A bank based in central and western Illinois will open its first branch in the Quad Cities on Tuesday.
President and ceo, Lee Garlach, says Fortress Bank is headquartered in Peoria and has 9 branches in Illinois, but chose Davenport for its first Quad Cities location.
"The growth and demographics - we follow traffic and population - certainly this is where, as everybody knows, the growth trend in the Quad Cities has been on this side. But probably more important, we wanted something very central and very convenient."
The new branch is located on East 53rd Street in Davenport, at I-74, in a building that was once a Gateway Computer store and then was used by Mimzi Art and Frame.
Garlach says Fortress Bank began in 2008 when he and some other investors bought two, small banks in western Illinois. They opened in Peoria two years later, and eventually came to the Quad Cities in 2015, opening a loan office in Bettendorf.
