MUNCIE – The news that Chase was closing its downtown Muncie bank — the black glass-fronted structure along Walnut Street it has called home for decades — was probably not entirely unexpected.
In recent years, the top floor of the building — which has been owned since 2009 by an out-of-town investment company — has been occupied by an insurance agency. The lower floors have been increasingly quiet as a dwindling number of Chase employees and customers rattle around inside a building that was meant to house many more.
As customers used other branches — one of them, in the Lyndenbrook area, will likewise close in November, about the time a new Chase opens in Northwest Plaza — and increasingly took advantage of direct deposit, ATMs and online banking, the two locations were slated for closure.
The northwestside branch's closing will be an inconvenience for customers there, just as the downtown bank's closing will be. But officials and industry figures told The Star Press that the closing of a downtown bank is different than the closing of one elsewhere.
"I was disappointed, of course," Mayor Dennis Tyler said when asked about his reaction to the Chase closing news. "I know these kind of decisions are not made locally, they're made by someone in a corporate office somewhere.
"All buildings being occupied in a downtown shows vitality in a community," Tyler added.