Sited in Kansas City’s burgeoning arts district, the Crossroad…
Sited in Kansas City’s burgeoning arts district, the Crossroads branch of Missouri Bank is located in a former auto-repair shop that dates back to the 1920s. Instead of tearing it down, the team from Helix turned it into a sleek new bank branch that caters to many of the artists and gallery owners that comprise the bank’s client base. Integrating art into these projects is a priority for Missouri Bank; bank CEO Grant Burcham purchased a pair of back-to-back billboards—that have towered over the building for many years—and has changed them into art-boards. Working with local group the Charlotte Street Foundation, Burcham and a team of employees choose from submissions by local artists. Winners are displayed on the art-boards and changed every three months.
Mike Sinclair
Missouri Bank, Crossroads branch drive-through
Mike Sinclair
Inside, local artist Adam Jones milled flooring out of pine salv…
Inside, local artist Adam Jones milled flooring out of pine salvaged from a barn in Polo, Mo., and boards for the storefront from staves salvaged from holding tanks at a defunct Speas Vinegar plant.
Courtesy Helix Architecture + Design
Missouri Banks Crossroads Branch Floor Plan
Mike Sinclair
Missouri Bank has been located in the same downtown Kansas City …
Missouri Bank has been located in the same downtown Kansas City headquarters building for 27 years. Helix renovated the former dry-goods store in 2008, creating a space composed of a ground-level customer area, with offices and conference rooms on the mezzanine level above.
Courtesy Helix Architecture + Design
Missouri Banks Downtown Branch Floor Plan
Aaron Dougherty
Missouri Bank Brookside Branch
Aaron Dougherty
The Brookside branch, which opened in 2010, is the most recent p…
The Brookside branch, which opened in 2010, is the most recent project that Helix has completed for Missouri Bank. It adapted another auto-related building (this time a car dealership dating to the 1930s) into a combination walk-up–drive-through banking center, turning the former service bays into a throughway for cars that runs down the center of the building.
Aaron Dougherty
Inside, a skylight provides natural light to the teller area, an…
Inside, a skylight provides natural light to the teller area, and where there are interior walls, Helix used glass partitions that promote the idea of transparency that has been central to the company’s mission.
Courtesy Helix Architecture + Design
Missouri Bank Brookside branch floor plan
Aaron Dougherty
Dream Mural in the drive-through, by local artist Scott Gobber.
Grant Burcham, the CEO and president of Missouri Bank, is adamant that his Kansas City, Mo.–based financial institution is different—a point that is driven home when he flashes a photo of himself and two other bank officers attending the company’s annual costume party, dressed, quite convincingly, as punk rockers. The bank is different. It loans money to odd entrepreneurs. It puts on huge rock-paper-scissors tournaments for customers. And it’s not afraid to embrace its differences: During the recent financial crash, Burcham thought of putting up a billboard with his own personal commentary on one of the banking industry’s more unsavory elements. The mock-up reads: “Dear Goldman Sachs, Because of you, we’re embarrassed to tell people we’re a bank.”
When his father bought the business in 1984, “we had no parking, no drive-through, no ATMs, $15 million in assets, and a $100,000 loan limit,” Burcham says. Over time the bank found itself succeeding by developing relationships with small-business owners that most commercial banks would never grant loans, and quirky entrepreneurs. These include artists, a pet-food store, gallery owners, and even architecture firms. One such firm was local Helix Architecture + Design, which has gone on to design Mo Bank’s (as its customers call it) last three projects: two branch banks and its headquarters renovation.
Before starting, Helix got Burcham’s blessing to conduct three daylong workshops with a select group of bank employees. “We’ve found that leaders often think they know the brand, and where the company is going. But employees also have great ideas about … what the core of their business is,” said project designer Kathy Kelly. “When we asked the bank’s employees what they thought the bank should be like, they said, ‘an art bus … a farmers market … a sidewalk café.’ ”
From these offbeat notions emerged a design direction for Helix, defined by characteristics not often associated with a financial institution: transparency, openness, lightness, and plenty of one-on-one contact with customers. A common thread in all three projects, besides the fact that they are all renovation-and-adaptive-reuse projects, is that there are few interior walls. Even in the downtown headquarters, which is a former dry-goods store, handrails at the mezzanine are supported by glass so that customers on the main level can see into offices and conference rooms above. No bullet-proof Plexiglas cages here: “Pretty much if someone said, ‘that’s what banks do,’ we said, ‘then we don’t want that,’ ” Burcham says.
