The Saratoga Builders Association is thrilled to present proceeds totaling $66,000 from the 2025 Saratoga Showcase of Homes to Rebuilding Together Saratoga County and Habitat for Humanity of Northern Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. The Saratoga Builders Association is proud to announce that the total contribution to our local charities from this area’s premiere new home tour event over the past 29 years is now nearly $1.7 million dollars.
By Rod Bacon
The Weber family has always believed in giving back to the community in which they live and work. In 2020 they implemented this ethos in a significant way when triumph rose out of ashes.
In December 2014 the family, led by the father-and-son team of Bert and Christian Weber, launched Common Roots Brewing Company in South Glens Falls. The business was thriving when the building suffered a devastating fire in 2019. Fortunately, no one was injured but the building was a total loss.
“When we started Common Roots, we had the idea that brewing beer could also be a vehicle for positive change,” said Bert Weber, president of the Common Roots Foundation Board of Directors. “Eleven years later we are proud to have supported, and continue to support, our neighbors dedicated to improving the lives of those around them. At a time when so many people are struggling, these organizations are putting in the hard work, driven by compassion, and making a difference throughout the region.”
Community support for the Webers after the fire came in the form of Rally for the Roots events in the Glens Falls area as well one dubbed Rising from the Ashes in Clifton Park where over 25 New York State breweries participated. A group called Friends of Common Roots started a GoFundMe campaign called Common Roots Brewing Company Fire Recovery that raised over $40,000. There was an event with music at the Queensbury Hotel, another at the Tack House in Troy, and others at various bars and breweries in Albany. Checks arrived from bars and breweries as far away as Colorado and Oregon.
By Rod Bacon
The significant expansion of a local social services agency is currently underway.
Ground was broken October 18 for a 3,000-square-foot addition to the Glens Falls Area Youth Center. Named the Matt Congdon Wellness Center in honor of its longest serving executive director, the facility will allow the center to vastly expand and improve its offerings to the area’s at-risk youth.
Following his 1982 graduation from Springfield College with a degree in physical education/health and fitness, Matt Congdon took on the role of executive director on an interim basis while the original director was on maternity leave. After she had her baby she decided to be a stay-at-home mother and the directorship became Congdon’s, a position he filled for 36 years.
Molly Congdon-Hunsdon, the center’s current executive director, said, “When I took over as executive director it was my vision to expand our facility. It’s so exciting to have this happening and I think it’s going to mean the world to our kids. We’re going to be able to grow our programs and offer them so much more while continuing our mission for the next fifty-seven years.”
The center was founded in 1968 to serve children in Warren, Washington, and Saratoga counties. For several years it was housed in “less than desirable” locations until Congdon raised $1 million in eight months to build the current facility.
PROVIDED BY ADNET TECHNOLOGIES
As businesses move into 2026, email remains the most targeted attack surface for cybercriminals. CEO fraud, fake invoice schemes and increasingly sophisticated business email compromise, or BEC, attacks continue to rise. Attackers exploit trust, routine communication and identity-based access to drain company finances. The FBI reports more than $55 billion in BEC-related losses over the past decade, and in 2024 alone, three out of four businesses experienced BEC attempts. For organizations, the question is no longer if these attacks will occur, but when.
For small and midsize businesses, email security is now a critical operational concern. Effective strategies combine identity protection, authentication, employee training and proactive monitoring to reduce both risk and exposure.
Business email compromise works because it exploits everyday business tools. When attackers gain access to a mailbox, often through stolen credentials or phishing, they can quietly observe communication patterns. From there, they redirect emails, impersonate leadership and access connected cloud applications such as OneDrive or SharePoint. The result is fraud that appears legitimate, with invoices, wire transfer requests and email threads that closely mirror real workflows.
The average BEC incident now exceeds $137,000 in financial losses. Cyber insurance claims tied to these attacks continue to climb.
