Santa Clara Valley Bank Opens Fillmore Branch

A financial bridge now spans the Heritage Valley.

In December, a group of investors capped a year of planning with the opening of the Santa Paula branch of the Santa Clara Valley Bank. The new institution was intended to fill a community bank niche that had disappeared from the city when Citizens State Bank merged with Santa Barbara Bank & Trust.

The next step in the business plan was to quickly follow with a branch in Fillmore, Santa Paula’s Santa Clara (or Heritage) Valley neighbor. That milestone was reached swiftly with the opening in mid-February of a branch on Fillmore’s downtown Central Street.

“Our objective when we applied to open two branches simultaneously was to serve the entire valley, and it does now tie it all together,” said Steve Voelker, president and chief executive of Santa Clara Valley Bank.

If the early success of the Santa Paula branch is any indication, Santa Clara Valley Bank has found a successful formula. Bank officials already have revised their original projection of $10 million in assets by the end of the first year.

“We’re already halfway there in the first six weeks,” Voelker said. “We’re doubling our projections. We haven’t put any of the other banks in town out of business and that’s not our goal, but we’ve been very pleased with the response.”

Voelker said the needs of the Fillmore banking customers are likely to be the same as those of the Santa Paula clientele.

“The community needs an institution that can focus on the Santa Clara Valley,” he said. “We’ve designed the buildings so that senior members of the bank have the ability to move between the two locations . . . and we staff the Fillmore branch with Fillmore people and the Santa Paula branch with Santa Paula people.”

With the trend of small banks being swallowed up by larger institutions, Voelker said, the craving for a community bank has intensified.

“We differentiate ourselves from other banking institutions in that we make our decisions locally,” he said. “We put a high, high value on customer service, personal service. We have a real live person who answers the phones. We find people in Santa Paula and Fillmore really appreciate that and patronize us.”