This week, we’re continuing with our series highlighting the award winners from our BBRC Annual Awards Dinner held last month. The past two weeks we’ve highlighted our Large Business of the Year, Darling’s Brunswick Ford; our Small Business of the Year, Midcoast Humane; our President’s Award recipient, Bob Langworthyk and our Director’s Award recipient, Charleen Foley.

If you’d like more information on these winners, you can log on to the chamber’s website to read their full profiles. Each Friday, you can find the videos that were shown on March 10 (produced by Sturdy Production) on our Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber Facebook page and YouTube channel.

This time, we’re highlighting our Young Professional of the Year. Before we do that though, we wanted to thank a special group of businesses who were announced at the March 10 event as well, and those are our 2023 Cornerstone Members.

Our Cornerstone members are businesses that choose one of three levels of annual support for the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber. The packages include the regular annual membership dues and a tiered marketing package depending on their level of support. Every Cornerstone member gets their company name tied to every project the chamber does throughout the year. This includes sponsor mentions at our three major events, namely the BBRC Annual Awards Night (March 10), Hacker’s Ball golf tournament (May 12 at BGC) and the Midcoast Tree Festival (Nov. 17-19 and Nov. 24-26). They also get recognized at our chamber programs, including Chamber After Hours, 12 @ 12, WILL Power events, Chamber Works 2030 programs and more.

We are thankful for our five top-level Cornerstone members:

• 2023 Cornerstone Commercial Real Estate Member: Priority Real Estate Group.
• 2023 Cornerstone Healthcare Member: Mid Coast-Parkview Health/MaineHealth.
• 2023 Cornerstone Automotive Sales Member: Darling’s Brunswick Ford.
• 2023 Cornerstone Residential Real Estate Member: RE/MAX- Riverside.
• 2023 Banking Member: Bath Savings Institution.

Joining us at the Chamber Partner level is Cook’s Lobster & Ale House. Joining us at the Chamber Supporter level are Sitelines, P.A. and Lajoie Brothers.

The support of these businesses and their belief in us to the point where they want their name tied to all we do is humbling and deeply appreciated. Thank you.

If your business wants to find out more about the advantages of being a Cornerstone member, please email cory@midcoastmaine.com.

Now onto our outstanding Young Professional of the Year.

Young Professional of the Year – Mandy Reynolds

There is an unmistakable spark that you see in her eyes when you speak with Mandy Reynolds about the community and the future. It is the spark that innovators have. I think Mandy, like most developers and real estate agents, has an uncanny ability to see what a space could be when the rest of us cannot imagine the details. I think the spark reveals itself every time a step is made in the direction of progress, as the vision for the project gets realized in the real world and begins to match the vision she has held in her head. Each spark ignites her to keep pushing forward with the project.

That is how she and her co-founders, including Sean Ireland, came to found Union + Co; they had a vision for a place where they could work alongside other like-mind professionals in Bath. They could see that Bath has a lot to offer entrepreneurs and remote workers with the historic downtown and keen sense of community, and they realized that the right space was needed. Through her work as an associate broker for Magnussen/Balfour at Keller Williams Real Estate, she knew what kind of space they needed, and with her co-founder’s partnership, Union + Co was created.

Of course, that is not how it began for the Berwick native and Noble High School graduate who finished second in her class of 1,200 students while working three jobs. Her perseverance got her to Colby College in Waterville where she graduated in 2012. After college, she began working in Boston for a U.K.-based nonprofit that researched and graded companies on their social responsibility for potential investors. While doing that, she kept her hospitality job in Ogunquit, as she loved the environment, the human connection and working a forward-facing job at which how well you treated people got rewarded with better compensation.

As Mandy was not busy enough, she began studying for her realtor’s license on the weekends. That led to helping with the Build Maine conference, and through contacts made there, Mandy got connected to Dan Catlin, who has been involved with many projects in the Bath-Brunswick area, including the Tontine Mall. In 2019, Mandy met Sean and began branching out on projects with him. Shortly after, Mandy first visited Bath, and she has loved it ever since.

The latest undertaking is the Grant Building, a 22,000-square-foot, mixed-use redevelopment project featuring 8,500 square feet of first-floor access office space for Union + Co to relocate to. The building also has two other commercial spaces and four market-rate residential units on the upper floors. The idea is to provide the region with a shared workspace, which is flexible enough to accommodate three to four events per month while also helping to promote community and economic development, highlighting arts and culture in downtown Bath, and providing a place for remote workers.

Mandy admits that she does not have an agenda for what the culture will be in the new space — she doesn’t feel it is her role to dictate that. Mandy and Sean are the conveners of opportunity; they provide the garden so the best ideas and collaboration can fully bloom. What grows in that space will come from the collective effort of what the entrepreneurs and residents of the space envision.

Yet, for this opportunity to ever materialize in the first place, it required a spark. It also needed energy, vision and a clear understanding of community. Mandy has all of that.

Congratulations to the 2023 Young Professional of the Year, Mandy Reynolds.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.