Biz Briefs: MountainOne Bringing All Services Together in Downtown North Adams
All together now
MountainOne Insurance is relocating from 26 Union St. in North Adams to downtown North Adams, adjacent to its Main Street headquarters location, in June 2019. Additionally, MountainOne Insurance will also relocate its Employee Benefits division, along with its partners from OneDigital, from 795 Main St. in Williamstown to the new offices at 85 Main St. in North Adams. MountainOne Investments will also be relocating back to the newly renovated and expanded 85 Main St. location. The significant investment of creating this new and improved working space in downtown North Adams enables MountainOne to bring all of its financial service offerings of banking, insurance and investments together.
The newly renovated 85 Main St. location is directly adjacent to the MountainOne Bank branch and Corporate Headquarters, located at 93 Main St. With all of its service offerings combined together, MountainOne’s customers will benefit from a convenient, one-stop, full-service experience, where its team of banking, insurance and investment professionals can completely and efficiently serve the needs of individual and commercial accounts.
"I am very pleased that MountainOne is making this significant investment in downtown North Adams to better serve our customers and as an expression of our commitment to our community. Having all three operating entities of MountainOne combined together in downtown North Adams will result in synergies within our company, customer convenience, and help to create a vibrant atmosphere throughout the downtown area," said Robert Fraser, MountainOne president and chief executive officer.
.jpg)
SVMC gift shop
Southwestern Vermont Health Care President and CEO Thomas A. Dee cut the ribbon at a new Lori’s Gifts location off the main lobby at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, Vt., earlier this month. He was accompanied by Jennifer Civello, SVHC's director of Volunteer Services, Leslie Keefe, the vice president for Corporate Development, Denise Scheps, Lori's Gifts store manager, and Sovany Trzepacz, Lori's Gifts district manager.
This is the company's first store in Vermont. They have several locations in nearby New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and nationwide. The store offers convenience items, like cell phone chargers, and quality gift items, like designer fragrances. It is open 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Berkshire Bank programs
Berkshire Bank has launched a series of new programs to bolster their commitment to diversity and inclusion both internally with its employees and externally with their customers and vendors. While it’s more common now for people to connect with technology than with a real person, with the expansion of the MyBanker program, Berkshire Bank is making sure that when customers bank with Berkshire they have access to the highest level of personalized service. The MyBanker program is designed to level the playing field and provide everyone who banks with Berkshire the "VIP treatment."
The new Storefront Program that is launching simultaneously will dive in even deeper to the community by creating a powerful place for resourcing to help neighborhoods tackle the growing wealth gap, building more authentic relationships and providing a safe space for communities to exchange ideas and encourage growth within the local economy.
Berkshire is invested in both its outward facing products and work, as well as a commitment to building its internal capacity of diversity and inclusion. It is for this reason that Berkshire also announced that this year they will be setting internal hiring goals to ensure diverse representation as well as creating a task force that tends to internal needs as well as external vendors.
"Since taking over the reins of Berkshire at the end of 2018 it has been our focus to offer products to our customers that meet our changing times. While technology has offered convenience, it has also eroded our in-person connectivity. Berkshire's new programs are set up to put communities and relationships first. We want to offer our customers the best of two worlds with the human touch of personal attention combined with all the ease and convenience technology has to offer," said Richard Marotta, CEO of Berkshire Bank.
Barnbrook expansion
To expand their service in central and northern Berkshire County, Berkshire Hathaway Barnbrook Realty will open a third sales and marketing center in a key Pittsfield location at 77 East St. This will allow their Pittsfield team of licensed professional real estate advisers to better serve central Berkshire buyers and sellers.
With an established client base in in the city, Berkshire Hathaway's advisers now have a beautiful space to serve their clientele. That team include's longtime local realty leaders Nicholas Sanginetti, Buddy Lewis, Trish Petricca, Mary and Tony Blair, Mark Charland and Adam Perusse. The Blairs, under their previous company Tony Blair Real Estate, were at the top of the Central Berkshire real estate market for decades before they joined the Berkshire Hathaway Barnbrook Realty team in 2018.
Maureen White-Kirkby, co-owner of Barnbrook Realty, said, "We are excited to have a home for our central county team. The new location is the next natural step for the company as we continue to grow and expand north from our regional sales and marketing center in downtown Great Barrington. We opened the sales center in Lenox in 2016 which proved a major success. We are always searching for areas in which we can improve on our consistently high customer satisfaction. We will continue to serve our central Berkshire clients with the amazing team we are building. We are certain that we will be an asset to the Pittsfield market and community."
Barnbrook was established in 1976 and named for its first office in a small barn beside a babbling brook on Route 7. Today Barnbrook has three regional sales and marketing centers with more than 20 agents and is the exclusive affiliate in Berkshire County of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, a Warren Buffet company. This allows Barnbrook alone to offer sellers unprecedented access to a global market of buyers and immediate syndication from the prestigious Berkshire Hathaway website into publications such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Mansion Global, The Robb Report and many more.
