Attendees gather at the BIC

Gonzalez welcomes Kiely as the new chair

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With tourism rebounding after the COVID-19 pandemic and a healthy budget and membership base, 1Berkshire is looking into the future with optimism.

On Thursday, over 100 people attended 1Berkshire's annual meeting at the Berkshire Innovation Center.  This was the first in-person event the organization has held in three years.

"We're actually excited this month to have learned that in 2021, the visitor economy has fully recovered to 2019 and pre-pandemic numbers in terms of the dollars that are being spent here.  We're not looking at that just with rose-colored glasses; it's a metric that we should be encouraged by," President and CEO Jonathan Butler said.

"We are still operating with limitations in that sector and other sectors with regards to workforce, with regards to housing challenges, and really our ability to meet the demand of visitors that want to spend money in the region and neighbors that want to spend money in the region, but this is a sign that demand is there, is growing, it's diversifying, and we have a lot to be optimistic about when we released the numbers from the current year."

Berkshire County tourism garnered $900 million dollars in sales in 2021, surpassing the 2019 number of $895 million.  Butler highlighted this as the "big announcement" of the day, as the number had dipped to $598 million during the peak of the pandemic in 2020 while the performing arts and hospitality sectors greatly suffered.

1Berkshire had its most successful income year as an organization in FY22, taking in over $2 million.  This number was down about 55 percent in 2020.

"As a nonprofit organization, we have over 800 members. FY22 was a really good year for us, and it was a really good year in the context of where we came from," Butler explained.

"This organization in fiscal years 17, 18, and 19 had a lot of momentum. We were growing incrementally every year, adding new programs, services, capacity, able to do more work in the region, and then the pandemic came."

Over $1 million of the total income was generated by its programs, which includes the Berkshire Leadership Program that was established in 1997.  

Lori Gazzillo Kiely, who is the Regional President of Berkshire Bank and was elected as Board Chair of 1Berkshire during the meeting, was in the first class of the Berkshire Leadership Program.  

She said that it is amazing to see how the program and the organization have developed over the years, creating a collaborative entity that makes Berkshire County a place of choice to live, work, visit,  start a business, and start a family.

"What I love about this county and 1Berkshire is that we are faced with challenges we work together to find solutions," Kiely explained. "The pandemic is a great example."

She was happy to see how many people and organizations stepped up to help.

"We became a role model for other communities as to how we work together quickly and find solutions to big problems," Kiely said, highlighting the vaccination centers that were immediately established in three regions of the county.

During the height of the pandemic, Kiely made it a point to attend Zoom meetings organized by 1Berkshire to address pressing issues during the height of the pandemic.  

She also recognized the organization's collaborative effort to address the countywide housing crisis in releasing "A Housing Vision for the Berkshires" with the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and its promotion of the Berkshires.

Outgoing Chair Danielle Gonzalez, who is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Williams College, said that launching the organization's housing report is a key accomplishment and an intersectional initiative that helped raise awareness about the statewide challenge and resources that may be lagging.

Housing was identified as a major theme in the development of the 2019 Berkshire Blueprint 2.0. and in 2020, BRPC and 1Berkshire created a working group of housing practitioners to identify critical housing issues and recommendations to address them.

The document recommends four immediate actions: to identify the lead entity and secure resources to support them; to increase the involvement of traditionally underrepresented, underserved, and disenfranchised people and organizations; to build a quantitative and qualitative set of housing data that captures the impact of COVID; to research existing regional housing models that have worked well in other regions.

"I think it shows the region's collaborative efforts to really address our own needs, establish priorities, build those partnerships, and be much more prepared to respond quickly when resources do become available," Gonzalez said.

The organization also helped reboot the Berkshire Benchmarks report that highlight's the region's successes and challenges and launched Berkshire Funding Focus, which delivers capacity-building support to Berkshire County stakeholders seeking government funds to aid with pandemic-related recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Director of Economic Development Ben Lamb reported that the organization did over 200 consultations with local businesses with 35 percent of the businesses self-identifying as underrepresented populations in the community.

"It's really critical to us to make sure that we are supporting everybody and try to be as inclusive and use our resources as best we can to support the broader business community," he explained.

Vice President of the Surface Ship Program at General Dynamics Stan Kordana said that the company continues to be involved in 1Berkshire for decades because they are serious about promoting economic development in the county.

Economic multipliers indicate that every GD employee equates to 3.8 jobs across Berkshire County.

"The great work that you all do helps us bring in and hire and keep the greatest talent across the country," Kordana said.  "And provide these great capabilities to our nation."

Many pointed out that it was symbolic to host the event at the Berkshire Innovation Center, as it is a physical representation of success after opening right before the pandemic began.

The meeting was followed by a reception with food from KJ Nosh, a cash bar from Kelly's Package Store and Catering, free coffee from Currency Coffee, and complimentary water from All Ways Moving.

The event was sponsored by General Dynamics Missions Systems, the Berkshire Innovation Center, and Berkshire Community College.

 

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