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Commerce Bank

Short History of Tower Grove Bank
Tower Grove Bank and Trust opened in 1911 in the building where the King and I is now. The building still says "Tower Grove Bank" above the door. In 1937, the bank moved into a gorgeous building at its current location. There are pictures of the original facade and lobby hanging on the wall in one of the rooms on the first floor (make a right from the entrance on Grand).

In 1954/1955, less than 20 years after it opened, the bank was remodeled. The exterior was transformed into a modernist box with sections of aluminum siding. Over the years, the bank has expanded two or three times by building on additions or incorporating neighboring buildings.

At one time, Tower Grove Bank had 40 teller windows and was the fifth largest bank in the city.

The Bank's Current Situation
According to Francis Fanara, a group manager for Commerce Bank who's in charge of nine branches, business is still very good at the Tower Grove branch where he's worked for 23 years. It's Commerce's third largest branch in the St. Louis area. However, because of changes that have occurred in the banking industry, the bank has a lot of space it doesn't need.

Branch banking was not allowed in Missouri until the 70s. Up until then, every bank had to have its own HR department, operations center, etc. In 1981, 250 people worked at the Tower Grove branch. Today, about 25 people work at the branch and another 20 work at the student loan center in the same building. Commerce is planning to move the student loan center and other centralized operations to the vacant Central Hardware site at Mason and Olive in Creve Coeur. The new facility probably won't be ready until June or July.

Plans
Commerce's goal is to build a facility that will be more efficient for the bank and more convenient for customers. They are committed to building a substantial structure that the bank and the neighborhood can be proud of.

They've been talking about it for three and a half years, but they don't have a definite plan. They've looked at various options including tearing the bank down and building a new one, removing the later additions from the building, and leasing extra space in the current building to other tenants.

Mr. Fanara said that the plan that Commerce currently favors calls for building a new 8,000 square-foot building, twice as large as most new banks, to accommodate the heavy volume of business that the branch does. They're hoping the new building will reduce their occupancy costs by 80%. The current plan would fit the bank and all of its parking in the space bounded by Grand, Juniata, Hartford, and the western edge of the existing parking lot. The bank wants to keep all of its frontage on Grand, but it won't need the land behind the new building. They will most likely sell the land that the current parking lot sits on rather than developing it themselves.

There won't be any parking in front of the new building, but there may be some parking on the side. The drive up and teller lines will be located in the back of the bank, and the layout will be reconfigured so that people won't have to walk in front of the drive up lanes to enter the bank from the parking lot.

Commerce doesn't really like any of the drawings that have been done, and nothing is finalized, but they're currently leaning toward a one-story building designed to look like a two-story building.

Orchestrating the move will be very tricky because the bank will need to continue operating during the construction. Construction won't start for nine months to a year at best. The student loan department will probably relocate in August at the earliest.