Meadows Bank opens their second Reno branch

Meadows Bank opened their second Reno branch in the financial district of downtown earlier this October.

“We are very excited to be serving the downtown and Midtown,” Denny Williams, Northern Nevada Regional President of Meadows Bank, said in a recent phone interview with NNBW.

The branch opened Wednesday, Oct. 6 and employs five new employees. According to Williams, they recently hired a bank manager, an operations manager, an accounts manager and two tellers for the branch.

The new branch is located at 50 W. Liberty, suite 100. Meadows Bank is leasing the 4,900-square-foot space from Basin Street Properties, a commercial real estate company and developer headquartered in Reno, who owns the 50 W. Liberty building. The space had previously housed a branch of Bank of America who vacated the space about a year ago.

According to Williams, when Basin Street Properties showed him the space he said, “This is ideal. It is perfect for us to open a location in downtown.”

However, it needed a fair amount of improvements before they could occupy the space.

“It was nothing but concrete floors and bare walls,” Williams said.

Pinecrest Construction & Development served as the contractor on the tenant improvements for the new branch. Construction on the project took about five-to-six months.

“It is fabulous, everything is brand new,” Williams said about the new location.

The new downtown branch does not have a drive thru ATM; however, for convenience Meadows Bank allows their customers to use their debt cards at other ATMs up to eight times a month without a fee.

Meadows Bank’s original Reno branch, located at 6518 South McCarran Blvd., will continue to be the headquarters for its northern Nevada operations.

The new downtown location makes Meadows Bank the only community bank in downtown Reno.

“Community banking has a certain attraction for small to midsize businesses,” Williams said.

Being a community bank allows them to provide personable service to their customers.

“As a smaller bank, we really focus on relationship building,” he said. “When you establish a relationship with customers you get to know them.”

According to Williams, people want to know that their money is safe and to be able to walk in and talk to a real person about their finances.

“It is hard to find that anymore,” he said.

The economic growth in northern Nevada makes it an opportune time to open the new downtown branch. Williams explained that he is seeing an increase of developers looking for financing to build single-family houses, multifamily complexes and self-storage units due to the demand for housing. He said this demand is anticipated to increase as more people move to the region.

“It’s exciting,” he said about the growth in Nevada. “There is a lot going on for all the banks in town.”

Meadows Bank was founded in 2008 during the midst of the Great Recession and the institution was one of the last few banks to be given approval to open in Nevada during that time. Williams explained that because they did not have any of the bad loans that many of the other banks had at the time and were able to start with “a clean slate” when they opened. Since its inception, the bank has continued to grow.

“It is a great bank to work for,” said Williams, who is a Nevada native and has been working in the banking industry for 48 years and started at Meadows Bank in 2012. “I can’t wait to go to work in the morning.”

The financial institution is headquartered in Las Vegas. Meadows Bank also has branches in Henderson, Reno, Pahrump and Phoenix, Ariz.