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Friday, April 4, 2008April 4 2008Bank Of Cooperstown Officially Opens Doors Income Ahead Of Projections, President Says  By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN At 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 2, well-wishers gathered in front of 73 Chestnut St. to make it official. With Mayor Carol B. Waller at his side, Bank of Cooperstown President Scott D. White cut the yellow ribbon with a set of big shears. Cooperstown’s newest financial institution was thus launched. Inside, the bank’s localness was evident. The coffee and pinwheel sandwiches were from The Stagecoach. The pastries, from Schneider’s. The fudge, from Tin Bin Alley. The mayor called it “a great addition to the community. I wish them success and long life.” “People like to be able to go into a bank and talk to a decisionmaker, where they can get good-quality, fast, local service,” said Robert Ranger, West Winfield, former regional president of Fleet Bank’s Mohawk Valley operations who is on the boards of the Bank of Cooperstown and its parent, USNY Bank. “All we have to do is a good job, to smile and get back to people,” he said. The bank’s founder and chairman of the board, Wall Street investor Robert F. O’Neill, who has a summer home in Cooperstown, used the terms “small-town feel” and “local touch” last May in describing the new bank to potential investors. Michael Moffat, vice chairman of the board, harkened back to Howard J. Aufmuth, the prototypical small-town bank manager who held sway for years at First National Bank of Cooperstown, before it was absorbed by Banker’s Trust. In exploring founding a local bank, O’Neill was deterred by the amount of energy absorbed by the regulatory process and the back-office challenges, but he discovered in Capitol Bancorp, founded in 1988 and based in Lansing, Mich., a model that he determined would work here. Capitol Bancorp handles the regulatory process, the accounting and other back-office activities. Its banks – Cooperstown’s is one of 64 under the Capitol Bancorp umbrella, mostly single-location entities – have a local on-site president and management team with full decision-making authority, reporting to a local board of directors, in this case O’Neill, Moffat and Ranger. There is also a 14-person Board of Community Directors. Community Director Jeff Haggerty, owner of Haggerty ACE Hardware in Cooperstown and Delhi, said the new bank’s concentration on commercial loans – “that’s what I do” – is what enticed him to get involved. White, he added, processed Haggerty’s first commercial loan back in 1992. Determined to proceed, O’Neill – his daughter, Roberta, is Mrs. Charles B. Kieler of Cherry Valley – formed the USNY Bank, intending to make the Bank of Cooperstown its sole subsidiary. In the process, however, he met banker Mike Briggs of Geneva, who encouraged O’Neill to participate in the formation of Geneva-based Bank of The Finger Lakes. With Briggs in place, that processed moved along more quickly, and the Geneva bank opened last Aug. 6. The bank had a “soft opening” in December, but the vault and the ATM machine had not yet arrived. White postponed the grand opening until the new bank could provide everything a customer would expect from a full-service bank. Capitol Bancorp has not been immune from the ebb and flow that has characterized American banking in recent decades – on March 31, for instance, it sold four of its Michigan affiliates, according to reporter Jeremy Steele, who covers the company for the Lansing State Journal. However, Steele said, that is a reflection of Michigan’s dipping economy. Beyond its New York entities, Capitol Bancorp has tended to focus on California, the Southwest and Texas, he continued, “all the places that, if you’re a bank, you want to be right now.” “I firmly believe community banks serve an important role in allowing local economies to grow,” said Terry J. McEvoy, an Oppenheimer & Co. senior analyst who has followed Capitol Bancorp for years. “At a true local bank,” he said, “decisions will be made quickly and they will be made locally – compared to a bank like KeyCorp, where the decision may have to go to Cleveland and it may take a few days.” Capitol Bancorp, valued at $350 million, has a winning strategy, he said: “It identifies markets where there’s a need for a community bank; or it identifies successful bankers … who are willing to partner up.” The company’s stock price experience “phenomenal” growth right through 2006, when a deep recession hit the auto-making state, McEvoy said. It discovered more than half of its loans were located in the Midwest – 85 percent of its bad loans – and the company responded by shifting loans – up to 55 percent now – to more prosperous regions, he said. White, the bank president, told the post-ribbon-reception that the operation is running ahead of projections. “We’re doing great