Sterling Savings Bank, of Spokane, has opened a corporate-banking office in downtown Seattle, employs three staff members there now, and expects to employ eight by the end of the year as it strives to plumb the market in the center of Washingtons largest city.


For the new office, the Spokane institution has leased 4,700 square feet of floor space on the 17th floor of 2 Union Square, one of Seattles most well-known buildings, says Heidi Stanley, Sterlings executive vice president for corporate administration.


Theres a huge corporate market there that demands our products and services, Stanley says. Were able to serve that mid-market that has been somewhat abandoned by the larger banks. That is just right up our alley.


Sterling Chairman and CEO Harold Gilkey has said that Sterling is working to fill a void in the mid- to upper-level Northwest commercial-banking market left by the sale of several regional banks to larger institutions.


Corporate banking involves giving customers such specialized services as international banking and wire transfers in addition to conventional business-banking services, Stanley says. She says corporate bankers tend to be highly skilled and to have specialized knowledge of the industries they serve.


Sterling modeled its downtown-Seattle office after its corporate-banking office in Portland, which it opened in the fall of 2001, Stanley says.


In Portland, we expanded much quicker than we anticipated, she says. A month after we had that space finished, we knocked out a wall and added 2,000 square feet of space.


The bank opened there with a staff of five, but employs 12 people in its Portland center now. Sterling reported $121.4 million in corporate-banking loan originations last year, but didnt have a category for such loan originations in 2001. It listed loan originations in that category for 2002 not by size or type, but because its corporate banking staff wrote them, Stanley says.


Sterling, which has enough space in its new downtown-Seattle office for as many as 15 staff members, has an option to enlarge its offices at 2 Union Square if it needs to do so, Stanley says.


In the fourth quarter last year, the bank hired Jim Mitchell, who had been with U.S. Bank in downtown Seattle for years, as its Seattle corporate banking team leader, Stanley says.


While Sterling long has had business bankers in its branches, the new office gives us a presence in downtown Seattle, which we have not had previously, Stanley says.


She says the banks criteria for a location was that it had to be downtown, on the upper floors of a building.


Gilkey has said that Sterling might eventually look at opening a corporate banking center in Boise.