Tacoma-based Columbia Banking System Inc. and Sandpoint-based Intermountain Community Bancorp have similar corporate cultures that will assist integrating the two banks following a planned acquisition that will mark Columbia Bank’s long-envisioned entry into Idaho, says the bank’s CEO Melanie Dressel.

Dressel says she spent nearly a week last month visiting Intermountain’s North Idaho branches to start planning the integration process, shortly after the banks jointly announced the pending transaction.

“The people are great,” she says. “I felt we could put Columbia bankers and Intermountain bankers in the same room and you wouldn’t be able to figure out who worked for which company.”

She says she expects a similar experience when she travels to Southern Idaho this month.

“Intermountain Community Bank has a great reputation and staff,” she says, adding that Intermountain CEO Curt Hecker will head up the integration process and help build Columbia Bank’s presence in the Boise market.

“Curt Hecker is well respected,” she says. “We know he’s going to be a great resource as we look at the integration process and start taking that next step with the Boise project.”

Nicole Sherman, Columbia Bank’s Eastern Washington region manager, also will be a key person in acclimating the Idaho team to Columbia Bank’s operations, Dressel says.

Columbia hopes to complete the Intermountain acquisition in the fourth quarter, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, she says, adding that all of the acquired branches will operate under the Columbia Bank name.

While Columbia has been eyeing Idaho at least since it acquired nine former Bank of Whitman branches, including two in Spokane in 2011, the planned Intermountain acquisition will expand Columbia’s footprint throughout the Gem State, she says.

Intermountain, the third largest community bank headquartered in Idaho, has 19 branches, 16 of which are in Idaho. It had total assets of $920.2 million as of June 30.

Its eight North Idaho branches operate as Panhandle State Bank. Three branches in Southern Idaho operate as Magic Valley Bank.

The rest, including the two Spokane-area branches and one branch in eastern Oregon, operate as Intermountain Community Bank.

Intermountain’s Spokane-area branches are located at 5211 E. Sprague, Spokane Valley, and at 618 W. Riverside, downtown, where it relocated a branch into 6,600 square feet of space last year.

Columbia Bank has 139 branches in Washington and Oregon, including 13 in its Eastern Washington region.

Columbia Bank’s Spokane-area branches are located at its Eastern Washington regional office in the Fernwell Building, at 505 W. Riverside, downtown, where it occupies 11,000 square feet of space, and a 10,000 square foot branch in the Wandermere area on Spokane’s North Side, at 12812 N. Addison.

The main overlap in branch-service areas for the two banks is downtown Spokane.

“We will consolidate the two Spokane offices in some fashion,” Dressel says. “We haven’t made a determination about exactly what it will look like. I doubt we could put everybody into one facility or the other.”

The acquisition will result in some corporate staff reductions, she says.

“They will be more at the administrative level,” Dressel says.

Cuts will be decided after Columbia firms up its organizational structure and personnel at each bank gain a better understanding about how the other bank works, she says.

For the most part, “Intermountain customers will be able to work with the same people, whether they’re walking into a branch or working with a lender,” Dressel says. “We want to have as much consistency as we can.”

Columbia currently employs 1,800 people, and Intermountain employs 280 people.

Even as Columbia grows, Dressel says that one of its main goals is to maintain its identity as a community bank.

“It’s part of our DNA and business philosophy,” Dressel says. “We work hard to be involved in community. We ask our team all the time to let us know if we’re doing things that are causing them not to act like a community banker.”

The regulatory atmosphere, rather than the size of the bank, creates the biggest challenge in maintaining the community-bank mission, Dressel says.

In the wake of the banking crisis a few years ago, “there was a feeling that consumers had to be protected from something,” she says. “A lot of regulations were written so there’s more of an interest in treating everyone in the same way.”

Customers’ needs, however, don’t fit in one mold, Dressel asserts.

“Everybody has different financial situations,” she says. “We really want to be able to customize services for individuals.”

The planned Intermountain trans-action would be Columbia Bank’s ninth acquisition or merger in 10 years.

Among those transactions, the bank acquired assets from five banks through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2010 and 2011, including the former Colfax-based Bank of Whitman branches.

“Columbia Bank had the financial strength to manage through the recession and very long recovery,” Dressel says.

The bank completed its largest open-bank transaction last year, when it acquired Lake Oswego, Ore.-based West Coast Bank, which had assets totaling $2.6 billion.

“Our team has a lot of practice and does a good job with the integration process, which is unique and different each time,” Dressel says.

The rising costs of technology and regulatory compliance likely will lead to more merger-and-acquisition activity in banking, she says.

“Certainly at some point in time Columbia Bank could be part of that,” she says of potential future acq-uisitions. “Right now, we’re concentrating on Intermountain.We would never do anything to jeopardize the partnership we’re forming today.”

Though some of the Intermountain branches are geographically closer to Montana, Utah, or Nevada than to Columbia’s Western Washington base, Dressel says the bank isn’t looking to expand beyond the three states in which it currently has a presence.

“Our focus has been on building a Pacific Northwest regional community bank in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho,” Dressel says. “We haven’t discussed moving beyond that.”

Mulling potential expansion in the Spokane area, Dressel says, “The South Hill would be a great spot for us, but we don’t have any specific plans now.”

Dressel, who grew up in Colville and has family in Spokane and Spokane Valley, says, “People know I’m passionate about what goes on on that side of the mountains. The whole Eastern Washington market has been very good for us.”

In its second-quarter earnings statement, released July 23, Columbia reported assets of $7.2 billion as of June 30.

Dressel says Columbia had record loan production during the quarter, resulting in an annualized loan growth of 14 percent.

“We’ve got a lot of money to lend, and we’re lending a lot of money,” she says.