MARTINEZ, Calif.–Cooperative Center FCU has purchased the former Union Bank building here on Main and Ferry streets to become its new headquarters and loan center in a city named after the CEO’s great-great-great grandfather.
The $126-million Cooperative Center is currently headquartered in Berkeley, Calif. Both sites are directly across the bay from San Francisco.
"Don Ygnacio Martinez was my great-great-great grandfather, and Martinez was named for him," CEO Fadhila Holman told the Bay City News.
Plans call for the move to be complete in 2021.
According to the Bay City News, the credit union recently sold its headquarters building on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley to the affordable housing builder Resources for Community Development, which plans to build the 87-unit Maudelle Miller Shirek Community building on that site next year.
Holman told the publication the credit union was looking for a smaller facility and reviewed approximately 25 options before settling on the new Martinez location, which is closer to areas to which many of its members have “migrated.”
"We're seeing our members work in the Berkeley area, but they increasingly do not live in that area," Holman told the Bay City News, adding Cooperative Center FCU won't leave Berkeley entirely, with a new Berkeley branch location planned at 3015 San Pablo Ave.
Approximately 20 full-time employees will be making the move.
History of Building
The Bay City news reported the credit union's soon-to-be new home was, starting in the 1890s, the Bank of Martinez, the first bank chartered in Contra Costa County. It was destroyed in a 1904 fire, and damaged in the big San Francisco earthquake two years later. More recently, after some exterior remodeling, the building had been the Union Bank of California, which left a few years ago.
Inside the building, now undergoing renovation, are sections of decorative railing/fencing with a stylized Bank of Martinez "BM" logo from many decades previous. Holman told the Bay City News some Bank of Martinez "branding" figures to be part of the finished design.