American Security Bank, one of the largest commercial banks based in Orange County, is moving its headquarters from Santa Ana to Newport Beach.
The bank just signed a 10-year lease for about 10,700 square feet of space at 1401 Dove St., on the border of Newport Beach and Irvine near John Wayne Airport. It plans to move in May or June.
The Newport Beach space will be used as a bank branch as well as for American Security Bank’s headquarters. The bank also plans to move some real estate lending operations from a nearby office on Quail Street there.
American Security ranked No. 3 on the Business Journal’s 2007 list of OC-based commercial banks with $470 million in assets as of June. The bank counted $234 million in OC deposits as of June.
The new office roughly doubles the size of American Security’s headquarters, which had been based at One Macarthur Place, near Santa Ana’s edge next to Costa Mesa.
Along with the bank’s headquarters, it also has offices in Laguna Niguel, Apple Valley, Lancaster, Victorville and Corona. It counts about 40 employees in OC.
The move to Newport Beach is set to put American Security closer to most of its clients, said David Blankenhorn, chief executive.
“The move gives us more visibility,” he said. “Most of our customers are in Irvine and in Newport Beach. The Santa Ana office was sometimes hard (for clients) to get to.”
The bank’s customers include law firms, accountants and other professional services firms, along with wealthy people.
The bank’s operations are largely “vanilla,” Blankenhorn said, which has kept it out of harm’s way during the recent tumult in the credit markets.
“How you underwrite loans in the good times will determine your success in the bad times,” he said.
American Security provides commercial real estate lending and some construction loans but has been making deals selectively as of late, Blankenhorn said.
“The ongoing credit issues affect all of us,” he said. “A lot of business in Orange County is tied to real estate lending.”
American Security’s Corona office has been focused primarily on business lending for the Inland Empire. “We stopped doing residential loans there about two years ago,” Blankenhorn said. “There was too much froth in the market. We thought it would be overbuilt.”
The bank is moving into the ground floor of the 74,405-square-foot office building on Dove Street.
The six-story building formerly served as the headquarters for Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc., before the mortgage investor moved to its Irvine campus on Jamboree Road in 2006.
After Impac’s departure and with American Security’s lease, the building now is about 28% full, according to CoStar Group Inc.
John Weiner of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Irvine office represented owner Far West Industries Inc. in the lease. Randall Parker and Mark Gardner, with the Newport Beach office of Travers Realty Corp., represented the bank.
