- January 9, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
Officials at Sanibel Captiva Community Bank are celebrating a big win early in 2026: Its new McGregor Boulevard branch in Fort Myers, closed for more than three years after being wrecked by Hurricane Ian in September 2022, has reopened.
The $1.04 billion-asset bank razed the structure, at 15975 McGregor Blvd, rather than renovate because it sustained catastrophic structural damage during the Sept. 22, 2022 category 4 storm. The bank had a presence on that property for 23 years, says Sanibel Captiva President and CEO Kyle DeCicco, and didn’t want to lose that. The 15975 McGregor rebuild was a $4 million project.
“We knew we wanted to keep the location,” DeCicco says, adding it's the third-most trafficked location of Sanibel Captiva’s nine Southwest Florida branches. “We believe in that niche market and wanted to build something new, something exciting and something our customers had never seen before.”
The opening kicks off what DeCicco projects will be a busy year for Sanibel Captiva, one of only a handful of locally-based community banks in the Lee-Charlotte-Collier market. The other large one, Fort Myers-based FineMark Holdings, parent of FineMark National Bank & Trust, is now part of Kansas City-based Commerce Bank. Commerce’s $585 million, all-stock transaction for FineMark closed Jan. 1. FineMark had $4 billion in assets, $3.1 billion in deposits and $2.6 billion in loans when Commerce announced the transaction last June. Gulf Coast Business Bank and Edison National Bank, both based in Fort Myers, are other Lee County-based community banks.
“We really believe in the Southwest Florida market,” DeCicco says, citing the hospitality sectors and retirees as robust pockets. “We believe this market is poised for good, consistent, slow growth, which mirrors our bank.”
DeCicco says there are several major investments in varying stages for the bank, even as an uncertain interest rate environment has some bigger national and regional banks scaling back. And this comes on the heels of another big win at Sanibel Captiva from last June, when it surpassed $1 billion in assets. The bank had $27 million in assets in its first year, 2003, and reaching $1 billion in assets represents 3,603.7% growth.
One major investment this year will be a new branch on Fort Myers Beach, where the bank, much like McGregor, is replacing a temporary office from a storm with a new building. Plans for that branch should be finalized soon, with construction starting by the end of 2026, DeCicco says. “We will be the only bank on Fort Myers Beach,” says DeCicco, noting the bank gets foot-traffic from new customers there everyday.
A second project on the docket in 2026 for its downtown Fort Myers branch, in the Edison Theatre building on 1533 Hendry St. The bank has had a branch in the building — which opened in 1941 and closed as a theatre in 1981 — since 2017. It bought the building last May for $2 million and DeCicco, in a Jan. 9 interview, says the bank is making “a large capital investment” in the Edison building this year.
One more investment Sanibel Captiva is making in 2026 is in technology: the bank recently signed an agreement to upgrade its core tech systems with Jack Henry, one of the leading tech firms focusing on banks. The bank, according to a statement from Jack Henry, will transition to Jack Henry’s “configurable core processing platform, which will help the bank streamline operations, automate workflows and enhance service consistency while giving employees more time to focus on customers.”
The McGregor branch, meanwhile, is open for business.
The branch, according to a statement, is a debut of Sanibel Captiva’s refreshed exterior design and modern, updated look. The 3,700-square-foot building “blends the bank’s warm, community-focused atmosphere with contemporary features,” the release states. That includes a multi-lane drive-thru, two electric vehicle charging stations and safe deposit boxes. There’s also a community room with full audio-visual capabilities, says DeCicco, which nonprofits and bank partners can access with a separate entrance during non-banking hours.
The bank branch, on a national industry-wide scale, is in decline. A September report from the Federal Reserve, to cite one example, found the total amount of bank branches nationwide fell 19% from 2014 to 2024.
DeCicco acknowledges that data. In response, he says Sanibel Captiva’s aim with the McGregor branch is to be “customer-conscious” and not "cost-conscious” like regional and national banks. “Our customer base and feedback tells us people put a value on talking to people,” he says. “And they want to come into a branch and do that without being charged for it.”
