Photo by Derek Redd Members of the Unified Bank Board of Directors cut the ribbon on the bank’s new Wheeling center Tuesday. Pictured are, from left, Bethany Schunn, Brian Hendershot, Unified Chairman, President and CEO Scott Everson, Gary Glessner, Erin Ball and John Hoopengarner.

WHEELING — Unified Bank, which already boasts a robust clientele in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle, cut the ribbon Tuesday on a site that will give those Mountain State residents a full-service spot to do their banking in Wheeling.

Bank officials and Wheeling dignitaries braved the cold Tuesday morning to celebrate the banking center’s opening on National Road next to CVS Pharmacy in Wheeling’s Woodsdale neighborhood. The area already is a bustling center of commerce in the city.

“We’ve acquired a considerable clientele over here in Wheeling who always asked us, ‘When will you put a brick and mortar building over here?'” said Scott Everson, Unified Bank’s chairman, president and CEO. “It was a matter of finding the right opportunities, and we found them here.”

Unified Bank has been an Ohio Valley mainstay for more than a century, founded in Martins Ferry in 1902. It has grown in Ohio, gaining branches farther north and east in the Buckeye State.

The bank has a Moundsville branch, but the Wheeling center will feature a full menu of services — complete commercial, retail, mortgage originators, treasury management executives and two commercial banking executives.

All of those services will now sit in a new 8,000-square-foot center in Woodsdale, which will serve as Unified’s regional West Virginia banking hub and initially house 10 full-time employees.

There is a separate three-lane drive-up banking facility about 300 feet behind the main banking center that will be staffed by up to three customer service representatives, and will include a 24-hour island ATM.

Tuesday’s event was the culmination of a 16-month process that puts Unified Bank in one of the busiest areas in Wheeling.

“For many years, Unified Bank looked for the perfect location to build a banking center in ‘The Friendly City,'” Everson told guests at the ribbon-cutting. “I firmly believe we found one of the premier locations right here on National Road.”