merge to become Cadence Bank

Regions Bank has launched a practice to focus on investing in low-income communities, further expanding its tax credit investment services.

Veteran banker Steve Ross will lead the New Markets Tax Credit team, Ross most recently served as head of the NMTC platform for Truist Community Capital and has held project management roles in nonprofit and for-profit organizations focused on community revitalization and the creation/preser-vation of affordable housing. Ross is based at Regions’ offices in Washington, D.C.

The Regions team will focus on similar investment initiatives,

including low-income housing tax credits and solar renewables tax credit equities, a news release said.

Established by Congress in December 2000, the New Markets Tax Credit program is designed to attract private-sec-tor capital investments into the nation’s urban and rural low-in-come areas, helping expand access to quality jobs, health care, education and other services in underserved communities. The NMTC program increases the flow of capital to businesses and low-income communities by providing a tax incentive to pri-vate investors.

— CityBusiness staff reportsRoss

Regions Bank launches New Markets Tax Credit practiceP H O T O S C O U R T E S Y R E G I O N S B A N K

The Birmingham, Alabama-based bank has expanded its tax credit investment services with the additional practice.


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Good News Is Worth Repeating!Promote your coverage with a

REPRINT & PLAQUEA S S E E N I N

THE BUSINESS NEWSPAPER OF METROPOLITAN NEW ORLEANS October 31 - November 13, 2014

Joel Duran is passionate about business and helping people

live the American dream. Whether a small coffee shop or

large energy company, he brings together buyers and sellers

of businesses.

Duran owns Sunbelt Business Brokers of New Orleans.

He bought the 30-year-old company almost three years ago

and has since overseen transactions of more than 300 compa-

nies totaling $25 million in value. He manages six salespeople,

day-to-day activities and an extensive advertising campaign

aimed at 35,000 buyers in Louisiana. Sunbelt works with all

types of businesses and currently has more than 150 listings

with new ones coming online all the time. The company also

brokers commercial real estate.

“The most popular businesses for sale are bars and

restaurants, but we deal with a broad variety including oil-

field services, hospitality and health care,” Duran said.

“When I bought the business, it was losing money. This year

we are on track to double sales. Many sales environments are

cutthroat, but here we have fantastic people with great atti-

tudes who are extremely knowledgeable and professional.”

Duran helped Leora Madden buy Cork & Bottle in Mid-

City, which she turned into Pearl Wine Co., a liquor store and

wine bar.

“When Leora initially talked to me, she wanted to buy a

different kind of business that included wine,” he said. “But

after we talked about it, she settled on Pearl Wine Co. and

her business has absolutely flourished. It received national

press and was part of a national radio show. It’s deeply satis-

fying and fun to help someone achieve their dream.”

Outside of work, Duran is a guest lecturer for University

of New Orleans. His topics include the importance of busi-

ness plans and managing resources as a business owner. He

also volunteers with the Bridge House/Grace House Fore

Recovery Golf Tournament, helping organize the event and

find sponsors.

— Kerry Duff

Joel F. DuranSunbelt Business Brokers of New Orleans Owner

2 0 1 4

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PeopleAROUND TOWN

Samuel Mouledoux Brooks Erdem

McNeal Green Basow

Awards ZERO to THREE has presented one of two Lifetime Achievement Awards to Joy Osofsky, Paul J. Ramsay Endowed Chair of Psychiatry, and Barbara Lemann, professor of Child Welfare at LSU Health New Orleans.

Oracle Lighting has won SEMA’s 2021 Man-ufacturer of the Year award for its contribu-tions to the specialty-equipment industry.

HousingNOLA has announced that execu-tive director Andreanecia Morris has been given a Consumer Champion Award by the Consumer Federation of America.

Ragan Communications has announced that Melissa Samuel, chief legal officer at Bernhard, has been named to its 2021 Ragan’s Top Women in Wellness and Human Resources list.

Second Line Brewing won medals at this year’s Denver International Beer Compe-tition. “Saison Named Desire” won a gold medal in the Saison category of the compe-tition. “Pour With Vigor” won bronze in the Czech Premium Pale Lager category.

