An expansion project for a business in Jefferson that was anticipated to take just over one year to complete is just now putting on the final touches, almost three years later.

In June of 2019, Home State Bank announced it would be building a second story to its existing building. CEO Sid Jones tells Raccoon Valley Radio he had concerns with building another story on top of the current building, but was reassured that the weight of the new structure would be on the steel pilings around the entire building. 

Jones points out one reason for the expansion was because the company was growing, already leasing a temporary office in Ankeny with plans for a permanent location in Polk City, and they needed space for their growing management team. He explains the other reason was the banking operations.

“So as the banking industry becomes more and more automated, and more and more electronic, those transactions still happen. Somebody behind the scenes has to watch them. So our operations center have to have really good people in them and really good people come with longevity. By building that center here and making sure that we could keep it here, we thought our employees would be long term, we’d have space to grow those, and then we could take care of the operations of other locations.”      

Jones says the first floor consists of employees who interact face-to-face with the customer and the second floor houses residential lending, information technology, human resources, marketing, operation departments, along with a conference and training room. Since they announced their expansion, Jones notes they’ve been through a steel embargo with China, the August 2020 Derecho and a global pandemic, which he says helped with moving construction along, because they also had to close their lobby, regardless if the pandemic happened or not.

Jones believes that this kind of an investment tells the community there are here to stay.