ShawneeDispatch.com

Commerce Bank’s decision to close its downtown Shawnee branch leaves the future uncertain for a building that’s been a keystone of the city for more than 100 years.

Although the ATM will continue to operate at Johnson Drive and Nieman Road, Commerce closed the branch May 6, bank officials said. By late last week even the time and temperature signs were gone.

At this time last year, Kevin Tubbesing had plans in place to purchase the building, redevelop it as Stag’s Horn Historical Center and lease it to mixed-use tenants.

The public seemed interested and excited about the plans, he said, but no one actually wanted to pay rent.

Without more tenant interest, Tubbesing said he wasn’t willing to invest in redevelopment up front hoping tenants would come later. He’s now brokering the building for sale through Evergreen Real Estate Services.

“From the future perspective, it’s really just going to be a matter of how someone can make the building into something new and different than what it is,” Tubbesing said. “It partially comes down to the community support for that being done.”

The original part of the building was constructed in 1909 as the Shawnee State Bank, according to documents from Tubbesing.

It has been expanded through the years and now covers 10,726 square feet. The final expansion took place in 1971, when black glass with aluminum framing was applied to the skin of the building.

Beneath that glass, however, some original stone is still in place, Tubbesing said. Plans for Stag’s Horn called for removing the 1971 façade from the east side of the building to reveal the original stone.

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Commerce bought Shawnee State Bank and took over its facilities in the 1990s.

Even with the downtown branch closed, Commerce still has three branches in the city: 11000 Shawnee Mission Parkway (at Nieman Road), 13501 Shawnee Mission Parkway (at Pflumm Road) and 21800 Midland Drive in western Shawnee.

The Johnson Drive and Nieman Road branches were only half a mile apart.

“At one time the Kansas banking laws required a branch to be within 1 mile of the main facility,” said Bill Ferguson, director of retail for Commerce Kansas City. “In today’s world, a bank would not build two locations so close together.”

Ferguson said when Commerce moved into the downtown branch, which had been Shawnee State Bank’s main location, backroom operations moved to another office, leaving the branch with more space than it needed. He said in the past five years Commerce has had offers to purchase the building and decided to move forward with consolidating branches.

The Shawnee Mission Parkway and Nieman location has five drive-thru lanes and a drive-up ATM, something there was not space for at the Johnson Drive branch.

“More than half of our transactions are conducted through the drive-thru, and many of our customers were already using the Nieman Branch for that reason,” Ferguson said. “The Nieman branch also offers extended hours.”

Anticipating more traffic at the Nieman branch, Commerce recently completed a project to improve traffic flow and parking at that location.

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Tubbesing said he’d love to see a single user come into downtown Shawnee and take over all 10,000 square feet of the old bank building.

However, he said, it’s more likely to become a mixed-use property, potentially a combination of retail and office space.

“The building can be configured in a lot of different ways,” Tubbesing said.

In the meantime, Mike Unterreiner isn’t thrilled about another building sitting empty just paces away from his business, Hartman Hardware at 11018 Johnson Drive. He noted that the Fine Arts Theatre, just a few doors down from Commerce, has been empty for years.

“It’s a huge part of downtown sitting vacant,” he said. “There’s enough empty buildings around Shawnee, we don’t need downtown starting to be vacant.”

Unterreiner said he’d love to see a mixed-use plan take hold, increasing the types of retail businesses that would invite people to park, walk and shop. He said a nice restaurant or even Chipotle might be a good draw for the corner, too.

With the bank gone, Unterreiner said he’s also going to have to break years of habit and figure out a new way for checking the time and temperature.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m used to looking out that front window.”

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