Managed identity threat detection and response, or ITDR, now plays a critical role in cybersecurity. ITDR continuously monitors user behavior to detect subtle account takeover indicators such as impossible travel, unknown devices, suspicious inbox rules, privilege escalation and unauthorized forwarding.
By Dani Pidgeon, COO Mannix Marketing
AI search tools are no longer futuristic concepts; they are daily realities for a majority of consumers. A recent survey by Higher Visibility confirmed that 71.5% of Americans have used AI search tools, with 14% using them every day.
Though nearly 80% of users still prefer classic search engines like Google for general queries, the younger, high-spending demographic (like Gen Z, with 82% adoption) is leading the charge. AI is becoming a dominant channel for specific, local answers, and if your business isn’t prepared to provide the data AI needs, your business is missing out on a huge opportunity.
How Does AI Search Work?
So how does AI pull or rank information? Think of traditional search (Google) like a librarian giving you a list of books (links) to check out. Useful, but as an end user, you have to do a lot of leg work to get the information you need. AI Search goes a step further and acts as a very smart, research assistant who reads all those books and gives you one synthesized answer. In a culture that prefers instant gratification, it is easy to see why AI Search has been so quickly adopted.
Let’s dive a little deeper now into how AI search rankings work. AI search scans billions of documents—your Google Business Profile, your website content, other website’s content about you, your reviews, and directory listings, social media mentions—to construct a single, highly confident answer. It understands entities (your address, your service) and facts (your hours, your prices). If your data is inconsistent or weak, the AI skips over you and recommends the next authoritative business.
By David Kopyc
The four pillars of retirement planning are Investment Management, Asset Protection, Retirement Income Distribution, and Legacy Planning. Mastering these concepts, presented in plain language, is crucial for building a secure and lasting financial future.
The First Pillar: Investment Management
Investment management is the ongoing process of strategically allocating your savings to help them grow while keeping risk at a comfortable level. It’s ensuring your money works as hard for you as you did for it.
The primary goal here is to balance “risk” and “reward.” Risk isn’t just about potentially losing money; it’s also about the risk of your money losing its purchasing power over time due to inflation.
• Understanding Risk Tolerance: Are you comfortable with market ups and downs for the potential of higher returns, or do you prefer stability even if it means slower growth? Your risk tolerance often changes as you get older and closer to retirement.
• Diversification is Key: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Spreading investments across different types of assets, like stocks (which offer growth potential), bonds (which provide stability and income), and real estate, helps mitigate risk. If one area performs poorly, another area might perform well.
By Nate Gage
I’m not proud to admit it, but taking proper care of my teeth was not always high on my list of priorities. Over time, this inattention led to the predictable consequences, with cavities slowly developing and growing. Eventually, faced with the reality of the situation, I put aside my fear and denial and made an appointment. As much as I dreaded the actual procedure, I dreaded the conversation with my dentist even more. I knew she would ask uncomfortable questions like what led to the problems in the first place and why did I wait so long to have it corrected.
Although I knew the question was coming, the best response that I could muster was a pathetic “I didn’t come in sooner because I was afraid of what you would tell me.” Karma is a funny thing; now all these years later I find myself on the other side of that conversation. No, I didn’t go on to become a dentist, but found myself in the financial services industry, specializing in workplace retirement plans, including serving in an advising capacity. When speaking to groups, I always strive to spend a little bit of time focusing on the big picture, encouraging everyone to do the planning needed to be ready to retire when and how they want. I also offer to meet individually with anyone looking to take a closer look, taking advantage of a retirement income calculator that makes the process easy and presents the results in a very user-friendly format.
The number of participants who take me up on that offer is relatively small and, often, those who meet with me have been considering doing so for many years. When I ask why they didn’t come in sooner, that’s when I hear “I was afraid of what you would tell me.” Despite that initial fear, the process is always helpful and, no matter the result, knowing is always better than not knowing. One feature of the calculator that I find particularly user-friendly is how the results are presented. Considering actual spending data for households with similar incomes, the user is presented with a calculated retirement income need in today’s dollars.
The Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce kicked off its Love Our Locals $20.25 campaign, an initiative that emphasizes the importance of supporting local businesses and nonprofit organizations.
The campaign began Oct. 30 and continues throughout the remainder of the year. During this time, residents and tourists who support any business or nonprofit in Saratoga County by spending or donating $20.25 or more are eligible to enter a gift card giveaway.
Individuals are encouraged to submit their receipts of $20.25 or more online at www.saratoga.org/love-our-locals to enter. Each week, the Chamber will randomly select winners for $100 in gift cards to businesses across the county.
While the campaign takes place during the holiday shopping season, it is designed to support a wide variety of businesses and organizations from the retail, dining, service, entertainment and nonprofit sectors. Eligible purchases can include a chiropractor adjustment, teeth cleaning, eye exam, hair care appointment, car repairs, home improvement projects, dry cleaning, hotel stays, dining at restaurants, concert tickets, landscaping, snow removal, fitness club memberships, floral deliveries, toys and holiday decorations. Donations made to area charitable organizations are also eligible for entry. Spending $20.25 or more at any locally owned Saratoga County business or nonprofit gives folks a chance to win in this months-long giveaway campaign with unlimited entries, multiple weekly winners and a variety of gift card prizes!
Love Our Locals $20.25 is generously sponsored by many area businesses that donate gift cards as the prizes.
Now in its fifth year, this campaign started during the pandemic as Save Our Locals $20.21, which resulted in more than 2,000 entries from locals whose purchases directly aided in the county’s economic rebound from COVID-19 restrictions. In 2022, the Save Our Locals program was recognized with a New York State Tourism Excellence Award from the New York State Tourism Industry Association.
By LEE COLEMAN
West Mountain ski center in Queensbury is preparing to open early this season with a larger variety of trails to offer skiers.
“We are really going to try to open early, but it depends on the weather,” said Spencer Montgomery, co-owner and managing member.
He said 4,000 feet of new snowmaking pipeline has been added on the Frolic trail to replace older piping that was in disrepair. The goal is to open more terrain on the Northwest Base area along with the Main Base, which traditionally opens first. The mountain also offers a large snow-tubing park for young people.
Ski center workers have been running compressors on the snow guns, testing pipelines, checking power and lighting for the popular night skiing, and cutting back the trail edges. All is ready to make snow when the temperature allows.
In recent years, West Mountain has offered year-round programming, with adventure courses, mountain-biking trails and scenic rides to promote use of the mountain in spring, summer and fall.
Saratoga Springs will soon welcome a new entertainment destination built around teamwork, storytelling, and immersive problem-solving. Saratoga Escape Rooms, founded by local entrepreneurs Tess and Brian Goodge, will officially open Nov. 14 on Gardner Lane in downtown Saratoga Springs.
The concept grew naturally from the couple’s complementary strengths. “We realized Brian had the engineering talent to bring these rooms to life, and I had the business acumen to make the venture possible, so we decided to take the leap,” said co-owner Tess Goodge. “Saratoga is home for us, and after visiting other cities with escape rooms, we were surprised no one had brought one to downtown yet.”
The Goodges have spent the past year designing themed adventures that blend atmospheric sets, engineered automation, and interactive puzzles. Each 60-minute experience is built for groups of two to eight players, who must work together to uncover clues, decipher riddles, and solve layered challenges before time runs out.
“We’re very proud of how automated and interactive the rooms are,” Goodge said. “Guests will be pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement our games require. Our third room will feature custom props we’re building ourselves, which is a whole new adventure.”
The venue opens with two completed rooms and a third scheduled for summer 2026. Saratoga School of Magic immerses players in a spell-casting challenge, while Echoes of the Lost Jungle uses hand-painted props and vibrant scenery to transport guests into an uncharted wilderness. A third room, Whispers Beneath Broadway, is under development and will introduce a more detective-style experience.