AmericanWest Bank plans to establish an operations center in the 48,000-square-foot Spokane Valley complex that Ambassadors Group Inc. vacated in August and will move 150 support personnel there from various Spokane-area locations.


The moves, which are intended to ease overcrowding the bank is experiencing due to fast growth, and also to improve collaboration among employees, is expected to take place in phases between January and April, says AmericanWest spokeswoman Kelly McPhee.


The former Ambassadors headquarters is located at 110 S. Ferrall, near the Thor-Freya interchange with Interstate 90, and includes two, two-story buildings, each with a basement. The complex had been named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1956 launched the nonprofit People to People educational travel program that Ambassadors still administers. Ambassadors moved into a new, 132,000-square-foot headquarters building near Spokane International Airport in August, and now is using Eisenhowers name on that new structure.


AmericanWest plans to use the complex in East Spokane to house its information-technology, human-resources, and loan-processing departments, McPhee says.


Currently, those departments are spread out in four buildings around the metropolitan area.


We are busting at the seams, she says. In the last three years, weve grown companywide from 450 employees to 730 employees across three states.


Robert Daugherty, AmericanWests president and CEO, says that bringing the support departments together will help them collaborate.


Work-flow efficiencies will naturally occur when these teams work side-by-side, Daugherty says.


McPhee says the interior of the former Ambassadors complex will require only minor tenant improvements to accommodate the bank operations center.


Its a great match for our purposes, she says.


AmericanWests loan-administration and loan-processing personnel will move from the banks branch on Appleway Avenue in Spokane Valley. Its information-technology personnel and other employees will be moved from the banks West Plains and Northpointe service centers.


The West Plains service center, where American West occupies 9,000 square feet of leased space at 1611 S. Geiger, is the only facility that AmericanWest plans to vacate completely, McPhee says.


We outgrew the floor plan and square footage there, she says.


She says a few employees will move from the banks three-year-old headquarters building, at 41 W. Riverside downtown, although the banks administrative personnel will remain there. AmericanWest is the anchor tenant there, and leases three-plus floors in the five-story building.


The new operations center will be secure and closed to the public, although it wont handle cash or process any monetary transactions, McPhee says.


AmericanWest Bancorp reported assets of $2.2 billion as of June 30. AmericanWest Bank, which is a unit of publicly traded AmericanWest Bancorp., also of Spokane, operates 61 branches in Washington, Idaho, and Utah. Earlier this year, the bank acquired Provo, Utah-based Far West Bancorp, which gave AmericanWest its 17 branches in Utah. The bank plans to open a new branch next month in Salt Lake City.


Matthew Byrd, of Cornerstone Property Advisors, handled the 10-year lease of the former Ambassadors complex.


Contact Mike McLean at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at mikem@spokanejournal.com.