Renasant Bank designs a transparent Memphis headquarters

By Tom Bailey, Daily Memphian

Bankers have often built their buildings with materials like stone, brick and cement to symbolize the institution’s strength, stability and staying power.

Renasant Bank leaders will project more modern symbolism in their new glassy, Memphis headquarters that is to open in September in the heart of East Memphis’ Poplar Corridor.

“Retail banking has changed a lot over the years,” said project architect Jason Weeks, a senior associate at LRK. “In the old days it was ‘Your money is safe inside a fortress, a really heavy box that makes you feel safe.’

“Well, now retail banking is open, and we want to highlight that. We want to allow the glass to open that up and invite people in more,” he said of the $15 million building at 5575 Poplar. “Your money is still just as safe. But it’s an opportunity to really reach out to the community.”

The transparency that glass creates is also an important value for banks. “To show, ‘Hey, look, we are here, we can help you. We are not trying to hide anything behind walls,” Weeks said.

Even inside, office walls will be glass. Natural light will permeate the building.

The bank will occupy the first two floors of the three-story, 45,000-square-foot building. Renasant will lease the top, 15,000-square-foot floor to an office tenant.

Daniel Reid, president of Renasant’s West Tennessee banking group, recalled the planning sessions he had with architect Weeks in creating the building’s design.

“We sat down and Jason said, ‘Let’s start looking at images and things you like,’” Reid said.

They tried envisioning the project through the lens of younger and future employees.

“We said, ‘What is this building going to be like in 20 years when the millennials are in charge and we’re not?’” Reid said. “What are they going to want? And we just started brainstorming. We did a lot of brainstorming, and everything just evolved.”’

The approach spawned a number of features, including two landscaped seating areas where employees and customers can enjoy the outdoors.

“People may want to take a phone call or take their laptop outside,” Weeks said. “It offers a lot of flexibility. I think those outside gardens give you the opportunity to go out and take a call and get some fresh air.”

The building also will have what Renasant officials now refer to as “the secret garden.” The roof of the large canopy over the entrance will support plantings.

Anyone looking down on the canopy roof from the upper floors won’t see a drab, dark roof, but vegetation instead. “It will be a green roof,” Reid said.

Employees and customers alike have a different experience simply walking from their parked car to the main entrance, which is under the canopy on the building’s south side.

Instead of meandering or zigzagging through parked cars heading for the bank door, they will be invited by the parking lot’s design to use a six-foot-wide walk that will be lushly landscaped on both sides. The path leads straight to the canopy and front door.

The walk, the landscaped seating areas on the building’s south and east sides, site walls, and sidewalks and landscaping around the building all create what Weeks calls a “layering effect.”

A banker for 35 years, Reid has experienced a lot of bank buildings. Asked what most distinguishes the new Renasant Memphis headquarters from the others, he said, “When you pull up in the parking lot you will notice that big wood ceiling.”

Reid referred to the ceiling of the large canopy greeting and sheltering customers as they approach the building from the parking lot in back.

“It carries you right into the building,” he said. The wood-ceiling theme continues inside on the ground floor. “It’s very warm and inviting,” Reid said. “That canopy is all wood. It goes into the hallway and it goes in the branch bank and the Community Room.”

The Community Room will have its own exterior entrance. The bank intends to make it available as a boardroom, training space, and even for civic clubs.

The third-floor occupants have yet to be identified.

“We’ve got a couple of folks in mind we are pursuing heavily,” Reid said of prospective tenants.

Besides the glass – slightly tinted green – the bank’s exterior will be clad in a relatively new, high-tech material called tactile concrete composite panels. The brand name is Taktl.

The panels are thin but strong, and are custom measured specifically for the bank building, said Brett Grinder, vice president of the construction contractor, Grinder Taber Grinder.

The panels, functioning as “rainscreen,” are attached in a way that leaves space between the panels and the moisture barrier. The space allows moisture to drain or evaporate.

Grinder described the building as having “an extremely tight envelope. And the mechanical systems are the latest technology… It’s a very green building in that respect.

“It takes a little bit higher level of contractors and subcontractors to put a building of that caliber together,” Grinder said. “So that’s always fun for us to get to do something that’s Class A-plus like this.”

The Tupelo, Mississippi-based bank, Peoples Bank, acquired Memphis-based Renasant Bank 16 years ago. Peoples Bank liked the made-up name “Renasant” better than its own and changed its entire business to Renasant, which combines “the constant strength of Renaissance, always growing and always renewing,” Welby Stamps said. She’s director of branding and private client promotions.

Changing the name of the entire Peoples Bank system to Renasant provided another advantage, Reid said. Other banks named Peoples Banks existed, but there was no other Renasant Bank. The more distinctive name proved advantageous for a 117-year-old bank that has grown to operate in seven states with 200 offices. Renasant reported $15.6 billion in total assets during its first quarter earnings report last spring. Total deposits were $12. 7 billion.