
After closing its Boise branches inside Fred Meyer grocery stores in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus, JPMorgan Chase Bank is now building a new branch — across the street from a Fred Meyer grocery store in which one of those branches had been located.
“We’d outgrown that space and determined it was time to find a location,” said Paul Silva, Chase market director of banking, who is responsible for all of Chase’s 20 branches in Idaho except two near Coeur d’Alene, which are covered by the Spokane market director. “Ironically, we found one right on the corner of Five Mile and Overland.”
New branch

The branch will be located on the northwest corner of the intersection, which is currently fenced off with excavation beginning, Silva said. Just under 3500 square feet, the branch will house from eight to 10 employees, he said.
“We anticipate it being completed and ready to open by the end of October,” Silva said.
The architect is the PM Design Group, which has 11 offices primarily in the West. The general contractor is ESI Construction. The company doesn’t disclose building costs.
“It’s not cheap,” Silva said.
New design
The branch will mark the first new Chase bank building in Idaho in some time.
“Considering that we haven’t had a new build in Idaho that wasn’t inside a Fred Meyer, it’ll be much different from older branches” in terms of its schematics and color palette, Silva said.
In design as well as color, the new branch will look similar to the renovated branch in downtown Boise, which the company opened in January 2019.
“It will look similar to that in feel and color, the way the desks are,” Silva said. “It’ll feel like that.”
In addition, the branch will have a walkup automated teller machine, as well as two ATMs in the lobby, Silva said.
“Typically, there’s one in a branch,” he said.
The ATMs are also a more advanced type, the EATM, that offer additional functions such as making payments and allowing people to get cash in denominations other than $20 bills.
“With an EATM, it performs almost any transaction that you can do at a teller at the ATM,” Silva said.
While the ATM doesn’t offer video, it does have a much larger touchscreen and an improved user interface, as well as the ability to display local content such as marketing messages, Silva said.
Private banking
Building the new branch also gives Chase the ability to offer private banking services at that location, as it does in the downtown Boise branch.
Private banking typically offers customers with complex financial lives a single point of contact to a preselected team of experts in various financial areas, including estate planning, trust planning and investment strategies, as well as banking services such as checking accounts. In addition, private bankers typically act as fiduciaries, meaning they are typically paid on salary, not on commission, and are required to act only in the client’s best interest. Fees for private banking are typically based on a percentage of the assets managed.
Currently, only four Chase branches in Idaho offer private banking services, Silva said. Part of the motivation for the branch was providing the capability to offer private banking.
“It’s been on our agenda for that area to provide private client services. Our big thing is community and location, and we were already familiar with that location,” he said, noting the bank had been providing financial services there since 1994. “We didn’t want to go too far. We wanted to stay close and connected to the community.”
One thing the branch may not have, at least for the time being, is amenities such as coffee and cookies, due to COVID-19, Silva admitted.
“In today’s environment, if you go to any branch, they won’t have coffee or cookies right now,” he said.
However, the bank’s branches continue to remain open through the pandemic, he said.