Featuring a glassy facade, the former Republic Bank building dominates the corner of Ninth Street and West Avenue.
Check in hand, Eileen Ambrose showed up to make a deposit shortly after 4 p.m. Monday at the Republic Bank in Ocean City.
An employee greeted Ambrose at the door and politely told her that the bank was closed. For good.
Catching some customers by surprise, Republic’s Ocean City branch was shut down at 3 p.m. Monday as part of the corporate takeover of Republic Bank’s assets by Fulton Bank.
Now, it remains unclear what will happen to the contemporary designed, glass-cloaked building that dominates the corner of Ninth Street and West Avenue at the entryway to Ocean City’s downtown shopping district.
City Council President Pete Madden wants the city to buy the bank property and explore its options for repurposing the site, including the possibility of demolishing the building and redeveloping the land for public parking serving the downtown.
“I’m open to suggestions. I don’t keep my mind closed to ideas,” Madden said in an interview. “I’d love to see the city acquire it.”
Fulton acquired the assets of Republic Bank after federal bank regulators seized the financially troubled Republic last April.
Fulton then announced plans to close Republic branches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that it concluded were made redundant by the corporate takeover. Branches in Ocean City and Northfield were among the South Jersey banks on the closing list.
“While it’s never easy to close one of our financial centers, it’s sometimes necessary after we evaluate factors including overlapping service areas and trends in how customers conduct their banking,” Fulton corporate communications manager Steve Trapnell said in a statement.
An armed guard takes valuables to an armored truck following the bank's closing.For former Republic Bank customers in Ocean City, the next closest Republic branch is about five miles away on Route 9 in Somers Point.
Ambrose, an Ocean City resident, said she really had no problem with driving to Somers Point to do her banking from now on. However, she thought she would have more time before the Ocean City branch closed down.
“I expected it to be open until October,” she said.
Trapnell said Fulton Bank sent letters to Republic Bank customers who will be affected by the closings.
“Our focus right now is on supporting customers as they prepare to convert to Fulton Bank systems in early November,” he said.
The Republic Bank property in Ocean City is actually owned by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the agency that maintains stability in the nation’s financial system.
“Essentially, the FDIC retains ownership of the location since Fulton will not be operating the financial center there,” Trapnell said.
The FDIC is experienced in selling different types of residential and commercial real estate, including bank branches. A sale of the now-closed Republic Bank building in Ocean City is likely the next step.
Madden, who is also the broker-owner of Goldcoast Sotheby’s International Realty in Ocean City, has estimated the land value of the property at between $1.5 million and $2 million. He believes that the bank would raise the value of the property to about $2.5 million if someone wanted to buy the building and reuse it, perhaps for commercial or office space.
A Republic Bank sign overlooks the Ninth Street entryway.The construction of the Republic Bank building in 2021 was supposed to represent the next phase of the Ninth Street corridor’s transformation into a more inviting gateway into Ocean City.
The way it was built, the bank sits up high, overlooking the busy intersection of Ninth Street and West Avenue. It is just a block from City Hall and the Asbury Avenue retail corridor downtown.
The bank’s prominent location and glassy facade ensure that the building is one of the first things visitors see while entering the city on the Ninth Street artery, the main gateway into town.
Republic Bank bought and demolished the former Wiesenthal’s Auto Service and a Sunoco gas station next door at the corner of Ninth and West to make room for its then-new building in 2021.
The bank project continued a sweeping overhaul of the Ninth Street corridor by both private developers and the city in the past several years. Ninth Street’s status as the main entrance into town gives extra importance to any project that is part of the corridor’s makeover.
Previously, the city was able to acquire two blighted former gas stations, a Getty and a BP, that once stood next to each other on Ninth Street. Working in partnership with Cape May County, the city turned the former gas station properties into a landscaped park to create a more attractive entryway into town at the foot of the Route 52 causeway bridge.
In March 2018, McMahon Insurance Agency celebrated the grand opening of a large new office building at 901 Simpson Ave., at the doorstep of the Ninth Street gateway. The following November, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach Realtors opened a new office in the McMahon building.
The real estate company Keller Williams then followed up with a new office complex at the corner of Ninth and Bay Avenue, on the site of a former Exxon gas station.
