In Duluth, Minn., 20 distressed houses scattered about town will soon get a Cinderella-style roof-to-foundation renovation needed to make them livable. Once they’re ready for their close-ups, these fresh-faced gems will be sold for below market-value prices, but not to just anyone. Their buyers will be owner-occupants with an average income of 60 percent of the median for the area. [Continue]
Chris Campbell, senior partner at Centier Bank, Whiting, Ind., was introduced to the 50-30-20 guideline to savings as a kid mowing lawns and babysitting in his Ohio hometown. At that point, however, the “essential” 50 percent of the loot often comprised candy bars and baseball cards, and the other two categories were for charity and savings. [Continue]
Whether it’s a data breach that exposes private information about your customers to the public, an attack that locks up your servers, or even a full-fledged strike that wipes clean all of your data, bankers need to defend against a range of threats. As the number of devices on which customers expect instant access to their data proliferates, the number of opportunities for bad things to happen notches upward. [Continue]
Worldwide, the novel coronavirus pandemic has upset global markets, economies and daily patterns of life like nothing we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes. And bankers and economists alike have no desire to proffer any forecasts at what the future of agriculture — even a few months from now — holds. [Continue]
St. Louis Park is an old Minneapolis suburb populated by the young, including young professionals. And it’s a community that the leadership of Bridgewater Bank has been eyeing for more than a decade. [Continue]
Nebraska banker Greg Hohl was at an out-of-state meeting when he received a text message from his sister that there just might be a fire at their family-owned Wahoo State Bank. Cindy Hohl, executive vice president of the $92 million bank, had been sitting at her desk when someone reported smelling smoke. [Continue]
Natural disasters are nothing new, but climate scientists are predicting more extreme weather events, which will continue to affect entire geographic areas. And while it’s not realistic to think that all losses can be prevented, architects and engineers can design a bank with features that can limit losses from flooding, fire, snow, lightning and tornadoes — and keep employees safe. [Continue]
Reliant on repeat business, firm goes beyond year’s warranty A few years back there was a shingle company that we used for a majority of our projects. If I remember correctly, the company came under new management and changed the composition of their adhesive to a cheaper alternative which resulted in several cases where groups … Read more
Firm mitigated disaster’s impact with TurnKey service Titonka Savings Bank had been a long time customer. One Sunday morning I received a call from the president/CEO (at 5:30 a.m.) letting me know that the main branch had burned to the ground. He was asking for our help. We immediately sent people there that day to … Read more
Kirk Gross has long history of doing ‘Whatever it Takes’ The projects that resonate are the projects with the biggest challenges such as digging a basement in solid bedrock only to find that the neighboring building had a cave underneath it. There are remodels of old buildings that require engineering to keep them structurally … Read more