Evans Bank is preparing to move its administrative operations to Amherst from Hamburg after the Amherst Industrial Development Agency on Friday approved nearly $600,000 in tax breaks to support the project.
Relocating business operations from one municipality to another within the region with the help of tax breaks can be sensitive and generally discouraged by local development officials. But Evans Bank president and CEO David J. Nasca said the bank conducted an extensive search before deciding on Amherst as the best option as the home base for its growing business.
“We scoured all of Erie County for two years,” Nasca said after the meeting.
The bank determined building new offices in Hamburg would have been cost prohibitive, Nasca said. And he said the bank was unable to find suitable existing offices in the town to accommodate its growth.
“We looked at it and said, ‘We want an existing building,’ ” he said. “We looked at everything. We looked in West Seneca, we looked in Evans, Derby, we looked in Hamburg for two years. We looked in Clarence.
“The thing that drove the decision was really, this is where the building was,” Nasca said. “If they would have had this building in Hamburg, we would have stayed in Hamburg. If they would have had this building in Angola, we would gone to Angola.”
David Nasca, president and CEO of Evans Bank. (News file photo)
Evans expects to close shortly on its purchase of 6460 Main St. in Amherst, the former home of Buffalo Cardiology & Pulmonary Associates. Nationwide Insurance owns the building. The entire project is estimated at $7.65 million, including the cost of acquiring, renovating and equipping the property.
The Amherst IDA approved $393,000 in property tax breaks for the Evans project, plus sales tax breaks of $201,250 related to renovating the property, for a total of $594,250.
Evans has pledged to add 20 jobs over a two-year period, which would bring its job total to 193. The bank has targeted moving into the Amherst building as early as April 2020.
Nasca said the Amherst location will also help the bank with recruiting a diverse workforce and access to its offices. “This is on a Main Street corridor with bus service, with transportation,” he said. “We are doing work to make sure our people can go with us with transportation.”
David S. Mingoia, the Amherst IDA executive director, said the agency adhered to the intermunicipal move requirements in the tax-exemption policy that it signed with other IDAs in the county.
“I think it’s always been my intention anytime there’s been a company that’s contacted us that’s coming from another community to make sure that they’re working with their existing representatives,” Mingoia said. He noted the bank had worked with CBRE-Buffalo in its search for a new location.
Evans plans to consolidate operations from three locations into the Amherst offices. The focal point of its administrative operations is One Grimsby Drive in Hamburg; the other two locations back-office operations at 6834 Erie Road in Derby and 485 Sunset Drive in Hamburg. Those three buildings combined have 37,000 square feet, while the Amherst building alone consists of 50,000 square feet, Nasca said.
The three locations that Evans will move out of will be sold, he said.
The move will mark a shift of Evans’ home base of operations to the Northtowns from the Southtowns.
“We view it as an expansion,” Nasca said. “Our footprint is more regional. … We have a more regional footprint with a community banking framework. We’re not leaving anywhere. We’ll continue to make investments in the communities we’ve always been in. … We love the fact that community, the Southtowns community, feels their ownership of us. We embrace that, support that. That will always be the roots of who we are.
“But in order to grow, this is the next step. And really what it does from our perspective, it gives us more corporate power to be able to help more in those communities.”