When veteran banker Sam Jones began working for FirstBank last summer, he immediately was tasked with staffing and finding sites for the lender’s first two branches in Chattanooga — and they were set to open just weeks apart.

Now, just over a year later, the bank’s city president can check all those tasks off his list.

In August, Lexington, Tenn.-based FirstBank opened a 4,200-square-foot branch on the first floor of the 401 Building in downtown Chattanooga.

On Friday, Mr. Jones joined the staff of the bank’s Hamilton Place branch for that location’s open house. The branch, in a former Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union building on Hamilton Place Boulevard, initially opened its doors on Sept. 4, less than a month after the downtown headquarters started operations.

What began with five employees in a mortgage and loan production office on Shallowford Road has grown to 17 people in Chattanooga.

The total cost of expansion for both branches was about $1.65 million, Mr. Jones said.

In the first 30 days since the downtown location has been open, the branch been extremely busy, Mr. Jones said.

“We’ve been real pleased with what we’ve been able to do,” he said.

Melinda A. Hicks, an 18-year veteran of the banking industry, was hired to manage the 4,600 square-foot Hamilton Place branch, which also houses FirstBank’s mortgage operations.

Mrs. Hicks came to FirstBank after working for Pioneer Bank as it changed names to First American and then AmSouth. She worked for FSGBank before coming to FirstBank this year.

The opportunity to be part of bringing an established banking company into a new market has been an exciting process for someone who has been in the industry for so long, she said. She also enjoys working for a company that is growing and adding branches despite problems in the economy, she said.

“We’re not cleaning up any messes,” Mrs. Hicks said.

The bank already has more than 30 offices among the state’s major metropolitan areas such as Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis and Jackson. FirstBank also has a branch in Dayton, Tenn., and a loan production office in Cleveland, Tenn.

Mr. Jones said he planned further expansion of the bank — in Hixson and Ooltewah — and should begin seriously searching for space in those two markets in the first quarter of 2009. He hopes of having one or the other open by the first quarter of 2010.

But, Mr. Jones said, the bank’s development depends somewhat on what the economy is doing.

“For us, what we are trying to do is do business as usual in these trying times, and that is not always easy in the banking industry,” he said.

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