Jake Van Ness

2231 Articles

Washington County Local Development Corp. Has 42 Active Loans, $1M Available To Loan

Posted on
Deanna Derway, president, Washington County Local Development Corp.

By Jill Nagy

With a $5 million loan portfolio to administer, the Washington County Local Development Corp. helps to foster a vibrant small business community in a largely rural county. Deanna Derway, president, executive director and the only employee of the corporation, “wears lots and lots of hats” keeping things going.

According to Derway, there are currently 42 active loans and she just made two more. Some $1 million is available for new loans.

The nonprofit corporation began in the 1970s with money from federal Community Development Block Grants. Aside from $80,000 a year from the county, interest, fees, and repayments of the loans made from those early grants sustain the organization.

Any business in Washington County is eligible to apply for a loan, she said. Applicants must be for-profit businesses and job creation is a criteria. (The unemployment rate in Washington County was 4.9 percent at the end of 2016, slightly above state and national averages).

The varied loan portfolio includes farms, restaurants, energy transport companies, cleaning services, delis and breweries. Typically, the corporation lends to businesses with some risk, “stuff banks may not want to lend to,” she said.

Read More

2017 The Hyde Exhibitions Include Abstract, Contemporary, Watercolor And Photography

Posted on
This painting is part of an upcoming exhibition at the Hyde Museum of the works of Allen Blagden, renowned for his paintings of birds, animals and scenes of the Adirondacks.

Officials at the Hyde Museum are looking for a strong 2017, with an exhibition schedule that includes one of the country’s greatest living watercolorists, an innovative contemporary artist, the most influential abstract artist of the postwar era, the annual Juried High School Show, and a massive exhibition of American folk art.

Featured exhibits this year include:

• Lorna Bieber: Forces of Nature, through May 14

The photo murals and montages of Bieber will be featured in the Hoopes Gallery. The artist manipulates stock media photography in scale and medium, reinterpreting the natural world, and evoking a sense of collective memory. Her works re-create nature as an idyllic and poetic world of familiar images. Bieber was trained as a painter, but turned her attention to photography while working for magazines. Her subject matter includes natural elements such as trees, flowers, and animals, as well as figurative subjects, sometimes with references to art history.

• Marking the Moment: The Art of Allen Blagden, Feb. 12 to April 16.

Blagden is a distinguished contemporary realist with longtime ties to the Adirondacks. He is well known for his paintings of animals, birds, landscapes, and people in the style of Winslow. His love of wildlife and birds stems from an internship illustrating for Serengeti National Park in Kenya, working for the Department of Ornithology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and summers spent in the Adirondacks.

Marking the Moment features 62 works by Blagden and is curated by Caroline Welsh, art historian and director emerita of the Adirondack Museum.

• The Juried High School Show, May 6 to May 28.

Read More

Family Makes $1 Million Donation Toward The Upgrading Of Local Hospital Birthing Unit

Posted on
A $1 million donation from the Bill and Joanne Stock Foundation will go toward the renovation project underway at The Snuggery family-centered birthing unit at Glens Falls Hospital.Courtesy Glens Falls Hospital

In her 30-plus years living in Glens Falls, the late Joyce Stock served as a nurse at Glens Falls Hospital, built a popular restaurant and raised three sons who share her philanthropic generosity.

In January, her eldest son, Bill, returned to Glens Falls to honor his mother’s memory and with one of the largest philanthropic gifts in Glens Falls Hospital history in the form of a $1 million donation from the Bill and Joanne Stock Foundation.

The money will go toward a $5 million renovation project underway at The Snuggery family-centered birthing unit at the hospital.

The hospital announced that the birthing unit will now be known as The Joyce Stock Snuggery at Glens Falls Hospital.

Read More