Come late summer and fall, Charlotte will start seeing more TD Bank branches offering financial literacy programs and resources at sites called community-centered storefronts.
Three locations currently under construction — Beatties Ford Road, Wilkinson Boulevard and North Sharon Amity/Albemarle roads — are in neighborhoods with large Black and brown communities. TD Bank chose these sites after a conversation with Mayor Vi Lyles about what areas of town need these resources most, according to Hugh Allen, regional president of mid-South metro for TD Bank.
“We want to help people with wealth creation and be an asset to the community so it can grow,” Allen said.
The New Jersey-based firm announced last fall it would expand its footprint into North Carolina with as many as 15 new sites by 2025, The Charlotte Observer previously reported. While other marquee brands, such as Bank of America and Truist, are closing branches amid greater online services, TD is banking on brick-and-mortar locations to provide a unique opportunity for financial education in Charlotte.
Each of the community-centered storefronts will have up to 1,000 square feet in extra space to accommodate the financial programming and be available for local businesses or nonprofit groups to reserve. Each will be open seven days a week and offer later hours, to improve accessibility for people who can’t get to a bank during the day, Allen said.
TD Bank’s motivating goal in establishing these community centers is to give back to the surrounding neighborhoods — which is why all of the programming at these stores is completely free.
Allen said the bank wants to help people who have lived in Black and brown neighborhoods for generations have access to capital and financial services. Branches will offer courses on building credit, first-time homebuying, fraud and how to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, according to Jay Johnson, retail market manager for TD in the Midlands/Charlotte region.
Knowing your neighbors
TD Bank community centers may be the first of their kind in Charlotte, but some in these selected neighborhoods question the bank’s timing.
Alesha Brown founded and is the executive director of For The Struggle Inc., a Charlotte nonprofit focused on fighting systemic racial and social injustice. The organization works in the Beatties Ford Road corridor, where one of the TD storefronts is set to open late July.
“There’s no real incentive to get folks to participate in the programming,” Brown said. “They have to trust you, and there’s no shortcut to achieve that.”
Brown says it is imperative that TD Banks work with groups already involved in the community. Local organizations, like For The Struggle, know the community and its members well — and can speak for what is truly needed.
A civil rights lawyer, Brown has plans to meet with a representative from TD Bank, she said, and looks forward to working with them if they are intentional about improving the community.
TD Bank has been working with the Historic West End Neighborhood Association and the business school at Johnson C. Smith University since the planning stages of the community centers.
These partnerships have remained central to TD working towards its goal of providing financial education for all businesses and individuals in the area, branch leaders said.
Services needed for decades
Over the past five years, Charlotte has rapidly grown, a trend that most expect will continue. While the city’s development has already been seen in the South End and NoDa, the city also has seen an uptick in gentrification in neighborhoods with large African American and Hispanic populations — such as around east and west Charlotte.
Brown questions the intent of companies like TD entering the community at a time of such fruitful investment — when their services have been needed for decades.
Seniors in the Beatties Ford corridor already don’t trust big companies and banks, according to Brown. Nowadays, real estate prices have skyrocketed, and these seniors — most of whom are long-term renters — and the younger generations can barely afford to live in the area anymore.
“[TD Bank] doesn’t have to be physically located in the community in order to make a meaningful impact on it,” Brown said. “They’re here because they see potential change in the neighborhood, and they want business here.”
Financial literacy education can empower people in the face of imminent gentrification in Charlotte, says Dr. Alphonso Ogbuehi, dean of College of Business and Professional Studies at JCSU. Understanding how to make the best financial decisions contributes to a more informed, prosperous community, he said.
For profit and for the greater good
TD Bank believes that in-person programming is crucial to connect with the community and draw people in.
Financial literacy can be an intimidating topic for a lot of people, and online resources aren’t always the easiest to understand. On top of that, if the community has yet to develop trust with the bank, there is even less incentive to visit their website, Johnson said.
The community storefronts can provide a setting for people to come together and learn — and ask questions. Between organized programming and traditional banking services, TD Bank has been working to design a store format to encourage that discourse.
“We’re not going to be a financial institution that’s going to take your check and deposit it,” Johnson said. “We want to coach, lead and develop as many people as possible to help them better their lives.”
It was very important for TD to hire employees who are from the surrounding communities that these storefronts are in, so that they can better understand the unique needs of different neighborhoods.
“We want the store to reflect the community that it is going to serve,” Allen said.
TD Bank is a for-profit company, but helping the west and east Charlotte communities presents the opportunity for mutual benefit.
“We recognize that if the community that we’re in can benefit from our storefronts in more ways than just as a place to transact, it’ll help that community flourish,” Allen said. “And that flourishing will help our business. We are all in it together.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2023, 6:00 AM.
