The Bank of Greene County bought a small piece of the bank's history on Monday.
The Catskill-based bank closed on a building at 345 Main Street in downtown Catskill — the site of where the 133-year-old bank got its start. The bank purchased the federal-style bank branch from TrustCo Bank for $385,000.
CEO Don Gibson said the Bank of Greene County plans to spend a few million dollars on renovations, which will start in the spring. The office will eventually house about 40 to 50 administrative employees as the bank expands.
"Most banks when they get larger build a big office out somewhere with a big parking lot around it," Gibson said. "We have five buildings [in the downtown], this will be our sixth building in Catskill. We’ve been buying older buildings, renovating them back to their original looks and modernizing them."
Those five buildings the Bank of Greene County has taken over in downtown Catskill in recent years:
- An operations center at 288 Main St.
- An administrative center at 302 Main St.
- A lending center at 341 Main St.
- A branch and investment center at 425 Main St.
- And last year the bank opened a new customer service center at 491 Main St. The center was originally meant for Etsy, which has a call center in Hudson, but it pulled out when business got uncertain during the pandemic.
It’s part of Gibson’s plan to have the bank and staff as part of the community, even as it has grown to over 200 employees, instead of isolated in an office park.
"We have a lot of young people who love being in the village and going to restaurants and shops," Gibson said. "If we took our bank and went in the middle of an office park we would ruin the culture."
The building at 345 Main St. is a big part of the bank's culture.
In April 1889, the founders of what's now The Bank of Greene County rented out an office in the basement of 345 Main St., below the headquarters of Tanners National Bank, a competitor and then the community’s dominant commercial lender. The bank paid $30 per year in rent plus a small share of the building’s upkeep.
In 1910, the structure was replaced with the federal-style building that stands there now, designed by architect Marcus T. Reynolds, who is famous for the D&H Building — now known as the SUNY System Administration Building — in downtown Albany.
TrustCo owned the branch for over 40 years after acquiring Tanners National Bank. Gibson reached out to TrustCo Bank CEO Robert J. McCormick a few months ago when he saw that the branch was only open two days a week. He offered to buy the building if McCormick ever consolidated the office.
As part of the deal, Gibson said they will be renovating the building with a respect for history, including the President's Room, which showcases oil paintings of former presidents of Tanners National Bank.
"Over the last three years we've added 1.5 new positions per month, so [we're] going to need the space," Gibson said. "When the opportunity came up, we knew we had to buy it. This thing is a beauty."
The Bank of Greene County has been growing rapidly in the last few years, and surpassed $2 billion in assets last year. The holding company, Greene County Bancorp, which includes The Bank of Greene County and the Greene Commercial Bank, had $2.68 billion in deposits at the end of June 2021.
To meet that growth, Gibson said the bank plans to add human resources staff and operations jobs to its team of 202 employees to better service its customers. The company has added about 25 jobs in the last 18 months to beef up the infrastructure.
A big part of the growth has been from its municipal cash management side of the business, as well as commercial lending.
Overall, the bank has 17 offices spread across Greene, Albany, Columbia and Ulster counties, with operations and lending centers located in the Capital Region and the Hudson Valley.