Hot Springs braces for loss of only bank

The planned closing in May of the Capital Bank branch in Hot Springs could leave the roughly 40-mile stretch between Marshall and Newport, Tennessee without any brick and mortar bank locations. First Horizon National Corp., which acquired Capital Bank in November 2017 and merged it with First Tennessee Bank, notified customers at the end of February that they planned to close the Bridge Street branch permanently May 25.

“As part of our retail bank optimization strategy, we review our branch network with the goal of meeting the needs of our customers. As customer behaviors shift to our online and mobile services, in some markets this means we may open new branches, consolidate others, or in some cases close locations,” Ali Ayca, community region retail bank executive and SVP for First Tennessee/Capital Bank, said in a release to The News-Record & Sentinel. “Our customers in Hot Springs will continue to have access to an ATM and a full suite of online and mobile banking services. We are working to ensure this optimization will have minimal impact on our employees and have placed all of them at other locations across our footprint. We have also been in contact with the mayor’s office as we actively seek a purchaser for the property.”

Spring Creek Tavern stands across downtown Hot Springs from Capital Bank. Amanda Arnett has been a customer of the local bank for the four years she’s owned the American-style restaurant with her husband Timothy. "If we wanted to stay with that bank, we'd have to drive 45 minutes to an hour to do any sort of transaction,” she said from behind the bar February 28. With the nearest Capital Bank in Leicester, Arnett said she’s considering changing banks to one with a Marshall branch. “We'll have to drive at least 20 minutes to go into another bank. It's a major inconvenience.”

Though she’ll admitted that changing accounts would cause headaches for her and her employees, Arnett said those without easy access to transportation and seniors face more serious consequences from the bank’s decision to close. “There’s a lot of people impacted by this.”

For roughly 40 years, H.C. Wood worked inside the small Bridge Street bank storefront, most of that time as the bank’s manager. Though he saw the name outside the bank change from Citizens Bank to Wachovia to Greene Bank to Capital Bank, new owners always saw fit to keep Hot Springs only bank open. “Just like everyone else, I don’t like to see it,” he said of the bank’s imminent closing in a brief phone interview. “Working at a bank, though, I do understand. It is a very small branch. There’s been a bank in Hot Springs for 100 years and I hate to see it without one.”