About five years ago, Randy Treiber, an advi-sor and branch manager with Sterling Mutuals Inc. in Lethbridge, Alta., was moving his team into a former Royal Bank of Canada branch built in the 1940s. Among other “improvements,” the building had been encrusted with stucco in the 1980s.

Following a significant — and revealing — renovation, the building is now a central part of the practice’s identity in the community. It houses the Sterling Mutuals branch and, unlike other financial advi-sory branches, the office frequently hosts exhibits featuring the work of local artists.

The branch is staffed by two senior advisors, Treiber and Terry Mirkovich, along with Brenda Massé (Treiber’s assistant and an advisor herself) and Pat Maendal. Treiber and Mirkovich have been working together under the Sterling Mutuals banner for nine years; the rest of the team has been on board for about seven years. The two senior advisors don’t share clients or financial planning duties, but the team works well together, Treiber says, all helping out with administrative duties and phone calls when other members aren’t around.

Treiber’s client base consists of about 280 individual clients, totalling $25 million in assets under management. Up to 80% of his clients are either retired or five to 10 years away from retirement. About 15% are younger people starting out in their careers, many of them the children of current clients.

Most of Treiber’s business is in mutual funds, but he also provides some insurance. He recently began offering segregated funds with guaranteed income benefits. He files that business, for about 10% of his clients, through Sterling’s managing general agency. He also files some traditional life insurance and living benefits through a Calgary-based MGA, Ray Hanson & Associates.

But clients don’t always visit the branch to talk with an advi-sor. An unusual attraction for this branch is the frequent art exhibits it hosts — to the delight of clients, other members of the community and the nearby university. The office’s art program is closely tied to the tale of the building’s restoration.

That renovation project, which began five years ago, started to get interesting when a contractor found Tyndall stone — the same type of limestone found in parts of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa — behind the old fascia.

“When [the renovators] found it,” Treiber says, “they were amazed that someone would cover this stone up with stucco.”

The stone was riddled with nail holes, but the building’s owner, a developer from Kelowna, B.C., knew he was onto something. The owner applied for a grant from the Alberta Main Street Program, a government fund that supports the restoration of old buildings in the province.

After Treiber and his colleagues moved in, the renovation project became a full-blown restoration.

“We had been anticipating having a nice space to work in,” Treiber says. “But they had a hole torn out front for six months.”

Inside, workers ripped out the drywall in what was formerly a takeout sandwich kiosk called A-1 Submarines, revealing old, red brick, which they protected with lacquer.

Outside, contractors restored the Tyndall stone close to its original appearance. To replace the sections of badly damaged stone, the developers found more stone from a quarry near Tyndall, Man., which turned out to be the source of the original stone. By the time the restoration was completed, it had cost considerably more than $100,000 — half of it paid for by the province.

The building looks, more or less, as it appeared when it was built — minus the tellers.

Eventually, the building won an Award of Excellence from the Main Street program. A plaque hangs on the wall in Sterling Mutuals’ office — where the submarine sandwiches used to be served.

Mirkovich had contacted the Uni-versity of Lethbridge’s art department to invite that institution to get involved with the branch’s grand opening in the autumn of 2007.

Students from the university were invited to exhibit their work during the event, which was attended mainly by clients, as well as some community leaders. A couple of mutual fund companies came on board and assisted with costs.

“We invited everyone in our client base that is in town,” Treiber says. “We had the mayor and several council people drop by as well.”

The gathering succeeded in raising the branch’s profile in the community and in raising $10,000 for a scholarship fund for the university’s arts program.

@page_break@It also started a tradition at the branch. Now, every few months, the office opens its doors with a new art installation. The advisors invite the student artists and their families — as well as the advi-sors’ clients — to enjoy the new exhibit and some complimentary wine and cheese. The installation usually includes up to 20 works, depending on the medium and what the university wants to showcase. Most exhibits consist of paintings, but sculptures of metal and wood have also been shown.

During the late spring and summer, when the university isn’t in session, Treiber and his colleagues invite local artists to exhibit.

Curating is left up to the artists, who are responsible for installing the art themselves. “We show them the ladder, the paint and the gear, and they go to it; we step back,” Treiber says. “Some of it’s good, some of it’s, well … you know how art works!”

He recalls, for excample, a mixed-media hanging of a hippopotamus wearing various fabrics.

Treiber himself doesn’t have an artistic background. But his career, like his office, once experienced a major renovation. He describes himself as a “refugee from the oilpatch”; he had worked in operations at Nova Corp. in the mid-1990s, managing the movement of natural gas from Alberta to British Columbia and California. When Nova restructured, Treiber was downsized and received a what he calls a “sweet package.

“At that point,” he adds, “I took a year off to decide what I was I was going to do when I grew up.”

He had already been training for a chartered management accountant designation but had yet to land an articling position. “I’m not a great accountant, but I liked the management part of it — understanding what makes a business tick,” he says. “Financial planning was a good extension.”

Treiber completed his certified financial planner designation in 2000 and accumulated some of his own clients for a few years before using part of his severance package to buy an advisor’s book.

“The opportunity came up,” he says, “and it was a quick way to build my business.”

As for the burgeoning artists, they’re not likely to become clients any time soon. But, as Treiber points out (below), that’s not why the branch hosts the events. IE