Children got to parade through the streets of West Springfield on Oct. 14, dribbling basketballs and laughing with friends and family. They followed behind a five-time basketball Olympian named Teresa Edwards, who is also a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer, and later had the chance to get her autograph.

The West Springfield Boys & Girls Club received a donation of $10,000, and hundreds of residents enjoyed a free lunch and entertainment by basketball entertainers who call themselves the Court Jesters.

This, all thanks to Florence Bank.

Headquartered in Florence, the bank opened its 10^th branch—the first in Hampden County—in West Springfield this summer, and planned the day’s amazing Florence Bank Dribble Parade to call attention to the milestone. What a great way to honor relationships and let the community know what a solid partner you will be.

The parade was the brainchild of the bank’s advertising agency, which partnered with Florence Bank staff in several months of intricate planning. I helped with the preparation and also promoted the event through press releases to get the bank some wider attention.

Even though it at first was threatening to rain on the Saturday of the parade, it stayed dry, the sun came out, and my intern, Abby Taylor, and I had a great time supporting the bank and taking part. While I was meeting with various photographers—several from the media—and working with the police detail that would keep marchers safe on the .6-mile route from the Boys & Girls Club to the new branch at 1010 Union St., Abby was helping with registration. She later marched in the parade with me, my grandson Eli, his friend Miggz and their babysitter, Emma, and Abby took some great photos as well.

Abby grew up in West Springfield and had the privilege to play basketball at the Boys & Girls Club when she was younger. She thought the parade was wonderful—“a great way to unite the community.” She got a kick out of the West Springfield High School band playing the bank’s “Always” song as the mayor, bank president, and CEO John Heaps marched behind a police escort.

“I cannot remember anything of this sort happening when I was younger, so I am happy for the children who got to feel famous for a day, walking around town for all to see,” Abby says. “I enjoyed recognizing people I see in the grocery store or at church. It warms my heart to know that the children of West Springfield are being nurtured by not only their parents, but by the community too.”

Abby is a junior at Westfield State University, and she is wise to see the ways in which Florence Bank created an opportunity for hundreds of children and their families in West Springfield. It was like being at a fair, not a bank! How clever and unique—and generous!

I’m proud to have had the chance to work with the Florence Bank staff. They are also clever, unique, and generous, as well as dedicated, organized, and genuine. If you run a business or organization, you’d do well to follow their example in offering a community event to give back and get noticed. It’s a smart idea. You can start small. Bring in a speaker on a topic of interest to your audience.

Or go big with a slam dunk like the Florence Bank Dribble Parade!

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Two hundred people to bounce basketballs from the Boys & Girls Club to the new center

WEST SPRINGFIELD—Led by a Basketball Hall of Famer, 200 people dribbling basketballs will march from the Boys & Girls Club of West Springfield to Union Street on Saturday, Oct. 14 as the West Springfield High School band plays Florence Bank’s “Always” song.

In an event aptly dubbed the Florence Bank Dribble Parade, bank and city leaders and area residents will celebrate the opening of the bank’s new Hampden County Banking Center at 1010 Union St.—the bank’s first branch in Hampden County. At the same time, it will also honor its partnerships with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Boys & Girls Club. A rain date is set for Oct. 15.

The parade and grand opening event will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the Boys & Girls Club, where Florence Bank President and CEO John Heaps Jr. will speak and present club leaders with a gift of $50 per participating dribbler, up to $10,000. The parade, led by a surprise Hall of Famer, will then step off into Main Street from the club at 12:30 p.m. and proceed down New Bridge Street to the banking center.

Up to 200 people will each dribble an Under Armour basketball, purchased locally at psi 91 in Springfield for the event, without stopping on the .6-mile parade route. Children interested in dribbling in the parade are invited to register to take part in the event at www.florencebank.com/dribble; registrations will be capped at 200, and each child will receive a free basketball.

Dribblers must be at least 5 years old and must be accompanied by an adult. All dribblers should arrive at the West Springfield Boys and Girls Club, at 615 Main St., West Springfield, at 11:30 a.m. to check-in and receive their basketballs.

Mayor Will Reichelt and other West Springfield leaders are expected to march in the parade and take part in the festivities at the banking center, which will include face painting, games, basketball competitions, and demonstrations by the Court Jesters, a comedic basketball troupe. Two food trucks, the Bistro Bus and Log Rolling, will provide meals.

“This festive celebration will honor our new branch and its employees, as well as the important relationships we have created and nurtured in Hampden County,” Heaps said.

