After sitting vacant for nearly three years, LH Today has learned ViewPoint Bank will be moving into the old Washington Mutual (WAMU) building located in Lake Highlands Plaza.

When JP Morgan Chase took over WAMU in 2008, the company had two banking locations literally across the street from one another – one on the southwest side of Walnut Hill and Audelia (LH Plaza) the other on the southeast side (Lake Ridge Shopping Center.)

Chase quickly closed the WAMU location.

This left the building vacant while the shopping center processed through foreclosure and ultimately sold to the investment group, Audelia WGK, LLC.

We’ve heard rumors of what might become of the bank building for awhile now, but in the end the location was a perfect spot for another bank.

In this case, ViewPoint Bank.

The North Texas based regional bank has been around since 1952 with corporate offices in Plano.

ViewPoint has over $3 billion in assets and 23 banking locations across the greater DFW area.

However, in large part, the branches are located outside of proper Dallas, with only two locations inside the loop, one of which is in Lake Highlands.

Viewpoint made its debut in LH in 2001 when the bank opened a grocery branch in the Albertson’s at Northwest Highway and Fernadale.

"Lake Highlands has been a great market for us," says ViewPoint's Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Mark Hord.

"Our grocery location has done very well, so we’ve been looking long and hard for a quality, full service location that will enhance the breadth and depth of services we can offer our current and future customers."

"The problem for us is that Lake Highlands is a very mature real estate market," Hord continues.

"There just aren’t many vacant tracts of land to build on. We’ve looked at a lot of existing locations but none of them made much sense up until now."

"We’re very excited to now have a location in Lake Highlands that will enable us to offer our full range of services."

According to Hord, the bank expects to employ eight to ten banking professionals at the new location and, if all goes well, will open sometime in November.

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Next up for LH Plaza?

Pending zoning approval (the City Council vote is set for early August) demolition of the vacant retail buildings is expected begin in late August or early September.

The highly anticipated “White Rock Place” residential development will take shape shortly thereafter.

Stay tuned to the homepage for updates.