Paul Bass Photo
A sign unveiling Tuesday revealed a sight not seen in the city in 15 years: A “New Haven” bank, in name, and in concept.
Employees watched from Whalley Avenue by the corner of Sherman as their employer, Start Community Bank, was officially rechristened New Haven Bank after a morning vote by the Board of Directors. The city’s only remaining locally based lender, Start was formed in 2010 with money extracted when the former depositor-owned New Haven Savings Bank went public.
The new name revives the title of the city’s first-ever bank, which was formed in 1784. It cements the bank’s commitment to completing an old mission — community-based lending, especially to small businesses, which has been endangered by the disappearance of local banks amid the globalization of finance.
New Haven Sign Co. began the work on Friday, removing the START signs …
… and shrouding the New Haven Bank replacements, including the main five-by-21-foot main illuminated sign at the corner as well as the above message facing Whalley.
New Haven Sign Co. chief Peter Deyo surveyed the work with pride Tuesday. He was a depositor at the old New Haven Savings, which in 2004 became a part of a regional lender named New Alliance, then an outpost of First Niagara (based in Buffalo) and now Cleveland-based KeyBank, over the last decade and a half. “It’s good to have a community bank back in town,” Deyo said.
“It’s who we are,” bank CEO Maureen Frank said of the new name. “We are the only local bank left in New Haven.” She said the bank has grown to $143 million in assets since its December 2010 opening; it has turned a profit the past four years. It focuses on local businesses too small for regional national lenders, whose New Haven branches typically look to make loans of $1 million or more. New Haven Bank’s “sweet spot” for a loan is between $300,000 and $500,000, Frank said. She said typical customers are small manufacturers and contractors fixing up blighted properties to make them eligible for tenants receiving federal Section 8 rental subsidies.
A community bank matters because “when you walk in, you see the people who make the decisions. It’s almost a lost art — personal contact,” said bank board member Rolan Joni Young (at right in photo). “Being grounded in a place matters,” agreed fellow board member Anika Singh Lemar (at left). Like the other board members, Young and Lemar have worked extensively on New Haven community development, from helping craft the deal that brought a supermarket to the “food desert” of lower Whalley (in Young’s case) to promoting regional affordable housing and promoting new urbanist neighborhood commercial planning (in Lemar’s).
Click on the video to watch three other New Haven Bank officials, Directors Michael Schaffer and David Newton and Executive Vice-President John DeStefano, comb through their memories to name local banks that sprouted from the 18th through 20th centuries and then all eventually closed their doors or sold out to outside companies.
First New Haven National Bank … Constitution Bank … New Haven Savings … Connecticut Savings … Second New Haven National Bank … Union Trust … Merchants … Bank of New Haven … Did they miss any?
The three directors, who, combined, have well more than a century helping to run civic institutions and negotiate New Haven financial deals, also reflected on what has been lost — and what their bank aims to preserve.