Florence Bank opened its new, full-service Hampden County Banking Center on Aug. 24, prompted to expand into Hampden County by the mergers and buyouts that have defined the banking landscape in past years, leaving Springfield without a community bank headquartered there.

The Dribble Parade and celebration comes one month after a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at the branch on Sept. 14 with Heaps, bank staff and community leaders in attendance to officially commemorate the opening of the bank’s 10^th branch.

In 2007, Florence Bank opened a loan production office in West Springfield, the success of which is responsible for transforming the bank’s total commercial loan portfolio to more than 36 percent from Hampden County-based businesses. That success also made clear the need for the full-service branch.

In the next three to five years, Florence Bank plans to open additional branches in the Greater Springfield area.

All of Florence Bank’s products and services will be offered through the center, located at the corner of Memorial Avenue and Union Street in one third of a 9,000-square-foot plaza that will also hold other commercial tenants.

The Hampden County Banking Center has eight employees including: Branch Manager Maureen Buxton; Assistant Branch Manager Stephanie Moore; Commercial Lenders James Montemayor and Henry Downey; Mortgage Loan Originator Susan Seaver; and John Ernst of Florence Bank’s Financial Group, who will be available by appointment.

Florence Bank has branches in Amherst, Belchertown, Easthampton, Granby, Hadley, Northampton and Williamsburg and is headquartered in Florence.

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WEST SPRINGFIELD—John Heaps Jr., President and CEO of Florence Bank, has a long and deep history in Hampden County.

He grew up in Springfield, lives and raised three children with his late wife, Jane, in Longmeadow and began his banking career at Valley Bank & Trust Co. in Springfield. And it was in Springfield, in 1987, that Heaps was first named a bank president; at 37, he was reported to be the youngest bank CEO in Western Mass by the Springfield Union News.

In August, Heaps will come full circle in banking in Hampden County when Florence Bank opens its new, full-service Hampden County Banking Center on Memorial Avenue.

“The timing is right for us,” Heaps said, noting that with the mergers and buyouts that have defined the banking landscape in past years, there is no longer a community bank headquartered in Springfield. That is a major reason why the expansion is appropriate now.

“There’s a real need for a community bank there,” he said.

Expanding in West Springfield

In 2007, Florence Bank opened a loan production office in West Springfield, the success of which is responsible for transforming the bank’s total commercial loan portfolio to more than 36 percent from Hampden County-based businesses.

“As a result of this accomplishment, and the fact that West Springfield is centrally located in the county, it became clear to us that we needed to open a full-service branch,” Heaps said.

In the next three to five years, Florence Bank plans to open additional branches in the Greater Springfield area. “We are making a commitment to Hampden County. It’s a major strategic direction for Florence Bank to build a presence there,” he said.

Between the loan center, a visible ATM in Springfield, a relationship with the Basketball Hall of Fame and employees—like Heaps—who live in Hampden County, the bank can already boast of nearly 3,000 personal banking customers and over 400 commercial clients in the Greater Springfield region. The bank also has a relationship with 97 nonprofits in Hampden County that have received over $300,000 in grants and gifts in the past five years.

Heaps, Hampden County connection

Heaps’ banking career began in marketing in 1971 at Valley Bank & Trust Co. in Springfield, located in what is now known as MassMutual.

He later worked for Old Colony Bank, which became Bank of Boston-Western Massachusetts, in 1982; in 1987, at 37, Heaps was named that bank’s president and CEO.

Heaps took over the helm of Florence Bank in 1995, and since that time, the bank’s assets have grown from $250 million to $1.2 billion and its capital from $25 to $130 million.

He continues to live in Longmeadow and is an active resident of Hampden County, where he has sat on boards for dozens of organizations; he currently serves on the executive committee for the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts and on the Board of Trustees for Bay Path University.

The Hampden County Banking Center

All of Florence Bank’s services will be offered through its new Hampden County Banking Center in West Springfield, scheduled to open in August in one third of a 9,000-square-foot plaza that will also hold other commercial tenants.

Located on Memorial Avenue and Bridge Street at the former site of St. Ann Roman Catholic Church, which closed in December 2008, the Hampden County Banking Center will have eight employees including: Maureen Buxton, Branch Manager; Stephanie Moore, Assistant Branch Manager; commercial lenders James Montemayor, Henry Downey and mortgage loan originator Susan Seaver, and John Ernst of Florence Bank’s Financial Group will also be available by appointment.

Florence has branches in Amherst, Belchertown, Easthampton, Granby, Hadley, Northampton and Williamsburg and is headquartered in Florence.

