Liberty Bank builds new headquarters

“We had it all dug out to pour the footings and then the rains came,” said Keran Lemons, senior vice president for Liberty Bank. “In a sense, we’re at the very beginning of starting to build.”

Butler, Rosenbury and Partners is the architect and Wirt Construction is the general contractor for the project, which will boost the number of Liberty Bank branches to 10.

With a total of about 45,000 square feet – 15,000 square feet per floor – Lemons said that Liberty Bank will occupy the first two floors and reserve the unfinished third floor for future growth.

The building will be a steel, brick and glass structure according to Geoffrey Butler of Butler, Rosenbury and Partners.

“It will have a separate, detached drive-in bank facility on the site,” Butler said. “The purpose for that is it will be six lanes, and so it was much easier and makes for better traffic flow by having a freestanding one, similar to the way Commerce Bank at Fremont and Battlefield is.”

Moving to a larger headquarters has proven profitable for another Ozarks bank this year. Peoples Bank of the Ozarks saw new accounts rise 73 percent following a March move from its headquarters at 201 and 204 Village Center in Nixa to a new 9,770-square-foot facility at 305 Mt. Vernon, in Nixa.

“We saw an immediate increase regarding the traffic at our office, but I think the better picture of our growth from moving into our new headquarters is seen when you compare the first six months of 2003 to the first six months of 2004,” said Robin Rees, business development and community relations representative for Peoples Bank of the Ozarks. New deposit accounts for the first six months of 2004 at the new main branch totaled 677, compared to 391 for the first six months of 2003.

The $1.8 million full-service branch has five drive-through lanes and houses some administrative offices.

“It definitely has been good for business. It helped us spread out a little more so we weren’t so on top of each other,” Rees said.

Employee shuffle

Rees said that additional employees weren’t needed to staff the new bank. Instead, the bank’s 140 employees, 70 of whom work in Nixa, were redistributed, and 21 employees moved to the new building.

Similarly, Liberty Bank doesn’t anticipate hiring additional employees for the new location, Lemons said. The bank currently has about 170 employees, and the new building is expected to house 55 employees once workers are redistributed.

“Most of (the employees who will move are) going to be existing associates that we’ve had to spread out between different locations,” Lemons said.

A building rented at 1519 E. Lark will no longer be needed when the technical and operational center that it houses moves to the facility at Primrose and Fremont, which will keep its retail lobby and drive-through. “We’ll have the opportunity to bring them all under one roof instead of having to do things by email or drive to see each other,” Lemons said.

Bank officials had been discussing the possibility of building a new facility for the last couple of years, Lemons said. “We’ve been very successful and had good growth. … In the process, we’ve outgrown our existing physical facilities. Sooner or later we had to do something, and the sooner was now and the later was now, too,” Lemons said.

Liberty Bank ranked No. 5 on SBJ’s 2004 list of the Springfield area’s largest banks and savings banks, with 2003 total local deposits of $37.5 million, compared to 2002 total local deposits of $35.3 million. Total local assets for 2003 were $45.6 million, compared to $41.7 million for 2002. Its holding company, Liberty Bancshares Inc., is based in Springfield.

In addition to Springfield, Liberty Bank has locations in Ozark, Marshfield, Mt. Vernon, Greenfield, Stockton and El Dorado Springs. Plans are under way to open new branches in Joplin and Lockwood, Mo.