Bank plans Sarasota branch

SARASOTA — Venice-based Florida Shores Bank, one of the fastest-growing community banks on the Gulf Coast, plans to open a branch in Sarasota later this year.

The new branch is the $320 million-asset bank's fourth office, and its first major expansion north of Venice since it was founded in November 2007. Florida Shores President and CEO Jim Kuhlman, in an interview with the Business Review, says the bank could open another location, in Bradenton, next year.

“From the day we started, the footprint plan we always had in mind to fill was from Bradenton down to Charlotte Harbor,” says Kuhlman, the Business Review's Entrepreneur of the Year for the Sarasota-Manatee region in 2011. “We have grown as earnings and common sense would dictate.”