Empire State Development Corp.’s board of directors has approved up to about $200 million in previously announced funding for three Buffalo Billion projects.

The board approved a grant of up to $107 million for the South Buffalo manufacturing hub commonly known as RiverBend that will house green energy businesses Silevo and Soraa. The funds will cover reimbursement for real estate acquisition, site and infrastructure development, and construction costs. The $107 million is part of a larger $225 million commitment by the state.

The board also approved $55 million to support the Buffalo Information Technologies Innovation and Commercialization Hub, a software development center that will be anchored by IBM and is expected to create 500 jobs. The funds will be used to purchase and build out part of KeyCenter and install software and equipment.

The third project approved for funding was the EWI/Advanced Manufacturing Institute in Buffalo, which will help area manufacturers commercialize technologies and improve their production efficiency. The board approved two grants totaling $35.3 million for the cost of furniture, fixtures, machinery and equipment, and for operating costs including personnel.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 17,000 for the first time as data showed employers added more workers than projected in June and the European Central Bank disclosed details of its stimulus plans.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and MetLife Inc. advanced at least 1.5 percent, pacing gains among banks and insurance companies. Paccar Inc. added 5.4 percent amid speculation that the maker of Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks may receive takeover interest from Volkswagen AG. PetSmart Inc. jumped 13 percent after Jana Partners LLC disclosed a new activist stake. Lululemon Athletica Inc. gained 2.9 percent after a report that the yoga-wear company has explored a buyout by a private-equity firm.

The Dow gained 92.02 points, or 0.5 percent, to 17,068.26 as equities markets closed at 1 p.m. Thursday before the Independence Day holiday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.6 percent to a record 1,985.44. About 3.5 billion shares changed hands on exchanges. The yield on 10-year Treasuries climbed two basis points to 2.65 percent.

It took the Dow 227 days to cross the 17,000 mark after surpassing 16,000 for the first time on Nov. 18. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, Walt Disney Co., the biggest entertainment company, and computer-chip maker Intel Corp., led the advance, rising more than 20 percent.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen said last month that accommodative monetary policy, rising property and equity prices and the improving global economy should lead to above-trend growth. The Fed has kept its benchmark rate near zero since December 2008.

ECB President Mario Draghi reiterated Thursday that he’ll keep interest rates low as officials try to revive the region’s economy with a new round of emergency measures.

Draghi gave some details on the new targeted-loan program that includes lending to banks under the condition they lend the money on to households and companies. He estimated that banks could take up as much as 1 trillion euros ($1.36 trillion) in the two initial tenders and a series of quarterly auctions.

“I’m confident that banks will quickly understand that even though it’s complicated, it’s also quite attractive,” he said.

“All eyes should be focused not on the jobs number, but on what Mario Draghi says,” Chad Morganlander, a money manager at St. Louis-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., which oversees about $160 billion, said in a phone interview.

Life insurers like Lincoln National Corp. and MetLife benefit from climbing bond yields, which allow them to invest clients’ premiums and maturing securities at higher interest rates. MetLife added 2 percent to $57.22 and Lincoln National increased 2.1 percent to $53.28. Goldman Sachs added 1.5 percent to $169.46 for the biggest advance in the Dow.

Paccar rose 5.4 percent to $67.25. Volkswagen spokeswoman Christine Ritz said by telephone that the largest European carmaker “clearly denies” an interest in bidding for the Bellevue, Washington-based company. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Max Warburton said in a note that Wolfgang Bernhard, chief of the truck unit at Daimler AG, said at an event Wednesday with analysts that Volkswagen may bid for Paccar.

MEXICO CITY – Germany’s BMW announced Thursday it will spend $1 billion to build a new luxury car factory in northern Mexico that will start production in 2019 as part of an effort to expand the company’s presence in the United States.

BMW board member Harald Kruger said the plant in the northern state of San Luis Potosi will have the capacity to make 150,000 cars a year while employing 1,500 people.

He made the announcement in Mexico City, accompanied by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Kruger said BMW’s only other North American factory, in Spartanburg, S.C., will receive $1 billion in investment to increase its production capacity to 450,000 cars by the end of 2016.

“This decision underscores our commitment to the NAFTA region,” Kruger said.

BMW, which has 28 factories in 13 countries, is also building a plant in Santa Catarina, Brazil, which will start production later this year.

The announcement came a week after Daimler and Renault-Nissan said they would spend $1.6 billion on a factory in Mexico to make premium compact cars for the Infiniti and Mercedes brands.

Since 2011, the BMW and Mercedes brands have been battling each other to be the leading seller of luxury autos in the U.S.

WNY Immediate Care and BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York have reached an agreement that allows the system of five urgent care centers to remain a participating provider within the insurance company’s network. The agreement, effective Tuesday, resolves a months-long contract dispute between the organizations.

The insurer in November had notified state regulators that it planned to drop Immediate Care from its network as of Jan. 1 after Immediate Care rejected BlueCross BlueShield’s established community rates for urgent-care providers in the area. Immediate Care had said it wasn’t seeking a rate hike but it refused to accept the lower rates offered by BlueCross BlueShield, and in December the urgent-care provider won a State Supreme Court ruling that extended its contract with BlueCross BlueShield through Monday.

BlueCross BlueShield said in a statement today that Immediate Care has agreed to the insurer’s established community rates. “As the region’s leading health plan, we continue to advocate for lower costs and highest quality for our members,” said Julie R. Snyder, a spokeswoman for BlueCross BlueShield, which has 600,000 members in upstate New York.

Immediate Care has five centers in Erie County: two in Amherst and one each in North Buffalo, Cheektowaga and Orchard Park. It is operated by the Amherst-based Exigence Group, which was purchased last year by TeamHealth Holdings Inc., a physician-staffing company in Knoxville, Tenn. TeamHealth did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

email: swatson@buffnews.com

WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit fell in May as U.S. exports hit an all-time high, helped by a jump in exports of petroleum products. Imports dipped slightly.

The trade deficit narrowed 5.6 percent in May to $44.4 billion after hitting a two-year high of $47 billion in April, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Exports of goods and services rose 1 percent to a record $195.5 billion in May while imports fell a slight 0.3 percent to $239.8 billion.

A lower trade deficit boosts overall economic growth when it shows U.S. companies are earning more in their overseas sales. Economists are looking for a smaller trade deficit in the April-June quarter to help propel growth in output after the economy shrank in the first quarter at a 2.9 percent rate.

Many analysts expect growth will rebound to a healthy rate between 3 percent and 3.5 percent, helped in part by stronger exports.

In 2013, the trade deficit declined 11.3 percent to $476.4 billion. That reflected in part a boom in U.S. energy production that cut into America’s dependence on foreign oil while boosting U.S. petroleum exports to a record high.

The larger trade gap in the first three months of this year, compared to the fourth quarter, shaved 1.5 percentage points from growth. That was a big factor in helping to push the economy into reverse. In addition to a higher trade deficit, the economy was held back by severe winter which dampened consumer spending.

In May, the U.S. trade deficit with China rose 5.4 percent to $28.8 billion. Through the first five months of this year, America’s deficit with China is running 3.2 percent ahead of last year’s record pace.

Officials from both countries will meet in Beijing next week for annual high-level talks covering economic and foreign policy issues. Previewing the discussions on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the Obama administration would push China to allow its currency to rise against the dollar. The Chinese yuan has declined by about 2.4 percent against the dollar so far this year.

American manufacturers contend the Chinese currency is undervalued by as much as 40 percent and the Chinese government is manipulating the value to gain trade advantages. A weaker yuan makes Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and U.S. products more expensive in China.

Lew said that computer security would be another issue discussed. In May, the Justice Department charged five Chinese military officers with hacking into U.S. companies’ computer systems to steal trade secrets.

MOUNT KISCO – Operators at KES Dispatch keep track of the company’s taxis on a yellow legal pad. They communicate with cars using a two-way radio. Drivers navigate their journeys largely by memory.

In the age of Uber and Lyft, the company is desperate to modernize.

“I gotta change something,” said Miguel Duarte, who has run his Mount Kisco, N.Y., company for 13 years. “I gotta stay ahead of the competition.”

Help is on the way. Dashride, a new startup, wants to give KES Dispatch a fighting chance. It is helping Duarte modernize his company’s clunky dispatch system, starting with a mobile app that will soon let customers book, track, pay for and rate rides.

Dashride is just one of several Web-based startups with a mission of empowering small, local businesses – often in struggling, traditional industries – by equipping them with tools and strategies that could help them keep up with changing times.

For example, Cups, a coffee subscription app that came to New York in April, helps independent coffee shops compete with giant chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. It is working with 50 small shops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. ShopKeep, a New York company, helps small businesses ring up sales, accept credit cards, email receipts or print remotely with an iPad-based checkout system.

Shakr, a startup based in Seoul and San Francisco, helps small businesses create their own video advertising through video templates created by graphic designers who have worked on ad campaigns for major brands, like Nike and Samsung. And Edelweiss, a Seattle-based newcomer, last year introduced a networking site for independent booksellers and publishers to connect online – and to regroup against Amazon, seen increasingly as an industry bully.

With an explicit focus on the underdogs, these startups reverse the perception that Web companies seek to put mom-and-pop operations out of business. Instead, they say they want to help small, local businesses take on corporate giants and juggernaut revolutionaries like Uber.

In return, the startups are able to tap into strong, distinctive businesses with longstanding ties to local communities, qualities that cannot easily be recreated online. KES Dispatch is a fixture in this leafy town in Westchester County, and Duarte knows the roads by heart and many of its residents by name.

And even decidedly old-school sectors of the economy, like the livery industry, remain a huge market. There are more than 200,000 taxi and limousine services in the United States, according to the industry research firm IBISWorld, with revenues of $11 billion.

“When you have disrupters like Uber and Lyft, it creates a need for the other 99 percent of the industry to update their tools, and for a company to sell them those tools,” said Jonathan Axelrod, managing director of the New York-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, which invested $40,000 in Dashride this year. Dashride is working on raising other financing.

“We’re disrupting the disrupters,” said Dashride’s founder and chief executive, Nadav Ullman, 24, who built the company out of a service he started in college to help students get home safely from bars. “There’s a feeling that the taxi-limo industry has come to a now-or-never moment, and there’s a hunger for change.”

Retail stores have perhaps been the best served by technology startups. OpenTable operates a reservation system for diners and restaurants; Yub helps brick-and-mortar merchants lure customers from the web with promotional offers; Shopkick alerts smartphone users to deals at nearby stores.

Gilad Rotem, an avid coffee drinker, long found the indie coffee scene in his native Tel Aviv, Israel, a refreshing antidote to the cookie-cutter chains that seemed to be springing up across the city. So in 2012, he founded Cups.

Customers with a monthly Cups subscription get unlimited coffee from a network of indie coffee shops, marked on an interactive map. Pricing for all-you-can-drink plans range from $45 to $85, depending on the types of coffee subscribers can order. Cups reimburses the shops for that coffee, after keeping a cut of the sales, while cafe owners get exposure and traffic.

In Manhattan and Brooklyn, Cups has signed neighborhood stalwarts like the Bean and Pushcart Coffee. Rotem likes to call his collective New York City’s third-biggest coffee chain, behind Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. For customers, the allure of satisfying their coffee fix while helping to empower the independent coffee shop culture is Cups’ biggest draw, he said.

“We want to bring local coffee shops the economies of scale of big chains, but also have them keep their atmosphere and vibe,” Rotem said.

Edelweiss, in Seattle, was originally an online digital catalog of print books. It also runs an analytics service to allow booksellers to compare their sales anonymously with their peers, giving even small booksellers access to a vast amount of sales and marketing data.

Its social network, Edelweiss Community, allows independent bookshops to share reviews of over 500,000 titles in its database — and to exchange trade tips and offer support as print books come increasingly under siege from e-books and Web giants like Amazon. The community got its start after Amazon announced last year that it was acquiring the popular social reading platform Goodreads, dismaying many independent booksellers, said John Rubin, Edelweiss’ chief executive.

