OakStar Bank is open for business in its new home on the Colorado River.

Tim Harty, The Business Times

It’s Oct. 23, Day 2 of OakStar Bank being open in its new location at the Riverfront at Las Colonias, and Clay Tufly is locked out of his office. He either has the wrong key fob for the door, or it’s not logged into the system right or some such.

Welcome to the new building!

OakStar’s regional president for Colorado saw the humor in it and chuckled, then took his interview with The Business Times to the second-floor break room.

It’s a cool building at 1351 Riverfront Loop, just off the Riverside Parkway and a stone’s throw from the Colorado River. Impressive from the outside. Glassy. Modern. A dog walker even relayed his appreciation for the architecture to Tufly during a brief conversation on the front sidewalk.

And it’s impressive on the inside. A tour of the nearly 14,000-square-foot building reveals a spacious, open first floor with a comfortable, natural-light-saturated lobby, a center section with stations to serve customers, offices on the perimeter, plus a break room of its own.

Then, the second floor has a large conference room with 16 chairs surrounding a rectangular configuration of tables, a small conference room with six chairs around its table, several offices and two large decks.

OK, the decks are technically exterior, but with sizable covered areas they feel like an extension of the inside, and they’ll allow OakStar Bank to host events for 70-80 people. Tufly suspects OakStar will make a habit of that.

Overall, it’s a significant upgrade from the downtown office at 501 Main St., where OakStar bids adieu to reside in its shiny, new home.

Well, shiny until Tufly’s 2-year-old grandson tracked in some mud. That reminded Tufly to go back to the Main Street office, which will close in two months, and bring back a broom, dustpan and vacuum cleaner.

The bank down by the river is OakStar’s fourth home since its arrival in Grand Junction in 2021, when it started in one downtown loft doing loan production, then moved to a loft at 461 Main St., above Summit Canyon Mountaineering (now Gearhead Outfitters). A move across the street to 501 Main St. a little more than two years ago brought the addition of personal banking.

It’s another thing Tufly can chuckle about, recalling the humble Grand Junction beginnings for OakStar, which has 20 branches across three states – Missouri, Kansas and Colorado – and is headquartered in Springfield, Mo.

“We started out in an office, just three of us sitting on each end with one little desk,” he said. “And we kind of kid that, I think, we had an old cardboard box that we used as like a side table to an old couch that I brought in, with an old TV that I had, so that was our break room.

“But we were able to just kind of keep our overhead very low and try to build some income and cash flow to support ourselves.”

A few more people joined the cause along the way, including Cassie Tufly, Clay’s wife. Hence, a contingent of 10 people initially occupy the new building, which is a full-service bank with the ability to grow.

It’s also a bank that’s going to stick around. Clay Tufly thinks that’s the ultimate message OakStar Bank’s new building sends.

He struggled for the right word to sum up that sentiment, then changed course and said it simply: “We’re actually here, people can trust that we’re here, they know we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “I think it shows a very large commitment to Grand Junction, to Western Colorado, and I think that’s probably the more important piece. It’s not so much a shiny new toy, but an established presence that can be an important part of the community, that the community can use as well.”

A grand opening is scheduled for Nov. 6, and Tufly hopes the community will seize the opportunity to see OakStar’s new home and find out what the bank is all about. He hopes newcomers will see what he sees.

For what sets OakStar apart, Tufly said, “I think it starts with the team of people we have, just really good people trying to do what they can to help others.”

He said they have a one-word motto: Serve.

Tufly knows a lot of banks want to provide good customer service, so standing out from the crowd is a challenge, and OakStar’s staff embraces it. They’re veterans of Grand Junction’s banking community, and Tufly thinks customers will experience that with every service OakStar provides.

“It’s a lot of the people they know from some of their previous banking relationships,” he said. “Come down and see who’s here and what we can offer, and we hope to just be able to help people do better and treat them the right way and see where that goes.”

Come see it for yourself

OakStar Bank team members, leadership and shareholders will celebrate the grand opening of their new building at 1351 Riverfront Loop on Nov. 6 from 2 to 5 p.m. The Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce will oversee a ribbon cutting at 4 p.m.

Members of the Grand Junction community are welcome and encouraged to attend.

How may we help you?

OakStar Bank Grand Junction offers deposit services, consumer and business lending, corporate services, mortgage lending, and other services to the surrounding community.

They appreciate what you did

If you find the architecture stunning, know that it’s the handiwork of Missouri-based Baron Design & Associates. The construction, meanwhile, was done by Grand Junction stalwart FCI Constructors.

Sized right for these parts

OakStar Bank Regional President for Colorado Clay Tufly characterizes OakStar as the right size to meet the average Grand Valley and Western Colorado consumer’s needs.

“We’re still small enough that we can make quick decisions and have a lot of ability to be creative with financing and other types of things,” he said. “But we’re large enough to do most any project that we would want to be a part of. Our lending limit’s sufficient to do in excess of $40 million. We choose to stay around $20 million for an individual project, but that’s just an internal kind of guidance.”

Parking-lot service, if you choose

One thing you won’t find at OakStar’s new facility is drive-up windows.

Instead, it will try to do “just a little bit different kind of banking,” Tufly said. “We’ll have three lanes out front that people can park, and if they want us to come grab their transactions, we’ll come do that, kind of like during the COVID era, instead of using a drive-through and having all of that additional overhead.

“You know, I’ve been doing this a long time, and drive-ups can be a challenge, and we just chose to do it without, especially with this location. There really wasn’t a way to do that that made sense. … With banking anymore, there’s so much digital and electronic opportunities that I think it’s less important to have people being able to drive through and do some of those other things.”

It took the whole team

Tufly knows his name got attached to all of the news during the past two years about OakStar Bank building its new home by the Colorado River, but he said that doesn’t recognize the people who deserve the recognition.

“I really don’t want any credit,” he said. “If you’re going to give any credit, it’s the team. … I’ve just been very fortunate and blessed to get to be the face of it, and sometimes that’s not fair to everybody else, I don’t think.

“And they’re all very humble people as well. I don’t know that anybody’s looking for any kind of credit, but they deserve it.”