When Benton County Schools Credit Union held a ribbon-cutting Monday at its new Philomath location, president and CEO Amanda Held couldn’t help but think of her late mother-in-law.
Ginny Held taught at Philomath High School for more than 30 years and was deeply connected to the community.
“She loved Philomath — it was in her heart,” Amanda Held said. “Her memorial service a couple of years ago brought a ton of people from Philomath that I met and so she would be so thrilled with this.”
The new building at 138 S. Seventh St. represents a major commitment by the credit union to the community. After more than 25 years of leasing space in Philomath, BCSCU has put down permanent roots with a building it constructed from the ground up at the northwest corner of Applegate Street and South Seventh Street.
The move marks only the second time in the credit union’s 72-year history that it has built its own brick-and-mortar facility.
“We knew we weren’t going to go anywhere in this community, we loved it,” Amanda Held said. “We’ve built a strong partnership with the school district here and so it just made sense to us to make a permanent foundation.”
The credit union previously leased space at 401 S. 19th St. Held said the original plan was to purchase and remodel an existing building, but that approach didn’t pan out.
“We wanted to make it our own and own it but we were trying to find a building that we could just remodel and it wasn’t working,” Held said. “So we started from the ground up instead.”
The process from conception to completion took three years. G. Christianson Construction, a Corvallis-based company, handled the project. Owner Carl Christianson and vice president-project manager Tanner Wood were among those attending the grand opening.
Wood said the structure exceeds standard building code requirements in three main ways — ceiling insulation rated at R-60 instead of the code-required R-49, raised heel energy trusses that allow full insulation to extend to the roof edges rather than tapering off at the eaves, and under-slab insulation beneath the concrete foundation.
“There’s a few things that are above code in this building just because it’s our commitment to have it be more energy efficient and a cheaper building to operate long term,” Wood said.
The new building also includes a community room available for use by boards or organizations. Additionally, the credit union built extra office space with the intention of leasing it to another business.
Staffing at the Philomath branch remains at three employees — a branch manager, loan officer and teller. Held said she would like to expand membership beyond teachers to other public employees.
“We’re hoping to really reach out and hit our other public employee sectors,” she said. “Our teachers are a big field of membership for us but we’re also open to other public employees — city, state, fire department, police, city hall — and we hope to reach their services and offer banking to them.
“We’re small but we still offer all of the same services that the big guys do,” she added.
Benton County Schools Credit Union, an educational and public employee credit union serving Benton and Linn counties, was originally founded in 1953.