Rubin, a former management consultant, said he was initially skeptical of trying to work with feisty indie merchants. “I was warned it would be like herding cats,” he said.

“But I just want to give them every edge, everything they can do to narrow the gap between Amazon and the bookstore,” he said. “It’s all about helping those one or two people in the tiny back office. I want to help those guys.”

Hires/Promotions/Honors

Phillips Lytle attorney Joanna J. Chen was named to Lawyers of Color’s second annual Hot List, which recognizes early- to mid-career minority attorneys working as in-house counsel, government attorneys, and law firm associates and partners. Honorees will be profiled in Lawyers of Color’s Hot List 2014 Issue. The Eastern Region honorees will also be recognized at a reception hosted by Sullivan & Cromwell.

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Ameriprise private wealth adviser Mark C. Mazzaro was recently named to the 2014 Chairman’s Advisory Council. He joins other advisers to discuss current issues and business opportunities with Ameriprise Financial chairman and chief executive officer James Cracchiolo and other financial leaders.

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The Financial Management Association, a statewide, nonprofit association for finance professionals in the habilitation and rehabilitation fields, recently named Gwen Loomis as the recipient of its 2014 Member of Distinction Award. Loomis serves as controller for People Inc., a Western New York human services agency. She has been with the agency for nearly 30 years.

Company Connections

Goldberg Segalla was named Law Firm of the Year by Reactions, a publication serving the global insurance and re-insurance industry.

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Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel in Niagara Falls and Seneca Allegany Casino & Hotel in Salamanca received the Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor for the third consecutive year. The Certificate of Excellence honors hospitality excellence worldwide, and only the top-performing 10 percent of businesses listed on TripAdvisor receive the accolade.

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Zoup! Fresh Soup Company, a local franchise owned by Michael Wiktor, recently celebrated the grand opening of its first location in Erie County, in the Crossroads Centre at 3217 Southwestern Blvd. in Orchard Park.

Patents

Title: One-piece manufacturing process

No.: 8,752,609

Inventors: Kuzdzal, Mark J. (Allegany); Pickrell, Kevin (Columbus, Ohio)

Assignee: Dresser-Rand (Olean)

Date issued: June 17, 2014

DETROIT – Brisk sales of pickups and SUVs are causing the Detroit Three to eliminate or shorten their traditional two-week summer shutdown at many U.S. plants.

This year, Chrysler workers will be on the job the next two weeks at four assembly plants, while Ford will idle at least four plants for only one week. General Motors will keep about one-third of its plants running.

Historically, automakers halt production for the first two weeks in July to prepare for model year changeovers.

GM, Ford and Chrysler closed more than two dozen plants during the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009. Now, with cars and trucks rising to levels not seen since 2007, there is little slack in their manufacturing networks.

“Today, plant downtime scheduling is driven by specific vehicle life cycles and market demand,” said GM spokesman Bill Grotz. “This approach gives us more flexibility and enables quicker response to market conditions.”

At GM, summer shutdowns vary by timing of new or refreshed models. Several of the plants Ford and Chrysler will keep open make pickups or SUVs.

At GM’s engine plant in the Town of Tonawanda, the Generation V engine production line will continue operating through the two-week shutdown, said Mary Ann Brown, a GM spokeswoman. The plant’s two-week shutdown period began this week. The Generation V engines are built for products including the Chevrolet Corvette, Silverado and Sierra.

Chrysler’s U.S. sales have increased 12 percent over the first half of this year, more than the overall industry’s 4 percent increase, putting pressure on the company to meet demand.

“I think our plants are doing a good job of keeping up,” said Reid Bigland, Chrysler’s U.S. sales chief. “But they are able to keep up by doing things like shortening summer shutdowns, working some overtime.”

In addition to four assembly plants, Chrysler will operate all its engine and transmission plants throughout the next two weeks, except for Indiana Transmission Plant II in Kokomo, Ind.

The assembly plants that will operate without interruption are Jefferson North Assembly in Detroit; Sterling Heights, Mich.; and Saltillo and Toluca, Mexico.

Many of Ford’s plants will shut down for maintenance this week and next, said spokeswoman Kristina Adamski.

But demand for trucks, specifically the F-Series pickups and Ford Explorer and Escape utility vehicles, requires Ford to keep four assembly plants and seven powertrain and stamping plants running for one week. Ford’s stamping plant in Hamburg is not among those operating during the shutdown period.

Ford’s Dearborn, Mich., truck plant will shut down from Aug. 25 to Sept. 21 to retool for the 2015 F-150, which features an aluminum body.

News Business reporter Matt Glynn contributed to this report.

At least three times during the last year, Comcast Corp. was asked to be the white knight.

But Brian Roberts said no.

The chairman and chief executive of cable giant Comcast initially rebuffed Time Warner Cable Inc.’s requests to combine the nation’s two largest cable companies. Comcast was still digesting its acquisition of NBCUniversal, and the company had been telling Wall Street that it didn’t need to buy any more cable systems to be successful.

But the pleas accelerated as Time Warner Cable tried to fend off a hostile takeover and turned to Roberts to be its white knight. The beleaguered cable operator had lost 300,000 subscribers during last summer’s blackout of CBS stations during an ill-fated battle over programming fees.

Blood was in the water. And Roberts’ lieutenants urged him to go for it.

“I just looked in the mirror and said: ‘If you are going to be an innovator, and if your products are not available in L.A. and New York, then will you truly be a great company?’ “ Roberts said during an interview at Comcast’s gleaming headquarters, the tallest tower in Philadelphia.

Building “a great company” has been a driving motivation of the Roberts family for more than 50 years.

Roberts’ father made a living in the 1950s selling men’s cologne, belts and suspenders. Then Ralph Roberts took a chance on what he saw as the next big thing. In 1963, he plunked down $250,000 to buy a Tupelo, Miss., community TV antenna system with 1,200 customers willing to pay for clear television signals.

The family has spent the past two decades on an aggressive buying spree, rolling up one company after another to build Comcast into one of the world’s most powerful corporations. Comcast now is the nation’s largest cable company, with more than 22 million subscribers and $64 billion a year in revenue.

Brian Roberts is looking to fortify his company for an increasingly competitive era. He believes that the $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable will help do that, particularly as major technology companies, including Google, Apple and Amazon.com, try to crowd into America’s living rooms to control the TV-watching experience.

He still needs the blessing of federal regulators, who are expected to decide early next year. If they approve, Comcast would be a dominant provider of cable TV and Internet service – an increasingly vital connection for tens of millions of families – along the nation’s East and West coasts. It would gain 7 million subscribers and claim two major pieces on the chessboard, Los Angeles and New York, an audacious move even for a company known for its daring bets.

Comcast would command the major population centers: New York, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, Comcast would become the sole cable TV operator, with reach into nearly 1.8 million homes.

The deal would complete Comcast’s transformation into a national company from a regional cable operator, all of it done without having to dig trenches and extend its fiber lines through every state.

“Something closer to world domination” was how veteran cable analyst Craig Moffett described Comcast’s ambitions.

Roberts, who turned 55 recently, does not come across as a power-hungry CEO. Instead, he is bookish and polite, with a dry sense of humor.

He possesses a quiet confidence that business associates say comes from his strong relationship with his father — and the corporate structure of Comcast. Roberts controls 33 percent of the company’s voting shares, which means that he doesn’t have to worry about being bounced out of the CEO office. He can take the long view.

Roberts has spent his entire career at Comcast. In high school, he trained as a cable installer in western Pennsylvania, climbing poles and learning to pull wires into homes. He joined the company full-time after graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts became the company’s president at age 30. He took over as CEO in 2002, just as Comcast was absorbing another huge acquisition, AT&T Broadband. That $47.5 billion purchase turned Comcast into the nation’s largest cable operator.

His 94-year-old father, Ralph, still makes it into the office.

Brian Roberts’ initial reluctance to bid for Time Warner Cable was based, in part, on worries that it would be inviting trouble.

He knew another big grab by Comcast would give ammunition to business rivals, consumer groups and even federal regulators who might consider stricter rules for the cable industry.

And the criticism came swiftly. During a congressional hearing this spring, a leading consumer advocate described Comcast as “a nationwide octopus with massive tentacles” capable of squeezing customers.

Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, agreed with that characterization.

“It will be like having Godzilla and Shamu merge – the company will be so enormous,” she said.

Comcast has been relentlessly expanding at a time when other media companies have been slimming down.

Its biggest prize to date has been its acquisition of NBCUniversal, one of the nation’s premier entertainment companies. It includes the NBC broadcast network; cable TV channels USA Network, Bravo, E!, CNBC, MSNBC and Golf Channel; Spanish-language Telemundo; and Fandango, an Internet movie ticketing service. NBCUniversal has a huge presence in Los Angeles, owning movie studio Universal Pictures, Universal Studios theme park and KNBC-TV Channel 4.

“If you look at the majority of deals that we’ve done over the years, we have always out-hustled everyone else,” said Steve Burke, who joined Comcast 16 years ago and now is chief executive of NBCUniversal. “Brian was the guy who stepped up to make it happen. He’s playing a really long game.”

Siemens AG Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser said he’s prepared to make acquisitions to exploit a boom in the U.S. natural-gas industry that will eclipse demand in Europe, where the economy is still struggling to rebound.

As more facilities spring up across the U.S. to extract, transport and store shale oil and gas won from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Siemens must keep up to expand its own offering, Kaeser said in an interview in Frankfurt., Germany. Supplying more gas and oil equipment would give the company a lock on lucrative, long-term service contracts, he said.

“Our firepower is huge, obviously, if you look at the liquidity, the cash we generate and the rating we’ve got,” said the CEO, a Siemens veteran who was promoted from finance chief in August last year. “There are great businesses within Siemens which are readily available now to integrate acquisitions. There are others which need to get their house in order first and then we can consider it.”

Siemens displayed its drive to participate in the natural-gas frenzy when the company sought to outbid General Electric Co. last month for energy assets of Alstom SA before the U.S. rival prevailed with a bid favored by the French government and Alstom’s board. Kaeser predicted that the U.S. will buy more gas-powered turbines in a single year than Europe in a decade, and that consolidation in the industry will benefit all players.

To beef up its energy business, Siemens in May agreed to buy most of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s energy assets for $1.3 billion. Before that deal, Siemens had been evaluating a bid for Dresser-Rand Group Inc., which also makes turbines and compressors used in gas extraction, people familiar with the discussions said previously.

Analysts have cited other oil and gas service specialists Chart Industries Inc., Dril-Quip Inc., Weatherford International Ltd. and Tesco Corp. as attractive targets for large industrial companies such as Munich-based Siemens. While Kaeser declined to comment on potential targets, process automation offerings for the gas and oil industry are “a desired area to acquire,” he said, citing technology around liquefied natural gas.

Kaeser became CEO after predecessor Peter Loescher slashed a profit target five times in his six-year tenure. The arrival of Kaeser and the bet that he can tackle the sprawling $115.7 billion company has helped boost shares of Siemens 16 percent since he took over. While that beat GE’s 8 percent gain in the same period, it lagged behind the 19 percent increase of Germany’s DAX benchmark index.

Fracking – the process of blasting water, sand and chemicals into miles-deep shale rock to extract fuels – has helped push U.S. natural gas production to new highs in each of the past seven years, according to the Energy Information Administration. North American oil and gas companies spent $168.2 billion on exploration and production last year, more than double 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

In the $17 billion takeover battle for Alstom’s energy assets, both GE and Siemens primarily wanted to acquire the French company’s gas turbine-making and -servicing business to meet surging demand from the fracking industry.

“Our products are good, but our installed base is not that great,” Kaeser said. “If you’re not in the installed base it’s hard to get it in, because no one takes stuff out and puts your stuff in, there’s just too much at risk.”

GE had a 49 percent global market share of new orders in gas turbines in 2013, compared with Siemens’s 23 percent, Credit Suisse estimated Feb. 11.

As a teenager, there was nothing Bonnie Michlin loved more than a shopping trip to the Summit Park Mall in Wheatfield.

