Transformation Of Former Bay Buick Under Way On Post Road

Work is going full bore on a conversion of the former Bay Buick building on Post Road across from the post office into business condos. The front portion of the building will be a Coastway Community Bank branch and rest of the building will be a second location of of Johnston, plus other medical offices.

Coastway announced it would be adding a branch at the site almost a year ago.  

Atmed is a medical group practice which has been in Johnston since 1979 providing routine and urgent medical services.

According to Executive Director Elaine Narducci, Atmed is looking for other medical-related businesses to occupy the additional available space. She says other medical groups find it beneficial to be located adjacent to urgent care centers and there is lots of interest in the space.

In addition to being a full medical center, Atmed has a division of occupational medicine and a travel clinic. They see opportunties at the nearby Quonset business park for the occupational medicine division and with increasing worldwide travel by business people, students and others, they've found a growing market for travel clinics.

Narducci said East Greenwich was picked as a site for expansion after a survey, including traffic and surrounding businesses, showed a market.

Coastway President Bill White said the bank had been interested in East Greenwich for a long time when they got the opportunity to buy. With limited opportunities around downtown, White said that area of Post Road was a natural location in terms of traffic generated by the post office, Felicia’s and other area businesses.

This will be the eighth Coastway branch, with another three on the drawing boards. Due to increasing technology, White doesn’t see the bank needing more than 12 branches to fully serve the state.

White says there is a demand for commercial lending, some coming from people who have been sitting on the sidelines and see it as a time to expand. Although the economy is down, interest rates are low. 

Last year the bank was one of the biggest small business lenders in the state, according to White. “That,” he said, “puts us up against the big ones and we hold our own, if not do better than all of them.”

With housing prices and loan interest rates low, White said it's an ideal time for investment. He said he hasn’t seen anything that's stayed this low for this long in his 32 years in banking.

Coastway’s web site shows the bank with $309.8 million in assets and 125 full-time employees.

The branch, which officials hope to hope by July, will have a full staff including two mortgage originators.

Atmed expects to open at the same time.