André Mouledoux of Mouledoux, Bland, Legrand and Brackett has received the Dis-tinguished Maritime Lawyer Award from the New Orleans Bar Association.

Jay Kaplan, MD, LCMC Health’s medical director for care transformation and prac-ticing emergency physician at University Medical Center, has been awarded the John G. Wiegenstein Leadership Award by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

On Nov. 4, the University of New Orleans honored Jeff Brooks as a distinguished alumnus from its College of Liberal Arts, Education, and Human Development.

General BusinessKristen Erdem has been named develop-ment director for Ronald McDonald House Charities of South Louisiana.

Mark Romig, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for New Orleans & Company, has been granted the Order of Civil Merit by King Felipe VI of Spain. Romig assisted the city in coordinating the king’s visit during the city’s tricentennial in 2018.

Entergy Corporation has announced a transition plan for the retirement of its vice president and treasurer, Steve McNeal, who plans to leave next spring. Barrett Green, vice president, commercial operations for Entergy Wholesale Commodities, will succeed McNeal, with an effective date to be confirmed in early 2022. Green will lead the company’s treasury function, including financing, risk and investments. Green will continue to report to Drew Marsh, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Health Care Charise Drouant has been named chief operating officer of In & Out Urgent Care locations in the New Orleans area and on the North Shore.

Ochsner Health has appointed Denise Basow, MD, as its first chief digital officer to lead digital health programs, build new digital businesses and expand clinical busi-nesses.


Lauderdale

AROUND TOWNPeople

LawBarrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver has welcomed Alexandra Gjertson to the firm as an associate.

Thomas Flanagan of Flanagan Partners LLP has been chosen as a Local Litigation Star in the 2022 edition of Benchmark Litigation (U.S.)

Shields Mott has announced that Pe-ter-Raymond Graffeo has joined the firm as an associate practicing in construction law.

Nalley and Dew has announced that Julie

Meaders has joined the firm as an associ-ate.

Phelps Dunbar has expanded its construc-tion industry capabilities with the addition of Larry Borda.

The International Association of Defense Counsel has announced that Diana Cole Surprenant, a partner and leader of the products liability team at Adams and Reese LLP in New Orleans, has accepted an invi-tation to join the IADC, a legal organiza-tion for attorneys who represent corporate and insurance interests.

Real Estate Stirling Properties has promoted Jared Lauderdale to vice president controller.

CityBusiness welcomes submissions for the “People” section. To be considered for inclu-sion in a coming issue, information must be received in the CityBusiness editorial office 10 days prior to the anticipated publication date. Submissions, including photographs, are published subject to space availability. Color photos submitted by email should be a head shot in jpeg format, with measure-ments of 3x3 and 300dpi. Submissions may be emailed to: [email protected].

Gjertson Graffeo Meaders BordaFlanagan

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PUBLISHER’S NOTICE: All real estate advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Ace and the Louisiana Open Housing Act, which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination. We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. For more information, call the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office at 1-800-273-5718.

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY GUIDE

Rates listed in the above advertisements are based on a credit score of 740, and a loan of $200,000, with a loan to value of 80% for conventional financing and 96.5% for FHA financing. Jumbo loans are based on credit score

of 780 and loan amount of $500,000, with a loan to value of 70%. The APR may increase after consummation and may vary. CityBusiness does not guarantee the accuracy of the information appearing above. All information

above is subject to change without notice. The above advertisers all pay a fee to be listed in this table and provide sample rates based on the given scenario described here.

All real estate advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Ace and the Louisiana Open Housing Act, which make it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color,

religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination. We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. For

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Call MONIQUE SULLIVAN • 504-293-9731 • [email protected]

Attention All Loan & Mortgage CompaniesIf your company is interested in participating or for answers to any questions you may have, please contact:

MONIQUE SULLIVAN 504-293-9731 • [email protected]

LendersPhone Numbers

Fixed Conform 30 Year 15-Year

3-5-7 YearARM

Comments & Other ProgramsContact Person

FHA

MILLER HOME MORTGAGE, LLCRoss L. Miller – NMLS&R #70833(888) 277-0306 (504) 455-7002FAX (504) 455-3722

• 15 and 15 year rate are location driven and N/A for cash out requirements.• Miller Home Mortgage, LLC., is pleased to offer the Homestyle Renovation Mortgage which is a 1-time closing purchase or refinance & renovation loan. We have 20 years of experience lending on residential property. Licensed in LA and Texas.

