Great Southern adds Lee's Summit retail operation

The Lee’s Summit branch will be Great Southern’s 36th – number 35 is under construction in Republic and is scheduled to open this fall.

Great Southern in August closed on the purchase of a facility at 300 S.W. Ward St. in Lee’s Summit from Jakes Properties LP. While officials declined to disclose the purchase price for the 6,000-square-foot property, Great Southern President and CEO Joe Turner said that plans call for renovations to begin before the end of 2005.

Kansas City firm Gastinger Walker Harden is the architect for the renovations, and Kessinger/Hunter Construction Management, also of Kansas City, is the general contractor for the Lee’s Summit project.

The new full-service branch will have a lobby, teller line, drive-through lanes and safe-deposit boxes. Great Southern opened a loan production office in Overland Park, Kan., in late 2002. The bank also operates loan production offices in Creve Coeur, near St. Louis, and in Rogers, Ark.

“We expect to move our loan production offices into the facility and to have a full-service retail facility as well,” Turner said. “We may look at adding travel, investment or insurance services (there) also.”

Loan production activities have helped Great Southern establish a name for itself in the Kansas City area, Turner said.

“We really like the Lee’s Summit area for a retail branch … and we think it’s a good time to enter the Kansas City area on a retail basis.”

Great Southern Bank isn’t the only local financial institution expanding its retail operations outside the southwest Missouri market.

The Signature Bank, which opened a loan production office in August 2004 in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, Sept. 1 purchased land to build a retail branch in O’Fallon. The Signature Bank issued $100 million in loans in 18 months from its St. Louis office. The Signature Bank officials have told SBJ of plans to build three branches in the St. Louis metropolitan statistical area in the next five years, and also to at some point examine possibilities in the Kansas City market.

New branches aren’t the only evidence of growth for Great Southern, which has total assets of $2 billion and operates more than 150 automated teller machines throughout southwest and central Missouri.

Great Southern Travel acquired Columbia, Mo.-based Canterbury Travel and Tiger Travel Associates Aug. 12. It is Great Southern Travel’s 15th Missouri office, with locations stretching north to Kansas City and east to West Plains.

Great Southern Travel has for several years had a presence in the Kansas City market, with an office on-site at Dairy Farmers of America.

Great Southern Bancorp is publicly traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol GSBC. Its stock was $31.39 per share at the close of business Sept. 6.

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