A grand opening ceremony for the new Riverside Bank was held Friday, and a group of approximately 50 Walker County residents attended the event to offer their congratulations and view the new facility.

Patrick Ross, branch manager and associate vice president of the First National Bank of Trinity, officially opened the branch with a ribbon cutting during a brief ceremony in front of the building with several other bank executives.

“We’re a branch of the First National Bank of Trinity, so we’ll just be another place where those with accounts at that location can conduct their business,” he said. “We actually opened on April 24, but we intentionally planned a soft opening so people would have a couple of months to trickle in. We’ve let word of mouth do most of our marketing, everyone has had a chance to get acclimated to a new environment, and I think it has worked.

“I’m happy to say the new branch is doing exceedingly well.”

As a branch of the Trinity First National Bank, Ross said the decision to build Riverside Bank was made by the board of trustees which now presides over both locations.

“The idea of building a new branch has been tossed in the air quite a bit in this area, but our board started implementing strategic planning for its construction about a year and a half or two years ago,” Ross said. “We started preliminary construction planning back in October, and the groundbreaking and first phases of construction were taking place by January or February of this year.

“This bank was paid for entirely by First National Bank of Trinity.”

With the population of Riverside reaching in several directions around the bank’s location on state Highway 19, Ross said he estimated thousands of area residents would consider moving their accounts to the new branch.

“We’ve already gotten between 100 to 200 new customers, and our mission was to come here and serve a lot of our customers at a closer range,” he said. “So many people in this area have had to go to Trinity or Huntsville to do their banking, and I think it will be really nice for them to be able to handle it in their hometown now.”

Since the bank’s construction has been completed, Ross said he and other bank executives have heard nothing but positive comments from the Riverside community.

“We’ve heard nothing but great comments from people, and we’ve really been welcomed with open arms by the community,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get a bank here for quite a while and we just haven’t been able to provide that until now, and I think people are excited.”

Ross said the branch was based on the goal of providing a more personal touch to banking.

“When you call our bank, you get to talk to an actual person instead of a machine,” he said. “You get more of that personal touch with Riverside band that seems to be lost in today’s business world. We pride ourselves on that point and on our friendly staff.”

The locally owned First National Bank of Trinity was chartered in 1911.