NMLS #69469

2.375%pts. 0LIP 30APR 3.985%

N/A2.125%pts. 0LIP 30APR 2.387%

2.999%pts. 0LIP 30APR 3.306%

HANCOCK WHITNEYYvonne Marinovic(800) 813-7346FAX (504) 846-2567

• 30 year and 15 year conventional rates include 1% origination.• Government rate DOES NOT include an origination.• FHA APR does include annual MIP.

NMLS# 454781

2.625%pts. 0LIP 30APR 3.727%

N/A2.125%pts. .125LIP 30APR 2.457%

2.875%pts. .125LIP 30APR 2.97%

425 Notre Dame St, #603 ・$2,180,000 2 Bedrooms/2.5 Baths

425 Notre Dame St, #402・$1,100,000 2 Bedrooms/2 Baths

One River Place, PH14A・$3,495,000 2 Bedrooms/2.5 Baths

Point your phone camera here for video tours:

425 Notre Dame St, #401 ・$1,995,000 3 Bedrooms/3.5 Baths

1061 Camp St, #F・$449,000 2 Bedrooms/1.5 Baths

FOR SALE: 27 Audubon Blvd. $1,390,000

FOR LEASE: 1111 S. Peters St., #411 $1,450

RECENTLY SOLD: 2 Canal St., #1904·2 Canal St., #2003·731 St. Charles Ave., #312·425 Notre Dame St., #201·731 St. Charles Ave, #403

586 Walnut St· 2621 Danbury Dr·1127 Dauphine St, #302·425 Notre Dame St., #802·6768 Pontchartrain Blvd. 700 Commerce St., #202·920 Poeyfarre St., #309·700 Magazine St., #407·1516 Robert St.·7 Everett Place

700 Magazine St., #412·700 Magazine St., #413·600 Port of New Orleans, 3E·715 Governor Nicholls St.·330 Julia St., #316

333 Julia St, #219・$470,000 2 Bedrooms/2 Baths

1107 S. Peters St., #111・$259,000 1 Bedroom/1 Bath

6824 Orleans Ave.・$899,000 4 Bedrooms/3.5 Baths

PENDING

747 Magazine St, #2・$965,000 2 Bedrooms/2.5 Baths

Latter & Blum, Inc. ・200 Broadway Street, #142・New Orleans, LA 70118・Office 504-866-2785

Glennda Bach, Realtor #1 Agent at Latter & Blum 504-583-2792 | [email protected] www.glennda-bach.latterblum.com Over $44 Million Sold in 2020 Diamond Award Winner | Top Producer Best Residential Real Estate Agent City Business 2021

Growingthe Westbank of Jefferson Parish

Commercial and Industrial Development and Leasing

Residential and

Recreational Development

Retail and Office Development and Leasing

Warehouse and Service Center Development and Leasing

Joint Venture DevelopmentMarrero Land AND IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, LIMITED

Marrero Land & Improvement Association, Ltd., popularly known as “Marrero Land,” with roots reaching back to the early 1900s, has been a major player in the great story of the Westbank of Jefferson Parish, neighbor to and across the Mississippi River from the City of New Orleans.

Throughout its history, Marrero Land has been involved in the full spectrum of land ownership, management, leasing, and development.

marreroland.com

Segnette Estates, an upscale residential community located in historic Westwego, is close to Bayou Segnette State Park, the Tournament Players Club of Louisiana golf course, and many other outdoor and cultural activities. It is truly one of the finer residential communities in the Greater Metropolitan New Orleans Area.

