“Our teammates are tentatively scheduled to move into this new space in December 2023. We are excited about this investment in the Dayton community that will improve accessibility and provide a new and modern workspace with more amenities for our teammates,” Key said.
Key, like other banks, has been been consolidating or closing retail real estate and office locations for some time.
In February 2021, Key said it was planning to close its first-floor branch at its self-named tower at 10 W. 2nd St. by mid-May that year. That location was to be moved to Key’s Eastown branch, at 4000 Linden Ave.
At the time, a bank representative said there were no plans to close the bank’s downtown offices in the tower.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Also in 2021, Key announced plans to consolidate its 951 Patterson and 20 W. Whipp roads branches into its Arbor branch, at 4401 Far Hills Ave. in Kettering. The Springfield Burnett Plaza branch (402 S. Burnett Road) was to be consolidated into the Downtown Springfield branch, at 1 S. Fountain Ave., the bank also said.
No job losses were expected as a result of those moves, a Key spokeswoman said in 2021.
Those plans were attributed in part to what Key said at the time was a “steady increase in client preference for digital banking. For example, transactions via online and mobile banking were two times the number of transactions completed at a branch office.”
This year, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported that PNC is closing another 30 branches across its footprint. The Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina reported last month that Wells Fargo & Co. has announced plans to close 17 branches.
KeyBank is the anchor tenant in the 27-story KeyBank building, on a corner of Courthouse Plaza.
In March 2018, the KeyBank tower was placed on the auction block for a second time, after an earlier auction failed to secure a winning bid.
The building was known as the MeadWestvaco Tower until KeyBank gained naming rights to the building in 2008.
The tower served as headquarters for the former Mead Corp. paper company from the 1970s through the 1990s. Previously, KeyBank had its offices in 32-34 N. Main St.
Chris Riegel, owner of Stratacache Tower and chief executive of downtown digital technology company Stratacache, said he sees a “flight to quality” in the downtown market. Buildings have to attract occupants, he said.
“No one wants to be in an empty KeyBank building,” Riegel said. Instead, he sees a movement toward more vibrant spaces, buildings that are being maintained and improved.
“I’m looking at the KeyBank tower right now, with weeds on the stairs, windows that haven’t been washed,” Riegel said in a phone call from his office. “You have to maintain and you have to upgrade.”
Riegel bought the former Kettering Tower (now Stratacache Tower) at the corner of Second and Main streets, across from the KeyBank Tower, about a year before the domestic onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2019.
He said he has no regrets.
“It has been a fantastic buy. If I had been able to buy it two years into the pandemic, I might have paid less for it, but that’s hindsight,” he said.
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