MGoBlog-endorsed OSB Community Bank pursues Ann Arbor community banking niche

Brooklyn, Mich.-based OSB Community Bank has been barely a stone’s throw from Ann Arbor for nearly a century, with six branches including Jackson, Onsted, and Adrian locations. But the bank is now making its first foray into Ann Arbor in an effort to fill a community banking void in the city.

That’s thanks in part to bank president and CEO Rick Northrup, who joined the bank just this January. Northrup has worked as a banker in Ann Arbor for nearly 20 years, most recently at the now-defunct United Bank and Trust. Northrup served as that bank’s executive vice president and was promoted to senior vice president at Old National Bank when it acquired United Bank and Trust.

“I stayed for a while, but I didn’t like it,” he says. “I wanted to get back into community banking.”

When Northrup took the job at OSB, he saw an opportunity to give Ann Arbor another locally-owned banking option. He notes that both United Bank and Trust and Ann Arbor Commerce Bank have closed in recent years, leaving Bank of Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor State Bank as the only community banks in town.

“They’re really good banks and I have friends that work at both of those institutions,” Northrup says. “But where there used to be four, now there’s only two, and we felt there was a need in the marketplace for another alternative bank.”

OSB’s new loan production office at 305 E. Eisenhower currently employs two people, with a third hired to join the staff early next year. The bank is currently seeking a fourth employee for the branch as well. Northrup says the location is already running “pretty well ahead of plans” for loans and other new business.

OSB arrives in town with the notable endorsement of Brian Cook, editor of the popular U-M sports blog MGoBlog.

“I’ve met [Cook] once,” Northrup says. “But I’m a big fan, as a lot of people are, of his writing and the website.”