September heralds many celebrations, from Labor Day to The Great Geauga County Fair to the Autumn Equinox, and for Middlefield Bank, it marks a notable anniversary.
September heralds many celebrations, from Labor Day to The Great Geauga County Fair to the Autumn Equinox, and for Middlefield Bank, it marks a notable anniversary.
The bank will be celebrating 120 years in business Sept. 16.
Melissa Maki, vice president and marketing communications director shared information about the bank’s history, including how far it has come from its humble beginnings.
“(After) recognizing the need for a local bank within the Middlefield community, a group of local businessmen met in early 1901 to fulfill this need,” Maki said. “On Sept. 16, 1901, The Middlefield Banking Company was opened with an authorized capital of $25,000.”
The bank has grown tremendously over the years and continues to values its day-to-day customers, she said.
Middlefield Bank’s values are “community, shareholder commitment, customer service and team focus,” and its goal is to “provide quality service to the customer,” according to its website, which added, “Our commitment to providing people-focused financial services over the decades has resulted in the growth and expansion of our original location into 16 branches across central and northeast Ohio.”
In 1985, the bank bought a plot of land on West High Street in Middlefield to make another branch office because there was “a lack of land to expand the main office on Main Street,” Maki said.
However, “in the early ‘90s, additional land became available and in 1993, a newly-expanded main office was opened,” she said.
However, the bank executives wanted to do something special when the main office got approved for expansion.
“To show the bank’s commitment to the community, in conjunction with the newly-renovated building, the bank constructed Middlefield Village Center, which represented a major redevelopment of a key section of Middlefield,” Maki said.
The expansion of different branch offices did not start until the 1980s, with Portage County being the first to go into the bank’s orbit and the Garrettsville branch opening up in 1986.
After that, the bank expanded very quickly in a number of different areas, according to its history.
The Mantua branch of Middlefield Banking Company was formed in 1998 and the Chardon and Newbury branches were both formed in 2001 and 2006, respectively.
“Ashtabula County also entered Middlefield Bank’s ranks with the Orwell Branch opening in 2003, and Trumbull county followed suit with an eighth branch in Cartland in 2008,” Maki said.
But the expansion did not end there.
“In January 2014, the Middlefield Banking Company consolidated Emerald Bank (which had offices in Westerville and Dublin, Ohio, near Columbus) into the charter of the Middlefield Banking Company,” Maki said.
Middlefield Bank currently has its eyes on the lucrative Cleveland banking scene, as well.
In January of 2017, the company bought three Liberty Bank offices in Beachwood, Solon and Twinsburg, which put “Middlefield bank into two more emerging markets in Summit and Cuyahoga counties,” according to the bank’s history, which added the bank operates a loan production office in Mentor, as well.
As of June 30, the bank “has total assets of $1.36 billion dollars, with 16 full-service banking centers and an LPL financial brokerage office,” Maki said, adding the banking company is even traded on the coveted NASDAQ, with the acronym “MBCN.”
The shares are priced at $23.71 with a market cap of $145,730,000 million dollars as of Sept. 3, according to the company’s website.
