We offer up big crocodile tears for the officials at U.S. Bank, which told its local customers just this week that it never intended to close its branch at Austin and Madison. The banking giant just put the site on the market because it wanted to cash out its real estate holdings at the location and then lease space for a branch.
“We’re just trying to juice our earnings,” is our translation of the messaging.
It is, they acknowledge, a tactic they are using in many branch locations.
Unfortunately for U.S. Bank, Oak Park’s village government very much wants the building and property as the new home for its police station. And, we expect, that as of a Tuesday village board meeting, the village will be full steam ahead in taking the site via eminent domain.
The bank says it will fight that effort with every sinew in its twisty veins because, by golly, they just want to serve Oak Parkers and Austinites with their banking needs. Considering U.S. Bank just shuttered its branch at 104 N. Oak Park Ave. last fall, you can color us doubtful.
This property is a great solution to what has been a vexing problem for years and years. The current Oak Park Police Station, in the basement of village hall is horrible. Overcrowded, windowless, unsafe and fully obsolete, everyone agrees that, while costly, a new police station is essential. Finding a way to not crowd it onto the village hall campus at Madison and Lombard is all good. And reusing the fine building the old locally owned Park National Bank remade as its handsome headquarters on Austin is a great solution.
And we’ll acknowledge that even 17 years later we hold a grudge against U.S. Bank and the FDIC, which stripped local banking champion Mike Kelly of his ownership of Park National after the 2008 real estate debacle. The small (relatively) banking group he had built with smarts and quiet generosity was handed over to U.S. Bank which has operated exactly as you’d expect a banking conglomerate to operate.