As an adult mom, she still goes to malls regularly, but there are plenty of other retail options vying for her affection.

“It used to be that the mall was, like, the place to go,” she said. “But now it’s like there are so many different places that offer so many different things.”

As shopping habits change, some predict that traditional, enclosed malls are doomed to go the way of the leg warmer. So malls are fighting back.

In Western New York and across the country, they are adapting strategies to stay relevant, some emphasizing high-end stores and others adopting an atmosphere that is almost like a community center.

The threats are lurking. While Internet shopping is taking its toll on all brick-and-mortar stores, malls face additional challenges, like competition from stand-alone discount stores attractive to struggling middle-class shoppers and the loss of anchor stores able to draw the kind of consumer traffic on which other tenants depend.

“Mall shopping has been down and particularly so in these little malls with two and three anchors that are not special,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm in New York City.

The national mall occupancy rate average is a healthy 91.9 percent, well above the 65 percent benchmark for mall distress. And occupancy rates at mid-tier malls Boulevard Mall in Amherst, McKinley Mall in Hamburg and Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence stand at or near a stellar 100 percent. The same goes for Walden Galleria.

But that doesn’t mean they are beyond harm’s reach and can stand pat, experts said.

Lavish upscale malls offering designer names and luxurious experiences are doing well catering to society’s most affluent consumers, who have thrived since the recession. Outlet malls, which offer brand names to cost-conscious consumers, are booming as well, though the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls is facing increased competition from the new Outlet Collection at Niagara that recently opened across the Canadian border.

But mid-range malls, especially those anchored by beleaguered department stores Sears and J.C. Penney, are the most vulnerable. With the middle class squeezed by stagnant wages and a weak job market, shoppers are turning away from traditional mall anchor stores in search of better deals and deeper inventories at stand-alone stores such as Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx and Kohl’s.

A rise in online shopping and high unemployment rates among teens are drawing key demographics away from the mall as well, hurting teen-serving mall staples such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale and American Eagle – which together have closed hundreds of stores and are expected to close hundreds more over the next few years.

Entertainment venues

Across the country, malls are experimenting with new ways of generating the foot traffic that anchor stores used to create.

One way they’re doing it is by re-imagining their vast indoor spaces as mixed-use facilities where, as is Walden Galleria’s motto, consumers can “Eat. Play. Shop.”

Entertainment, long a part of the mall mix, is becoming an increasingly important factor.

Walden, McKinley and Eastern Hills each have movie theaters, which have been commonplace at malls since the beginning.

But Eastern Hills Mall has ramped up its entertainment offerings with an indoor ball field and batting cage complex called Sports Performance Park, a Dave & Buster’s restaurant arcade and is planning an outdoor ice rink.

Boulevard Mall’s coin-operated rides and food court carousel are very popular, as are the celebrity appearances, fashion shows and holiday events it hosts. Walden Galleria recently opened Pole Position Raceway, a giant indoor electric go-kart track, has interactive video games outside its Microsoft Store and is launching a live music series this summer.

Malls across the country are even experimenting with art galleries, performance spaces and rotating museum exhibits, which shoppers here could also eventually see.

Restaurants, once relegated to the food court, are becoming a more important draw.

“The concept is about bringing everything to one destination,” said Matthew Bader, general manager at Walden Galleria. “It’s about giving people a reason to come in and shop, and stay longer once they’re here.”

As part of its $60 million renovation five years ago, Walden Galleria added “restaurant row,” an exterior wing of restaurants, many of which cannot be found elsewhere in the local market. Eastern Hills Mall added a popular Duff’s Famous Wings franchise. Boulevard Mall added Bonefish Grill years ago and is looking for another restaurant to fill a space vacated by Honey’s.

Community centers

Malls are also offering more community-oriented events and services, in an attempt to turn themselves into neighborhood hubs.

“We are a local community center and we’ve always tried to play to those strengths,” said Betsey Bonvissuto, the Amherst mall’s marketing manager. “We have tried to be more than a retail venue. We’re a destination for the local community.”

Boulevard Mall’s children’s play center in the food court is a huge draws for families, especially during the long winter months. Its Boulevard Buddies children’s programming has hundreds of members and its annual Breakfast with Santa is wildly popular.

Eastern Hills Mall, which was barely surviving five years ago, has bounced back with its new mix. The mall hosts a Department of Motor Vehicles, an Erie County SPCA and a blood donation center and serves as an NFTA-Metro Park & Ride location. It also houses the WBBZ television studio.

“My plan all along has been to make Eastern Hills something a little different,” said Russell Fulton, the mall’s general manager. “I don’t try to compete with a super-regional shopping center like Walden. Instead I try to complement it, be something different, give shoppers another choice.”

McKinley Mall in Blasdell is home to the popular Tabby Town cat adoption center and the Red Dragon School of Martial Arts.

Each of the malls also has free Wi-Fi as well as a full calendar of family-oriented programming – free children’s activities, nonprofit fundraisers, animal adoption events – that get shoppers through the doors.

New convenience

Shopping centers are also changing up their retail offerings.

Boulevard Mall recently added a new exterior entrance to highlight nontraditional anchor and popular clothing retailer H&M. Both Walden Galleria and McKinley Mall have Best Buy locations, a big box retailer that is usually found in off-the-mall properties. Just five percent of Best Buy locations are housed within malls. Most are in strip malls, which are gaining in popularity.

“People would rather drive up in their cars, run into a store and drive away,” Davidowitz said.

McKinley Mall has added five additional entry points along the front of its building which gives it a more convenient, strip-mall-type format. One of those entrances opens onto Bed, Bath and Beyond, another traditionally off-the-mall format store it has lured inside.

“It’s not about just getting retailers in, it’s about getting the right mix,” said Jeff Ohle, general manager at McKinley Mall.

email: schristmann@buffnews.com

For years, phone carriers have wanted to find ways to make it easy for mobile customers to buy things and charge them to their phone bills.

That has legitimate uses, like buying ringtones and apps, or even making political donations or financial pledges to a nonprofit radio station. But it is easily abused, in ways not always easy to spot: Consumers, for instance, could start getting text messages about sports scores or horoscopes for which they never wanted to sign up.

“As with 900 numbers, it’s ripe with potential for abuse, and in some cases that potential has become reality,” said Jan Dawson, an independent telecom analyst for Jackdaw Research.

Such practices returned to the spotlight this week when the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit accusing T-Mobile USA of profiting from “cramming” – the tacking on of unauthorized charges that appear, often without a coherent explanation, on customers’ bills.

The practice of cramming is common on bills for traditional phone lines, but only recently began to appear on bills for mobile phone usage.

A Senate committee investigation into unauthorized phone bill charges concluded in 2011 – just as smartphone apps were becoming popular – that cramming costs Americans $2 billion a year.

Regulators say that in the context of cellphones, cramming typically occurs when a user is browsing the Web with a smartphone, encounters an advertisement and inadvertently agrees to something. The phone number then subscribes to a text-message service, which delivers texts on topics like celebrity gossip, dating and the weather for a monthly fee that is usually around $9.

The FTC advises customers to regularly check their phone bills. Consumers should call the phone carriers to clarify or dispute any suspicious charges.

But how do you spot the charges if they are hidden? The Federal Communications Commission says cramming charges are often listed in a bill with generic terms like “service charge,” “service fee,” “membership,” “other fees,” “usage fee” or “voice mail.”

To safeguard consumers against cramming, phone carriers in 2008 required third-party companies to agree to a code of conduct, according to CTIA, the trade group that represents the phone carriers. One requirement for third-party vendors was that they had to ask a user twice to confirm a purchase before any charge was made.

Despite those consumer protections, some companies still manage to drop in those extra charges on unwitting consumers. Last year, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint each decided to stop allowing third-party companies to make charges through texting services.

Last month, T-Mobile announced a refund program for customers hit by the unauthorized charges.

Clearly, T-Mobile’s remedies were not enough to satisfy the FTC, which has concluded that the carrier made hundreds of millions of dollars by taking a cut of revenue from the unauthorized charges. The trade commission said T-Mobile knew in early 2012 that customers were complaining about the charges in increasing numbers, and that the carrier refused to give some consumers refunds when they asked for them.

On Thursday, T-Mobile’s chief executive, John J. Legere, published a statement on the company’s website reiterating the steps that T-Mobile had taken to protect customers from unwanted charges.

Legere wrote: “T-Mobile has in the past and will continue to keep our pledge to bill customers only for what they want and what they have purchased for as long as I am C.E.O. of this company! NO EXCUSES!”

Donna Henrich and Michele Litwin believe most Western New York golfers could benefit from a woman’s touch.

At least, that’s their business model. And they’re certain it’s on par with any other pro shop in the area.

As newly minted owners of Golf Headquarters of Buffalo, the pro shop located inside Wehrle Golf Dome in Clarence, Henrich and Litwin are in the middle of their first season as business partners.

They went in on the shop together when its previous owners put it up for sale in November.

With more than 60 years of experience in the local golf market between them, the local businesswomen felt they could offer a unique service by combining the Henrich reputation as one of the nation’s top most recognizable names in club repair with Litwin’s extensive golf retail background.

As individual tenants of the 100,000-square-foot golf dome, which includes a putt-putt course and more than 100 tees inside the dome and out, and the accompanying Billy Baroo’s restaurant, the pro shop provides an opportunity to be a part of one of the area’s unique golf experiences.

“We’re a destination with the dome and restaurant,” said Litwin, who first started working at the shop out of high school almost 25 years ago. “You can make an afternoon out of it. It’s really the whole package when you come here – everything from eating to looking good to improving your game to buying equipment.”

Litwin, now 43, has a degree in business from Canisius College but never envisioned getting into retail. The Williamsville resident has stuck around under several ownership changes through the years. She has worked with Henrich for many of those years.

Henrich, 58, of the Town of Tonawanda, is the daughter of longtime local Professional Golf Association pro and nationally renowned club repairman John “Jack” Henrich.

John Henrich was the pro at Elma Meadows Golf Course from the day it opened in 1960 until he retired in 1989.

A life member of the PGA, John Henrich won the organization’s Horton Smith Award in 1975 for his contributions to education as one of the first instructors to teach golf club repair for the PGA.

Woods to Wedges, his equipment sales and club repair business, spawned from his hobby of repairing golf clubs at home for friends and other golf pros in the area during the winter months.

Donna Henrich inherited the business and is in her 40th year repairing clubs. She had been operating out of the Wehrle Golf Dome pro shop since it opened.

When she and Litwin became owners, they combined the retail and repair ends to form the conglomerate pro shop that customers see today, selling everything from golf balls and apparel to clubs and fitting services – all within feet of the golf dome, where customers test-drive their new clubs.

A $25,000 machine used to custom tailor a club to a golfer’s swing, along with a vast selection of more than 100 grip combinations, allow for a wider range of fitting services that other outlets cannot accommodate.

Henrich has also recently begun fitting putters, a service exclusive to the shop, she said.

“With what we’ve introduced as far as the fitting aspect, I think that’s really helped us to grow,” Henrich said. “We saw a big need for something like this. We see a huge potential for that going forward.”

Henrich and Litwin said the less-than-ideal spring weather made for a difficult beginning to their first year in business, and Internet sales remain their biggest competitor.

But that’s where gender could give them an advantage.

“If anything else we’re probably even more open-minded,” Litwin said.

“I think people are surprised when they learn two women own the store,” Henrich said. “Sometimes a customer will come up to us and ask for the fitter, and we’ll say, ‘That’s us.’ ”

email: bschlager@buffnews.com

ALDEN

• 13251 Colonial Woods Drive, Krista Mack; Jeffrey E. Mack to Jerome A. Krull, $123,700.

AMHERST Highest price: $899,999 Average price: $192,975 Median price: $168,500 Number of Sales: 52

• 43 Hidden Pines Court, Maureen Bollier; Sherwood L. Bollier to Hua Ge; Limin Chen, $899,999.

• 24 Regents Park, Jharna Basak; Sanjit Basak; Sanjit K. Basak to Nishikant S. Harvey, $475,000.

