New York HVAC Insider News

City Honors John Betlem Heating & Cooling For 70 Years In Rochester.

On Sunday, August 21, several hundred customers, vendors and friends gathered for a picnic at Ellison Park to help John Betlem Heating & Cooling celebrate its 70th anniversary. The guests included Carlos Carballada, neighborhood and business development commissioner for the City of Rochester.

Carballada came to the event to present the Betlem family with a plaque expressing the city’s appreciation its seven decades as a City of Rochester business.

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Carballada also congratulated the Betlem family for its successful transition through generations. He noted that the company is currently in its third generation of managers, although a total of five generations have worked for the company.

CEO Paul Betlem explains that his grandfather helped his father in the business’ early days. Also, Paul’s grandchildren and his brother Robert’s grandchildren have begun working for the company summers while going to college. Robert Betlem is company president.

Currently, John Betlem Heating & Cooling employs 54 people; 12 of whom are members of the Betlem family. The management team is comprised with Paul and Robert Betlem’s children, with Kathy Betlem at the helm as vice president and general manager. Paul Betlem describes the current managers as, “the best managers that have ever been at the wheel.” He gives the current management team all the credit for growing the company and diversifying it into such areas as Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® and renewable/sustainable energy.

In 1941, Dutch immigrant John Betlem, then 36, quit his job as a tinsmith at Bausch & Lomb to start his own business. The new business, Betlem Roofing, evolved into John Betlem Heating and Cooling.

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