Sketch of the proposed bank building on Big Lots Plaza.
Last year The Bank of Greene County broke the billion-dollar mark in deposits. As of June 30, the rapidly growing Catskill-based mutual savings banking institution held deposits of $1.15 billion — more than any other locally controlled bank in the upper mid-Hudson region. It now has branches in Albany, Columbia, Greene and Ulster counties. It specializes in commercial real-estate and commercial loans.
The bank applied this week to build a 1536-square-foot branch in the Big Lots Plaza in Saugerties. This would be its third in northern Ulster County and seventeenth overall.
“We’ve always been patient when considering new branches, willing to wait for the right opportunity, which often comes on the heels of a consolidation,” says the bank’s 2019 annual report. “And when the right opportunity presents itself, our compact decision-making process enables us to move quickly. The goal is of course to expand our footprint profitably, but also to ensure that people have access to community banking in places that have been abandoned.”
The bank has been dominant in its home county for decades, holding about 48 percent of all Greene County bank deposits. It’s been rapidly expanding its branch network in recent years, coming to Kingston in 2016 and to Woodstock in 2018. Its Kingston-Ulster branch is at the corner of Ulster Avenue and Miron Lane and its Woodstock branch.
The Bank of Greene County held $12.6 million in deposit in Ulster County in 2016, $38.7 million last year, and $66.6 million on June 30 of this year. As of 2018, it had 147 employees.