By Chris Fuchs
The $196 million merger between Queens County Bancorp, the parent of Queens County Savings Bank, and Haven Bancorp, the parent of CFS Banks, has netted their new financial thrift, New York Community Bancorp, 25 branches in all of Queens. This is nearly twice what Queens County Bancorp had had when it was headquartered on Main Street in Flushing, said Ilene A. Angarola, vice president of investor relations.
As a result of the corporate marriage, Queens County Bancorp's Main Street headquarters, housed in a dullish yellow utilitarian building on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue, closed its doors to customers Saturday. The branch had moved into the former HSBC bank on Roosevelt Avenue near Lippman Plaza Oct. 10, and the corporate offices, also based in the Main Street building, relocated to Westbury, L.I., where Haven Corp. was headquartered, on Dec. 14.
Originally Queens County Bancorp had only 13 branches in Queens, with one in Nassau County, Angarola said. But with Haven Bancorp's merging into Queens County Bancorp, the holding company now has a total of 25 banks in Queens alone, a fact that drew a wry smile from Claire Shulman, the Queens borough president.
“I'm sorry that they left the borough,” Shulman said in an interview Tuesday. “I wish I could have had a chance to keep them in Queens. But I must say Queens County has been a very good neighbor.”
Shulman said her office had not known about the merger in time to coax Queens County Bancorp into staying at its Main Street headquarters. “I wish we had had an opportunity to bid for that office space,” she said.
Many of the acquired CFS branches of Haven Bancorp are known as “supermarket branches” – branches that are housed in supermarkets or drugstores. Angarola said that CFS has seven traditional branches in Queens and the remainder are supermarket branches.
The CFS branches are in Woodhaven, Bellerose, Far Rockaway, Forest Hills, Howard Beach and Ozone Park. Queens County Savings has branches in Astoria, Auburndale, College Point, Corona, Fresh Meadows, Jackson Heights, Kew Gardens Hills and Little Neck.
In all, Angarola said, there are 70 CFS banks scattered throughout the five boroughs, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. Both the Queens County branches and the CFS branches are being operated independently, at least until the two banks can interface their computer systems, she said. Thus, customers of either bank will not be able to make transactions at the other until March of next year, at the earliest, Angarola said.
It was still unclear what would ultimately happen to the Main Street building, whether or not it would be razed and how it would be developed. Angarola did say that the spacious parking lot in the back of the bank was to be developed into a commercial building that would provide jobs for 600 people. Some elected officials had expressed disquiet during the summer when bank officials first acknowledged that some employees would lose their jobs with the corporate relocation.
In an interview this past summer, John Watts, the chief of staff of City Councilwoman Julia Harrison (D-Flushing), said he had seen a proposal to develop the property “more than a year ago.”
Watts said the plan called for the development of a “multi-use facility,” which would include retail shops and a food court. A prominent businessman in Flushing, who had asked that his name not be used, said that Michael Lee, a Flushing developer, had been under contract to develop at least the parking lot, if not the property on which the bank was built.
