Newtown Savings enlarges its 150-year-old footprint

Newtown Savings Bank is celebrating its 150th anniversary by, among other things, adding a 16,000-square-foot addition to its Main Street headquarters, planning to open its 11th location this one in Brookfield - and gearing up to push the mutual bank's assets to $750 million next year.

The addition

will let the bank consolidate its back-office operations, now spread between leased facilities in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown and its Southbury and Danbury branches. "Once we move into the back building, we'll make minor renovations to the main building," said John Martocci, chairman and chief executive officer.

The main building is across the street from the house where Henry Glover opened the state-chartered bank in his parlor on Sept 25, 1885. It moved several times before landing at 39 Main St. in 1910. That building underwent several expansions over the years as the bank enlarged its footprint into eight communities: Bethel, Danbury, Monroe, Shelton, Southbury, Trumbull and Woodbury. The Brookfield branch is scheduled to open in March.

"We've been very successful in growing the organization in terms of assets," Martocci said. "At the end of 2004 our assets were $614 million. We're at $700 million today, and our growth should bring us to $750 million or so by the end of next year."

Brookfield branch

Newtown Savings began its yearlong anniversary celebration by creating "a big-budget float" for the town's annual and elaborate Labor Day parade, which this year was part of Newtown's 300th anniversary celebration. The float featured a 12-foot-high birthday cake surrounded by local children, said Tanya Wulff-Truax of the bank's public relations department.

By the end of the year it hopes to publish the bank's history written by the town historian, Dan Cruson, who had access to records dating back to its founding in 1855. The celebration will continue into January, when the operations building is completed and open, and into March when the Brookfield branch is scheduled to open for business.

The 3,500-square-foot branch at 99 Federal Road is being built by Hawley Construction of Danbury, which will lease the building to Newtown Savings. All of the banks locations are leased except for the Newtown main office and its Southbury branch "Everyone has a different business model," Martocci said. "We think our capital is better spent in lending rather than putting it into bricks and mortar to the extent that we can."

The Brookfield branch will be the bank's first in that community. "It's a natural, contiguous part of our market and we're already serving a customer base there," Martocci said. It also is in a high-volume retail stretch that runs from Danbury to a mile or so north of the branch office. It's adjacent to Levitz Furniture and Party Post stores, across the street from the Kohl's shopping plaza, and has a traffic light to that regulates traffic flow into and out of the parking lot. "The traffic light is one of the reasons we chose the location, so our customers could get in and out with ease."

Internal growth

This past April, Newtown Savings opened a branch office in Shelton and "we're doing very well there," he said. "That office has about $12 million in deposits already."

After the Brookfield branch opens next March, the bank will take a bit of a breather before deciding on another branch.

"Every time you open a branch, you have to absorb the overhead and focus a little bit more on profitable growth rather than expanding our footprint," he said. Although the bank is leasing the Brookfield property, it still has to pour about $700,000 into furnishing the branch office. "An ATM is $50,000 alone."

"We think it's time to grow from within, to grow from this base to better absorb the overhead."

Not that Martocci isn't planning ahead. "We're keeping that quiet," he said about the location of the bank's next branch. But "it will be a contiguous community" and will probably open around 2008 or so.