Old National bank to open in new Main and Vine building

An Evansville-headquartered bank will be the main tenant of a five-story mixed use development in downtown Lexington, the developer of the project and the bank announced Friday.

Old National Bank, which has 200 banks in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, announced Friday it will be leasing 7,000 square feet of first-floor retail space of the proposed Main and Vine building. Construction on the building will start this fall and is expected to be completed in the fall of 2017.

Old National is currently in several Kentucky cities including Owensboro and Louisville. It has leased temporary space on Main Street and has hired many familiar faces in Lexington banking to help it start its operations here, said James A. Sandgren, president and chief operating officer of Old National Bank. Currently, Old National is focusing on building its commercial loan business in Lexington.

“Lexington is a market that we have had an interest in for a number of years,” said Sandgren. “We look at it as a tremendous growth market.”

Once the bank is open in the fall of 2017, it will be a full-service bank, offering commercial loans, mortgages, personal banking and other services, Sandgren said. It will also have a drive-thru, Sandgren said.

Bob Quick, president and CEO of Commerce Lexington, was the president of an Evansville-area chamber of commerce from 1994 to 2001 and is familiar with Old National.

“I couldn’t speak more highly of them,” Quick said. “They will be a good fit for this community because they invest a lot in the communities they are in.”

Phil Holoubek, the developer of the Main and Vine building, said in addition to the bottom-floor retail, the building will have 48 to 52 apartments that will be between 750-square feet and 1,000 -square feet. The apartments will be both one and two-bedroom. Old National will take a little less than half of the 15,000 square-feet first-floor retail space. Other retail tenants will be announced later, Holoubek said.

“We are seeing a strong demand for apartments and rentals downtown,” Holoubek said.

It’s possible those apartments will be converted to condos in the future, he said.

There will be more than 100 parking spots on the pie-shaped lot, 50 of which will be in a single-story underground garage. At one point, the Lexington Parking Authority had agreed to put a parking garage on the lot. However, those plans were scratched because there were too many utilities on that site and a culvert for the now-buried Town Branch.

There will still be space on that lot for the Town Branch Commons, a linear downtown trail, to traverse the property, Holoubek said.

“We are working with the city on those plans,” Holoubek said. “I absolutely love our downtown and I’m so happy to finally, after so many years of trying, be able to bring a great quality project to this site. It’s going to be a cool addition to our downtown.”

Holoubek said they are still in the design phase and final schematics are not yet available. But it will be similar to the look of Main and Rose, another property Holoubek developed, and is across the street from the proposed development.

The project is being financed through a combination of private bank financing and local investors. Main and Vine building is part of a tax increment financing district created and approved by the city and the state. Tax increment financing uses new taxes generated by the project to pay for infrastructure costs. That new TIF district stretches from the Main and Vine property to Midland and Third streets. Holoubek said he expects to announce other projects in that district soon.

Other partners in the TIF district include Mike Scanlon and Community Ventures, a nonprofit.

This story was originally published May 20, 2016 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Old National bank to open in new Main and Vine building."