Quoted from joebxr

Taxpayer money should not be used to help move local businesses around from one place to another.  It should be used to attract business that is not here now, and I don't mean from Albany County to Schenectady County.  How about attracting businesses from the Buffalo/Rochester area or downstate that are not in the Capital District but would benefit the area with divesity and alternate choices or new slections that are not available now.  Even better yet, how about going after business from out of state that we don't have.  That creates new opportunities, jobs, growth, and competition. And when other businesses see these moves, they may also be interested in moving into/back into NY from Ga, SC, NC, MN, AL, TX, etc.  It's not rocket science!!!!

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But bankers now say the industry overestimated the attractions of electronic banking and underestimated the profitability of retail banking. They say they have since learned that customers still want, as John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association, puts it, "high touch, instead of high tech" - or at least they want the choice. And some people, like Mr. Brown, say the most successful banks over the last decade were the ones that were good at opening, not closing, branches.

One of those was Commerce, which started with a single branch in New Jersey in 1973 and had none in New York City until shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when it opened a branch in Midtown Manhattan and one on the Upper West Side. Two and a half years later, its city inventory is 26. In an interview, Mr. Hill said, "We want 100 in New York City. We'll get to 50 or 60 in a couple of years."

Washington Mutual, based in Seattle, also arrived in New York City in 2001, after acquiring Dime Savings Bank. It inherited 40 branches in the city and has opened 34 more since June 2002. John Benevento, a senior vice president, said of the New York metropolitan area, "We do have expectations of opening on average approximately 50 branches a year over the next five years. We will end up with 400 branches in this market."

Even J.P. Morgan Chase will be opening new branches, albeit at a slower clip. Mr. Hawkins, the Chase senior vice president, said Chase plans to open 100 new branches in the Northeast and Texas in the next four years.

Not every neighborhood is equally flush with banks. Banks tend to gravitate toward high-density and high-income areas, bankers and brokers said. The demographics of the Upper West Side shifted during the 1990's, and the neighborhood became more affluent. As one broker put it, "Ipso facto: More money, more banks."

If the proliferation of bank branches in some neighborhoods seems baffling, the competition has produced some obvious benefits. Commerce is selling itself in part as the bank that is open seven days a week, with extended weekday hours. Washington Mutual officials said their bank is "the only national bank that is A.T.M.-surcharge-free."

The real estate market has benefited, too. "There are like four of them who compete almost head to head for every major corner in New York - Midtown and Upper East and Upper West," Susan Kurland, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate services firm, said of the banks. "They've almost created their own marketplace, in terms of rent. There have been many cases where banks have beaten out a national retailer on price per square foot."

Not everyone is happy. Gale A. Brewer, the city councilwoman who represents the Upper West Side, compares the impact of the bank branch boom on her neighborhood to that of chain stores. Landlords tend to favor them to the detriment of smaller mom-and-pop operations, she said.

Benjamin Fox, executive vice president at Newmark New Spectrum Retail, a commercial brokerage firm, said the proximity of one bank to the next is not necessarily without logic.

"Banks aside, this city is really 50 cities wrapped up in one," he said. "The pedestrian patterns, the mass transportation hubs are spread out all over the place, so you can literally have a location two blocks from yourself without experiencing any cannibalization. "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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HSBC says: 'Branches are, and will continue to be, a fundamental part of our distribution network. Indeed we are investing more than £75 million a year on a refurbishment programme across our 1,350 branches.
'However, there is little doubt customers are changing their banking habits and using branches where they work rather than where they live, or are using the 24-hour convenience of internet or phone banking.
'Financial institutions have to react to this shift in customer behaviour and as such we need to ensure our branches are situated in locations where they will be used.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1268592/Banks-stealth-axe-cuts-customers.html#ixzz1FsGaLGNV

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The real estate market has benefited, too. "There are like four of them who compete almost head to head for every major corner in New York - Midtown and Upper East and Upper West," Susan Kurland, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate services firm, said of the banks. "They've almost created their own marketplace, in terms of rent. There have been many cases where banks have beaten out a national retailer on price per square foot."Not everyone is happy. Gale A. Brewer, the city councilwoman who represents the Upper West Side, compares the impact of the bank branch boom on her neighborhood to that of chain stores. Landlords tend to favor them to the detriment of smaller mom-and-pop operations, she said.

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Banquet house building makes way for the new


The Edgewood Restaurant in Rotterdam, one of the Capital Region’s premier banquet houses for a half-century, became nothing but piles or rubble last weekend.

Wrecking crews demolished the Altamont Avenue facility to make way for a brand new Pioneer Savings Bank branch. Pioneer, operating at the nearby Hannaford Plaza for more than 30 years, is expected to transfer operations in the fall.

Edgewood opened in 1950 and closed in 2002. Now deceased owner Rose Adamec gained a reputation for being able to serve home-style cooking for large gatherings.

Wedding receptions, political dinners, anniversary celebrations and other events that drew up to 300 guests were the backbone of the business.

For many years the Edgewood also offered weekend dining and dancing. The popular Wimpy Shoemaker and Dave Jarvis dance bands brought out capacity crowds on a regular basis.

After the Edgewood closed, the place became the Dragon Buffet. The Asian restaurant didn’t last long before federal officials padlocked the building. The owner was imprisoned for tax evasion, money laundering and using illegal-immigrant workers at the Rotterdam restaurant and other eateries he owned in the Capital Region.

Quoted from Kevin March

From Marv Cermak in the Times Union today...



So, a business that was open for 50 years has gone away, to make room now for moving a bank that has been in the same place for 30 years down the road about a 1/2 a mile or so.  Maybe it's time to change the name of Altamont Ave to Bankers Row.  With the taxes in Rotterdam and Schenectady County, who has money to fill all these banks?

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

so --- basically -- quit bitching about the new bank .. it is a GOOD THING.

Quoted from Kevin March

I appreciate your comments, but the fact is that I wasn't bitching, I was just making factual comments about the facts of this situation.  Fact: a business that was going for 50 years closed. Fact: A building is being built to move one business just a short distance down the road.  Fact:  there are many banks located in one smalss stretch of road on Altamont Avenue.  

It will be a good thing if they can last there and the location they were at can be backfilled.  I'm sure they did their job, but the fact is that if you get too much of a good thing, things go the wrong way.  I think we're getting to the point of having too much of a "good" thing on Altamont Ave, and that's the number of banks.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Fact -- Pioneer is not  just moving a branch a short distance ... it is building a new branch office AND space for some offices that it is moving from its HQ.     They needed MORE space for the offices and there studies showed that a stand alone branch was warranted and would be more attractive to its customers.

Fact -- Edgewood was not in business for 50 years .. probably about 40 years . and the last 20 of those it was not much to brag about.

FACT -- there are many banks located in one small section for ONE simple reason ...  IT IS PROFITABLE for the banks to have branches in that part of Rotterdam

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Fact -- Edgewood was not in business for 50 years .. probably about 40 years . and the last 20 of those it was not much to brag about.