News

Ask Matt ... what's coming on Asheville Highway

By Matt Matteson, Published: January 28, 2018

Q. The old First Citizens bank building near Patton Park is sold.  What’s going to go there?

Not another bank. Actually the building at 1700 Asheville Highway was also an NCNB bank. It was vacant for years until last month when it was bought by Forest Dermatology. They have a main office in south Asheville and also operate in Spruce Pine. Cooper Construction Co. is doing the renovation. According to project manager Eric Oursler, the job will add another 1,000 square feet, most of which will be where the drive-thru lanes are located. The job is scheduled to be completed by April or May. They will remove the 12x15-foot concrete vault, no easy task, and the 3,000-pound steel vault door will be hauled off as well. Oursler said sometimes there is a market for old vault doors such as people that want to secure their valuables. Oh yeah, did the demolition crew find any leftover cash? Naw, not a cent.
Here is a historical note. Charlotte-based NCNB became NationsBank in 1991 under the leadership of Chairman Hugh McColl Jr. and after some mergers became Bank of America. If you have the time to read McColl’s fascinating biography, you will discover that as a young man he learned the banking business from former Hendersonville banker Jack Ruth.

Q. I saw a device at SunTrust bank in Downtown Hendersonville that uses facial recognition to access the bank vault. Is this the first use of that technology here?

With far less fanfare than when the first motorcar came to town, facial recognition software has indeed come to Hooterville and from my limited research, it is the first public use of its kind in the county. The device you saw is made by Diebold (pronounced dee-bold). The company was founded in 1859 in Cincinnati and made safes and bank vaults. After recently acquiring a German firm, it is now Diebold Nixdorf. Not a jazzy name for a car company, but for the bank vault, ATM and security market, who cares? The device you saw uses facial recognition to enter the safe deposit vault. The good folks at SunTrust care enough about security to withhold details about the system. A cursory web search, however, yielded that SunTrust got into the biometrics business in 2014, and it'’s spreading. USAA already offers voice, fingerprint, or facial recognition to access customer accounts. Yup, no need to remember those pesky login passwords. So cheer up Bucko, facial recognition is here and one day you will check your library books without opening your wallet. Ain’t technology great!