Buckeye Community Bank, located at 105 Sheffield Center in Sheffield Township, is opening a new branch in June in the village of LaGrange.
The independent bank will open the branch in the former Huntington National Bank, 106 S. Center St. in LaGrange, according to Ben Norton, president and CEO of Buckeye Community Bank.
The LaGrange location has sat empty since 2021.
“That left a great opportunity for Buckeye Community Bank to look at expanding into southern Lorain County,” Norton said.
While primarily serving Lorain County’s northern communities, Norton said opening the new branch presents an opportunity to serve communities in LaGrange and surrounding areas.
“We decided to take advantage of the fact that there are no community banks in southern Lorain County,” he said. “We felt that that market is a very dynamic area, and there’s a lot of great businesses down in southern Lorain County that Buckeye Community Bank will be able to provide much better banking services, than they might be getting at this point in time.”
Since 1999, Buckeye Community Bank’s mission has been to keep valued relationships with customers built on trust and service, Norton said.
“We’re going to be celebrating our 25 years of operations in 2024,” he said. “Buckeye Community Bank has always focused on being a community bank and has focused on being a part, a big part, of the communities that we’re in and that we serve.
“We’ll be bringing that philosophy to southern Lorain County, and we envision ourselves as being the go-to bank in that part of the county.”
According to Norton, the bank also has a loan production and servicing center in Avon and, at the end of the month in Sheffield Village, will have an operations center.
Buckeye Community Bank will move into a new main branch this year which is across the street from the current office, he said.
“We’re never going to shy away from exploring additional opportunities,” Norton said. “We know that great things are going to happen in 2024.”
