Commission appeals to BoA officials to keep Pahrump branch open

Nye County commissioners are soon expected to send a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in the hopes that the company’s top banking official will reconsider the impending closure of its Pahrump branch.

“We have a lot of small businesses that depend on the bank,” said Commissioner Leo Blundo, who added that many veterans and seniors in town rely on the branch. “They depend on being able to go into the bank in person. I get it – financially, [bank officials] want to close it. It doesn’t make sense on paper, but to the people out here, it makes perfect sense.”

Bank of America’s lone Pahrump branch, located at 750 S. Highway 160, is expected to permanently close on May 24. Bank officials gave no direct reason for the closure, but said an ATM will continue to be maintained at the site. When the Pahrump Valley Times broke the news of the closure in February, there was a strong reaction from the public on social media.

“It’s a small town,” Bill Broadwell posted on Facebook. “It’s not like you can go to another branch a mile down the road.”

Many noted the long lines at the bank, that often snake out the door into the branch’s parking lot, as a sign of how many in the community depend on the institution. One Pahrump resident said it will be a blight after the bank abandons the building in the coming months.

The bank is located at a prominent intersection in town at the corner of highways 160 and 372.

“Not happy about this,” Patricia Robb posted on Facebook. “It looks bad to have a large empty building for our town too.”

Bank of America officials told the Pahrump Valley Times that there have been “considerable changes” in client traffic at many of its banks — especially during the pandemic. They pointed to the rise in mobile banking, which has shifted the way many clients approach banking.

Bank of America now offers an app, where clients can deposit checks, transfer money and pay bills from their smartphones. These days, a visit to the bank branch is less essential than it was 10 years ago.

Still, the closure of a bank is a hit for both its workers and the community it serves.

“Not everyone’s online on their damn cellphone. There are people out here with flip phones and they just want to be able to go in [the bank],” Blundo said. “Whatever happened to the day you went to the bank, you talk a little bit – face-to-face – and you do your transactions?

“They are so concerned about the profits they forget about the people,” Blundo said of “big banks.”

Bank of America Corp. is based in Charlotte, N.C. and has 4,300 branches in the U.S.

In 2020, BoA reported annual revenues of $85.5 billion, which is about as much as the gross national income for the Dominican Republic.