Naugatuck Savings to open Wallingford branch office

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NAUGATUCK — Naugatuck Savings Bank is continuing to spread its wings.

Naugatuck Savings Bank formally announced plans last week to open a branch office in Wallingford later this fall, the bank’s 19th banking center.

The Wallingford branch will be located at 665 North Colony Road, at the end of a new shopping center currently being built on the site of the former Colony Lumber wholesale and retail operation, said Charles Boulier III, president and chief financial officer of both the bank and its parent, Nutmeg Financial Mutual Holding Co.

The branch is expected to open later this fall, possibly in November, Boulier said.

The Wallingford branch is the fourth the Naugatuck-based community bank has opened since the beginning of 2011, following the opening of branches on Route 10 in Hamden and at Naugatuck High School in 2011, and another on East Main Street in Waterbury in April.

The 2,500-square-foot Wallingford branch will be on the ground floor of a building that will house more than one occupant. The bank will feature a computer cafe, an investment center, a walk-up ATM and a drive-through teller window, Boulier said.

The new branch will have four employees, he said. The new jobs will be posted, enabling existing employees to apply to fill the openings. New employees will be hired if existing employees do not fill each of the available positions at the new branch, he said.

Naugatuck Savings, which was established in 1870, employed a total of 263 people in the equivalent of 232 full-time positions as of August.

A state-chartered bank, it currently operates 16 full-service banking offices, including three in Naugatuck, two in both Meriden and Waterbury, and single offices in Ansonia, Cheshire, Hamden, Middlebury, Oxford, Prospect, Southbury, Watertown and Woodbury. The bank also operates two limited-service offices — in Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury and Naugatuck High School — that are open only to students and faculty.

Mark Yanarella, the bank’s chairman and chief executive officer, said Naugatuck Savings was “excited” with the opportunity to expand into the Wallingford market.

Boulier called the new Wallingford location a “natural fit” within the bank’s existing retail footprint.

“If you imagine Naugatuck as being at the center of a wheel, and our branches as being at the ends of the different spokes, you’d see that our new Wallingford branch fits in nicely with our existing branches in Meriden, Hamden and Cheshire,” he said.