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In an era when banks open fewer branches, or consolidate their branch distribution, the Bank of Tampa has taken a different tack. It plans to take an existing branch, raze it and build a bigger, better branch at the same location.
Scheduled to be completed in summer 2020, the new branch will be at 4400 N. Armenia Ave. in Tampa, near the intersection with West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., which also happens to be the site of the 35-year-old bank’s first banking center in Tampa. It will be an expansive facility, with a 5,000-square-foot, full-service banking office, plus a 40,000-square-foot support center that will occupy the top two floors of the three-story building.
Bank of Tampa COO David Moore tells Coffee Talk the project, with an undisclosed budget, has been in the works since April last year, when the bank, which boasts nearly $1.6 billion in total assets, began to consider what to do with the land. The site already housed a 20,000-square-foot branch office but offered room for additional development. Bank officials considered selling the property but then decided the best course of action would be to double-down on its historical ties to the area.
“We started in west Tampa,” Moore says. “We want to stay there and invest in the community.”
Another key to the decision: The support center will allow the bank to bring together, under one roof, 115 staff members from various leased office spaces citywide, Moore says. “We prefer to own our own real estate, so we control our destiny.”
Cognizant of Florida’s ultra-competitive banking sector, Moore says a modular, mobile-home-type banking center will be set up at the site during construction, so customers aren’t tempted to shop around. “It’s not cheap,” he says of the cost of setting up a temporary branch, “but this is an 18-month project, so we wanted to make sure that people in the community had the ability to continue to transact business with us.”
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