A county-owned property on the corner of Beach Road and Route 10 may soon become a Chesapeake Bank.
John Harmon, the county’s real property manager, said the bank was one of four companies that submitted bids on the property, which is located at 10000 Courtview Lane, south of Beach Road and west of Route 10.
Chesapeake Bank was the top bidder at $801,000, Harmon said, noting that a sale is pending.
The county purchased the land Jan. 21, 1997 from the state Department of Motor Vehicles for $317,500, he said. The
Harmon said the county decided to sell the high-visibility property for two reasons: to have all of its departments on the same campus and to bring the property back onto the tax rolls and generate real estate property tax.
Chesterfield County declared the .91-acre property “surplus” on June 27. A 2,891-square-foot building is currently on site.
Chesapeake Bank placed a $25,000 deposit on the property after it was notified of the winning bid, said Harmon, who has worked for Chesterfield 44 years and is the county’s longest-tenured employee. He noted that the property was listed for sale “in house” in a form of “internal marketing.”
Chesapeake Bank is headquartered in Kilmarnock in the Northern Neck. It has 15 bank branches in Virginia, including three in Richmond. It has a loan production office at 9401 Courthouse Road in Chester.
Frank Bell, the bank’s Richmond regional executive, said the company is waiting on regulatory approval from the State Corporation Commission’s Bureau of Financial Institutions and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
He anticipates that the new branch would open in late fall after some remodeling.
The loan production office will relocate to the new bank when it opens, Bell said.
He noted that the company’s strategy for moving forward involves opening a loan production office in an area to generate revenue prior to a bank opening. Chesapeake Bank primarily makes small business loans, he said.
