There’s a major change coming to the financial district in St. Joseph, but before you voice the inevitable shock and surprise of what’s changing, consider the landscape of what has already changed. Fifth Third Bank is poised to notify customers of the bank this week that the downtown branch and banking center located at 830 Pleasant Street will be closing down by mid-July.
With the increasing prevalence of direct deposit of payroll checks, the ubiquitous presence of ATM machines for both deposits and cash withdrawals, and the dramatic spike in online banking for bill-payment, balance updates, and even document retrieval, the move away from walk-in brick & mortar bank facilities continues at a steady pace.
In St. Joseph, the regional headquarters banking center at 830 Pleasant Street is barely 2-miles away from the bank’s Southtown Branch situated at 2915 S. State Street in the city. Fifth Third Community President Randy Reimers says that as the financial institution continues to research consolidation efforts, they found a tremendous amount of crossover and duplication of clientele at those two banking centers.
Based on the cost to maintain a lion’s share of the four story building downtown versus the single-story facility a block off of the Niles Avenue corridor, common sense dictated that the larger structure would afford considerably higher savings without seriously impacting the convenience factor for clients and customers. There was no immediate indication whether the downtown ATM would be retained, relocated elsewhere in the central business district or also closed out.
It was just 15 months ago in January of 2017 that Fifth Third closed down three dozen branch banks including the Monroe Street branch in Bangor and half a dozen others around Michigan. Those included banks in Portage, Battle Creek, Okemos, White Lake, Saginaw and one on Plainfield Avenue in Grand Rapids.
A month later, in February last year, the bank admitted that there would likely be additional branches trimmed from the roster. At that time, Larry Magnesen, who is Director of Corporate Communications for Fifth Third, told Grand Rapids reporters that the bank’s customers are now doing nearly two-thirds of their transactions digitally. He was quoted as saying, “We’ve seen a huge migration in transaction activity,” including mobile apps and other online access.
At that point, the bank, which was the 13th largest in the nation, still operated 201 branches around Michigan, including a number of branches in the tri-county area of Berrien, Cass and Van Buren Counties. With over 200 branches in operation at that time, Fifth Third was the fifth largest banking company in the Great Lakes State.
In addition to the consolidated operations in Southtown St. Joe, Fifth Third will still have branches in Stevensville, Benton Township, Sawyer, New Buffalo, Niles, Niles Township, Berrien Springs, Coloma and Watervliet.
Reimers says that the final consolidation to Southtown is targeted for “sometime around mid-July,” and there might be further clarification in the corporate correspondence being dispatched to customers yet this week. Stay tuned.
