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Info on Gifford Garden in Millbrook, NY here

Re The Mount:

more than 100 people attended a public forum on the future of The Mount, the Edith Wharton Estate and Gardens. It’s become clear that the current financial crisis (owing millions to Berkshire Bank) has a complex, tragic and compelling backstory

Gordon Travers, the only member of The Mount’s board of trustees to live in the Berkshires (he has a weekend house in Sheffield), wanted to focus on the future. “It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback,” he said. “In hindsight the wrong decisions were made.” One of those decisions was the 2005 purchase of Edith Wharton’s library for $2.6 from an English book collector without having the money in the bank to pay for it. “It was something of a Hail Mary,” said Travers.

Travers explained that the Berkshire Bank was doing its best to be patient with The Mount, but that the bank has a fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders and employees. He said the threat of foreclosure is very real and that the bank would probably have no trouble finding someone with deep pockets who would like to buy the property and turn it into a private residence. Having raised $580,000 in the past five weeks, the board hopes that it can convince the bank to hold on until the summer when The Mount will be able to use admission receipts to pay for operating expenses while continuing its quest to raise $3 million to satisfy the bank and win a $3 million matching grant (payable over five years) from an anonymous donor.

“We’re in a triage situation,” said Travers, who noted that the five member board needs to be three or four times larger. “It is of critical importance to us that a number of these new positions be filled by local Berkshire people with the time, commitment, vision and fund-raising capability to achieve success,” he said.

An excerpt of a Posting by Dan Shaw on 04/02/08