Berkshire

Veterans

Residence

Pittsfield,

Massachusetts

Introduction

The Developers United Veterans Berkshire Housing

The Member

The Residents

The Numbers

Tour the Site

Edward Rizzardini

A Legacy Banks office (right) in downtown Pittsfield.

Edward Rizzardini is senior vice president at Legacy Banks.

In the fall of 2003, Peter Lafayette, president of Berkshire Housing Development Corporation, approached us about participating in this project. His organization does many projects like this and wanted to know if we would play a role. We were very excited about it and very much appreciated the opportunity. So that's really what got it started.

Our Affordable Housing Program (AHP) application was submitted around September. Toward the end of the year we were notified that the project had been approved for a $274,000 direct subsidy and a $274,000 advance. Legacy Banks also provided a bridge loan to finance the purchase of the property. I think it's a great project because of what it does for the community.

We've been involved with previous AHP initiatives. The AHP gives us flexibility and the ability to provide funds to a project that may not be doable otherwise. It allows us to pass those benefits along to the project and makes the economics more workable.

When we were first approached to participate in this project, I said I'd like to get to know Jack Downing a little bit more and see what his organization, the United Veterans of America (UVA), does. The UVA has an existing facility (a homeless shelter for veterans) in Leeds, Massachusetts.

I had not met Jack Downing before, and I came away from that meeting tremendously impressed with this man's commitment to helping the veterans of this country. He's been involved with that facility as executive director for about three years now. As we walked around I got to see what he was doing and how he made one-on-one contact with every veteran he came in contact with. I was just tremendously impressed and decided that this would be a great project for the veterans, for Pittsfield, and for our bank. It's one of those situations where I think I can use the term win win win.

About Legacy Banks
Legacy Banks is a community bank. We're a mutual savings bank whose primary market is Berkshire County. Being able to participate in a project like this has provided us with a great opportunity to meet the needs of our community.

The Pittsfield site, which had been vacant for several years, used to be a nursing home, so it lent itself to its current use as a transitional-housing facility for veterans.

In recent years, Pittsfield has been going through some transitions, but it continues to do reasonably well. A number of years ago General Electric, which had several divisions in the area, was the primary employer up here. But that level of employment has been reduced significantly. There are probably only a couple of thousand employees working at General Electric and General Dynamics now, which has created challenges for Pittsfield.

In addition, Pittsfield's downtown has felt the effects of the opening of a major mall in the area, though there are a number of initiatives underway now to revitalize the downtown. Our bank made a substantial commitment to the downtown revival through construction of a new Legacy Financial Center on the site of a former department store. So I think things are looking up for Pittsfield.