Tyler Herrick: Entrepreneur like my parents

By Zander & Mark Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer & Editor

Queensbury Hotel general manager and Spruce Hospitality co-owner Tyler Herrick says, “Both of my parents were entrepreneurs. They left corporate America in the early 80s.

“My mom started her own little gift shop in the town I grew up in, Topsfield, Massachusetts, about halfway between Boston and Newburyport right on Route 1 there.

“And my father left Stop and Shop after all those years. And he started his own kind of office suites investment company. So I kind of always had that in my blood that I want to do something different.

“I spent 14 years at The Sagamore kind of soaking up as much as I could,” eventually as second-in-command to Glens Falls-born General Manager Tom Guay.

“And it just all came together literally just having conversations with Zack [Moore] as a friend and wanting to do other things. Ed [Moore] wanting to do other things, because he always wants his next project and stuff to do. And it all kind of worked out.

“And I looked at it that Spruce was the kind of stuff I was bringing to the table — with the hospitality — and how we as a team can make it something bigger.”

Mr. Herrick said he’s always taken a pretty mature approach. “My wife will make fun of me. I was the one that, you know, my friends when I was in high school called me ‘Dad’. I was always thinking, what am I doing when I’m 25? What am I doing when I’m 30?”

Still, he said after graduating, “all my friends went west. They were ski bums for a few years out in Jackson Hole, Breckenridge and all that.”

Mr. Herrick said he was tempted, but “my wife — girlfriend at the time — got a job as a tenure track teacher over in Corinth. She’s born and raised Glens Falls.”

He says he initially told her, “Well I’ll go there [out West] for a little bit. And she said you go there —it’s kind of like my little Good Will Hunting moment.

“So I said, allright, boys, you go have fun. I’m going to go to Glens Falls, and see where that takes me. And it’s been great.”

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