• 59 Emma Way, Forbes Homes Inc. to Sara B. Fluskey; Robert J. Fluskey Jr., $414,936.

• 31 Dauphin Drive, Joseph P. Morsellino; Arlene B. Morsellino to Kelli Marie Wilson; Ken Leone Jr., $374,500.

• 59 Randwood Drive, Joseph P. Muenkel; Anita M. Muenkel to Michael Ott; Kari A. Mergenhagen, $361,000.

• 32 Waterway Lane, Ryan Homes of New York; Nvr Inc. to Jean S. Filipiak; Gerald T. Filipiak, $339,990.

• 220 Crestwood Lane, Yung-Chang Kee to Robert D. Kaye, $299,000.

• 36 South Castlerock Lane, Ruth K. Hastings; Lawrence P. Hastings to Viktoriya Kuchuk; Robert Kuchuk, $284,000.

• 51 Silver Thorne Drive, Kari Mergenhagen to Robert M. Brown; Cheryl A. Brown, $280,000.

• 155 North Union Road, Pasquale Attardo; Margaret F. Attardo to Sandra Klaiman; Bertell Klaiman, $270,000.

• 123 Waxwing Court, Patrick L. Neill to Byoung Hoon Seok; Hye Mi You, $265,000.

• 102 Mill St., Jennifer L. Hoeger; Carl J. Hoeger to Timothy P. Malysza; Laura M. Debacco, $257,500.

• 10 Green Forest Court, Peter Kent; Carol A. Kent to Shawn P. Hennessy; Kelli M. Hennessy, $243,000.

• 31 Stonybrook Lane, Jonathan H. Holt; Karen G. Holt to Chucko Mu; Emay Sun, $220,000.

• 410 Burroughs Drive, Donald J. Held to Robert E. Fitzgerald, $205,000.

• 101 Ponderosa Drive, Kim Kunze; Susan M. Steinhaus to Babita Das, $190,000.

• 1 Ferndale Road, Sandra Leddick to Christopher M. Guida; Sengdeuane L. Guida, $185,000.

• 477 Dodge Road, Margaret S. Signore; Mark P. Signore to Ryan D. Miller; Sheryl L. Miller, $184,900.

• 150 Brush Creek Road, Lynne M. Logan; Gerard J. Logan to Praseeda Gangadharan; Venkat Kishore R. Doddamreddy, $183,000.

• 269 Mount Vernon Road, Holli Alexander; Patrick J. Alexander to Monica Morales; Mark R. Kourt, $183,000.

• 139 Los Robles St., Kimberly Giannelli-Calos; David Calos to Matthew M. McKeon; Jamie J. McKeon, $181,000.

• 290 Walton Drive, Mark E. Ruch to Maryjane Metzen; Gregory J. Metzen, $177,500.

• 122 Parkhaven Drive, Ann Sorci; Ann Marie Sorci; Ann M. Sorci to Joseph P.A. Toni, $175,000.

• 87 Huntleigh Circle, Carol K. Militello to Shannon M. Smith; Jacob D. Smith, $172,500.

• 43 Gatewood Lane, Jamie Hendrie; Spencer Churchill to Justin M. Johnston; Danielle E. Johnston, $172,000.

• 91 Empress Ave., Susan K. Baumler to Jeffrey M. Beach; Christine N. Beach, $170,000.

• 141 Breezewood Common, Barbara J. Nelson to Stanislav Tchernyi, $167,000.

• 436 Roycroft Blvd., Angelo D. Morgante; Laina M. Morgante to Carole Emberton; Darrell Stevens, $164,900.

• 20 Kingsgate Road, Donna Vaccaro; Nancy A. Vaccaro; Kathleen A. Barrus; Donald J. Vaccaro Jr. to Jessica M. Gorski, $158,000.

• 438 Callodine, Anna Post to Zhilin Liu, $148,000.

• 179 Delamere Road, Jerome Edelstein; Emily Edelstein to Leslie C. Knodt, $142,000.

• 271 New Road, Ann Marie Zehler to Michael F. Danciak Jr., $139,000.

• 175 Sargent Drive, James C. Waterman to Ronald C. Reger, $135,000.

• 59 Sunset Court, David Dycha; Christopher Dycha to Gary J. Matteson, $130,000.

• 116 Thistle Lea, Boleslaw R. Klusek; Patricia A. Klusek to Maria A. Zito, $129,500.

• 93 Gaspe Drive, Marek Tarnawski to Andrea L. Mentecki, $128,500.

• 19 Majestic Circle, Joan Schneider; Joan M. Schneider to Leslie J. Menges; Harold J. Menges, $122,000.

• 61 Richfield Road, Charles G. Leonard to Randilyn Smith; Walter Oldenburg, $121,000.

• 14 Keph, Barbara A. Young to Victoria Malamas; John N. Malamas, $116,000.

• 1477 Eggert Road, Elise Gibbons; Jeffrey D. Kluczynski to National Residential Nominee Services Inc., $108,000.

• 1477 Eggert Road, National Residential Nominee Services Inc. to Sandra L. Blatz, $108,000.

• 414 Greengage Circle, HUD to Gregory P. Long, $108,000.

• 663 Longmeadow Road, Jeff Gilson; Sarah E. Gilson to Adam C. Hahn; Ashlee D. Hahn, $108,000.

• 1667 Eggert Road, Patricia M. Mariani to Elba M. Poyfair, $100,700.

• 321 Callodine Ave., Linda Ann Konopa; Leonard Chester Konopa to Casey L. Lafleur, $94,000.

• 4775 Chestnut Ridge Road, Michael A. Ragusa to Erik V. Scheuneman, $90,000.

• 36B Foxberry Drive, Elizabeth A. Tetreault to Eileen M. King, $83,900.

• 70 Groton Drive, Andrea Reed to Yu Ju Chen, $78,000.

• 185-3 Charter Oaks Drive, John Cody Vinci to Rochelle Deloach, $75,000.

• 47 Fairchild Drive, Richard J. Herdlein III to Melissa Heavern; Richard Heavern, $47,000.

• 593 Kings Highway North, Diane Zelakiewicz; Rose Marie Lozinski to Karolyn M. McDonald; Joshua J. McDonald, $46,000.

• 215 Belvoir Road, Barbara Eaton to Mack Realty Inc., $24,349.

AURORA/EAST AURORA

• 195 Blake Hill Road, Dorothy R. Hutchinson to Andrew Grinsfelder; Stacy Grinsfelder, $335,000.

• 872 Porterville Road, Patricia B. Pfeifer to Theresa Imhof; Donald G. Imhof Jr., $220,000.

• 240 Center St., Theresa Imhof; Donald G. Imhof Jr. to Katherine Son; Daniel S. Son, $210,000.

• 236 Behm Road, Ruth Behm; Frank A. Behm to Patrick Lally, $75,000.

BRANT

• 10580 Lakeshore Road, John F. Wurster to Charles Galante; Mary M. Galante, $157,000.

• 11085 Brant Reservation Road, Pennymac Loan Trust to Maryellen Cruz, $45,000.

BUFFALO Highest price: $875,000 Average price: $96,358 Median price: $49,730 Number of Sales: 70

• 55 Middlesex Road, Donna M. Gioia to Mary R. DiBenedetto; Paul A. DiBenedetto, $875,000.

• 19 Dorchester Ave., Naples Family Trust 3 to Mara Montante; Matthew T. Montante, $423,000.

• 401 Northland, Sunset Bay Park Inc. to Northland Management, $300,000.

• 66 Claremont, Jason Fox Manning; Kelly A. Delp to Kate Holzemer; Mark Hicar, $284,000.

• 92 Fordham Drive, Douglas R. Stevens; Heather L. Stevens to Laurie R. Herbert; Eric P. Herbert, $270,000.

• 39 North Pearl St., Daniel W. Ash to Samuel Shatkin Jr.; Joanne M. Shatkin, $268,000.

• 81 Woodward Ave., Karl W. Krause; Valerie L. Wang to Marc Bohlen; Natalie Tan, $250,000.

• 849 Delaware Ave., Sarah A. Filocamo to Li Li, $230,000.

• 172 Sterling, Kathleen S. Ludwig to Katherine B. Cartwright, $215,500.

• 191 Hodge St., Barbara J. Dray to Anna Leone; Brandon J. Haspett, $215,000.

• 77 Allenhurst Road, Alex Nadiak to Beth A. Downing; Craig S. Downing, $185,000.

• 26 Arthur St., Hiram Rivera to Meghan B. Palumbo; Joseph L. Palumbo, $170,000.

• 187 Lovering, Gary L. Davies to Jacob T. Young, $148,000.

• 180 University Ave., Luvenia June-Mack to Jamie Rackl; Christopher Rackl, $139,050.

• 1088 Delaware Ave., Purple Plaid Llc to Mindy Menke, $135,000.

• 102 Putnam, Kate Holzemer to Alexandra E. Judelsohn, $134,500.

• 1088 Delaware, Ursula Pieroni; Daniel Pieroni to Van Ness Harwood Jr., $131,000.

• 1 Norwalk, Tonya Salter; James Salter to Nicholas J. Camposeo; Leah C. Camposeo, $130,000.

• 605A Bird Ave., Joseph Caserta to Michael Philbin, $130,000.

• 217 Norwalk Ave., Amy L. King to Anish Patel, $121,250.

• 111 Kimberly Ave., Jacqueline Sands-White; Patricia Colern; Margaret Janik; Mary M. Sands; Dennis J. Sands to Sarah B. Braunscheidel, $117,000.

• 114 Southside Parkway, Robert R. Fogg; Kevin A. Ojeda to Fannie Mae, $96,341.

• 21 Whitehall Ave., Linda C. Sattler to Andrew R. Drenning, $92,000.

• 309 North St. Apt 3, Clifford E. Madell to Brookwood Hospitality, $91,000.

• 58 Dundee, Raymond W. Wilson to Kevin O’Neil; Patricia Harpster; Renee O’Neil, $90,000.

• 11 Cable St., Nicole Macdowell to Nicole S. Jeffree; Dwayne M. Cragle, $76,320.

• 83 Krakow St., Sherry Ann Ebert; Sherry A. Holtz to Timothy A. Schwab, $76,000.

• 15 Brayton, Melissa M. Goff to Buffalo Homestead, $75,105.

• 60 Titus, Free Spirit Missionary Baptist Church to Path Illuminated, $75,000.

• 28 Crystal Ave., Gary J. Matteson to Laura Southern; Terrence Southern, $65,000.

• 187 Melrose, Timothy Gozaloff; Timothy J. Gozaloff to Gems Properties of WNY Inc., $60,000.

• 50 Yale, Kevin F. Lewis to Peter Damon, $55,000.

• 117 Hewitt Ave., Premier Investment Porperties to Erik Jones, $54,900.

• 19 Pulaski St., Timothy D. Kwiatkowski; Irene T. Kwiatkowski; Pamela A. Rzeszutek to Geleynse Whelchel Family Living Trust, $52,900.

• 330 Parkdale, Francesca Nocera to Dustin Dimit; Megan Dimit, $49,960.

• 36 Rogers, USA Homes Properties to Ovadya Azori; Edna Azori, $49,500.

• 146 Riverside Ave., Joan A. VonDerEmpten to Tee Reh, $48,000.

• 47 Alice, DHGF Llc to EQ Solutions, $44,660.

• 96 Grote St., Yelena Shmist to Ofer Dar, $44,000.

• 141 Rounds, Darryl McPherson; William A. Pyle; Kevin Pyle; William Albert Pyle to Christine Acoff; Charles Acoff, $41,200.

• 367 Warwick Ave., Dennis W. Stallings; John K. Jordan to Wells Fargo Bank, $37,800.

• 485 & 487 Tonawanda, Maung Maung One; Myint Myint Soe to Gin Khen Pau; Cin San Niang, $35,000.

• 120 Hagen, Kevin Deaman; Equity Trust Company to USA Homes Properties, $32,500.

• 212 Smith St., Sharon Gollwitzer to Kathleen Leonard, $32,000.

