ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Back in January, Equity Bank announced it would be rebuilding its south location, a project Equity Bank Regional President Steve Williams said had been in the works for a while.

“This project has been in the works for quite a while, and it came about after we looked at our branches around the full Equity Bank footprint and realized our branch on South Kansas Ave. near El Rancho Supermercado was in need of more than a little bit of repair,” Williams said in a January L&T story. “We felt we could serve our customers a lot better with a new branch. It was really the ongoing maintenance costs of the current location that really made our decision to put together a new building. When buildings get to a certain point, it's more efficient to just tear it down and start again and make the next one last for 30 years, and we ultimately decided that was the way to go with this.”

Williams added there will be multiple benefits to the new building.

“If you look at that branch the way it sits now, one might have absolutely no idea you can actually walk into it and take care of business, but you can,” Williams noted in the January L&T story. “At first look, someone would probably think 'This is a drive-through only location,' but we had bankers and staff in there who can take care of consumer loans and all types of other business. The new building will be much more walk-in friendly looking, and it'll look more like a branch where banking customers can go in and take care of what they need to. The big thing I'm most excited about is being able to take care of the customers better and overall being more welcoming for customers to be able to take care of any banking needs. Another big thing for us will be making sure Equity Bank is demonstrating that commitment to the Southwest Kansas part of the world. We're already a Kansas-based bank, but Liberal's a long way from Wichita, and it's nice to know we're a very important piece of the entire Equity Bank pie.”

The groundbreaking took place Thursday afternoon, and Hutton Builds representative Ryan Gfeller said progress on the project has been positive so far.

“Everything has been going really, really well. We got started back in April, when we took the old building down, and then we took the time to make sure everything was cleared up properly so it wouldn’t bother the residents,” Gfeller said. “There are some great local contractors we’re working with, so this project has started out really well.”

And there is much more work to come, Gfeller said.

“Right now, we’re pushing toward everything that has to get done so we can get the building slab in,” Gfeller said. “Once we get that in, we can put some steel up and some framing up and roofing and that work. There’s a lot of critical work to take care of yet, and that’ll push us toward the end. I’m really proud of how this project has progressed so far, we do this type of building pretty frequently, so I think this will end up really well. This building will have some really nice new features, and we have a great relationship with the architect, so it’ll be really exciting seeing how everything goes.”

Gfeller said the groundbreaking was a very exciting day.

“It’s great to be able to get the community together and celebrate a milestone like this for a project like this,” Gfeller said. “As far as the next few months, people will start seeing the project go more vertical and start seeing more project, and before everyone knows it, the grand opening will be happening. We’re going through pretty much the same process as all of our other projects, but we’re really excited about how nice this building will look after all the work that went into the design and now the construction.”

Overall, Gfeller said, he will be excited for the community to see the finished project.

“We’re excited to have this job in Liberal, and we’re glad we can do a project that will be such a big benefit to the community,” Gfeller said.