financially,” he said, “and that’s great for a startup.” Groff Sister Olympic Triathlon Contender  By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN Lauren, whose “The Monsters of Templeton” novel is being widely and favorably reviewed nationwide, isn’t the only one of the Cooperstown Groff sisters who’s living her dream. “Four years ago, this was my ultimate dream,” said Sarah Groff, Loren’s younger sister, in an interview from Santa Monica, Calif., where she is mounting the final push to represent the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. “It’s been an incredible journey.” Sarah, the younger daughter by 14 months of Gerald and Jeannine Groff, is one of the top four female triathletes in the country right now. (The Groffs’ oldest child, Adam, is a physician.) So far, only Laura Bennett, who won the trials in Beijing last September, is guaranteed one of three spots on the U.S. team. The other two will be chosen based on their rankings at the Olympic Team Trials April 19 in Tuscaloosa, then at the Hyvee Triathlon June 22 in Des Moines. Just listening to Sarah talk about her typical day is exhausting. She’s up at 5 a.m. for her “first breakfast,” toast with almond butter, a banana and coffee, then swims from 6 to 8. After a “second breakfast” at 9 – egg whites, vegetables, brown rice, water – she takes a three-hour bike ride, followed by a one-hour run. Lunch is a turkey sandwich (or other lean meat), vegetables, fruit and nuts, followed by a “very sport-specific” workout in the afternoon aimed at strengthening the “core” muscles – the back and stomach. From 4 to 5, Sarah takes an “easy bike ride” to flush the lactic acid out of her muscles. Supper at 6:30 or so is likewise Spartan: vegetables, a grilled boneless chicken breast, more brown rice. She’ll watch a movie – “Juno,” among the recent ones – and TiVo allows her to watch favorite shows. By 9 p.m., she’s in bed; after all, 5 a.m. comes pretty quickly after that kind of day. Once every two weeks, a day off. As you might expect, she “sleeps a lot” on the day of leisure, does some yoga and stretching to keep limber, grocery shops, does her laundry “and all the things I’m normally too tired to do.” Sarah, 26, was born on Nov. 27, 1981, in Hanover, N.H., and raised on Cooperstown’s Lake Street. She joined the Clark Sports Center swimming team as soon as she could, at age 7 or 8, and swam on the boys’ team at CCS before transferring to Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts her junior year. There she competed in her first triathlon, borrowing brother Adam’s bike and riding it in one gear in that particular leg. Angus Mackie, she said, was the first triathlete she ever met. (Incidentally, she’s never done the Glimmerglass Triathlon: Swimming is her favorite part, and the local event features canoeing instead.) At Middlebury College, she double-majored in conservation biology and studio art, graduating cum laude, and with highest honors in art. She swam freestyle all four years, earning All-New England and All-American honors. “My parents never put any constraints on what we were capable of,” she recalled of her Cooperstown girlhood. “It made us kids into dreamers.” At the Athens Olympics shortly after graduating, Sarah was inspired by triathlete Susan Williams. So when came home, she crossed the country to USA Triathletes in Boulder, Colo., to train under Susan’s coach Siri Lindley, herself a top triathlete in 2001 and 2002. (USAT, with 90,000 members, sponsors 2,000 events annually and is charged with preparing U.S. athletes for the international competition.) The highlight of Sarah’s career so far was winning the International Triathlon Union’s Pan American Cup in Geneva in 2007. Triathletes may be like the rest of us, only – listening to Sarah – a lot tougher. Asked about her heroes, she replied, “my family members. They’re very strong, amazing people.” In addition to her physician father and brother, her mother, a former teacher who is now a physician’s assistant, and her novelist sister, her grandfather, in his 80s, is still working 10-12 hours a day. Her sports hero? Loretta Harrop, the Australian triathlete who competed in 2000 in her brother’s memory, after he was killed by a drunk driver. Despite her athletic prowess and her struggling overcoming that personal hardship, Harrop is “one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet.” Sarah’s mental toughness is suggested by her response to a question about the “high point” of her career so far. Racing in Des Moines last summer, she fell and fractured her elbow. She was due to compete in Edmonton, Alberta, the following weekend. Despite everyone urging her to take a break, and even though she could barely move her arm for a few days, she competed, and “it was the best race of my life, despite the pain. I was able to find an inner strength I didn’t know existed.” She placed sixth, in one of the best races