West Michigan Community Bank continues Grand Rapids-area expansion

West Michigan Community Bank continues Grand Rapids-area expansion

West Michigan Community Bank has extended its Grand Rapids-area footprint with a new office in Grand Rapids Township.

The new location on Cascade Road houses the Hudsonville-based company’s newest retail banking office, as well as commercial lending and wealth management staff. The office that opened this week sits along a high-traffic corridor with high visibility as the bank continues to grow in the Grand Rapids-area market.

“It’s a statement for us in Grand Rapids,” said bank President Phil Koning. “It’s a big investment in that community.”

West Michigan Community Bank now has seven offices in Ottawa and Kent counties: two in Holland and one each in Zeeland, Hudsonville, Jenison and downtown Grand Rapids, in addition to the newest location.

The bank first entered the Grand Rapids market with the opening of a downtown branch office in early 2012. A “good share” of the bank’s growth today comes from the Grand Rapids market, Koning said. It’s considering additional locations in Kent County, particularly the Byron Center/Wyoming area, though any additional office is at least two years away, he added.

“That’s in our sights, and then we would look at other locations as well on a longer-term basis,” Koning said.

While the company has no immediate plans for further expansion in the Grand Rapids area, the bank did recently buy the building next to Van Andel Arena that houses a Chemical Bank office. The location once housed the former Bank of Holland that Chemical acquired in 2015. The bank could open an office at the location in 2022, Koning said.

West Michigan Community Bank at the end of the second quarter has total assets of $702.9 million, an increase of more than 26 percent from a year earlier, and 62 percent from the $431.5 million at the end of 2017, according to a quarterly financial report file with the FDIC.

West Michigan Community Bank had $583.1 million in net loans as of June 30, an increase of nearly 24 percent from midyear in 2019.

Commercial loans alone grew 57.2 percent in the 12 months through June 30 to $211.6 million. Much of the commercial loan growth came from the $70 million in loans the bank wrote this spring through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.

The bank through midyear had net income of $3.4 million, according to the FDIC filing.

At the new Cascade office, David Bareman of DLB Architects LLC in Holland served as the principal architect on the project. First Companies Inc. in Grand Rapids was the general contractor.