MNB Opens First Northwest Office

One year and one week after officials made a grand announcement about an intended $30 million investment and a 12-branch entry into the Northwest Arkansas market, Little Rock–based Metropolitan National Bank held a soft opening of its first permanent office in the area.

On June 12, Lunsford Bridges, Metropolitan’s president and CEO, talked with a construction foreman and checked for ambient lighting faults in the lobby of the bank’s Northwest Arkansas headquarters, a two-story 23,000-SF building in the Pinnacle Hills area of Rogers.

The facility cost $4.5 million to construct, Bridges said.

Metropolitan will have another five or six offices open by the end of 2006 and the remaining open by the first quarter of 2007, he said.

Wyley Elliott, Northwest Arkansas regional president, said all but two of the bank’s 12 locations are under some form of construction. Next on tap will be a location on Sixth Street in Fayetteville, scheduled to open July 12; an office at Fountain Plaza in Bentonville, set to open July 31; and an office at Har-Ber Meadows in Springdale, slated for late August.

And the bank’s ATM network will eventually match retail branches in numbers, Bridges said.

Stand-alone ATMs will spread the bank’s effective footprint in places a branch may not be feasible, an expensive strategy not implemented by any of the bank’s new-to-the-market or start-up competitors.

Metropolitan already has gleaming eagle-emblazoned ATMs in Farmington, Pea Ridge, Lowell, Rogers and at the University of Arkansas’ Student Union.

Metropolitan has operated full-service banking in the area for about a year, first with a temporary office in Fayetteville, then with a temporary office adjacent to the new headquarters, but the bank has had fairly striking success with its shoestring infrastructure.

In the last six months, Bridges said, the bank has taken in about $14 million in deposits from folks in Benton and Washington counties. He notes that was done without paying a premium in interest rates.

And the lenders have been even busier, generating a total of $220 million in Northwest Arkansas loans to date.

Only about $6.5 million of those are consumer loans, but officials expect that number to swing soon.

Bank-wide, Metropolitan had $1.41 billion in assets and $1.08 billion in deposits as of March 31.

There are 26 different banks competing for more than $6.03 billion in deposits in Benton and Washington counties.

When asked if Metropolitan is late to the banking party in Northwest Arkansas, Bridges said, “No.”

But regional president Elliott need not look far to be reminded about his stiff competition.

Out his office window and across the street is a relatively new two-story Bank of Rogers, a community bank with roots back to a 1995 charter and the backing of its Fort Smith holding company, First Bank Corp.

First Bank Corp. had $1.31 billion in combined assets as of March 31.