Another bank coming to 25th & Poplar
Sep. 4—Paris, Illinois, based Prospect Bank will become the fifth bank to locate near the intersection of 25th and Poplar streets in Terre Haute.
And Terre Haute will become the bank's first Indiana location with a brick-and-mortar banking facility.
In July, the bank purchased the former Larry Paul Tanning/Sun Factory Tanning building at 2615 Poplar St. for $330,000 from Fleschner Properties LLC, according to county records. The purchase also includes a house at 2609 Poplar St., as well as a strip of land at 2611 Poplar St.
"We were able to close on those three lots between the bank (Fifth Third Bank) to the west and the church (Memorial United Methodist) to the east, so we own all three lots and we will be building a building on that site," said W. Eric Volkmann, president and CEO of Prospect Bank.
"The size and scope is yet to be determined. We are working on that," Volkmann said.
Construction of the new bank could start at the end of 2022 or early 2023, depending on architectural designs and receiving building bids, he said.
"We will have a temporary office that we will open up sometime in the fourth quarter (of this year)," Volkmann said. "We are working with The Meadows on a temporary place, but nothing definitive yet."
Prospect Bank is a medium-size bank with total assets of more than $689 million. In addition to Paris, Prospect Bank has Illinois branches in Champaign, Ashmore, Brocton, Gilman, Homer, Kansas, Sidell and Watseka. The bank has 83 full-time employees.
The bank has a Terre Haute resident, Jeff Fisher, a certified public accountant at Sackrider & Co., on its board of directors, Volkmann said.
"We have a few employees that work for us from Terre Haute and we have several millions of dollars of business already over there, so for us, it is a very familiar place. We have done a lot of business there," Volkmann said of Terre Haute, "and we are finally putting in a physical location to service our customers better from Terre Haute."
The bank previously rented a space in Terre Haute in 2007 and 2008, Volkmann said, but closed amid the Great Recession, with the 2007 to 2008 phase of that recession called the subprime mortgage crisis.
"It is not our first time being over there, but we are coming back now after many years," Volkmann said of Terre Haute. "We are already approved to do business in Indiana. We will be a full service facility offering all the deposit products, mortgage lending, consumer lending and commercial lending from that (Terre Haute) location.
"We will also offer trust services," Volkmann said.
"We have been doing business for 15 years or so in the Terre Haute area, so we have the volume from good customers of ours that allows us to open a facility (in Terre Haute) and be profitable from day one," Volkmann said.
Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached at 812-231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com. Follow on Twitter@TribStarHoward.
