Carlo Bonavita

When Carlo Bonavita went looking for the right home for a wine shop, he kept coming back to Tower Square. He would watch the downtown crowd move through the building — heading to court, to the office, out for a coffee — and saw an opportunity to serve people well, right where they already were. Nearly six years later, the shop he founded, Springfield Wine & Spirits Exchange, is a Metro Center fixture built on old-school service: hand-selected bottles, a wine matched to whatever’s for dinner, and curbside runs and deliveries carried straight to the office.

For Bonavita, that success is inseparable from downtown itself. The attorneys, financial advisors, and public employees who fill the towers are the same neighbors who fill his shop — and who want to see it thrive. Metro Center, as he puts it, is the hub of activity that makes a boutique like his possible.

It is also why he is watching downtown’s future so closely. Keeping anchors like the courthouse — and the daily foot traffic they bring — in Metro Center, he believes, is what lets small businesses like his keep thriving alongside the community that made them.