If there are prisoners at Enfield Correctional Institution that still harbor dreams of big-money heists, the views from the prison’s western side atop a hill must be tantalizing.
That’s because Enfield, a town of 33 square miles and 46,000 people, has 24 bank or credit union branches.
“There’s so many of them you lose track,” said Peter Bryanton, community development director for the town.
Sitting on I-91 and surrounded by pastoral neighbors, Enfield has seen a boom in new retail in recent years. Competition from two new plazas, featuring Home Depot, Costco, Circuit City, Kohl’s and Best Buy between them, has made the town such a shopping destination that financial institutions have opted to crowd around each other there rather than open branches nearby.
So while six new branches arrived in Enfield in the past five years, the surrounding towns of Suffield, Windsor Locks, East Windsor, Ellington and Somers added a total of just two, both in Windsor Locks.
“I think just the fact that there is a concentrated area of retail [is the cause]. We really are sort of the service and business center for the north-central region, and I think it’s just a natural area for [institutions] to locate,” Bryanton said.
Population Growth
As a result, many of the rivalries between competing financial institutions in Hartford County are now on display within a mile or so of the intersection of Hazard Avenue, which has nine different bank branches, and Enfield Street, which has six.
To the community’s longest standing lenders, the influx has been perplexing.
“It’s a good area. It’s blue collar. But it’s not growing by leaps and bounds,” said David J. O’Connor, president of Enfield Federal Savings Bank.
Perhaps no banker in the state has seen so much new competition on one’s home turf as O’Connor. In addition to all the typical Connecticut players, there is the added dynamic of Massachusetts being just next door. Around 2,000 commuters arrive from Massachusetts towns like Springfield, Westfield and Agawam, while some Enfield residents head the other way.
As a result, both Bank of Western Massachusetts (part of a planned acquisition by People’s United) and MassMutual have their only Connecticut branches there.
“It’s very attractive to the Massachusetts banks, because they can only [otherwise expand towards] Worcester, which is a heavily banked area, and then there’s Pittsfield, which is not that populated,” O’Connor said.
In 2004, Enfield Federal had three locations in town. But as more players began to arrive it closed its Stop & Shop location on — where there is now a People’s Bank — and then closed its branch at 660 Enfield, where deposits were dropping. That’s now a Rockville Bank.
The two closed locations have been consolidated into its new headquarters at 855 Enfield Street, which opened last year.
Part of the competition comes from credit unions. Enfield Community Federal Credit Union, 71 years after being founded in the Bigelow-Sanford carpet mill, has 3,800 members. When the mill moved south in the 1970s, the credit union stayed. And when it was time to open a new headquarters last year, it did so on Cranbrook Boulevard, right around the corner from its old place.
“It has not really had any effect on us,” president Kathleen A. Gleason said of the growth. She said the area has become attractive because of all the commuters who make Enfield home. Still, the credit union office doesn’t hold bankers’ hours, closing at 3 p.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays and opening at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays. And its growth is modest: Assets grew 0.8 percent from June 2006 to June 2007.
“We’re just happy to be in Enfield and serving our members here,” Gleason said.
Northern Beauty
For everyone else, Enfield seems to be irresistible beyond what simple market factors can explain.
William J. McGurk, president of Rockville Bank, now has three branches in Enfield – despite the fact that he thinks there are too many there already.
“Enfield is probably a bit overbanked,” McGurk said.
He already had two branches there when he found out a few years ago Enfield Federal would be vacating its headquarters. For McGurk, that space was too good to pass up.
“We had a chance to move into a competitor’s main office. People are used to going in there,” he said.
Rockville’s Enfield branches have shown steady deposit growth. Its Hazard Avenue branch added $12.2 million in deposits during the last four years, while its Palomba Drive locale added $10.1 million. That has come at the expense of other banks. Deposits at Sovereign Bank’s Enfield Street branch fell more than $11 million during the last four years and other, larger banks – Webster, NewAlliance and People’s – have branches that have dropped in deposits or made only modest gains. Luckily, most have more than one branch in town.
Maybe it’s just that everyone “discovered” Enfield at once. McGurk compared the situation to a street corner with enough traffic for only one store, but for which two stores simultaneously announce plans.
“Some will do better than others. Just no one’s going to hit a home run,” he said.
