Wilmington will see the entry of another bank into the city in the not-too-distant future.
Charleston, South Carolina-based CresCom Bank has purchased the former Cape Fear Credit Union building at 4710 Oleander Drive, which it will eventually renovate and open as a branch office, CresCom CEO David Morrow said this week. Morrow said there is no specific timetable for the project.
“We put full focus on our branches when we open them, and right now our full focus is on the 12 branches we just acquired,” he said during a visit to Wilmington on Thursday.
CresCom entered the regional market Dec. 12, when it completed its acquisition of 13 – now consolidated to 12 - former First Community Bank branches in North and South Carolina, plus a loan processing office in Wilmington. The integration of those locations is in process as bank officials get to know their new neighborhood, which they believe holds significant potential for their bank, Morrow said.
The locations, taken over from failed Waccamaw Bank in June 2012 by Bluefield, Virginia-based First Community Bank, are in Southport, Shallotte, Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach, Whiteville, Elizabethtown, Chadbourn and Tabor City, as well as in Horry and Lancaster counties, South Carolina. When First Community Bank took over Waccamaw, the latter had a branch in Wilmington, but First Community Bank subsequently closed it.
CresCom’s CEO said that acquisition of First Community’s branches in the region made sense for his bank, whose geographic footprint stretched along the South Carolina coast from Charleston to the North Carolina border before the deal. First Community Bank’s major presence, on the other hand, was in north-central North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
“We are a community bank and think our style and approach will fit well with some of these smaller markets,” Morrow said. “When we had an opportunity to meet with the [employees] it was amazing how committed and dedicated [they] were to their bank. Their tenure and depth of knowledge are very impressive. People bank with people, and the people we were able to bring onto our team are very experienced.”
Since its branch purchase, CresCom has consolidated the two Shallotte branches into one, but has kept all employees, some of whom are now working in the bank’s two Southport offices, according to Morrow.
CresCom was created in 2011 with the merger of Charleston-based Community First Bank and Myrtle Beach-based Crescent Bank. It went public in 2014. With the recent acquisition, the bank has 26 branches and more than $1.2 billion in assets, Morrow said.