Mountain West closing old branch

SANDPOINT — Beginning this summer, patrons at one of Mountain West Bank’s local finance centers will no longer have to fight Highway 95 traffic.

The Mountain West Financial Center along Highway 95 at 201 East Superior St. will close in June as it consolidates services with another Sandpoint branch on Highway 2 and Division Street.

Mountain West opted to close the center, an older facility that it purchased from Pend Oreille Bancorp after a 2002 acquisition of the company, in part because of the difficulty that patrons have accessing the center.

“The older branch has a tough ingress and egress,” executive vice president of retail banking Dan Price, said. “It’s tough to get back on the highway, especially in summer.”

Once the move is completed, Mountain West will continue with a strong presence in the area with its two branches here, including one in Ponderay. 

The four employees from the Superior Street branch will relocate to either the Ponderay or Division Avenue center, Price said.

A tenant in the Superior Street center, Loan Star Mortgage Co, will have the option to continue leasing space in the center, Price said.

Mountain West, has made no plans to sell the building, he said.

The move to consolidate the two facilities made sense to the company after reports showed that the Division Avenue center was seeing a lot of foot traffic.

“The new bank has taken off really well,” he said. “It’s convenient for folks.”

Mountain West, based in Kalispell, Mont., is a subsidiary of Glacier Bancorp, Inc. which acquired Pend Oreille Bancorp, and its bank subsidiary Pend Oreille Bank headquartered in Sandpoint, Idaho in 2003. The acquisition resulted in Pend Oreille Bancorp’s merger into Glacier Bancorp, Inc. and Pend Oreille Bank merged with Glacier’s Idaho bank subsidiary, Mountain West Bank.

With assets of $6.191 billion, Glacier Bancorp is the largest publicly traded banking company in the Inland Northwest, according to the company.