• 873 South Park Ave., Keith Felder; Linda Pasniak to Dawn L. Beard; John E. Beard, $32,000.

• 148 Bush St., Michael Maywalt; Lynda Maywalt to Javier Vellon, $30,000.

• 51 Florida, Stephen Carroll to William Randall, $30,000.

• 654 & 658 Walden, Rita Woodard; Eldred Woodard to Mostafa Kamal; Jamal Uddin, $30,000.

• 98 Mohr St., Rick J. Glaze to Ruhul Amin; Humairah Dilara, $29,000.

• 36 Rogers, Redbird Properties to USA Homes Properties, $28,000.

• 147 West Ferry St., James Luppino to Anthony K. Bandoh Jr., $26,500.

• 60 Titus, Free Spirit Missionary Baptist Church to Nasreen Ahktar, $25,000.

• 153 Folger St., John J. Griffin Jr. to Angela R. Gayles, $24,000.

• 32 Berwyn, Remilie Llc to Dora Properties, $23,500.

• 603 Fargo Ave., MDF Group Llc to 9Gf Llc, $22,500.

• 390 Dewey Ave., John Crane to Renee Verse, $22,000.

• 22 Marigold Ave., Shanta Ballee; Mohamed Ballee to Parker Realty Buffalo Inc., $20,000.

• 26 Berwyn Ave., Lawrence Montgomery to Deanna R. Townsend; Equity Trust Company, $20,000.

• 515 St. Lawrence Ave., Fannie Mae to Vicki Barnes, $18,100.

• 288 Coit St., Wanda Cook to Abul K. Islam, $17,000.

• 239 & 235 High St., Tmaria Llc to Tmaria Llc; Western New York Property Investors Inc., $16,000.

• 125 Progressive Ave., Krista Gruchy; Stephane Beaudoin to Roger L. Russin, $15,000.

• 146 Longnecker St., Odette Fischer; Richard Fischer to Premier Investment Properties, $15,000.

• 136 Reno, Charles Marranca to KC Buffalo Enterprises, $12,000.

• 155 Gorton, Christopher Strong to Wing Properties, $12,000.

• 884 Kensington, Joseph P. Canella to Sanders Anita; Woodruff Enterprises, $8,000.

• 202 Best St., James W. Jones; Hazel J. Jones to Beatrix Nix, $7,000.

• 46 Wade, Ardenia Gildersleeve; Billy H. Gildersleeve to NPS Enterprises of Buffalo, $7,000.

• 328 Davey St., Shawn H. Shriver to Acsa of WNY Inc., $5,000.

• 38 Miller, Michael Broadus to Maleka Begum, $5,000.

CHEEKTOWAGA Highest price: $147,400 Average price: $84,279 Median price: $84,450 Number of Sales: 22

• 26 Butternut Road, Marcio Vieira; Mariel L. Decker to Keeley Sprague; Matthew Sprague, $147,400.

• 94 Liberty Terrace, Christopher S. Castleman to Benjamin R. Wolf; Meghan A. Corcoran, $132,500.

• 61 Biscayne Drive, Marion L. Barone; John A. Barone to Gabriela Lira, $130,000.

• 215 Currier, Denis A. Sommerfield to Mayra Casillas; Juan Carlos Casillas, $119,000.

• 181 Dubonnet Drive, Gretchen M. Schmidt-Notaro; Gretchen M. Schmidt to Janette J. Covert, $115,000.

• 193 St. Felix Ave., Alice R. Nowak to Ronald J. Barczak, $106,000.

• 203 Merrymont Road, Valdemar Sousa to Chitra Adhikari; Bishnu P. Adhikari, $98,189.

• 104 Raymond Ave., Mary Szczempka to Kathryn M. Kowalski, $97,000.

• 131 Patsy Lane, Kimberly A. Dowd; Lynn M. Sheldon to Sail Holdings, $95,000.

• 44 Rogers Drive, Frances K. Bull; Charles D. Paladino to Lyndsey R. Pawlak, $91,500.

• 335 Beach Road, Deborah A. Moritz; David L. Moritz Jr. to Scott C. Herr, $88,000.

• 1298 Cleveland Drive, Virginia Hadley; Richard K. Hadley; Virginia E. Hadley to Kristina L. Ramsey, $80,900.

• 28 St. Paul Court, Howard C. Mansfield to Elizabeth Hyzy, $77,000.

• 279 Beale Ave., Jack Behlmaier to Jack P. Behlmaier, $74,000.

• 81 Goering Ave., Thomas Wojcik; Thomas A. Wojcik to Paula Milligan, $70,000.

• 88 Midland Drive, Geoffrey T. Jankowski to Mary Jeanne Wieszala, $68,000.

• 31 Loxley Road, Jacob M. Vullo to Mitchell D. Webber, $64,000.

• 64 Danbury Drive, Christopher J. Ruh; Deborah A. Ruh to Stephen R. Kowalewski, $52,500.

• 74 Wabash Ave., Elisabeth M. Colucci; Joseph L. Piskorowski to State of New York Mortgage Agency, $49,157.

• 1274 Walden Ave., James S. Billinghurst; Karin L. Billinghurst to One On One Fitness Llc, $45,000.

• 150 Lackawanna, Truman 2012 SC2 Title Trust to Ron Canestro, $31,000.

• 328 Reiman, Alfred F. Bialasik Sr. to Alexander 46 Inc., $23,000.

CLARENCE Highest price: $1,130,000 Average price: $406,809 Median price: $345,000 Number of Sales: 11

• 5345 Transit Road, Transit Road Land Llc to Dies Irae Erie Llc, $1,130,000.

• 5817 Transit Road, Spoth Family Llc to 5817 Transit Llc, $1,000,000.

• 9710 The Maples, Richard Engl; Lorraine Engl to Elisa Carlino; Antonino Carlino, $510,000.

• 8377 Black Walnut Drive, Joseph A. Brennan; Marianna B. Brennan to Joseph Neiman, $420,000.

• 8574 Lakemont Drive, Angela Vacanti; Thomas Vacanti to Kimberly J. Gozdzialski; Marek J. Gozdzialski, $390,000.

• 8561 Lakemont Drive, Brian G. Cannon to Melissa Jones; Matthew Jones, $345,000.

• 9030 Cliff Side Drive South, Marcia Grove; William Grove to Laina Morgante; Angelo Morgante, $305,000.

• 4357 Barton Road, Leslie C. Knodt to Michael J. Biemel, $125,000.

• 9678 Golden Aster Court, Courts at Spaulding Green Llc; Blase W. Caruana to Custom Built of WNY Inc., $119,900.

• Vacant Land/5908 Corinne Lane, Cimato Enterprises Inc. to Forbes Homes Inc., $108,000.

• 4610 Shisler Road, Tammy Kamman; Eric Kamman to Tammy Kamman; Charles D. Brennan Jr., $22,000.

COLDEN

• 9425 State Road, Thalia L. Greenan; Gerald J. Greenan III to Jon M. Wangelin; Tamara L. Wangelin, $152,000.

CONCORD

• 118 South Central Ave., Charlotte Huneault Morley to Timothy Knab, $148,000.

EDEN

• 3381 Kickbush Gulf Road, Porter Properties to Marc Egleston, $50,000.

ELMA

• 521 Willardshire Road, Peter Tower Inc. to Kevin R. Murray; Susan G. Murray, $325,000.

• 68 Springbrook Shores Drive, Vincent T. Lauria; Catherine A. Lauria to Edward P. Malone, $277,000.

• 16 South Shore Drive, Colleen K. Ogiony; David E. Ogiony to Barbara M. Moon, $265,900.

• 22 Old Mill Circle, Calvin L. McCabe; Carol A. McCabe to Mary Melinda White-Mayer, $140,000.

• 6890 Seneca St., Jeffrey P. Markello to MS Properties of WNY Inc., $136,000.

EVANS

• 6666 Derby Road, James J. Ernewein; Eileen P. Ernewein to Robert Myers; Brittany Myers, $144,000.

• 515 Herr Road, Kimberly Ann Kales to Delores L. Fontana; Thomas J. Fontana; Richard A. Fonatana, $30,000.

• 8583 Southwestern Blvd., John J. Maloney to Shawn Keefe; Lori Keefe, $7,000.

GRAND ISLAND Highest price: $499,900 Average price: $204,807 Median price: $165,000 Number of Sales: 11

• 1909 Steeg Road, Janet Brunton Milkey; Janet B. Milkey to David Stender; Margaret G. Stender, $499,900.

• 3621 West River Road, Melanie Young; Todd Young to Carolyn M. Schopp; Michael A. Schopp, $320,000.

• 601 Pin Oak Circle, Kenneth O. Potts; Jeanne E. Potts to Brandon O’Connor; Kristel O’Connor, $265,000.

• 67 Island Park Drive, Sunye Orgis; Garth R. Orgis to Michael J. Bawol; Samantha J. Conta, $205,000.

• 2150 Harvey Road, Karen L. Fischer; Joseph W. Fischer to Matthew S. Green; Susan R. Zinter, $202,910.

• 1548 Red Jacket Road, Kelly L. London; Thomas E. London to National Residential Nominee Services Inc., $165,000.

• 1548 Red Jacket Road, National Residential Nominee Services Inc. to Nicolaos Christou Jr.; Marlene Figlewski, $165,000.

• 915 East River Road, Mathilde Witt; Mathilde R. Witt to Melanie McKenney, $142,570.

• 3369 Warner Drive, Crestview Property Holdings to Karen L. Fischer, $132,000.

• 1901 Marjorie Drive, Joan A. Droit to William A. Kuhn, $113,500.

• 1237 Whitehaven Road, Gun Creek Llc to Christopher R. Wilkinson Sr., $42,000.

HAMBURG Highest price: $278,230 Average price: $148,007 Median price: $155,000 Number of Sales: 13

• 4067 Connors Way, Ryan Homes of New York; Nvr Inc. to Emmanuel E. Lawson, $278,230.

• 4070 Connors Way, Ryan Homes of New York; Nvr Inc. to Brian T. Koscielniak; Megan A. Koscielniak, $267,110.

• 5095 Fairgrounds Road, Thomas P. Taylor; Deborah A. Taylor to Robert D. Gorecki; Christine F. Gorecki, $217,500.

• 26 Central Ave., Karen L. Provvidenza to Audrey Goble; Lawrence J. Goble Jr., $167,500.

• 3033 Walbridge, Dennis L. Eisenhauer to Ismael C. Flores; Maria E. Flores, $160,000.

• 5498 Camp Road, Sado Gas Sales Inc. to MAD-JS Llc, $160,000.

• 2089 Lakeview Road, Heidi Schultz; William Schultz to Shawn Giardino; Amelia Schunk, $155,000.

• 3449 Emerling Drive, Karen Poleon; Edward P. Poleon to Daniel E. Westin, $133,000.

• 4301 Victorian Drive, Amy Zolnowski to Diana L. Tomasik, $129,000.

• 4034 Allen St., Justin J. Weixlmann; Rachel E. Weixlmann to Heidi Schultz; William Schultz, $124,000.

• Vacant Land/2148 Shadow Lane, Cimato Enterprises Inc. to Ryan Homes of New York; Nvr Inc., $52,000.

• 5045 Clarice Drive, State of New York Mortgage Agency to Ronald Planter, $40,750.

• S-3556 Salisbury Ave., Thomas Krawiec to Ronald J. Krawiec, $40,000.

HOLLAND

• 12595 Vermont St., Regina Defeo; Robert J. Cutting; Regina R. Defeo to Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, $212,443.

• 12595 Vermont St., Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to Allen J. Jablonski Sr.; Krystyna M. Jablonski, $200,000.

LACKAWANNA

• 104 Elkhart Ave., Dana C. Tezanos to Christopher M. Gemmati, $86,500.

• 10 Cleveland Ave., Andrew Adam Kull to Alicia Tilli; James Boyle; Patrick Boyle, $79,500.

• 90 Della Drive, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to Douglas M. Barry, $40,000.