of her World Cup career. Bank’s President Has Roots In Rural Life COOPERSTOWN When Scott D. White got out of Cornell in 1982, he joined the Farm Credit Service, going from farm to farm, conferring with clients. “They ranged from very astute farmers, who knew their cost structure and planned ahead,” said White, president of the new Bank of Cooperstown, “to the bachelor brothers” – they shall remain unnamed – “whose dog slept on the hood of my car while I was inside talking to them.” It was retail banking in the trenches – or furrows, if you will – but much in White’s background made the Farm Credit Service a logical first professional step, and one he must have enjoyed. His eyes light up these 24 years later as he reminisces. “It was meeting clients at their place of business, sitting at the kitchen table, talking about needs for the next year – delivering a commodity in a personal way,” said White. That’s the sensibility he plans to bring to Cooperstown’s latest financial institution, where you can drive by most any day and see him through the plate-glass window on the front, talking on the phone or tapping away on his laptop. “This is a bank where decisions are made right in this office,” he said, looking around the freshly renovated quarters, redecorated in soothing browns and greens. Scott White uses the carpet as an example of local decisionmaking. When he went out to Krazy Tom’s in Hartwick Seminary to pick it, he had to reassure owner Charlie Contro that, yes, he didn’t have to double-check his decision with the corporate office. The new bank’s president was raised in Voorheesville, the suburb of Albany, but he worked every summer from age 9 to 18 at his grandfather’s Christmas tree farm in Colebrook, N.H., near the Canadian border, an operation that harvested 7,000 to 10,000 evergreens a year. His father was a Cooperstown Extension agent. So a degree in agricultural business from Cornell just seemed to make sense. The farming connection was further strengthened when he met Lori Stalter, raised on her family’s farm in Franklin, while skiing at Scotch Mountain. Her parents, Ken and Lois Stalter, have retired from the Route 357 operation, which is now farmed by Lori’s brother Shane. The Whites, parents of 13-year-old twin boys, Alex and Troy, seventh-graders at Unatego, are marking their 25th anniversary in October. (Coincidentally, bank Vice President Michelle Catan and her husband, Paul, have triplets, Riley, McKenzie and Christopher, 5. When Scott White’s mentor at Farm Credit – “a very, very good mentor” – moved to NBT, he soon asked his protege to follow him. White joined NBT in 1987 as branch manager in Sidney, but soon found himself managing the Small Business Banking Department. In 1999, he left banking for a period, serving as CFO of a Sidney-based business, then joined Wilber Bank in 2005 as a vice president. Still, it was hard not to be intrigued when he learned that Bob O’Neill, the Wall Street investor who has a summer home on Cooperstown’s Lake Road, was planning the modern version of a small-town bank locally. “You’re starting a new business,” White explained. “You’re in on the ground floor.” One thing led to another and, on March 19, 2007, he joined the prospective Bank of Cooperstown and within a few days was participating in presentation to raise local investment. Busy months followed, ferrying the bank building – the former Ron Mitchell Antiques, one of the few buildings in town with associated parking – through the village’s planning and zoning process, hiring the staff, and a “soft launch” in December. So far, so good. “We’re running a little ahead of where we had hoped to be,” he said. Year Later,Chris Spurs Good Deeds  Saturday, April 5, is the first anniversary of the car crash that killed CCS senior Chris Gentile en route to his waiting mother at Holy Thursday mass. But, if anything, efforts to bring some good from a community tragedy are gaining momentum. At the PTO’s Crayon Carnival Saturday, March 28, “Click The Grab” T-shirts were being sold to benefit the Chris Gentile Scholarship Fund. An arrow from that phrase – it means, fasten your seat belt – points down in the appropriate direction. Elsewhere on the shirts, designed by Ann Kieler and her mom, Roberta, are the words, “Slow The Ride.” On the anniversary of Chris’ death, his brother Rob and his Christian-rock band, Called to Glory, will be performing two tribute concerts – entitled “Never Scared” – at the Foothills Performing Arts Center in Oneonta. All the songs are original, said Rob, who lives in West Virginia and attends Jefferson College in Steubenville, Ohio, the Nashville of Christian rock. “All of them have something to do with Chris in their own way,” he said. “We chose them because they were special songs to me and to other band members.” Half the $5 fee will benefit the scholarship fund. Labels: Archives
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