Pacific Continental Bank has inked plans to expand its presence in Southwest Washington as part of a long-term commitment the financial institution is making to downtown Vancouver.
In January, crews will break ground on a new building that will be four times larger than the bank’s current local offices, said Kristy Weaver, senior VP and business relationship manager/Southwest Washington team leader. Construction is expected to be complete by 2016 – Pacific Continental’s ten-year anniversary in Clark County.
Today, Pacific Continental offers online and in-person banking services from a 1,700-square-foot branch at 911 Main Street in downtown Vancouver. The new location will occupy 6,500 square feet of a three-story, 40,000-square-foot building that Killian Pacific will build on a vacant lot at the corner of Sixth and Main streets, Weaver said.
While construction gets under way, Pacific Continental is expanding the range of online banking and mobile banking services it offers to customers. By the time the new branch opens, the bank hopes to use its high-tech tools and its bricks-and-mortar floor plan to test a new banking prototype that has been in development for many years.
“The space is going to be very modern, and we are going to try to take advantage of sustainable and green business practices whenever we can,” Weaver said. “We’re also going to think about service in different ways. We want to be more consultative with our clients – not just check cashing transactions, we want to be business consultants.”
Some of that consulting will take place in a public meeting room, which will seat up to 50, where Pacific Continental may offer seminars to its small business and nonprofit customers.
“We already have a strong history of providing education to all banking segments we serve. We host events though the year,” and the meeting room will allow the bank to expand this approach, Weaver said. The space will also be available to community members, giving nonprofit boards a place to hold meetings, for example.
Although Pacific Continental does offer traditional checking and savings accounts to individuals, the Eugene, Ore.-based company primarily targets a different niche than other financial institutions in the area. It specializes in serving nonprofits, locally-owned businesses and professional service providers such as doctors and lawyers.
In part because of that focus, Weaver said it was important to her to stay in downtown Vancouver when she and her colleagues began looking at expansion opportunities several years ago.
“We are committed to the revitalization of downtown,” she said, noting that the new location at Sixth and Main will also put the bank near the gateway to planned developments along Vancouver’s waterfront.
Pacific Continental operates in three market areas: Eugene and Lane County, greater Seattle and the greater Portland-Vancouver area.
Officials have said they intend to make a growth push in the metro area, in part by acquiring Capital Pacific, a small Portland bank with just one branch, which also caters to nonprofits. That acquisition, announced last month, is expected to close in February.
“Capital Pacific and Pacific Continental are well-aligned, but the Capital Pacific announcement doesn’t relate to our Southwest Washington growth plans,” Weaver said.
“We’ve been exploring what we want to do in this community – how we want to do it, what we want to deliver – for a good six years, and we’ve been working in earnest for the last three years to refine our vision,” she added. “We’re specifically targeting Southwest Washington and we’re very excited about growing in Southwest Washington.”
