THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997 TAG: 9702120792
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 35 lines
After identifying itself with a single city for 62 years, Virginia Beach Federal Savings Bank will change its name next week to First Coastal Bank.
The savings bank has been notifying its customers by mail and will install signs with the new name at branches this weekend, said John M. Chattleton, executive vice president for retail administration.
Virginia Beach Federal's mortgage banking subsidiary, Beach Fed Mortgage Corp., will become First Coastal Mortgage Corp.
At the direction of Virginia Beach Federal's board of directors, management and employees began working on the change last spring.
``We developed 600 or 700 possibilities and boiled that down to 25. We got the number down to eight and presented them to the board,'' Chattleton said.
``We wanted something that indicated that we are a community bank and still reflected the region we serve.''
Virginia Beach Federal opened its first branch outside Virginia Beach seven years ago with an office in downtown Norfolk. Since then, it has opened branches in Chesapeake, Newport News and Williamsburg.
Its branch network has grown to 15 branches, including two in Harris Teeter supermarkets in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Another branch is due to open later this year at a Harris Teeter store in Newport News.
The identification with a single city became a hindrance, and use of ``federal savings bank'' in its name provoked uncertainty about the range of its services, Chattleton said. ``We had a number of prospective customers ask, `Are you a credit union?' because of the federal in our name.''
The savings bank will continue to use its logo of two birds in flight and its red, white and blue colors.