Grays Ferry neighborhood to lose its last bank

The Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia had no bank in 1975, and banks outside the neighborhood refused to lend there because they considered it too risky.

Fed up with the neglect, the Grays Ferry Community Council formed a federal credit union, opening with 17 members and $85 in deposits, eventually using proceeds to pay for youth sports.

Now, many Grays Ferry residents are angry and upset because as of Thursday, they will again have no bank.

Conestoga Bancorp Inc., which acquired the former Grays Ferry credit union through a series of mergers, is closing the branch because it has been robbed three times and it loses money.

The closure will be hardest on people such as Helen Henry, 80, who is a regular at the bank and does not drive. "I walk to church. I walk to Pathmark. I walk around the corner to the bank," she said yesterday.

Henry, who raised five children in the neighborhood, said she fears for her safety if she has to take a bus to one of Conestoga's suggested branches on Passyunk Avenue and return with cash. "People watch you," she said.

Richard A. Elko, president and chief executive of Conestoga Bank, which is based in Chester Springs, said the biggest reason for the closure was "the safety issue for our customers and our employees."

Elko met in June with members of the community council to explain the decision and to talk about other ways to deliver banking services to the neighborhood. Those suggestions included a banking day at a local senior center, a no-fee ATM, and teaching the elderly how to use online and telephone banking. He pitched debit cards.

"We remain wide open to this day to those types of creative solutions," Elko said.

Lifelong Grays Ferry resident Ellen Uditsky, 47, said Elko's suggestions made no sense for her elderly neighbors. They don't have computers, and they like to make frequent bank visits to avoid carrying much cash.

"I feel like we're being dumped on," Uditsky said.

Community leaders organized the Grays Ferry Community Council Federal Credit Union to help an area that was weighed down with abandoned houses and had no banks to lend money to people willing to fix them up.

"Nothing was in the neighborhood," said James McCullough, 76, one of the founding officers. "You had to go down to Snyder Avenue or to Broad Street to get to a bank."

In 1985, the Grays Ferry credit union merged with the I.G.A. Federal Credit Union in Feasterville, which was founded by Philadelphia Electric Co. employees. "It was a better source of money for us to offer to the residents," said McCullough, a retired accountant who moved to Williamstown in 2003.

The fate of the Grays Ferry lender may have been sealed when I.G.A. converted into a federal savings bank in 1998. PSB Bancorp Inc., the parent of the savings bank founded in 1923 by the grandfather of State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.), bought I.G.A. in 2000. Conestoga, which was chartered by Pennsylvania in 2006, bought PSB last year.

Deposits at the branch went from $9.3 million in 2000 to $6.5 million in June 2007, the most recent data available.

Dan Egan, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Banking, said that before approving the closure, regulators considered petitions from residents about the impact on the neighborhood. They also took into account the fact that a relatively new bank was dealing with a money-losing branch in a rowhouse that could not be upgraded into a modern bank, Egan said.

Residents said they think their loss did not get enough weight in the decision.

"It's my lifeline," said Margaret Ebbinger, 67, a third-generation resident of Grays Ferry. "My concern is we need to put another bank there. We're hoping for a miracle."