Richland-based Gesa Credit Union has opened a home-loan center and is planning a commercial lending office in the former Bank of Whitman building downtown, says Randy Wacker, Gesa’s vice president of mortgage lending.

The credit union has leased 6,600 square feet of space in the building, located at 618 W. Riverside, Wacker says.

Jackie Cardle, formerly a real estate lending manager for Spokane-based Global Credit Union, is managing Gesa’s Spokane mortgage team, he says. So far, Cardle has assembled a nucleus of seven people to get the mortgage center started, and Wacker says he anticipates the team will grow quickly.

“All of our home-loan-related folks will be new hires in the Spokane market,” Wacker says. “We could see as many as 17 people there.”

Spokane is a strong market for mortgage and commercial lending, he asserts.

“We think there’s plenty of opportunity in the Spokane market, and we’ve got some unique 100-percent-financing mortgage products we’re excited to bring to the market,” Wacker says. “We look at Spokane as having turned the corner with developments and mixed-use properties in the periphery of downtown.”

Gesa will continue to operate its Spokane retail branch at 9625 N. Newport Highway, he says, although commercial loan officers currently based at the branch eventually will move to the downtown space.

Wacker says the available space in the former Bank of Whitman building accelerated Gesa’s long-range plan to open a mortgage center in Spokane.

“We weren’t planning on doing it so soon, but this opportunity came in front of us,” he says. “We walked in, and the furniture, desks, and everything was still there. It made for a quick turnaround for us.”

Spokane commercial real estate brokers Vic Overholser, of SDS Realty Inc., and Mark McLees, of NAI Black, negotiated the lease.

Colfax-based Bank of Whitman developed the building in 2006 in a $12 million project that converted two former department store buildings into a single three-story office structure.

Regulators seized Bank of Whitman in 2011. Tacoma-based Columbia Bank, which bought some of the failed bank’s assets, operated a branch in the building initially, but moved it to the Fernwell Building, at 505 W. Riverside, the following year.

As of Dec. 31, Gesa had 17 branches in Eastern Washington, 145,400 members, and $1.8 billion in assets.