Bank building to be first for relaxed height limit

"It's been a long time coming," Rob Glunk, president and CEO of Muncy Bank & Trust Company, told those gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking for the new full-service office in South Williamsport.

Noting that plans for the latest addition to the company have been over three years in the making, Glunk said, "We're very excited to be coming to South Williamsport."

"The Borough of South Williamsport and Muncy Bank and Trust both have a history. In 1886, South Williamsport was incorporated as a borough and a short seven years later, in 1893, Muncy Bank was founded in Muncy as a hometown community bank," Glunk added.

Construction on the 15,790-square-foot, four-story structure is expected to be completed during the fall of 2022. It will be Muncy Bank & Trust's ninth full-service community office and will add administrative space. Plans are to hire 12 additional employees to staff the new facility.

Pine Ridge Construction has been contracted to build the multi-million dollar project.

The current Muncy Bank buildings in downtown Muncy will continue as the company's headquarters and operations center, according to Glunk, but a need for more office space was one of the reasons for the new construction.

In addition to Muncy, the company operates offices in Clarkstown, Hughesville, Montoursville, Dewart, Avis, Linden and Montgomery.

Glunk said that it had always been the company's plan to fill in the gap between branches in Montoursville and Linden.

"We are fortunate that we already had established a strong customer base in both Williamsport and South Williamsport," Glunk said. He added that the location, in the corridor leading to the Market Street Bridge, is easily accessible for both communities.

"We're just really excited where this office sits in our footprint," Glunk said.

The new location will offer traditional banking and services as well as E-banking, residential mortgage and commercial lending and services and trust and investment services.

South Williamsport's mayor, Marlin R. Angelo, said that he feels the new bank will generate business for the borough.

"It's also the gate to the borough, the first thing you see. The building is beautiful. I'm sure it's going to be an asset," he said.

The bank's four-story building is the first structure of that height to be built in the borough since changes were made to zoning to permit buildings that high.

"The community was pretty much land-locked," said council president Cory Lehman. "We really had no land around to develop."

"We needed to change the zoning, which we have recently, to allow to grow vertically. This project is our first project to go above the three-story max to be a four story," Lehman said. He noted that since the change in zoning buildings in the borough can be built as high as 70 feet.

"Hopefully by opening that up, it will spawn other businesses to look at us," he added.