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WEST SPRINGFIELD—Construction is underway on a 9,000-square-foot plaza at 1010 Union St., one third of which will house Florence Bank’s new Hampden County Banking Center, scheduled to open this summer.

John Heaps Jr., Florence Bank’s president and CEO, is confident the time is right for an expansion into Hampden County, and community leaders who attended a hard hat tour at the construction site on April 27 said they are excited to welcome the bank as part of a city-wide commitment to new business.

“Our goal is business development,” West Springfield Mayor Will Reichelt told a crowd of roughly 50 civic, business and bank leaders who gathered for a celebratory hard hat tour with Developer Frank Colaccino and architects, attorneys and other professionals involved in the project.

“We’ve been developing the Memorial Drive corridor, and we’re doing that because of businesses like Florence Bank,” Reichelt said. “We’re happy that Memorial Drive is becoming another major corridor.”

West Springfield City Councilor Bruce Gendron, also at the event, chairs the Ordinance and Policy Committee, which the mayor said is working to restructure the city’s zoning laws to make West Springfield more welcoming to new business. “We want to make it easy to open the doors and get business done,” he said. “It’s good for the businesses, and it’s good for West Springfield.”

Others in attendance included Fire Chief Bill Flaherty; Rick Sullivan, president of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts; and Florence Bank board members John Ebbets and Bob Borawski, and board chair Ruth Constantine, as well as Corporator Tanya Barber.

Heaps, the bank’s CEO since 1995, said that what has made this year a good one for expanding to the south are recent bank mergers and acquisitions that have left Springfield without a local bank headquartered there.

“That’s a unique opportunity for us, and we’re taking advantage of that void,” Heaps said.

Florence Bank is unique in that it’s a mutually-held bank, and Heaps said that mutuality allows it to make decisions about what’s best for customers and the community without input from stockholders.

“The Springfield area needs our kind of independent institution,” he said.

In the next three to five years, Heaps said Florence Bank plans to open two to three additional branches in the Greater Springfield area—a strategic direction that began in 2007 with a loan production office in West Springfield, the success of which is responsible for transforming the bank’s total commercial loan portfolio to more than 36 percent from Hampden County-based businesses.

Between the loan center, a visible ATM in Springfield, a relationship with the Basketball Hall of Fame and employees—like Heaps—who live in Hampden County, the bank can already boast of nearly 3,000 personal banking customers and over 400 commercial clients in the Greater Springfield region. The bank also has a relationship with 97 nonprofits in Hampden County that have received over $300,000 in grants and gifts in the past five years.

Under construction

The Colvest Group, Ltd. of Springfield is developing the building where St. Ann Roman Catholic Church was once located, at the intersection of Union Street and Memorial Avenue. It’s expected that, by the end of May, a team of local subcontractors hired by the bank will be able to get inside and do what’s called “the tenant set-up,” according to Mark Cavanaugh, the bank’s facilities director.

Solidus of Bloomfield, Conn., will oversee that interior work, which Cavanaugh said will include framing walls and ceilings, installing partitions and lighting, and laying carpet.

The building’s exterior will feature stone wainscoting on the first few feet near ground level—already in place—and tan siding and multiple windows across the front. Florence Bank will occupy one third—or 3,000 square feet—of the new plaza, and up to three additional commercial tenants will fill the remaining space, said developer Colaccino.

“We certainly think it’s a high-quality location, and the building is very attractive, Colaccino said. “We’re excited to have Florence Bank as our anchor tenant, and we’re confident we’ll have some good-quality tenants in addition to Florence Bank.”

Colaccino thanked the building’s architect and all the professionals—in private business and in West Springfield—who have helped expedite development. “It takes a whole team of people to get something like this done,” he said at the bank’s hard hat event.

“West Springfield is a great place to do business,” he said. “It’s an exciting project. Florence Bank is here, and Florence Bank is a great bank to do business with. We’re happy to not only be your customer but your landlord as well.”

The Hampden County Banking Center

All of Florence Bank’s services will be offered through the new Hampden County Banking Center.

The full complement of offerings includes deposits and loan products, mobile services to provide 24-hour access to accounts, mortgage application services, debit card issuance, commercial loan services and investment services. The center will also offer a drive-up ATM and night depository.

The center will be staffed by eight employees including: Maureen Buxton, Branch Manager; Stephanie Moore, Assistant Branch Manager; commercial lenders James Montemayor, Henry Downey and mortgage loan originator Susan Seaver, and John Ernst of Florence Bank’s Financial Group will also be available by appointment.

Florence has branches in Amherst, Belchertown, Easthampton, Granby, Hadley, Northampton and Williamsburg and is headquartered in Florence.

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