Bank plans Sarasota branch

SARASOTA — Venice-based Florida Shores Bank, one of the fastest-growing community banks on the Gulf Coast, plans to open a branch in Sarasota later this year.

The new branch is the $320 million-asset bank's fourth office, and its first major expansion north of Venice since it was founded in November 2007. Florida Shores President and CEO Jim Kuhlman, in an interview with the Business Review, says the bank could open another location, in Bradenton, next year.

“From the day we started, the footprint plan we always had in mind to fill was from Bradenton down to Charlotte Harbor,” says Kuhlman, the Business Review's Entrepreneur of the Year for the Sarasota-Manatee region in 2011. “We have grown as earnings and common sense would dictate.”

Florida Shores will lease about 5,700 square feet in the ground floor of a building at Fruitville Road and Goodrich Avenue in downtown Sarasota. The building was once home to Sarasota-based Century Bank F.S.B., which federal regulators shuttered in 2009. Now Sarasota-based entrepreneur Jesse Biter owns the four-story, 46,617-square-foot building. Biter, who bought it in May 2011, is spending $1.5 million to turn it into a startup business incubator.

“It's a perfect location for us,” says Kuhlman, “being that it's downtown, and it's right on Fruitville.”

Kuhlman says Florida Shores considered other options downtown for its Sarasota expansion, including building its own branch. That option was too expensive, says Kuhlman. Another option, leasing 10,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Bank of America building on Main Street, was deemed too big. BofA is vacating that space, likely by early 2013.

Kuhlman expects the Sarasota Florida Shores branch to open by September. He intends to staff it with nine people, and he might also bring on one or two bank directors to help generate new business. He projects the branch could bring in $70 million to $75 million in deposits in its first year, partially by targeting residents on Siesta Key and Longboat Key for accounts. The bank's Venice office already has several business accounts from the barrier islands, including a handful of condo and homeowner associations.

“I'm very excited about this,” says Kuhlman. “It's a natural extension of what we are doing.”