WESTFIELD – Todd Cieplinski, owner of MoFroYo on East Main Street, has been open for just over two years, having moved into the one of the two shopping plazas that sit on Route 20 heading east toward West Springfield.
His business has not seen the growth that he had hoped for and says small business owners in the city that he has spoken to are rapidly coming to the same conclusion – Westfield doesn’t support local businesses.
“That’s what I’ve been wrestling with. There’s some pretty high-income, affluent neighborhoods (in Westfield),” he said. “Our philosophy is community-focused and family-friendly, so we’ve tried to do everything we can to make this as appealing as possible to that type of demographic. But we haven’t seen the traffic in here over the past year.”
Cieplinski, a Springfield native and Westfield resident who had been in consulting, manufacturing and software prior to his foray into frozen yogurt, said that Westfield seems on paper to be the perfect place for a business like his to thrive, but that his odds of weathering the upcoming winter months are “50-50 at best.”
“It is scary going into our third winter. We opened at the end of August, not April or May, so we have to weather our third winter without a third summer,” he said, adding that towns across the Connecticut River are experiencing frozen yogurt booms. “East Longmeadow has three, Enfield has two. We (Westfield) have one and we don’t see the foot traffic.”
With 21 flavors and over 100 toppings and with larger square footage, Cieplinski said that his business has received patrons from tony Springfield suburbs who say it is the best frozen yogurt establishment they’ve been in.
“But where’s the people in Westfield?” he asked. “That’s the million dollar question and I don’t know if there’s any one silver bullet out there. I think it’s a mindset.”
“There’s a huge focus on downtown Westfield, now that the infrastructure is done, on supporting local businesses,” he said. “But yet you see everyone from Westfield at the shops in West Springfield, at the Holyoke Mall, at the restaurants in Northampton. There are even fundraisers for political candidates – for this city – held at The Federal in Agawam.”
The focus on downtown seems to be sputtering as well, as several businesses have closed up shop in recent months.
Clemenza’s Cafe and Brick Oven Pizzaria on Elm Street has been open for just over a year, but owner Anthony Martone says that he now has a “different philosophy” about the city and the business.
“The first year, I let the customers decide what we were going to go to. In the beginning, we wanted to be more of a cafe and it would work, but we don’t have the parking for it,” he said. “If I was going to serve an apple, I’m now serving the orange. Knock on wood, our numbers have held, which is pretty rare for this downtown.”
Martone added that abandoning his vision for a cafe-type establishment was a matter of survival.
“People in the morning don’t want to park in the back when it is 20 degrees, jump over snowbanks, order their coffee… it’s a 20-minute process,” he said. “We’re surrounded by Dunkin Donuts who dictated us not to be a cafe.”
The restaurant is back to full service after being limited to just lunch during the duration of the Big E, – Clemenza’s had a stand at the fair’s Italian pavilion – but despite that exposure, Martone added that only 60 percent of his customers are from Westfield.
Birds of a feather usually flock together and Martone said he hears of his fellow small business owners’ struggles when they stop by his restaurant for lunch.
“I will tend to agree with that somewhat,” he said of Westfield’s apparent apathy in supporting local businesses. “A lot of people say there is nowhere to park. If we were in the shops (on East Main Street), I’ll bet we’d have double the business. I guarantee it.”
Martone said that he spoke recently with Maureen Beliveau, former director of the defunct Westfield Business Improvement District, who recently took a job with the Easthampton Chamber of Commerce.
“When that BID left, it was like energy left. Even if you got 40 customers a week because of it, 40 customers, 160 a month, 1,300 a year. That’s huge,” he said. “It was like a balloon deflated when the BID left. There is a very muted feeling (downtown).”
“I see some of these restaurants down here – they’re closed on Sundays. You come down here on Sunday night, it’s a ghost town. It’s very seedy down here at night,” Martone added. “But if you go by Applebee’s, they’re mobbed.”
“Demographics come into play a lot,” said Martone. “Money doesn’t make you a good or bad person, but someone who lives off social security or gets SSI, they’re not buying anything down here. We have a lot of homeless people who are starting to ask customers for money.”
Martone also touched on a sentiment shared by Cieplinski, saying that Westfield’s most affluent residents don’t visit the city’s downtown.
“Some of them drive to Northampton rather than come here because what are you going to do here?” he asked. “Westfield has that small business Saturday. It’s a great idea, but people’s bags were empty when they came to eat lunch. What are you going to buy down here?”
Asked what advice he’d give aspiring Westfield small business owners, Cieplinski responded solemnly.
“I hate to say it, but seriously consider and review your plan,” Cieplinski said, citing numerous conversations he’d had with consultants prior to and since opening his business. “Westfield is very risky to open a small business,” he said. “Other restaurant owners in Westfield forwarned me and I didn’t heed the warnings.”
“We’d need about six, seven or eight restaurants to make this a dining city,” said Martone, adding that he doesn’t think that is possible. “The amount of money it would take to renovate these storefronts… people have to dump at least $100,000 to open up a restaurant down here.”
