ErieBank, Erie Insurance, Bishop Brock - practicing the Golden Rule on Parade St.
His friend Erie Insurance Chairman Tom Hagen recommended patience.
Bishop Dwane Brock upon meeting the new CNB Bank president at a corporate retreat, no surprise, went with direct and immediate instead. Given the needs and ambition languishing in Brock's underserved community, there was no time to waste.
What is your philosophy? Brock asked Michael D. Peduzzi.
And in Peduzzi's answer, Brock, Black pastor and Erie's CEO of social change, and Peduzzi, white corporate chief from rural Clearfield County, discovered an affinity with power to unlock opportunity in the neighborhood targeted by Brock's East Side Renaissance.
Peduzzi told Brock he lives by the gospel's Golden Rule — which in CNB's business practice translates to "finding a way to say 'yes' to our customers and communities."
"We are living in the greatest country in the world, and we are only as great as we take care of all of the souls in our nation," he told Brock.
There are many ways to talk about the historic forces — trade, retail, sin — that gave rise to the conditions that restrict horizons in Erie's most impoverished neighborhoods.
It can also be summed up in a long history of saying "no."
No to banking outlets and fair lending policies; no to buying homes in suburban neighborhoods subject to restrictive deed covenants; no to fresh food outlets, fair school funding, adequate health care and transit.
ErieBank, a division of CNB, is wielding the Golden Rule and declaring "yes," instead.
ErieBank President Dave Zimmer and Peduzzi on a brilliant March morning stood before a crowd of Erie residents and leaders to announce plans to open the first new bank branch in Erie in years — and in an area long bereft of traditional banking services. Located at East 10th and Parade streets, it won't be just a community bank, but an institution committed to educating the population it serves — a mission that aligns with Brock's Eagle's Nest capacity-building ministries.
More: New bank is coming to Parade Street in ErieBank investment in Erie's East Side Renaissance
The new bank and financial literacy center, potentially partnering with agencies like the United Way of Erie County, Penn State Behrend and the Erie Housing Authority, will answer questions that people with ready bank access take for granted — the basics of checking accounts, savings, credit scores and pathways to home ownership, Zimmer said.
"We want to help, and we know there's a level of need in terms of financial literacy and, really, generational wealth," Zimmer said.
More: In block after block of city neighborhoods in Erie, there's not a bank to be found
After the ceremony, Peduzzi told me he has seen in his own family's history how access to opportunity can lift generations.
"There may be well be … future bankers, surgeons, researchers, and teachers that come from here," he said. Offering banking services and the tools of building wealth in underserved areas, be they the urban or rural communities that CNB covers, he said, "is really just connecting people to what all the rest of us have had an opportunity to take advantage of."
And therein lies the power of the Golden Rule. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is not about being polite, pious or woke. It is a difficult ethic that if adhered to defeats the impulses that sustain inequity. The Golden Rule can be a vital aspect of authentic personal relationships, a principled business vision and, for a community as broken as Erie, revolutionary and saving. Experts tell us Erie can't claim its place in the modern economy without attending to the legacies of past policy and prejudice that scar its people, prospects and landscape.
More: An inclusive recovery would mean the best is yet to come for Erie County
The East Side Renaissance with the support of Erie Insurance has been working for several years to do just that. It is acquiring property and developing a multi-year plan to restore both Parade Street and the people who live there with job and entrepreneurial opportunities, banking, housing, dining, grocery and health care resources and more. This, in a diverse, formerly redlined area where, as Kevin Flowers and Jim Martin have reported, the median household income is just above $19,000 a year and 56% of residents live below federal poverty guidelines.
More: Erie's East Side Renaissance hopes bank announcement will lead to more investments
The Renaissance project ranks high on the list of projects prioritized by Infinite Erie, the cross-sector team positioning the region to seize federal funds made possible by recent legislation and fuel inclusive growth. And that same kind of high-octane support from leaders whose labor and values sustain the region was arrayed in force at the ErieBank event.
More: Infinite Erie expands leadership base, but County Executive Brenton Davis steps away
Hagen spoke, calling the announcement of the new ErieBank branch a "great day" for Erie.
“You are returning banking back here to this neighborhood which is so vitally needed for any neighborhood to be prosperous,” he said.
More: Erie's Black Wall Street advances homeownership and overdue access to the American Dream
He praised the leaders of the East Side Renaissance — Brock, Marcus Atkinson and Matt Harris — for their dedication and thanked all those who are supporting them.
"The community is going to be better for it," he said.
Erie Insurance CEO Tim NeCastro, like Peduzzi, invoked the Golden Rule upon which Erie Insurance was founded.
The East Side Renaissance project, he said, is as vital as the investments leading institutions have made in the Erie Insurance-led Erie Downtown Development Corporation focused on the downtown core.
"We know the stimuli and the type of opportunity that is due to this underserved community. ... We begin by racking up one success after the other," NeCastro said.
Erie City Councilman Mel Witherspoon and Charles "Boo" Haggerty, president of the Hamot Health Foundation, joined the welcoming chorus. Erie Mayor Joe Schember pledged support from the city.
More: Erie County Executive Davis removes three more members of DEI Commission board
More: Let's get to work in Erie County — on racial disparities and economic growth
The ErieBank event in that attendance, spirit and vision functioned both to counter and soar above the demoralizing, scarcity-minded rhetoric and actions too often deployed by Erie County Executive Brenton Davis and some on County Council. That approach does not build up, unite and advance solutions for all in need, but instead manufactures and stokes a rural-urban divide, and sounds tired dog whistles insinuating that investments to remove barriers and unleash economic agency in marginalized people of color are ineffectual "band-aids," and not the market-savvy, historically informed solutions they are.
More: City of Erie's vision, commitment and plan ensures DEI transformation success
On this day, there was instead recognition of fellowship, need, shared interests — and hope for the guaranteed good returns that flow from investing in the Golden Rule.
NeCastro pointed to momentum in Erie's downtown, west bayfront, and east bayfront.
"It is going to happen here," he said of Parade Street. "We are going to be here to help it happen, I assure you of that. I am so very happy to be here today and very proud of our partnership with ErieBank and very blessed to have friends like Marcus, Matt and Bishop. Thank you."
Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: ErieBank, Erie Insurance practice Golden Rule on Erie's east side
