Against The Grain

‘A Partner to the Community’: Bankwell Works with Local Businesses in Designing, Outfitting New Elm Street Headquarters

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Laura Waitz, executive vice president and COO at Bankwell, had a vision when the company decided to move its headquarters to New Canaan two years ago. 

The largest private employer in New Canaan at 100-plus workers is “a relationship bank,” Waitz, a New Canaan resident, said on a recent morning from the second-floor conference room of Bankwell, located at the corner of Elm and Grove Streets. “It’s all about building relationships in business and for our employees and for the community we work in,” she said. “So when we expanded and brought so many more people to New Canaan it was about being a partner to the community, as well. And that was critically important and I wanted a workplace that was peaceful and serene and didn’t look ‘corporate banking’ but that would provide a welcoming, collaborative environment.”

In designing it, Bankwell—which already donates to more than 200 organizations per year, with focus on children, education, food insecurity, homelessness and financial literacy—hired, contracted and otherwise worked with dozens of New Canaan businesses. The bank’s placid and functional workspace includes conference room pieces handcrafted by New Canaan’s gifted furniture designer maker, Tom Throop of Black Creek Designs, a custom-made 300-gallon aquarium from Randy Jahier of Life Aquatic on Park Street, walls lined with the work of local artist Elena McCoy and photography from CAS Gallery on Elm Street, gardens planted by Gregg’s Garden Center and Landscaping on Grove Street, with year-round outdoor furniture from Against the Grain on Main Street.

Black Creek Designs

Local Business Q&A: Black Creek Designs

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Today’s installment of our Q&A series with a local business is with Tom Throop, owner and furniture designer maker of Black Creek Designs on Grove Street. Here’s our exchange:

Tom, when we checked in back in August 2020, it sounded like it was business as usual on Grove Street for you and Primo, though the pandemic had just settled five months prior. Here we are two Christmas seasons later, and the pandemic is still lingering. How’s it going for you at Black Creek Designs? Business is still going very well here at Black Creek Designs.

Black Creek Designs

Local Businesses and COVID-19: Black Creek Designs

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For today’s Q&A with a local business owner, we hear from Tom Throop of Black Creek Designs. The Grove Street furniture designer and maker, a 1982 New Canaan High School graduate, has a number of pieces available. Here’s our exchange. 

New Canaanite: Tom as far as I know, except for Primo your handsome Vizsla, you work alone there in the shop on Grove Street, so I don’t expect your day-to-day has changed too much in terms of the schedule. Even so, you have to be able to meet with those commissioning work from you or to show them what you’re doing. What has this experience of the COVID-19 public health emergency been like for you? Tom Throop: You are correct, it has been pretty much business as usual for Primo and I. We are at the shop every day, I’m working on commissions and Primo is sleeping soundly.