Bangor Savings Bank Foundation Gives $100,000 to The Cedars

The Bangor Savings Bank Foundation has announced a major gift of $100,000 to The Cedars, a comprehensive not-for-profit senior living community in Portland. The gift will be used to help build an innovative Memory Care residence on The Cedars’ campus that will provide treatment and care to seniors with a diagnosis of dementia and related memory-loss issues.

“Our success as a company has come through innovation and our commitment to exceptional service,” said Bob Montgomery-Rice, Bangor Savings Bank President and CEO. “When we see those same values in another organization, especially one with such a long history of caring for Maine people, we want to support them.”

Founded nearly 90 years ago the Jewish Home for Aged, The Cedars today serves people of all faiths and offers a full continuum of senior living and care. The new Memory Care center is part of The Cedars’ ongoing initiative to transform senior care in Maine and around the country by adopting the Household Model™, where residents have their own rooms, share a kitchen and living areas, and can create their own schedules and daily activities, instead of following a highly regimented institutional model of care. “We are combining a welcoming, home-like environment with cutting-edge therapies so seniors with memory impairments can live a full and comfortable life,” said Kathy Callnan, The Cedars President and CEO. “We are deeply grateful to Bangor Savings Bank for recognizing that what we are doing is changing senior care for the better.”

The Cedars will be the first facility in Maine, and among the few in the country, to adopt the Household Model™, Callnan noted. In addition to the memory-support programs, which also will available to seniors in the community who are not yet ready to leave their homes, The Cedars is building a new healthcare center, renovating other facilities on its 11-acre campus, and creating a Learning Community in collaboration with seven Maine colleges and universities to train a new generation senior care workers.

“The Cedars was a clear choice for our support,” said Carol Colson, Senior Vice President and Director of Marketing and Communications at Bangor Savings Bank and President of the bank’s Foundation. “From the moment we walked through the door, we could feel the warmth and friendliness, and we could see the good work that is going on there. We wanted to be a part of that.”

“This gift represents a partnership between Maine’s oldest continuously operating bank and the state’s oldest senior care organization,” said George Marcus, chair of The Cedars’ “Grow Bold With Us” capital campaign, which includes the new memory care center. “Both of us are forward-thinking and committed to serving our communities, which is why we are so grateful and proud to receive this generous support from Bangor Savings Bank. It matters, and it will make a difference in the lives of the people we serve.”

About The Cedars
The Cedars was founded nearly 90 years ago on Portland’s Munjoy Hill as the Jewish Home for Aged. Today, The Cedars serves people of all faiths and offers a full continuum of senior living and care, including Independent Living, Assisted Living, Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Care, at its modern campus on Ocean Avenue. Long recognized for its caring staff and attention to individual needs, The Cedars remains at the forefront of senior care in Maine and the nation as it transitions to the Household Model™, an authentic home-like environment where residents can follow their own routines and make their own choices about how to go about their daily lives.

About Bangor Savings Bank
Bangor Savings Bank, with more than $3.6 billion in assets, offers retail banking to Maine consumers as well as comprehensive commercial, corporate, payroll administration, merchant services, and small business banking services to Maine businesses. The Bank, founded in 1852, is in its 166th year of service to the people of Maine, with 54 branches and on the web at www.bangor.com.

The Bangor Savings Bank Foundation was created in 1997. Together the Bank and its Foundation invest $1.7 million per year into the community in the form of non-profit sponsorships, grants, and partnership initiatives.

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