Developer, Marrero Land & Improvement Association, Ltd, has roots as far back as the turn of the last century in the Westbank of Jefferson Parish. This heritage and experience help Marrero Land build communities with the people and area in mind. With Segnette Estates, Marrero Land’s main focus is giving homeowners the quality of life they desire while building the property value they deserve.

Lots in Segnette Estates start under $55,000. While the community has many homes already constructed, there are plenty of great home sites still available.

Whether using your own builder or theirs certain guidelines need to be met prior to construction. This process is quick and helps preserve and enhance the quality of the community. www.segnetteestates.com

PRIME RETAIL - AVAILABLE FOR LEASEFormer Toys “R” Us Building4800 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, LAProperty SummaryFree-standing BuildingFor LeaseBuilding Size: 45,176 SFLand/Site Size: 194,940 SFParking Spaces: 300Located in the heart of Marrero, LA situated as an outparcel to Walmart Supercenter Former Toys “R” Us stand-alone building, this 45,000+ SF space situated in the heart of Marrero’s retail corridor as an out-parcel to the Super Walmart and adjacent to The Home Depot and Office Depot. The property boasts 300 (+,-) parking spaces, great visibility, as well as convenient ingress and egress. The neighboring intersection of Lapalco and Barataria Boulevard is coined as the entrance to “Sportsman’s Paradise” as it is the direct route to fishing and hunting activities.Traffic Counts• On Lapalco Boulevard, east of Barataria

Boulevard: 38,800• On Barataria Boulevard, north of Lapalco

Boulevard: 35,920

OFFICE SUITES - AVAILABLE FOR LEASE

Vincent Vastola, Director of R/EPhone 504-341-1635 • [email protected]

Marrero Land Office Plaza5201 Westbank Expressway, Marrero, Louisiana

ParticularsProfessional office buildingOffice suites available from 500 SF to 3,800 SFFull service – janitorial, utilitiesSecurity alarm system and closed circuit cameras Fire/smoke alarm system7 day 24 hour access via keyless entry/monitored Smoke freeLadies and Men’s restroom facilities on each floor. Handicap (ADA) accessible Owner occupied (4th floor) and owner managed. On site, parkingParking Spaces: 210AccessabilityConveniently located -15 minutes away from downtown New Orleans 2 blocks from West Jefferson; Medical Centre. Easy access to elevated Westbank Expressway

Joe Gardner, CCIMOffice: 504-523-4481 Direct: [email protected]

Carly PlotkinOffice: 504-523-4481 Direct: [email protected]

Former Toys“R”Us Building4800 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, LA

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R=1996.86'

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PORTION OF LOTS 29, 30, & 31BELL PLANTATIONJEFFERSON PARISH, LOUISIANA

0.42'

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HANDICAP ACCESS STRIPING-BLUE

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LEGEND OF SYMBOLS

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BUILDING45,176 S.F.

STORM DRAIN LINES & INLETS

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stirlingproperties.com Member ofThe foregoing is solely for information purposes and is subject to change without notice. Stirling Properties makes no representations or warranties regarding the properties or information herein including but notlimited to any and all images pertaining to these properties. It is the obligation of each purchaser/lessee to investigate the condition and attributes of the properties and to verify the accuracy of the foregoinginformation to the extent such purchaser/lessee deems necessary. Also subject to errors, omissions, changes in terms and conditions, prior sale, lease or withdrawal, without notice. 5/17

Joe Gardner, CCIMOffice: 504-523-4481 Direct: [email protected]

Carly PlotkinOffice: 504-523-4481 Direct: [email protected]

Former Toys“R”Us Building4800 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, LA

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N 76°46'53"W

N 0

1°4

3'1

3"W

N 24°31'29"W

N 65°05'16"E

100' L.P. & L. SERVITUDE

R=1996.86'

317.91

133.00

197.00

46

.83

362.84

18

3.9

4

96.47

460.01

102.60

PORTION OF LOTS 29, 30, & 31BELL PLANTATIONJEFFERSON PARISH, LOUISIANA

0.42'

3.53'

