One of the most successful businessmen in the Liverpool area, Joseph J. Janowski, has been elected to the Syracuse Chiefs board of directors. The Chiefs baseball club — which is playing in its 52nd season of community ownership – is the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals.
Janowski’s membership on the Board of Directors of the Community Baseball Club of Central New York, Inc. took effect in April and was officially announced by the ball club last week. Janowski is the managing general partner of the Bayberry Plaza and Clay Medical Center. He replaces Jay Wason Jr. on the Chiefs board.
Chiefs President Bill Dutch praised Janowski’s many and varied business interests and community service projects. “Joe Janowski’s activity in the community is important to the Syracuse area,” Dutch said. “He provides a wide range of experience to our board.”
Janowski serves as president of the Tri-R Neighborhood Pharmacy chain, a group of eight independent drug stores with locations in New York and Florida. He’s past president of the Onondaga County Pharmaceutical Society and serves as a financial board advisor for Bishop Ludden High School. Janowski also has served as president of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. In 2007 he was named “Business Man of the Year” by the local Chamber.
A pharmacist by trade, Janowski is also real estate broker, developer and private pilot.
He joins several other Liverpool area men on the Chiefs’ 24-member board including past president Ron Gersbacher, Assistant Treasurer Frank Mento, and Crandall “Chip” Melvin III.
Janowski’s devotion to the sport of baseball has been displayed overseas as well as here in Syracuse. He is involved in the construction of a new Little League baseball stadium in Warsaw, Poland. The Poland National Youth Baseball Foundation was established in 1989 and Janowski’s ancestral homeland became the first country in Eastern Europe to establish Little League baseball.
More than two decades ago, he helped secure funding for the first Little League field in Poland. That diamond was dedicated as “Friendship Field” in June 1990 in Jaslo, a rural town in south-eastern Poland.
