Wells Fargo closing banking operations at downtown Cedar Rapids branch

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify other local offices remain open.

CEDAR RAPIDS — Wells Fargo this week will close banking operations at its downtown Cedar Rapids branch while the fate of the building waits to be decided.

The branch, at 150 First Ave. NE, posted a notice that it would close the banking operations there at 11 a.m. Wednesday. But the Wells Fargo Advisors office on the building’s second floor will remain open to assist with customers’ investing needs.

The bank’s other local offices — at 3570 First Ave. NE, 500 33rd Ave. SW, 3010 Williams Blvd. SW and 4051 42nd St. NE — remain open for business for normal banking needs. Wells Fargo also maintains a Marion office at 340 Seventh Ave.

All branch employees at the downtown location will be transferred to other Wells Fargo branches, spokesperson Mike Slusark said in a statement Monday.

“Because we currently have bank branches so close to each other, we are consolidating them into fewer locations,” Slusark said.

Wells Fargo owns the 150 First Ave. NE property and officials are “considering future options,” Slusark said, but no decisions have been made yet.

Although the branch will not fully shutter, the decision adds to the remote work trends brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic that have resulted in fewer workers downtown and a growing number of office vacancies in Cedar Rapids’ city center.

According to a Cedar Rapids commercial real estate report recently unveiled by GLD Commercial, the approximately 3.4 million square feet of office space in the city’s central business district ended 2023 with a vacancy rate of 15.53 percent — up from 14.03 percent at the beginning of the year. U.S. Bank’s branch banking services downtown were among the vacancies.

Banks across the United States have closed their costly brick-and-mortar locations in recent years. According to Daily Mail, Wells Fargo closed more locations than any other bank in 2023, shuttering 312 branches nationwide.

Wells Fargo has reduced its Iowa footprint and laid off workers since a fake accounts scandal in 2016, the Des Moines Register reported, when regulators accused employees of opening accounts without customers’ knowledge to meet corporate sales goals. As a result, regulators have imposed an asset cap that limits Wells Fargo’s growth until issues related to this scandal are resolved, YahooFinance reported.

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A slowdown in Wells Fargo’s mortgage business, which has its headquarters in Des Moines, has added to the challenges. In 2023, Wells Fargo announced it would step back from the housing market as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike contributed to a collapse of the lending market, driving down demand for mortgages and refinancing as the cost of buying homes grew.

Last month, Wells Fargo announced more layoffs from its Jordan Creek Parkway campus in West Des Moines, bringing the total reduction of Wells Fargo’s Iowa workforce to 1,356 since 2018, according to the Register.

In late 2023, YahooFinance reported Wells Fargo Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf announced plans to cut the company’s workforce. Wells Fargo eliminated 11,300 jobs, or 4.7 percent of its workforce in 2023.

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