10' WATER SERVITUDE

15' SERVITUDE

10' LP&L SERVITUDE

25' X 34.67' LP&L SERVITUDE

CO

NC

RETE

CO

NC

RETE

CONCRETE

CONCRETE

10' PRIVATE SERVITUDE

LAPALCOBOULEVARD

JULY 5, 2006

T. LOWRIE

T. LOWRIE

1

CHECKED BY

OF

SHEET NO

DATE

DRAWN BY

REVISIONS

ONE

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DRAINS

STOP BAR AND STOP SIGN

WHEEL STOP - YELLOW

HANDICAP SIGN

DIRECTIONAL ARROWS-YELLOWSHOPPING CART STALL

FIRE LANE STRIPING-RED

HANDICAP ACCESS STRIPING-BLUE

PARKING STALL STRIPING-WHITE

STOP

19.0'

R20'

3 SPACES

EXISTING

TOWER

TBM#1

LEGEND OF SYMBOLS

LEGEND OF SYMBOLS

LEASE SITE PLANSCALE 1" = 60'-0"

BUILDING45,176 S.F.

STORM DRAIN LINES & INLETS

10' WATER SERVITUDE

WATER

POWER

GAS

GA

S LIN

E

Retail Aerial

stirlingproperties.com Member ofThe foregoing is solely for information purposes and is subject to change without notice. Stirling Properties makes no representations or warranties regarding the properties or information herein including but notlimited to any and all images pertaining to these properties. It is the obligation of each purchaser/lessee to investigate the condition and attributes of the properties and to verify the accuracy of the foregoinginformation to the extent such purchaser/lessee deems necessary. Also subject to errors, omissions, changes in terms and conditions, prior sale, lease or withdrawal, without notice. 5/17

Private patios with large fenced yard

OR SALE

FOR SALE

1001 JULIA STREET, UNIT 2BSoaring 13 foot ceilings and amazing light greet you in this very well designed 1 bed / 1 bath residence. 970 Square Feet of living space. Huge windows, wood floors

throughout, marble tops, top of the line appliances with gas cooktop, 24 hourlobby attendant, amazing amenities with state of the art gym, pool, deck and

party rooms. Garage parking on site. Short walk to all downtown attractions including Superdome and Arena.

$615,000

SHAUN TALBOT(504) 975-9763

(504) 525-9763www.talbot-realty.com

CHIC PIED A TERRE IN PREMIER BUILDING - THE STANDARD!

ONLINE ONLY AUCTIONVisit proxibid.com/servcorp for more info

THURSDAY | DECEMBER 2, 2021 Online Only Timed Auction | No Onsite Bidding

First lot starts closing at 9AM City of New Orleans Impounded Vehicles

Items located at 10200 Almonaster Ave in New Orleans, LA 70126 Preview is 9A-3P on Wed 12/1. Various Vehicles: Dodge, Acura, Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Chevy, Nissan, Buick, Pontiac, Mazda, Chrysler, Mercury, Fiat, Infiniti, GMC, Toyota, Cadillac & Others! Must be 18 or older. Valid ID required to enter & view vehicles. Full Payment Due before 2PM on 12/3. All vehicles sold without keys, running condition unknown. Some vehicles may be branded salvage, reconstructed, water damaged, etc.

15% buyer’s premium & $25 notary fee applies to all purchases. Please visit Proxibid.com/servcorp for terms, removal, and more details. Any Covid-19 protocols in place must be followed while on auction premises. Some items may be subject to reserve. All items are

sold “AS IS” without warranty & with all faults/defects. ServCorp Int’l, Inc. • 101 Magnolia St. • Slidell, LA 70460

(800) 340-2185 • www.servcorpii.com • B. Mutz, LA 1467-21

PRESTIGE PREVIEW

Advertise YourResidential or Commercial

Property in

MONIQUE SULLIVAN293-9731

[email protected]

COCO EVANS JUDD293-9288

[email protected]

Advertising space deadline: November 19, 2021

MONIQUE SULLIVAN293-9731 • [email protected]

COCO EVANS JUDD293-9288 • [email protected]

Celebrating 41 years in printReal Estate Issue

Friday December 3, 2021Warehouse Space Real Estate/Law

Fabulous renovation of beautiful Metairie Club Gardens home on oversized lot. Large pool and patio with pool house. Wood floors, 10 foot ceilings, crown molding. Spacious, light-filled rooms- stunning kitchen

with breakfast area, family room with fireplace flanked by bookshelves. 5 bedrooms 3 baths 2 half baths. Huge primary bedroom has a bath with spa tub and separate shower, large walk-in closet. Wonderful closet

space throughout and plenty of parking.

