Melanie Dressel, president and CEO of Tacoma-based Columbia Banking System Inc., says visiting the Spokane area is like coming home - and she's had reason to come home a little more often than usual this month.

Columbia State Bank, the wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia Banking System, recently acquired eight branches of the former Colfax-based Bank of Whitman, and she's personally helping with the transition.

Dressel, who grew up in Colville before moving to the West Side to attend the University of Washington and then start her banking career in 1974, says she aims to see the bank do some growing up of its own east of the Cascade Mountains.

"We are growing," Dressel says. "We're trying to look ahead to where we want to be when the economy starts taking off."

Since the Aug. 5 acquisition, the bank has created an Eastern Washington division, hired a Spokane-based regional manager, and bid on a bank property it had earlier passed on, and it's looking for more opportunities to expand, she says.

Dressel says the acquisition of certain former Whitman assets is part of Columbia Bank's goal to become a Pacific Northwest regional community bank.

Whitman's history of serving agricultural interests appealed to Columbia Bank, Dressel says.

"We knew it would be a good fit for us," she says.

Columbia Bank strives, she says, to provide personalized service and community support.

With the acquisition of the former Whitman branches, Columbia Bank now operates 101 bank branches, including 76 branches in Washington state and 25 branches in Oregon. The bank employs about 1,200 people and expects to retain some former Whitman employees, although Dressel says it's too soon to say how many.

Dressel, who was appointed president and CEO of the bank in 2000, planned to visit with some former Whitman employees in Eastern Washington earlier this week.

"We want them to be able to put our face and name on the bank," she says. "Also, we want to deliver the message that new geographies are important to our future, and we want to grow business in those markets."

Columbia Bank last week hired Nicole Sherman, a former AmericanWest Bank executive, who will manage Columbia Bank's newly formed Eastern Washington region, in which she will play a major development role, Dressel says.

The Bank of Whitman acquisition, which was subject to a competitive bidding process through the Federal Insurance Deposit Corp., included a $314.4 million asset purchase of the bank's total assets of $548.6 million and all of its deposits totaling $515.7 million.

Whitman's failure is expected to cost the FDIC's deposit insurance fund $134.8 million.

Columbia Bank's offer involved eight of Whitman's 20 branches, including two Spokane-area branches, one of them at 618 W. Riverside downtown and the other at 12812 N. Addison, in the Wandermere area.

Downtown, Whitman had leased the first floor of the three-story, 60,000-square-foot building that was named for it, and Columbia Bank will decide during the next 90 days whether it will renew that full lease. Dressel adds, though, "There's no discussion about making a change there. It's a beautiful building."

In addition to the two Spokane-area branches, the acquisition includes branches in Clarkston, Colfax, Othello, Pullman, Ritzville, and Walla Walla, all of which extend Columbia Bank's reach beyond its formerly easternmost branches in the Tri-Cities.

In all, 12 former Whitman branches, including the branch at 8727 W. U.S. 2, on the West Plains, won't reopen, the FDIC says.

"We spent a lot of time examining the demographics based on limited information we have when looking at an FDIC transaction," Dressel says. "It wouldn't be financially possible for us to take more than the eight branches that we did."

The bank, however, was the highest of multiple bidders last week on the FDIC sale of land and a building formerly occupied by a Bank of Whitman branch in Mattawa, Wash., about 160 miles southwest of Spokane, says Bob Dodson, of Quantum Financial Partners, an FDIC contractor.

The FDIC identified the Mattawa community as being underserved by banks and expedited the sale, allowing only financial institutions to bid on it, Dodson says.

Columbia has applied to the FDIC for approval of a new Columbia Bank branch there, but declines to comment further on that proposed branch during the approval process, says JoAnne Coy, a Columbia Bank spokeswoman.

Other former Whitman branches that will remain closed are in the Eastern Washington towns of Endicott, Kennewick, La Crosse, Lind, Pasco, Pomeroy, Rosalia, Royal City, Warden, and Washtucna.

Dodson says the FDIC has instructed Quantum Financial to market those properties in a "traditional fashion" for real estate with no requirement that the buyer operate them as banks.

"Three to four of those communities appear to be 'under-banked,'" he says. "I'm looking into that."

Columbia Bank's emphasis on building and maintaining capital, its high ratio of core deposits, and its balanced loan portfolio have helped it remain strong as 68 FDIC-insured banks nationwide, including three in Washington state, have failed in 2011 as of last week, Dressel says.

"We have been very financially healthy," she says. "We have a lot of capital, and that puts us in a position to take advantage of disruption in the marketplace."

Columbia Bank has completed five FDIC transactions in less than two years, she says.

"The acquisitions we've done over the last 18 months have helped fill in the gaps we've had," she says.

In May, Columbia Bank added eight branches to its banking network when it acquired deposits and assets of Snohomish, Wash.-based First Heritage Bank and Burlington, Wash.-based Summit Banking Co.

Columbia Bank last month posted strong second-quarter results with net income of $8.6 million, or 22 cents a diluted share, more than double its net income of $3.9 million, or 11 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

Columbia Bank's total assets were $4.43 billion as of June 30, up from $4.26 billion a year earlier. Its total deposits were $3.5 billion, up from $3.3 billion, and its loans totaled $2.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion a year earlier.

She says she hopes, however, that recent loan growth is an indicator of rising confidence in future economic growth.

"Last quarter, we saw a lot of loan growth," she says. "We made over $160 million in loans and netted about $74 million in loan growth."

She says Columbia Bank will continue to look for opportunities to acquire community banks to expand its reach in the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

"There are still markets along the Interstate 90 corridor we would like to be in," Dressel adds. "We would be open to considering other acquisitions, and we're always looking for opportunities to partner with banks that share our business culture and philosophy."