LANCASTER Highest price: $335,757 Average price: $184,916 Median price: $177,500 Number of Sales: 10

• 15 Jonquille Court, Marrano/Marc Equity Corporation to Brandon W. Benham; Jill E. Benham, $335,757.

• 53 Woodgate Drive, Jennifer Lee Gramiccioni; Gregory J. Gramiccioni to Franconia Real Estate Services Inc., $257,000.

• 53 Woodgate Drive, Franconia Real Estate Services Inc. to Karen Sepe; Brian Sepe, $248,000.

• 1 Lake Forest Parkway, Deborah L. Heveron; Norman C. Heveron III to Stephen P. Kowalski, $213,000.

• 15 Birchwood Common, Calvin R. Johnson; Georgia M. Johnson to Marcio Vieira; Mariel L. Vieira, $180,000.

• 66 Brunck Road, Kathy Ann Beck; Susan Marie Vriesen; Heidi B. Braun to Daryl R. Pierce, $175,000.

• 34 Pleasant Ave., Michael J. Ramsey; Kristina L. Ramsey to Jacob Massaker; Stephanie Massaker, $156,400.

• 85 Central Ave., James H. Delaplante III to 85 Central Llc, $130,000.

• 51 Cowing St., Dennis R. Szwartz to Thomas J. Wisnowski, $84,000.

• 56 Tranquility Trail, Alliance Construction of WNY Inc. to James C. Delprince; Pamela M. Delprince, $70,000.

MARILLA

• 13074 Bullis Road, Dawn M. Krull; Jerome A. Krull to Matthew A. Pivarunas; Sara A. Pivarunas, $224,900.

• Vacant Land/Three Rod Road, Wayne K. Ali; Josephine E. Ali to Earl A. Gingerich Jr., $75,000.

• Vacant Land/Clinton St., Tomarsue Inc. to Joseph Peters, $50,000.

NEWSTEAD

• 4828 South Newstead, Donald Seger; Donald L. Seger to Nicholas Craig Hathaway, $170,000.

NORTH COLLINS

• 10770 Main St., Josif Popjanevski; Lazar Bosilkovski to Josif Popjanevski, $40,000.

• Vacant Land/Sherman Ave., Marilyn R. Purdy; Howard A. Purdy to Sam Militello; Jenifer L. Militello, $10,000.

ORCHARD PARK Highest price: $250,000 Average price: $135,044 Median price: $145,000 Number of Sales: 9

• 30 Poplar Ave., Cathy M. Buyea; Kent L. Buyea Jr. to Marie A. Nowak, $250,000.

• 45 Sleepy Hollow Lane, Paul K. Dietrick; Arlene A. Dietrick to Edward J. Delmonte, $162,400.

• 4 Faahs Drive, Ashley M. Morgan; Matthew B. Morey to N. Mario Dinardo; Daniel Dinardo, $156,000.

• 5155 Lake Ave., Lynn Buffamonti; Mary Jane De Vincentis; Lynn Buffamonte; Richard W. Jablonski; David Jablonski to Kenneth C. Jarembek; Kristina A. Jarembek, $155,000.

• 16 Stepping Stone Lane, Fredera L. Stiglmeier to John J. Messina; Marguerite R. Messina, $145,000.

• 4915 Bussendorfer, David Furgala to Eric M. Lanc, $145,000.

• Vacant Land/8 Conway Circle, Pleasant Acres West Llc to Ryan Homes of New York; Nvr Inc., $102,000.

• Vacant Land/70 Arrowood Lane, Essex Homes of WNY Inc. to Debra Feher; Nathan Feher, $85,000.

• Vacant Land/Powers Road, Schreiber & Winkelman Inc. to Brian M. Komorowski; Michelle A. Komorowski, $15,000.

CITY OF TONAWANDA

• 46 Highland Ave., Raymond T. Schultz to Thomas Fendrick III, $90,150.

• 149 Niagara St., Joan M. Christopher; Joseph P. Christopher to Sara C. Christopher, $65,000.

• 108 Kohler St., Patricia Ann Shepherd; Donald L. Shepherd to Michael F. Klinger; Hanni A. Klinger, $43,000.

• 203 Young St., Charles Farnham to Imagination Enterprises, $22,500.

TOWN OF TONAWANDA Highest price: $380,000 Average price: $124,318 Median price: $112,537 Number of Sales: 25

• 701 Ensminger, 701 Ensminger Llc to Neco Transport Limited, $380,000.

• 141 Dolphann Drive, Jennifer M. Miller-Mckie; Christopher A. McKie to Molly E. Moran; Kevin J. Hess, $180,000.

• 28 Dale Drive, Ruthanne Jillian to Karen L. Freeburg, $172,500.

• 35 Columbia Blvd., Kelli Kane to Casey Y. Hay; James A. Hay, $167,000.

• 447 Thorncliff Road, Kim Marie Safy to Linda M. Sangeorge, $165,000.

• 192 Kingsbury Lane, Terence R. McDonald; Lorena R. McDonald to Valentina Shershnevsky; Danil Shershnevsky, $146,000.

• 10 Sherwin Drive, Victoria Malamas; John N. Malamas to Kathy J. Hogan; Robert F. Hogan, $142,500.

• 208 Lyndale Ave., Tyler S. Benson; Kristina L. Benson to Timothy J. Flynn; Colleen N. Flynn, $135,000.

• 123 Lasalle Ave., Kristen M. Downey to Amanda J. Silkey, $125,000.

• 46 Linden Ave., Brian Sepe; Karen A. Yearly to Kim Marie Catalano, $120,000.

• 1242 Colvin Road, Paula Macaluso; Philip Macaluso to Victoria Vizzi, $117,000.

• 167 St. Clare Terrace, Elinor D. Pratko to Karen S. Murray, $116,000.

• 420 Mang Ave., Dean Lilac; Carolynn A. Rendon to Secretary of Veterans Affairs, $112,537.

• 276 Nassau, Frances S. Lotsof to Jessica Panepento, $107,900.

• 319 Washington Ave., Mark A. Taylor to Lauren Ceccarelli, $106,500.

• 30 Liston St., John M. Conley to Stephen C. Mancuso, $100,000.

• 139 Brendan Ave., Maria A. Sagliani to Mark Roberts; Kimberly Roberts, $95,000.

• 316 Desmond Drive, John C. Weber; Lenora D. Weber to David Morris, $89,040.

• 99 Springfield Ave., Delancy Joyce Wood; Richard L. Wood to Sara D. Danheiser, $89,000.

• 270 Westgate, Shannon M. Dymock; Jacob D. Smith to William H. Sypniewski, $85,000.

• 93 Charleston Ave., Evelyn Kladek to Eliseo A. Taborda; Amanda M. Smith, $80,000.

• 240 Koenig Road, Sharon A. Dipalo to Samuel Charles Cook; Heather Cook, $76,320.

• 88 Floradale Ave., Kevin L. Nichols to Andrew J. Nagel; Samantha A. Ministero, $69,500.

• 176 Wabash Ave., Sheri A. Spann; Jennie T. Otis to Adria Lanham; Eric R. Lanham, $69,000.

• 970 Parker Blvd., Richard J. Kubiniec; Patricia A. Booth to HUD, $62,160.

WEST SENECA Highest price: $289,500 Average price: $103,272 Median price: $99,950 Number of Sales: 18

• 4 Connor Drive, Anna Lutz; Paul R. Lutz to Brian J. Ames; Brenna K. Ames, $289,500.

• 101 Molnar Drive, Fadi Ghajar to Michael A. Dietz; Cheri L. Dietz, $180,000.

• 51 Davis Road, Ralph G. Daily to Patricia A. Tucholski, $145,000.

• 212 Warren Ave., Paul W. Sparks; Sheila A. Sparks to Jacqueline C. Duntley, $127,500.

• 2360 Berg Road, John P. Cyna; John J. Smead to Eileen P. Ernewein, $124,600.

• 74 Steiner Road, Petro Burda; Anna Burda to Sharon Lipp, $121,000.

• 144 Tudor Blvd., Michael H. Ork to Emmett C. Gerwitz; Elizabeth M. Victor, $113,000.

• 133 Tindle Ave., Stephanie A. Massaker; Jacob A. Massaker to John M. Murray Jr., $111,300.

• 63 Aurora Ave., Karen A. Wojcik; Ronald A. Wojcik to Jolene A. Lamphier, $100,900.

• 1000 Mineral Springs Road, Natalie Kosnikowski; Kenneth K. Kosnikowski; Natalie M. Kosnikowski to Bridgette C. Bova, $99,000.

• 334 Wimbledon Court, Megan A. Sreniawski to John J. Stewart; Jacquelynne A. Stewart, $99,000.

• 107 Tobey Hill Drive, Jeffrey A. Robinson; David W. Robinson to Jason R. Smith, $95,000.

• 400 West Ave., Kimberly Miller; Marjorie E. Philipps to Mark J. Kosowski, $87,600.

• 1090 Reserve Road, Kristy Bonetto to Bryan Koestler, $57,000.

• 107 Tobey Hill Drive, Michael J. Robinson to Jason R. Smith, $47,500.

• 640 Center Road, Dennis J. Hall; Deborah A. Ruh; Pamela J. Gates to Deborah A. Ruh, $40,000.

• 65 Summit Ave., Jeffrey Franklin; Rodney Seiwert to Maksim Vorobyev, $16,000.

• 65 Summit Ave., James D. Stoner; Regina S. Stoner to Jeffrey Franklin; Rodney Seiwert, $5,000.

CAMBRIA

• Subbera Road, Robert A. Proefrock; April D. Proefrock to Carolyn Dolan; Peter M. Dolan, $189,900.

• Church St., Ronald E. Kightlinger to Nathan E. Kightlinger, $140,000.

LEWISTON

• Legacy Drcarriage Houses at Legacy, Building 734/Unit 105, LMK Realty Associates to Frances Cale, $216,945.

• Simmons Road, Ray A. Sekera to Austentic Inc., $24,000.

LOCKPORT

• 1 North Transit St., Hamilton Lockport Associates to Cole WG Lockport NY Llc, $4,767,164.

• 1 Summit St., Michael Kahle; Brian B. Kahle to Susan M. Hollingsworth, $74,730.

• Juniper St., Stanton E. Noon; Heather E. Noon to Osward J. Cabrera; Jessica L. Cabrera, $74,000.

• Prospect St., Robert Virtuoso to Anthony Person Kyle; Kyle Anthony Person, $67,500.

• Locust St., William J. Stamp to Margaret R. Brown; Daniel J. Brown, $65,500.

• 313 Cottage St., Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. to Crestview Property Holdings, $18,000.

• South St., Hugh J. McCartney; Catherine M. Mccartney to RJ Riverrock Enterprises, $16,750.

NEWFANE

• Prospect St., Adam Wylubski; Angela M. Wylubski; Angela M. Downs to Rhonda J. Harris, $116,000.

• Van Horn Ave. & East Exchange St., Nathan W. Bridges to Danielle C. Pomeroy, $92,000.

• Ewings Road, Scott Jeffords to Lawta Properties, $45,000.

• Brown Road, Roger W. Strong to Keith Hetrick III, $10,000.

NIAGARA FALLS Highest price: $175,000 Average price: $50,198 Median price: $40,000 Number of Sales: 19

• Terrace Drive, Melissa M. Whelan; Melissa M. Ranieri to Luz Maria Parker; Luz M. Parker, $175,000.

• 716 84th St., C.W. Reno Miles to Secretary of Veterans Affairs, $89,303.

• McKoon Ave. & Vanderbilt Ave., Robert Selkowitz; Abigail Levin to Cory M. Cech; Corinne E. Abrams, $88,000.

• Pear Ave., John M. Tisdale; Helen L. Tisdale; Patricia A. Kunkle to Anne R. Dill, $78,900.

• Orchard Parkway, Domenick E. Iannuzzi; Betty I. Corieri to Jeffrey J. Orchard; Robert C. Donner, $75,000.

• 93rd St., Florice Palermo; Michelle M. Hoffman to Joseph S. Colavecchia, $73,250.

