The spine of downtown banking, which for years ran up and down 17th Street, is curving as banks increasingly set up along the shopper- friendly 16th Street Mall.
Minnesota’s TCF Financial Corp., which has largely limited its presence in Colorado to the Denver suburbs and Colorado Springs, plans to open a branch Friday on the busy corner of 16th and California streets.
“It is about convenience,” said Wayne Marty, president of TCF Bank in Colorado. “You place a retail outlet where the people are.”
Noticing a crowd getting off a light-rail train just outside the window of the new branch, Marty said, “We want to make those people our customers.”
The new TCF is across the mall from a Washington Mutual branch that opened in 2003 next to the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau’s information center.
Separately, the Bank of Denver is making plans to establish a foothold on the mall – in a space once occupied by Bogart Golf – after it moves its headquarters from 1534 California St. to a location uptown at 17th Avenue and Clarkson Street.
Even banks that once had a spot on the mall and left, such as Chase Bank (formerly Bank One), are seeking a way back in.
“You look at downtown and the life it has taken on,” said Steve Shaffer, Chase’s marketing manager. “It is a matter of finding the right deal.”
On an average day, about 110,000 workers fill downtown and 63,000 people ride RTD’s free mall shuttle. Downtown is home to 9,000 residents living in 6,239 housing units, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership, the group overseeing the mall.
The new 16th Street branches offer convenience to consumers in terms of proximity and hours.
Wells Fargo, which two years ago established a presence on the Lower Downtown end of the mall to reach the area’s new residents, opens its LoDo branch on Saturdays, spokeswoman Cristie Drumm said.
TCF’s branch will be open seven days a week, as with its branches elsewhere.
Consumers also can expect to be pitched deals, especially from retail banks like TCF that cater to consumers more than to institutions.
TCF will offer iPod Shuffle music players to the first 150 customers who open up an account after the branch opens at 9 a.m. Friday. The bank is also offering a market-beating 4.5 percent rate on one-year certificates of deposit.
The blurring of patrician 17th Street with merchant-minded 16th Street has raised questions about how the influx will change both neighborhoods.
A consultant working for the downtown partnership went so far as to recently suggest that fewer bank branches be permitted so as to protect the mall’s retail focus.
To that, TCF’s Marty replies: “I’m sorry, but we’re retail.”
And the nonprofit partnership isn’t blocking the banks.
“We are looking for a diverse quality of retail,” said Jim Kirchheimer, the partnership’s director of economic development. “Banks are an important part of that. There was never an intention to single out any industry.”
Having a bank in place is much better than having a vacant storefront, and the banks are sprucing up the locations they are taking, Kirchheimer said.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-820-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
