Banks, Builders Move To Standardize Branches

Ask any banker in Northwest Arkansas if their operation is planning any expansions and most answer back: “We are always looking for opportunities.”

So with more than 142 bank offices in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area, it’s a head-scratcher to figure out how more banks will fit.

But they’re coming.

BancorpSouth Bank of Tupelo, Miss., which operates 10 offices in the Fort Smith area, and Bank of the Ozarks of Little Rock have recently made public their intentions to move into the two-county area. There are a string of loan origination offices that serve as potential jumping-off points for full-service branches from south Arkansas.

And of the four startups announced this year, Signature Bank of Arkansas has three proposed locations with plans for more, and Gary George and Don Gibson’s yet-to-be-named venture has indicated it will have a “significant presence.”

On top of that, existing banks such as Fayetteville-chartered Arvest Bank Group Inc. and others are ramping up locations to maintain or increase their share of the market.

It’s a good time for bank builders.

Jason Kincy, advertising manager for Arvest, said his bank has plans for seven new offices in Washington and Benton counties plus one right across the state line in Jane, Mo. Not including the 60,000-SF operations center recently completed in Lowell, Arvest will add 16,500 SF of floor space to the area’s banking segment by the end of 2005. Those projects combined with the operations center are worth about $11.5 million dollars in construction costs.

Arvest will spend $5.5 million on major and minor renovations at 12 branches from Huntsville to Pea Ridge and two out-of-state but locally managed offices in Stilwell, Okla., and Shell Knob, Mo., in about the same time period, Kincy said.

Arvest does so much building that it formed its own internal architectural office in 2000. Kelly Sutterfield is architectural manager for the bank. When she came on board, she helped develop four standardized prototype Arvest offices that vary in size and layout according to the needs of a location. Each prototype office costs between $750,000 and $1 million to build, she said. The standardized design helps get projects rolling faster, Sutterfield said.

The regional bank works with about six general contractors in Northwest Arkansas and about 12 market-wide, which includes Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, she said.

Nabholz Construction of Rogers does a lot of banking business. Quintin Hilburn, executive vice president of Nabholz, said his company has done work for Arvest, Simmons First Bank of Northwest Arkansas and Regions Bank.

Even if Nabholz doesn’t build the bank or do the interior build-out in leased space, Hilburn said the customer service division does a lot of “fit-ups” with Diebold security equipment. He said as far as he knows, Nabholz is the major installer of this equipment in the area.

Most banks are going to standardized buildings and layouts like Arvest, and that’s good for the general contractors who work on them, Hilburn said. He said it helps contractors improve efficiency and performance with each job, which in turn helps contractors land repeat business.

“The more times you shoot a basketball, the better shot you are,” Hilburn said.