David White was scouting this fast-growing community near Houston in 2016 in search of a site for his planned hamburger-chili parlor. The most promising candidate was a vacated suburban bank adjacent to a small shopping center.
As The New York Times reports, White, a restaurant entrepreneur, had his doubts about turning a bank into a restaurant. But today Ron’s Hamburgers and Chili is flourishing in its Magnolia, Texas location. Part of a chain based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the restaurant serves jumbo burgers and Frito pies in a bright red dining room that bears no hint of its previous life as a financial institution.
White’s conversion of a former bank site is hardly an oddity. Banks have steadily pared branches over the past several years because of industry consolidation, efforts to curb operating costs and, most significantly, the growth of mobile and online banking.
Former bank branches have been reincarnated as pizza parlors, fast-food outlets, health care sites, massage chains, credit unions, educational institutions, churches and mobile phone stores. Some serve as locations for Starbucks, CityMD Urgent Care, CVS and other chains.
The number of bank branches in the United States has fallen to about 89,860 in 2017 from a peak of nearly 100,000 in June 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits and monitors the banking system. Last year, the number of branches dropped by nearly 2,000, a 2.2% decline from 2016.
Nearly 1,650 bank branches or former branches were up for sale across the country in mid-July, according to the CoStar Group, a real estate data and analytics firm. The average asking price was about $350 a square foot, which would be just under $2 million for an average-size bank of about 5,600 square feet, said Justin Bakst, CoStar’s director of capital markets.
Former banks can also offer the allure of architecture that reflects wealth and confidence.
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Amid banking downturn, vacant branches are being turned into churches, pharmacies and pizza joints
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