332 FRIEDRICHS • $1,825,000

Cell 236-6834 | Office 866-2785 [email protected]

lettyrosenfeld.latter-blum.com

Letty Rosenfeld, GRI, CRS

Specializing in Uptown, Lakefront and Old Metairie Properties

Beautifully renovated home with gorgeous pool and covered patio. 10 foot ceilings, beautiful new hardwood floors. Extra spacious family room with 2 sets of French doors to the pool, spa, and patio.

Fabulous kitchen with large island, separate full sized stainless refrigerator and freezer. 5 burner stove with 2 ovens and pot-filler, and breakfast area overlooking the patio and pool. Light and airy, extra large downstairs primary suite. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths down, 2 bedrooms with new wood floors and bath up.

919 CRYSTAL STREET • $1,099,000

PENDING

Fabulous Uptown condo with stunning River views. Built in 2017, condo has pine floors, 11 foot ceilings, crown molding, 2 sets of French doors to a long private balcony, great kitchen with quartzite counters, upscale stainless appliances and large island with eating bar, light-filled primary bedroom with exciting bath with slipper

tub and separate glass shower, and laundry room. 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2 garage parking spaces.

111 AUDUBON ST #301 • $849,000

NEW LISTING

SKYE & SUSAN PRICESPECIALIZING IN:

M E TA I R I E C L U BG A R D E N SU P T OW N

O L D M E TA I R I EG A R D E N D I S T R I C T

L A K E V I E W

[email protected](504) 891-6400

SUSAN HURTH PRICEGRI, ABR, CRS

(504) 908-3317Platinum Award Winners

Licensed in Louisiana

SKYE PRICERealtor

(504) 388-7593

Two PRICES for the price of one

SKYE & SUSAN PRICESPECIALIZING IN:

M E TA I R I E C L U BG A R D E N SU P T OW N

O L D M E TA I R I E G AR D E N D I S T R I C T

L A K E V I E W

[email protected](504) 891-6400 SUSAN HURTH PRICE

GRI, ABR, CRS2014 President’s Club

(504) 908-3317Platinum Award Winners

Licensed in Louisiana

SKYE PRICERealtor

(504) 388-7593

Two PRICES for the price of one

Kelli Wright, ABR

Licensed by the Louisiana Real Estate CommissionCell 504-613-7902 • Office 504-866-2785

www.KelliWright.latter-blum.com

Since 1916Since 1916

Contemporary renovation of historic 19th Century corner store in fabulous West Riverside. Quality renovation + superior materials = low maintenance STYLE! 3 bdr/4 full baths w/ 439 sq. ft. guest suite. Airy, open floor plan is radiant w/ stunning custom windows, oak floors and soaring 14 ft ceilings. The dream kitchen with huge island, high end appliances will be the heart of your home. Spacious master is a private oasis w/ dressing room/office, nursery, or gym. Gated parking wired for charging station.

5901 LAUREL STREET • $1,295,000

3624 N RAMPART STREET • $575,000

Lovely, bright 3BR/2BA home on corner lot w/large fenced yard in an area of many renovated & updated homes. Two bedrooms down & one up, some 12 ceilings. Primary bath recently updated. Kitchen-dining area has lots of cabinet space and an old original fireplace remains in the kitchen. Lovely old wooden floors and lots of windows, relatively new kitchen appliances & possible off-street parking. This home is surrounded by charming local amenities in and

around St. Claude Avenue. Definitely a must see!

Elizabeth ReissLatter and Blum Realtors 2727 Prytania Street (The Rink)New Orleans, LA 70130

O: 504-891-6400 | C: [email protected]

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JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL’S NEW BUILDING FOUR SEASONS’ …