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AMBER MOBLEYBay Cities Bank thinks the market is so strong it's buying land at nearly three times market value.
CARROLLWOOD - Bay Cities Bank is banking on small businesses in Carrollwood.
The Florida bank with headquarters in the West Shore business district is opening two offices in Carrollwood come December 2005 and March 2006, respectively.
"Carrollwood is an important market: commercial real estate, small businesses, professionals and executives," Bay Cities president Gregory Bryant said about building the bank's fifth and sixth locations in the area.
"When you look around Tampa Bay, this is just a phenomenal market for that type of niche," Bryant said.
Currently with two offices in Tampa, one in Lutz and another in St. Petersburg, Bay Cities plans to have 10 or 12 locations evenly split between Pinellas and Hillsborough counties by 2010.
Nearly 30,000 businesses with fewer than 50 employees call Hillsborough home, according to 2002 U.S. Census Bureau figures. And more than 2,000 opened between 1998 and 2002.
"We love small businesses and professionals, and I just think there's a lot of opportunity there for a well-run independent bank," Bryant said.
There's so much love, in fact, that Bay Cities is paying nearly three times market value for the future location of its sixth office, a half acre at Bearss Avenue and N Dale Mabry Highway.
The land with the $1.45-million price tag is the former home of a gas station and the future home of a 3,500-square-foot banking branch with two drive-through lanes.
"That is expensive," said Ray Pineda, commercial appraisal manager for the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser's Office. "It's a lot of money, but banks are weird. Anybody'll tell you that."
But, Pineda said, "as far as what they think they could make back in the number of deposits, the cost is probably nothing."
Bay Cities, while small, is anything but the typical small-scale, locally owned independent bank.
Its chairman and founder is big-time banker Bronson Thayer, who previously operated First Florida Banks, Tampa's biggest locally owned bank until the now-defunct Barnett bought it in 1992.
In its initial public offering in 1999, Bay Cities sold more than $13-million in shares, roughly double the beginning investment regulators recommend. Since then, the company has grown to $250-million in total assets.
Bryant said it should not come as a surprise that, in this era of megabanks, there would be room for an upstart like Bay Cities.
"Banking seems to happen in cycles," he said.
"If there's a merger or an acquisition, it makes some talented bankers available and they go out and create banks."