" 'When we bought the bank in 1973, boarded-up
buildings were beginning to crop up throughout the community,'
says Milton Davis, South Shore Bank's chairman. 'Now a board-up
is the exception. Almost everywhere you go you'll come across
construction crews -- working on new buildings, rehabbing old
ones. Right across the street from the bank, you'll see a $10
million, 110,000-square-foot shopping center, the first major
commercial development in the community since World War II.'
Widely regarded as one of the nation's leading forces
for inner-city renewal, Shorebank, the parent company of South
Shore Bank, is now extending its development banking presence
from five to eight neighborhoods in Chicago's South and West sides.
The expansion grows out of the acquisition of Indecorp, the nation's
largest black-owned bank holding company. The acquisition will
double the assets and nearly double the deposits of South Shore
Bank's balance sheet. The bank expects to make at least $150 million
in new loans over the next five years in its expanded target area.
'The bank is the prototypical bottom-up player,'
says Mary Houghton, Shorebank president. 'We partner with community
people who have a stake in their neighborhood. We're really capacity
builders: providing local people with the financial, managerial,
and technical resources for them to succeed.'
...'As in all the communities we work in, our
efforts are designed to be comprehensive,' says Davis. 'Many people
know about us through our rental housing investments, but recently
we've focused more on enterprise and labor force development.
But all of Shorebank's investments have the same bottom line:
revitalizing a neighborhood's sense of community and making it
a desirable place in which to live and do business.' "
