Emporia will have another five-star bank in the community, if regulators approve an application to open a branch office in Emporia.
Jim Hefley, president of the Marion National Bank in Marion, said that the bank applied for the branch office officially on March 23.
Announcement of the application was published that day in a legal notice in The Gazette.
“We don’t anticipate any issues,” Hefley said, adding that approval usually takes 60 to 90 days.
“It’s strictly up to the regulators at this point,” he said. “Given the strength of this bank and the condition of the bank, it’s conceivable that we could have it sooner than that.”
Approval for the branch comes through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, administrator of national banks for the U.S. Treasury Department.
Longtime Emporia banker Daryl Flager will become community bank president for the new branch office.
“We’ve been talking about it for some time, and we feel like the Emporia market would be a great place for us to have a presence,” said Flager, who until last year had been executive vice president for Lyon County State Bank.
Another Marion bank officer, senior vice president and cashier Don Noller, also formerly worked at LCSB.
Noller said he expects that he and Hefley will be at the Emporia branch occasionally, to help get the secondary mortgage market “up and running over there.”
The Emporia branch will be a full-service bank and will be located at 701 Commercial St., after the building undergoes substantial remodeling. Marion will have a lease-to-buy arrangement on the building, which once was headquarters for Lyon County State Bank, and most recently was the site of Prudential Realtors.
Hefley said the company soon will interview architects to design the renovations, set to begin when the branch receives OCC approval.
Marion National Bank, which opened in 1905, is owned by the Joseph McLiney family, which Hefley described as a “very community-oriented banking family” that has been in business many years.
The McLiney family had been involved in LCSB’s ownership.
The Marion branch here will emphasize individual relationships and community involvement, Hefley said.
“Our company has a high level of moral standards and code of ethics,” he said. “The ownership believes you do a good job in the community, you take care of the community, and we’re in this for the long run.”
Hefley said the Marion bank’s management considers Emporia a good location for expansion.
“We just think Emporia’s gonna grow,” Hefley said. “We want to help Emporia grow.”