When the bank decided to open a new branch in 2008, Burcham wanted the kind of location where the customers it has courted for years live and work. “The most obvious spot was the Crossroads,” said Helix’s principal-in-charge Jay Tomlinson, AIA, speaking of a once rough-and-tumble zone of old warehouses and light industrial buildings that has emerged as Kansas City’s arts district.
Burcham set his heart on a 1920s-era brick auto repair shop there. “We told him it would be much cheaper to tear it down, but he insisted on reusing the garage,” Tomlinson says. The resulting LEED Gold space has a green roof, restored roof monitors, flooring milled from local barn wood, and storefront soffits and trim made from vinegar vats. The building spans a city block, so customers can enter the bank from either of two parallel streets. “There is a drive-through window, but we’re proud of the fact that 95 percent of the customers walk into the branch to bank,” Burcham says.
In 2010, the Brookside neighborhood became Mo Bank’s latest conquest. It is home to the city’s growing group of urban professionals and one of the city’s oldest suburban shopping centers. An underutilized 1930s car dealership was perfect for a combination walkup–drive-through branch. Helix repurposed the dealership’s central service bays as a drive-through, and, in keeping with the theme of transparency, drivers view tellers through large glass windows, as opposed to tiny video monitors.
Mo Bank’s success is due in no small part to its use of architecture to attract customers and build loyalty. “We think that you don’t have to hate your bank,” Burcham says. “Some people think that’s just the deal. But you don’t.”
Project Credits
Missouri Bank Crossroads
Client Grant Burcham | Missouri Bank and Trust Architect Helix Architecture + Design, Kansas City, Mo.—Jay Tomlinson, AIA (principal-in-charge); Bryan Gross, AIA (project manager, project designer); Jacob Palan (project architect) Interior Designer, Landscape Architect, Lighting Designer Helix Architecture + Design Collaborating Artists Adam Jones and Jesse Small Collaborating Architect El Dorado Architects (furniture design and fabrication) Mechanical/Electrical Engineer Sys-Tek Structural Engineer Structural Engineering Associates Civil Engineer Taliaferro & Browne Geotechnical Engineer and Materials Testing Terracon General Contractor HarenLaughlin Construction Recycled Materials Sourcing Adam Jones Size 7,500 square feet Cost $1.9 million ($80,000 for furniture)
Client Grant Burcham | Missouri Bank and Trust Architect Helix Architecture + Design, Kansas City, Mo.— Jay Tomlinson, AIA (principal-in-charge); Bryan Gross, AIA (project manager); Kathy Kelly (project designer); Jacob Palan (project architect) Interior Designer Helix Architecture + Design—Mia Lechlitner Mechanical/Electrical Engineer Sys-Tek Structural Engineer SEA General Contractor Haren Laughlin Lighting Designer Derek Porter Studio Size 15,300 sf total (8,800 sf at first floor; 6,500 sf at mezzanine floor) Cost $1.4 million ($250,000 for furniture)
Materials and Sources
Carpet Bentley Prince Street (Iconic broadloom) bentleyprincestreet.com Furniture Tuohy (workstations and casegoods) tuohyfurniture.com; Allsteel (task chairs) allsteeloffice.com; Vitra (conference room chairs) vitra.com; Bright Chair Co. (lounge chairs and sofa) brightchair.com Glass C.R. Laurence Co. (1/2″ tempered-glass railing system) crlaurence.com Lighting Chris Ferguson (custom fixture) Millwork SquareOneStudio (walnut and back-painted glass, painted MDF and Corian countertop) sqonestudio.com Windows, Curtainwalls, and Doors Dirtt (interior glazed wall system and doors) dirtt.net
Missouri Bank Brookside
Client Grant Burcham | Missouri Bank and Trust Architect Helix Architecture + Design, Kansas City, Mo.—Jay Tomlinson, AIA (principal-in-charge, project designer); Brad Kingsley (project architect); Joe Jimenez, AIA (project manager) Interior Designer Helix Architecture + Design Collaborating Artist Archie Scott Gobber Collaborating Architect El Dorado Architects (furniture design/fabrication) Mechanical/Electrical Engineer Lankford and Associates General Contractor Haren Laughlin Size 5,000 square feet Cost $340,000
