American Savings Bank has gotten the green light from the Oahu Island Burial Council to proceed with plans to build a new headquarters in Chinatown.
Rich Wacker, president and CEO of the state’s third-largest bank, said Friday that the bank has agreed to make certain modifications on the site at 300 N. Beretania St. The project has been stalled since February, when iwi, or human remains, were discovered.
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THIRD-QUARTER NET
$15.1 million
YEAR-EARLIER NET
$13.5 million
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Still, Wacker said a new headquarters is not a foregone conclusion.
“We went on hold earlier in the year when we discovered the iwi, and now that we found a good resolution with the cultural descendants and got the plan approved, we’re back actively working to finalize the cost and if and when we’ll be able to move ahead. We passionately want to do it, but the numbers have to make sense.”
Wacker updated the project’s status on a day in which the bank reported a 12.3 percent increase in third-quarter earnings that were powered by double- digit deposit growth and a moderate gain in loans from the year-earlier period.
“We shifted the building on the lot about 3 feet in order to avoid disturbing the iwi kupuna, and then we made a couple other adjustments to the foundation design and lost a few parking spots,” Wacker said. “It will be the proper environment for the kupuna.”
Wacker said about half of the company’s 1,500 employees would be relocated from the bank’s downtown headquarters on Fort Street Mall, the Mililani service center and a couple of other locations near downtown. He said the building will have five floors of parking and five floors of offices along with a new branch on the ground floor.
American Savings, which had hoped to be a stand-alone operation by now, saw those plans squashed July 15 when the state Public Utilities Commission voted to reject NextEra Energy’s $4.3 billion acquisition of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc., the parent of the bank. American Savings would have been spun off as part of the deal.
“We’re business people, and we move on as developments happen,” Wacker said. “We’re just working hard to make the best bank it can be and do a great job for our customers. What’s in the past is in the past.”
American Savings’ earnings rose to $15.1 million as deposits jumped 12 percent to $5.38 billion, and loans grew 4 percent to $4.73 billion in keeping with the bank’s target of mid-single-digit loan growth. All six Hawaii banks that reported earnings this week showed good loan growth.
“We grew our loans, deposits and margins, and improved our efficiencies,” Wacker said. “I think it was a strong quarter. Earnings were up $1.7 million over the same quarter last year.”
He said the areas of loan growth were consistent with the other banks in town.
“Commercial real estate has been the strongest growth,” Wacker said. “We’ve also done very well with our consumer loans and home-equity loans. On the residential mortgage side, we’ve originated a lot of new mortgages, but with the rates very low, we ended up selling them into the secondary market. We still end up servicing them because they’re still our customers, but we sold the investment.”
The bank also increased its provision for potential loan losses by setting aside $5.7 million compared with $3 million in the year-earlier quarter.
American Savings reported its earnings ahead of corporate parent HEI, which will release its financial results Nov. 4. HEI’s stock closed up 5 cents Friday at $29.08.
The bank’s earnings were announced after the market closed.
