By JEFF LIPTON
A Community National Bank branch is under construction at Long Beach Road and Windsor Parkway, where a Shell gas station once stood for decades. According to Stuart Lubow, president and CEO of the bank, the 3,500-square-foot branch with a drive-up ATM should be ready to open in about five months as a full-service bank.
³We rely on great personal service and building community relationships,² said Lubow. ³We want to become part of the fabric of a community.²
Headquartered in Great Neck, the bank opened its first branch in April 2005 and will have five branches in Nassau County and one in Suffolk County by the end of the year, Lubow said.
For business loans, he said, the focus of Community National Bank is on small and medium size businesses. ³We want to really provide a great service to these businesses,² Lubow said.
Lubow said Community National Bank strives to bring even more high-technology to the banking industry, allowing businesses to make deposits from their offices via the computer without leaving the workplace. The bank also will provide no-fee checking. ³We don¹t make money on nickel and diming people,² said Lubow.
He said Oceanside provided the ³perfect opportunity² for Community National Bank to open a branch. ³It has a great business community and a great downtown,² said Lubow, who added that the bank, when opened, will employ seven to 10 people, probably from the local community.
³I¹m glad things are coming in where empty lots are,² said Bob Towers, president of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce. ³It¹s nice to see a flourishing business rather than having a vacant lot there.²
Towers also said that when a bank arrives in a community, it usually signals the financial stability of a neighborhood.
He said the Shell station was in the community for at least 40 or 50 years before it was demolished a couple of years ago and remained that way until now. ³It was an eyesore,² Towers said.
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