Spokane-based Sterling Savings Bank plans hiring push – Additional 100 jobs here due in acquisition; bank eyes big space downtown

Spokane-based Sterling Savings Bank plans to hire about 100 people in coming weeks to work in its headquarters here, and is negotiating to lease about 30,000 square feet of additional space downtown to help accommodate that growth.

By Addy Hatch

http://spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article&sub=1810

The expansion is being driven by Sterling’s impending acquisition of Klamath First Bancorp Inc., a Klamath Falls, Ore.-based financial institution that has more than 50 branches, says Heidi Stanley, chief operating officer of Sterling Savings. That $147 million acquisition is scheduled to be completed Jan. 2, she says.

About 10 to 20 people are expected to transfer to Sterling’s headquarters here from Klamath Falls, but “the remainder we will have to hire, and we’ll be hiring locally,” Stanley says.

The jobs will be located throughout Sterling’s head-office and back-office operations, including loan servicing, marketing, human resources, facilities management, and information technology, she says.

“Almost every department has an impact,” Stanley says.

Sterling doesn’t have room for all of those new employees in its headquarters facility, at 111 N. Wall, so the bank is negotiating with a downtown property owner for an additional about 30,000 square feet of space, she says. Stanley declines for now to disclose the location Sterling is considering, but says, “We will have those people housed downtown, which should help the economy.”

In addition to the 100 additional workers coming to Sterling’s downtown operations, the bank probably will hire another 50 or more people throughout its system next year “to accommodate the growth that Klamath brings us,” Stanley says. Many of those jobs will be in commercial banking.

“Because Klamath brings with it a significant amount of deposits, it allows us to increase our lending throughout our market areas, therefore we’re having to hire business bankers throughout our system,” she says.

Klamath First’s deposits totaled about $1.1 billion as of Sept. 30, the end of the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, and it had assets of about $1.5 billion at that time.

Sterling Savings had deposits of $2.4 billion as of that date, which was the end of the Spokane bank’s third quarter, and assets of $4.1 billion.

“So you can see what’s happening,” Stanley says, “it’s not a doubling in size of our company, but we’re increasing it by about a third.”

The acquisition of Klamath First also will result in the hiring of 350 people who currently work in the Oregon-based bank’s 52 branches, Stanley says.

About 130 head-office and back-office jobs at Klamath will be eliminated as a result of the acquistion, she says.

Currently, Sterling employs about 1,200 people, about 450 of whom work in the Spokane area.

Once the combination of the two banks is complete, Sterling will employ about 1,700 people. It now has 84 branches in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and northwestern Oregon.

The acquisition of Klamath First will give Sterling a statewide presence in Oregon, Stanley says.

Sterling Savings expects to continue growing in the Spokane area, even though about 55 percent of its revenue is derived from customers along the Interstate 5 corridor between Seattle and Portland, she says.

“We will continue to add to the what I call back-office or head-office staff to support the growth that’s going on in our company,” she says.

The bank is discussing where its operational employees will work, she adds.

Asked if Sterling is considering buying or leasing additional facilities here, Stanley says, “We have lots of options and we’re looking at several alternatives at the moment. It’s something we have to discuss—who needs to be downtown and who doesn’t.”

Sterling operates a processing and operations center on the West Plains, another in Tukwila, Wash., and is in the process of establishing a third such center near Portland, Stanley says.

“It’s been a busy couple of years for our company,” she says.