Huntington to close three FirstMerit Bank branches in West Michigan, 31 statewide

FirstMerit Bank branches in Grand Haven, Muskegon and Portage will close following the proposed $3.4 billion merger into Huntington Bancshares Inc.

The planned closings are among 34 in Michigan and 107 in five states that would occur in early 2017 after the deal between the Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington and the Akron-based FirstMerit Corp. closes in the third quarter.

The office closings, which need the approval of federal regulators, will eliminate office redundancies in selected markets. In most instances, offices targeted for closure in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania — whether the FirstMerit or Huntington — are “close by or relatively close by” another branch, Huntington spokesman Brent Wilder said.

The Grand Haven FirstMerit office will consolidate into a nearby Huntington about a mile away on Beacon Boulevard. The Portage FirstMerit office in Centre Avenue is less than two miles down the road from a Huntington branch, and the Muskegon FirstMerit office on West Norton Avenue is a few blocks away and around the corner from a Huntington branch on Henry Street.

In reviewing which offices to close, Huntington considered each branch’s condition, proximity to another location, customer traffic, transaction trend, and financial performance, Wilder said.


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