Category Archives: Business News

New York state announced that 22 counties, including Saratoga and Washington counties, and three municipalities across upstate New York are receiving $30.2 million in license fees paid by newly licensed destination resort casinos.

Saratoga County will receive $1,240,780, while Washington County will receive $357,170, officials said.

“This funding will help counties and local governments provide essential services to their residents as well as work to reduce their tax burden,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “These destination resorts will help drive more tourism and economic development dollars upstate and, with these payments, local governments are already seeing the benefits of these projects.”

The county payouts are one portion of the $151 million in commercial casino license fees that are being distributed across upstate using the same formula for casino gaming revenue laid out in the Upstate New York Gaming and Economic Development Act of 2013.

The Malta Business & Professional Association continues to plan its eighth annual Taste of Malta to be held on Tuesday, July 19.

It will run 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Hudson Valley Community College’s TEC-SMART, 345 Hermes Road, Malta.

While the final restaurant list isn’t complete, attendees can expect to sample items from Campagna Restaurant, Jimmy’s Pizza & Pasta, Dock Brown’s Lakeside Tavern, Dunning Street Station, Lake Ridge, Panza’s Restaurant, Leah’s Cakery and more. As in the past, there will once again be a cash bar offering wine, beer and soda to attendees.

Other activities include the “dinner for a year raffle” which includes gift certificates from 12 local eateries being awarded to one lucky winner.

The gift basket raffle table will return. Walt Adams will emcee this year’s event.

PrimeLink Inc., a regional telecommunications company with offices in Champlain, Plattsburgh, and Queensbury, is continuing to grow its fiber optic network infrastructure in Saratoga Springs and expand the number of businesses it serves.

Company officials said all services are brought to the end user with a 100 percent fiber optic network. The availability of fiber optic technology will provide Saratoga with the most advanced transport medium available in digital communications and provide a more competitive environment for business customers seeking affordable high-quality communication services.

According to the company, the biggest benefit of fiber is that it can offer much faster speeds over longer distances than traditional copper-based technologies like DSL and cable. Even if typical broadband speeds become 1,000 times faster in the next 20 years, a single existing fiber-optic connection will still be able to support it.

Because fiber optics uses light instead of electricity to transmit data, the frequencies that are used are much higher and the data capacity is much greater, officials said. The fiber optic cable itself is made from glass which is not susceptible to electromagnetic interference like metal cables. This allows data to flow over great distances without degrading.

Interference and energy loss is the limiting factor for all types of communication transmissions and fiber optics handles these factors much better than other modes of transmission. In the future, more and more of our world will be connected via fiber optics as we outgrow the old copper based infrastructures.

By Maureen Werther

G.A. Bove Fuels, an 80-year-old company that distributes propane, heating oil, and diesel fuel across the upstate region, is building a 40-unit apartment complex in Stillwater, on nine acres of land that has been owned by the Bove family for years.

The apartment complex is called Gennaro Apartments, named after John Bove Jr.’s grandfather, Gennaro Bove, founder of Bove Fuels.

Bove Jr. said they broke ground two months ago and are hoping to have the first two buildings completed and ready for occupancy by the end of 2016. When the project is complete, there will be five buildings, with eight condo-style units per building.

Williams & Williams Designers Inc. in Glens Falls are the architects of the Gennaro apartment project and the general contractor is 10 Cardinal Lane LLC of Gansevoort. The budget for the project is $5 million and it is expected to be completed in the next two to three years.

The property is located off Coldsprings Road and west of the DeCrescente building in Mechanicville. It is approximately a 12-minute ride to GlobalFoundries, a factor that Bove thinks will be attractive to people working at GlobalFoundries and nearby businesses.

The Concerned Citizens for Saratoga Racing has rejected the state’s plan for re-privatization of the New York Racing Association.

NYRA is the group that operates Saratoga Race Course, Belmont Park and Aqueduct, the three main thoroughbred horse racing tracks in the state.

According to the local group, the plan now being circulated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that seeks to retain public control of NYRA and unilaterally transfer funds legally designated for the state’s thoroughbred racing industry into the state’s general fund.

Four years ago, Cuomo “promised to return NYRA to a nonprofit corporation in three years,” Concerned Citizens said in a statement. “He did not keep that promise last year. This year, his plan is another means by which he is seeking to exert his control over NYRA and the future of our state’s thoroughbred racing industry.”

The group, which recently elected Maureen Lewi as its chairwoman, said the governor’s proposal will:

• Allow the governor to appoint one-third of the members to the new NYRA board of directors or five of the 15 members.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) has partnered with the Saratoga Springs Downtown Business Association in celebration of SPAC’s 2016 50th anniversary season, offering SPAC patrons a 10 percent discount at participating DBA member businesses.

Participating DBA businesses show a SPAC 50 logo in their window.

In addition, SPAC and the DBA co-present a chance to win SPAC amphitheater tickets to all 2016 performances of the Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival, New York City Ballet, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The sweepstakes package is valued at more than $2,000.

Officials said anyone can enter to win by completing an entry form at participating DBA member businesses before June 19. The winning entry will be drawn on June 21. Participants must be 18 or older to enter.

“We are delighted to announce our exciting 2016 50th Anniversary partnership with the Saratoga Springs Downtown Business Association,” said Marcia J. White, president and executive director of SPAC. “For five decades, community collaborations such as our continued partnership with Saratoga’s DBA member businesses have facilitated SPAC’s growth into an internationally renowned summer home for world-class music and dance. As we celebrate SPAC’s 50th Anniversary, we celebrate this community that has enhanced, enriched, and expanded SPAC for fifty years.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced in May that he is advancing legislation to close what he called “the LLC loophole” in New York state.

The governor has introduced eight bills – one for all political offices and one for each of the state’s elected offices, requiring that limited liability corporations be treated as traditional corporations, capping contributions at $5,000. The bills would prevent LLCs from circumventing disclosure requirements and ensure that businesses do not wield an outsized influence in politics and elections across the state, Cuomo said.

“The people of New York are demanding change and it’s time we took action to restore the public trust by closing the LLC loophole and bringing fairness to our campaign finance system,” Cuomo said. “For years, I have proposed closing the LLC loophole–one of the most egregious flaws in our campaign finance system–and every year the bill has stalled. This year, I am introducing eight different bills to close the LLC loophole – one for each elected office in the state. Pass all of them, or as many as you’d like, but at a minimum, pass the one impacting anyone running for the office of the governor.”

He said the LLC loophole is widely open to abuse – with companies regularly taking advantage of the gap in state law to set up numerous LLCs to donate millions of dollars to political campaigns, candidates for public office and elected officials in New York.

These eight bills are designed to close the LLC loophole, all of which apply to candidates for governor:

1. Everyone (all candidates for state political office).