• 70th St., Sarah Demiglio; Michael A. Lucatra; Agatha M. Lucatra to Michael A. Palmeri Jr., $60,000.

• 71st St., Mark Johnson; Diane Johnson; Susanne M. Johnson; William Johnson to Kenneth Wagner, $53,000.

• 2480 Cleveland, Redbird Properties to DHGF Llc, $43,500.

• 79th St., Ann Higgins-Keating; Ann Marie Higgins-Keating; Kathleen M. Higgins; Michael T. Higgins; Colleen A. Smith; Joseph Michael Higgins to Central Development Group Inc., $40,000.

• 38 Duane Ave., Freida Parker to Simone M. Cain, $39,750.

• 8249 Troy Ave., Kellie S. Woods to Moria M. Mort, $29,401.

• 8713 Munson Ave., US Bank to Michael Scott Stallard, $25,655.

• Hyde Park Blvd., Juliet A. Gordon; Mary H. Biro to Dora Properties, $24,000.

• 1706 18th St., Willie Magwood to Wing Properties, $15,000.

• 22nd St., Deokie Sooknarine; Vijai Bissessar to LMP Maintenance Inc., $14,000.

• Michigan Ave., Keybank to Wing Properties, $11,000.

• 18th St., Gavin Mariano to Golden Calf, $10,000.

• 14th St. & Ferry Ave., Deokie Sooknarine; Vijai Bissessar to LMP Maintenance Inc., $9,000.

NORTH TONAWANDA Highest price: $133,000 Average price: $105,610 Median price: $104,590 Number of Sales: 8

• Bryant St., Beverly G. Metzgar; Beverly G. Brownell to Melissa Yochman; Andrew S. Grabowski, $133,000.

• Castlebar Drive, Denamarie Wildt; Denamarie Drozdowski to John J. Farkas, $132,000.

• Colvin Blvd. & Sweeney St., Michael F. Heim; Barbara M. Denny to Robert J. Farleo, $129,900.

• Woodward Ave., Jane L. Sweet to Patricia J. Sylvester; John J. Sylvester Jr., $109,180.

• Summit Blvd., Mahmoud Khweiss; Mark Lemke to Michael F. Heim, $100,000.

• Spaulding St., Katie A. Wright; Katie A. Thompson to Jakob Getty; Kelly Getty, $85,000.

• Meadow Drive, Kenneth C. Stoll to Jeanne E. Wilson; Sarah E. Newman, $79,800.

• Keil St., Sandy Daniels to Joseph P. Jank, $76,000.

PENDLETON

• Oakwood Drive, Barbara M. Kwasniak; Barbara M. Athans to Sara Loeser; Josef Loeser, $216,300.

• Campbell Blvd., Randall Tiebor to Ronald Larocque, $41,500.

PORTER

• Lake Road, Mark A. Orsi to Stephanie M. Smeal, $141,000.

ROYALTON

• Wolcottsville Road, Connie L. Weiler; Kelly A. Urtel to David Waters, $62,500.

SOMERSET

• 1641 Quaker Road, Melissa M. Zeitz; Kenneth S. Poole to US Bank, $69,879.

• Somerset Drive, Ray D. Fitch; Linda C. Fitch to Jeri L. Linderman; Herbert A. Linderman, $31,500.

TOWN OF LOCKPORT Highest price: $775,000 Average price: $204,936 Median price: $150,000 Number of Sales: 11

• Glendale Drive, Mueller Properties to Georgian Lane Apartments, $775,000.

• 5512 Hartford Drive, Robert Hugar; Nancy Hugar to Robert W. Luff, $239,900.

• Ridge Road, Sandra Preston Loesch; Christopher Loesch to Marlene Nadel; Todd E. Nadel, $209,000.

• 6803 Erica Lane, Michael Swanson; Lindsay Swanson; Lindsay E. Swanson; Michael M. Swanson to Thomas A. Hoffman, $172,500.

• North Canal Road, John J. Ellegate to Robert A. Proefrock; April D. Proefrock, $155,500.

• Niagara St., Ann M. White; Earl C. White Jr. to Joseph Filippelli; Brianna Hunt, $150,000.

• Erna Drive, William M. Carosella to Roger W. Covell; Linda B. Covell, $138,000.

• Bowmiller Road, F. Paul Weitzsacker; Mary Ellen Weitzsacker; Frederick P. Weitzsacker to David F. Hinton, $123,000.

• Strauss Road, Rodney K. Horner to Barbara L. Fox, $104,900.

• Sherman Drive, Ronald A. Sutton; Margaret F. Sutton to Justin P. Walck; Kristin M. Leszkowicz, $97,500.

• Akron Road, Kathryn A. Dorazio; Daniel S. Dorazio to Thomas W. Mangine Jr., $89,000.

First Niagara Financial Group appointed Paul Cronin senior vice president, senior managing director, capital markets. Cronin was regional head of corporate banking for Northeast at HSBC Bank USA. Cronin earned a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Business at the University College Dublin and a bachelor’s degree from the University College Dublin. He also qualified as an Illinois CPA and fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland.



The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, a national accounting association, elected Joseph M. Falbo Jr. of Grand Island, president-elect. His one-year term began on June 1, 2014. Falbo, CPA and CGMA, is a partner and member of the executive committee at Tronconi Segarra & Associates in Williamsville. He has been a member of the Society since 1994 and is a current member of the Buffalo Chapter. He holds a bachelor’s degree in from Niagara University.



Buffalo General Medical Center appointed Vi-Anne Antrum vice president and chief nursing officer. Antrum was the assistant director of nursing at the Erie County Medical Center. Antrum is a dual master’s graduate from the University of Phoenix and received her bachelor’s from Daemen College.



Buffalo First Wealth Management in West Seneca named Allen Dembski chief operating officer. Dembski was a financial adviser for Waddell & Reed, a national investment firm, for the past seven years. He is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo State.



Philpac Corporation named Martin J. Dziwulski director of sales. Dziwulski has an MBA from Medaile College, as well as his bachelor’s degree, and two associates degrees from Bryant and Stratton College. He was with SimplexGrinnell.



Amherst Chamber of Commerce appointed Kim Whelan executive director of the Small Business Division. Whelan has been on the staff of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce since 2009 previously as director of member relations. She attended the University.



CCS Oncology welcomed Dr. Haider Khadim, a board certified medical oncologist, to its practice. Khadim received his medical degree from King Edward Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan. He completed his residency in internal medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University and a fellowship at SUNY Upstate Medical University.

The Northstar Companies, a debt collection solution provider, named Barbara Crean president, client operations and David Evtimovski president, collection operations. Previously senior vice president, client relations, Crean has been with the company for 12 years. Evtimovski, with the company for six years, was previously vice president collection operations. Also, the company named Nicholas Hinman vice president, collection operations. Hinman previously was director, collection operations. He has been with the company for six years.

Kei Advisors promoted Garett K. Gough to assistant vice president. Gough earned dual bachelor’s degrees from the University at Buffalo. Also, the agency named Gregory J. Rhoads research analyst. Rhoads previously was with Citigroup. He earned his bachelor’s degree and MBA from the University at Buffalo.



Trellis Marketing named Kristin Derby a graphic designer. Derby most recently was a designer for 360 Magazine in Syracuse. She graduated from Syracuse University and Whitman School of Management.

Eric Mower + Associates appointed Erinn Newman as senior strategic planner. Newman served as director of the OPEN Savings Program at American Express. She received a bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary, and an MBA from The University of Virginia.



The Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity, located at Stella Niagara, appointed Phillip Cunningham development coordinator in the office of advancement. Cunningham is a graduate of Canisius College.

The Martin Group promoted ​Dave Riley to creative director and Lianne Coogan to senior art director. Riley, who previously was associate creative director at the agency, will lead the Seneca Casino team. He graduated from SUNY Buffalo State. Coogan, who will also serve on the Seneca team, was previously art director. Coogan is a SUNY Fredonia graduate.



People Inc. promoted Carrie Grant to family care/second family program director. She is a graduate from SUNY Buffalo State.

A little less than two years ago, Gregory D. Wasson, the chief executive of Walgreen, sought a series of tax breaks from Illinois, where his company is based.

“We are proud of our Illinois heritage,” he said at the time. “Just as our stores and pharmacies are health and daily living anchors for the communities we serve, we as a company are now recommitted to serving as an economic anchor for northeastern Illinois.”

The state gave Walgreen $46 million in corporate income tax credits for 10 years in exchange for a pledge to create 500 jobs and invest in upgrading its offices. The state also provided $625,000 in training money and $875,000 in other tax incentives.

Wasson’s actions, however, could soon run counter to his words. The same chief executive who said he was so “proud of our Illinois heritage” is now considering moving the company’s headquarters to Switzerland as part of a merger with Alliance Boots, a European drugstore chain.

Why? To lower Walgreen’s tax bill even further.

Alarmingly, dozens of large U.S. companies are contemplating the increasingly popular tax-skirting tactic known as an inversion. Under the strategy, companies merge with foreign rivals in countries with lower tax rates and then reincorporate there while still enjoying the benefits of doing a large part of their business in the United States.

AbbVie, a drug company spun off from Abbott Laboratories, is in talks to merge with its rival Shire, based in Ireland, Europe’s equivalent of a tax haven. Medtronic announced plans to merge with Covidien, also based in Ireland. Similarly, Pfizer sought to buy AstraZeneca, based in Britain, where the tax rate is lower than it is in the U.S., but AstraZeneca’s board rejected that offer.

In Walgreen’s case, an inversion would be an affront to U.S. taxpayers. The company, which also owns the Duane Reade chain in New York, reaps almost a quarter of its $72 billion in revenue directly from the government; it received $16.7 billion from Medicare and Medicaid last year.

“It is unconscionable that Walgreen is considering this tax dodge – especially in light of the billions of dollars it receives from U.S. taxpayers every year,” Nell Geiser, associate director of Change to Win Retail Initiatives, a union-financed consumer advocacy group, said in a statement.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, called it “unfair and deeply unpatriotic if the company moves offshore while continuing to make its money here, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab for its tax avoidance.”

According to Americans for Tax Fairness, a move by Walgreen to Switzerland would most likely cost U.S. taxpayers about $4 billion over five years. Illinois taxpayers would also be hurt. The company’s tax rate would be cut to 20 percent as part of Alliance Boots from about 31 percent now.

Interestingly, Alliance Boots, which was originally based in Britain, moved to Switzerland in 2008 in large part to lower its tax rate.

A spokesman for Walgreen did not respond directly to the contentions of Americans for Tax Fairness, but he did say, “Our management team and board are making significant progress evaluating the proposed transaction determining the timing and structure, the combined management team, additional synergy and cost reduction initiatives and potential changes to our future capital structure.”

While it is not illegal for a U.S. company to seek to lower its tax rate by merging with a foreign company, such deals have large policy implications. If Walgreen were to move, would CVS Caremark be far behind? What about other companies? CVS’ tax rate was about 34 percent last year, which would clearly make it less competitive than a reincorporated Walgreen, both in terms of pricing drugs and attracting investors.

A bevy of large investors is pressing Walgreen to make the move abroad. Jana Partners, Och-Ziff Capital Management, Goldman Sachs and Corvex held a meeting in Paris with Walgreen in hope of persuading it to move. Goldman has tried to distance itself from the debate by publicly saying that it did not take a position at the meeting.

All of these inversions – driven by lower rates and, in some cases, cash that U.S. companies have overseas that they don’t want to bring home at current rates – highlight the need for corporate tax overhauls.

Both Democrats and Republicans say they support lower corporate tax rates and the elimination of loopholes that would make tax inversions less attractive.

Several short-term proposals have been made to restrict inversions while larger corporate tax overhaul is sorted out, if at all. The current law allows a company to reincorporate abroad if it acquires a foreign company in a transaction that transfers more than 20 percent of the shares to foreign owners. President Barack Obama has sought to raise the threshold to 50 percent.

