Bank of Alabama opening first Huntsville site

A business-oriented bank with several Birmingham-area branches opens its first location in Huntsville today.

Bank of Alabama, a subsidiary of Financial Investors of the South since 1992, opens today in a renovated, 3,300-square-foot building at 2123 Whitesburg Drive. It will serve commercial and individual customers, but plans to build its customer base around commercial clients, bank officials said. The bank, which has total assets of more than $300 million, has four other locations around Birmingham: Homewood, Fultondale, Pelham and Hoover.

"Huntsville is very much a business community," said Richard Perdue, the bank's Huntsville president, so locating here was "a perfect fit" for Bank of Alabama, which offers specialized services for commercial clients. "Huntsville was the next logical place to expand."

With the ongoing mergers in the banking industry, "a smaller, community bank can do a better job getting to know and serving the small to medium-sized business accounts," said Perdue. "As we have mergers and some banks disappear, there's a place for the community bank to step in and fill the void."

The bank is looking to expand in this area, particularly in the northern part of the county and in Madison, Perdue said. For now, he said, "we want to get this (Whitesburg Drive) location up and running."

Perdue, who has more than 25 years of commercial banking experience, was with Union Planters Bank for the last 12 years. He was most recently a senior vice president and commercial sales manager. Previously, he was with Regions Bank in Mobile for about 14 years. The new Regions Financial Corp. was formed by the merger of Birmingham-based Regions Financial Corp. and Union Planters Corp. of Memphis.

Bank of Alabama will hold a grand opening for the Huntsville location on Oct. 28 from 5 to 7 p.m. The bank is located south of Governors Drive on the east side of Whitesburg in a building that was a former First Commercial Bank.