While many Democrats appear to support a short-term solution, some Republicans, arguing that a Band-Aid approach could have unintended consequences, instead want to address inversions only in the context of an overall corporate tax overhaul bill.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat from, Illinois, told the Chicago Tribune last week: “I am troubled by American corporations that are willing to give up on this country and move their headquarters for a tax break. It really speaks to your commitment.”

Given all of the benefits Walgreen has received as a U.S. corporate citizen, it remains curious why Wasson would consider a new passport.

One Walgreen shareholder, CtW Investment Group, which holds less than 1 percent of Walgreen’s shares, may have put it best in a letter to the company’s chairman, saying, “We fear that there could be political and reputational risks following an inversion, which would pose a clear contradiction with Walgreen’s quintessentially American brand.”

Anna Newell Jones knew she was living well beyond her means when the Great Recession struck: She was $24,000 in debt. What surprised her, though, was how quickly she climbed out of that hole during the agonizingly slow recovery.

She had a lot of work to do to cut costs, start saving and stop being what she called “a slave to the economy.”

Before the Great Recession, most of her $28,000 annual salary as a court clerk went to paying the mortgage on a one-bedroom duplex in Denver. She had turned to credit cards to pay for fancy dinners, vacations, furniture and more.

“I had always thought that a recession was something that happened a long time ago and it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime,” Jones, 34, said. “So it really was a big wake-up call as far as ‘Can I afford the life that I’m living?’ ”

She learned she couldn’t.

The Great Recession ended five years ago this month, but the severe pain and fear it caused continue to haunt Americans and have led to major changes in how Jones and many others spend and save.

Baby boomers who had hoped to retire remain on the job to rebuild battered 401(k) plans. College graduates live with their parents as they work at low-paying jobs and look for better ones. U.S. companies outside the banking sector sat on a record $1.6 trillion in cash at the end of last year, afraid to expand for fear the economy will tank again.

More than anything, the recession triggered a simple but profound change – people are spending less and saving more. That’s a key reason the recovery has been so sluggish, economists said; consumers account for about two-thirds of all economic activity.

Their adjusted behavior, though, has had a positive effect as well. Many Americans have repaired their finances by ending bad habits developed in the years leading up to the recession.

Soaring housing prices in the mid-2000s combined with easy-to-get loans spurred U.S. households to borrow at record levels. By 2008, they had piled up an all-time high of $12.7 trillion in mortgage, credit card and other debt.

At the same time, the percentage of disposable income that people saved plunged to a historic low as rock-bottom interest rates discouraged them from keeping money in the bank.

With such lopsided finances, the housing market collapse and subsequent economic crash sent many people into a frightening world of underwater mortgages, foreclosures, unpaid credit card bills and debt collectors.

Even people who avoided those problems faced financial trauma as the value of their homes, retirement plans and investments plummeted.

“The crash was more or less inevitable,” said William Emmons, a senior economic adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “The rate at which people were borrowing and spending was just really headed for trouble.”

Altered habits from the searing experience had a major effect. Households have reduced their overall debt by more than $1 trillion from the record high. And the personal savings rate of 4 percent now is double the all-time low hit in 2005, though a survey released Monday found that many people still don’t have enough money put away to deal with a lost job or other emergency.

In a recent Gallup poll, Americans said they preferred saving to spending 62 percent to 34 percent, the widest margin since the company began asking the question in 2001.

“One of the things I’ve been concentrating on is putting money aside so I’ll be prepared,” said Eric Rossman, 38, of Wappingers Falls, who works in computer security.

The mortgage on his two-bedroom condominium remains underwater. And with two children – one requiring two heart surgeries – Rossman and his wife have learned they need to save for a rainy day.

“We’ve become much more focused on having enough money should an emergency happen,” he said, noting they’ve cut down on eating out and other “frivolous spending.”

“You still have to have your occasional night out,” Rossman said. “But it’s not every meal.”

Before his first son was born in 2011, Rossman and his wife had about $2,000 saved, and they sometimes would dip into that money for routine expenses. Now they’ve got $10,000 in the bank.

Households are in a much different place than they were five years ago, and the changes could be long-lasting, said Fabian T. Pfeffer, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

“What happened during the Great Recession in terms of wealth and saving was so earth-shattering, it’s hard to believe that didn’t change attitudes long-term,” he said.

In Denver, Jones was saddled with $24,000 in debt and went on what she called a “spending fast” in 2009. By eliminating all but the most vital purchases, she paid off all her bills over 15 months. Then she started saving.

“I was able to recession-proof my life by taking control of my finances,” said Jones, who has since married, had a baby and bought a $169,000 house in Denver with a 20 percent down payment to replace the duplex she had bought with no money down at the height of the housing boom.

“Even now, if the economy tanked again, we’d still be secure in our financial situation,” she said.

As the economy and her own finances have improved the last few years, she has loosened her spending. She sold her duplex to help with the home purchase. But, she said, “I always am worried I’ll slip back into my old ways.”

Jones has tried to prevent that by blogging about her experiences at AndThenWeSaved.com. She’s one of dozens of people who have taken to the Internet to chronicle efforts at cutting their debt since the Great Recession.

Because so many people found themselves in dire financial condition, “a lot of the shame was lifted and we were able to have a conversation about it,” Jones said.

The Great Depression in the 1930s had a similar effect on people’s spending habits, producing a generation of frugal Americans traumatized by the experience of bread lines and bank failures.

The 2007-09 recession was the worst downturn since then. But even though the scars remain, there are signs that some bad habits could return as the memories fade.

Total household debt rose $129 billion from January through March, the first time since the recession it had increased for three straight quarters, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

PITTSBURGH – After more than a decade of eluding phone calls, a Brighton Heights man said his experience with a third-party collection agency hired to recoup his student loan debt went from marginally annoying to borderline cyber stalking.

Even for loan scofflaws there are rules collection agencies must follow, and two government agencies are working to make that better known.

Clarifying that laws outlined in the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act of 1977 also apply to collection attempts made through digital media has been a priority for the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, said Christopher Koegel, assistant director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection’s financial practices division.

For example, full and honest disclosure of identity and the intent to collect a debt is mandatory for collection agencies.

It also prohibits contacting third parties without prior consent from the debtor or a court unless they’re seeking location information for the debtor. The act bans disclosing debt obligations to third parties; contacting debtors after 8 p.m. and before 9 a.m.; directly contacting consumers who have attorneys handling the debt; making any false or misleading statements; using obscene or profane language; and using threats of violence to collect.

Individual debt collectors found in violation of the act could face fines of $1,000 per violation – money that goes directly to the debtor.

Last year the federal agency initiated or resolved nine debt collection cases, obtained injunctions against agencies or individuals in seven cases, and referred two cases to the Justice Department for civil penalties.

Yet, a 2014 report says last year the commission received 204,464 debt collection complaints, up from 202,616 in 2012. Thirty-eight percent involved collectors misrepresenting the type of debt, amount or status; 19.7 percent were failure to identify as a debt collector and 16.6 percent involved repeated calls to third parties.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which only began enforcing debt collector complaints last July, has handled 30,300 debt collection complaints in less than a year. Twenty-three percent of those surrounded collector’s communication tactics, 8 percent involved improper contact and 13 percent were concerns about disclosure and verification of debts.

The Brighton Heights man asked to keep his identify secret because his student loan debt has ballooned from around $80,000 in 1998 to more than $270,000 following years without payment. In 2012, he hired an attorney and accountant to set up a payment plan. He believed the worst was over.

That is, until a picture taken in May at Regent Square restaurant Square Cafe with PBS personality Rick Sebak was posted to Facebook and shared more than 50 times within a friends list of more than 5,000 people.

Within days, a person who said he was looking for the man contacted Square Cafe and left a phone number that traced back to Salem, N.H.-based collection agency Windham Professionals Inc.

“I don’t understand what my rights are. I didn’t know I had any,” the Brighton Heights man said.

If a debt collector researched Square Cafe by becoming his Facebook friend under false pretenses or by connecting with individuals on his friends list under a false pretense, the company is in violation of disclosure laws and laws prohibiting contact with third parties associated with the debtor without prior consent, Koegel said.

DETROIT – The deeper General Motors digs into its vast portfolio of vehicles, the more safety problems it finds.

The announcement last week that GM would recall another 8.4 million cars and trucks for a range of defects appears to be a direct result of the company’s newfound vigilance to rooting out safety issues.

But even as GM addresses its safety shortcomings with a beefed-up roster of product investigators, the spiraling number of new recalls – GM has surpassed 29 million worldwide this year – is threatening to undermine the company’s reputation for quality.

“We’re hitting unprecedented numbers and it’s reasonable for people to start asking, ‘When and where will it end?’ ” said Karl Brauer, an analyst with the research firm Kelley Blue Book.

The vast majority of this year’s recalls for GM have come after the company admitted in February that it failed for years to address a deadly defect in the Chevrolet Cobalt and other small cars.

Yet while GM is now issuing recalls almost every week, the unsettling reality is that the company might never have discovered some of the defects without the Cobalt crisis.

Among the vehicles recalled Monday are 8.2 million cars that have faulty ignition systems that could suddenly cause the vehicles to lose power.

That was essentially the problem with 2.6 million recalled Cobalts and other cars linked to 13 deaths and 54 accidents. Defective ignitions have also forced the recalls in June of 3.4 million midsize cars and more than 500,000 Camaros.

And the problem is not isolated to GM cars. Chrysler last week said it, too, would recall 696,000 sport utility vehicles and minivans made between 2007 and 2009 over a concern that the ignition key might turn off the engine. The move came after federal safety regulators said in June that they were conducting a review of all the major automakers for ignition-switch problems.

GM’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, said the latest recalls were part of “the most comprehensive safety review in the history of our company.”

A company spokesman said the recalls were not being done in any particular order, but rather were ordered as soon as the relevant data was discovered. “When it was clear there was an issue, we acted,” said James Cain, the GM spokesman.

The Cobalt crisis and GM’s subsequent internal investigation shed light on years of lax safety practices. Fifteen employees have been dismissed for their roles in allowing the original ignition defect to go unrepaired for more than a decade, and regulators imposed a $35 million penalty for failing to report the problem in a timely manner.

In years past, GM usually issued recalls at a comparable rate to its competitors. But the long delay in fixing faulty ignitions in the Cobalt showed that the company avoided action in that case by viewing stalling problems as a customer convenience issue instead of a safety one.

Even as she has admitted to incompetence and neglect at the company, Barra has repeatedly denied assertions by lawmakers and safety advocates that GM had a repeated pattern of deliberately ignoring safety issues.

But since the Cobalt scandal has unfolded, the company has adopted a far more rigorous assessment process, including assigning a new vice president, Jeff Boyer, to oversee all safety activities within GM.

“We have worked aggressively to identify and address the major outstanding issues that could impact the safety of our customers,” Barra said.

Monday’s safety actions were a microcosm of the deluge of recalls that GM had done since the first ignition switch recalls in February.

GM announced six recalls in total Monday. Two were for 8.2 million cars with safety problems described as “unintended ignition key rotation.” GM said three people had died in those cars but could not tie them to the defect. The vehicles covered included the Chevrolet Malibu, model years 1997-2005; Oldsmobile Intrigue, 1998-2002; Oldsmobile Alero, 1999-2004; Pontiac Grand Am, 1999-2005; Chevrolet Impala and Monte Carlo, 2000-05; Pontiac Grand Prix, 2004-08; Cadillac CTS, 2003-2014; and Cadillac SRX, 2004-06.

Cain said the company would retrofit keys for those models with an insert that has a hole at the end rather than slots on the key. The change will increase the force needed to turn the key, so that it cannot be easily bumped out of position.

Some of the keys may be replaced rather than fixed with an insert, Cain said. GM will also modify the small ring in the vehicle that the key fits into.

The solution was an echo of a suggested fix to the Cobalt and other small cars in 2006. Aware of the issue at the time, GM sent dealers a notice suggesting that they urge customers to put an insert in the keys to make the hole smaller; a total of 474 Cobalt owners had the fix made.

Now, GM is taking no such chances.