The rapid move of people, housing and business into Shelby County has been well noted. The county's population was estimated at nearly 166,000 in 2004, up nearly 16 percent from the 2000 count by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Shelby County Chamber of Commerce lists the county's median household income at $55,440, far above the national and state averages.

The county has regularly ranked as the fastest growing county in the state and typically lands at or near the bottom in reports of monthly unemployment rates.

And as the Shelby County boom continues seemingly unabated, Wachovia is not the only bank hoping to tap deeper into the state's biggest growth market.

Shelby County's growth potential prompted Alexander City-based Aliant Bank in 1998 to open its main Birmingham office in Meadow Brook Corporate Park, a site that today employs about 45 people.

Jack Naramore, Aliant's president for the Birmingham region, says the bank, which currently reports nearly $830 million in assets, has grown since its arrival in the region, and Shelby County plays a big role in that.

"That's where most of the growth is," he says.

In the past year alone, Birmingham-area deposits have increased 40 percent, total loans have grown 28 percent and total assets are up 26 percent, Naramore says.

Aliant opened its first branch in Alabaster in September and anticipates opening a new Pelham location in 2006. Faith Black, Aliant's vice president of marketing, says the bank has secured property for the Pelham branch but has not yet started construction.

Aliant's rapid growth also has prompted a need for additional space in the Meadow Brook office. The bank's operations, which formerly had been housed on two of the office's four floors, now take up 90 percent of the building. Renovations began last week to reconfigure the space to create additional capacity, particularly for the bank's mortgage and construction lending divisions.

Naramore says the bank wants to open additional branches at the rate of about one per year, in high-growth areas of Shelby and Jefferson counties.

Competition is strong in the lucrative market. "We're not the only bank that's chasing those same customers," Naramore says, "and there are new banks being born all the time."

Wachovia's new branch in Alabaster will house 10 employees and will incorporate design elements intended to improve customer service that are quickly becoming common throughout the company's extensive mid-South network.

For example, the branch's financial center manager, Shelley Anderson, will be stationed at a desk at the front of the bank entrance rather than sit inside a back office. Safety deposit boxes will be self-service for quicker customer access, and teller lines will be equipped with electronic keypads where customers can swipe their debit cards to link bank employees more efficiently to customer account information.

"It's an expensive model to operate," says Randy Jordan, Wachovia's regional president for Birmingham, "but we think it's worth it."

Jordan says the Alabaster branch will complement existing Shelby County branches in Pelham and extend Wachovia's branch network farther south into the lucrative region.

Jon Kral, Wachovia's facility planner for the mid-South region, says the new Alabaster branch is ideally located in an area with high population density and strong growth projections, and the new retail center promises to generate a lot of traffic. It also puts Wachovia nearer to Montevallo and other growing communities in south Shelby County that do not yet have a dedicated branch.

Wachovia is ranked No. 4 among banks in Shelby County with nearly 9 percent of the banking market, according to June 30 data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Top players are Regions Financial Corp., which holds a 24-percent share, and AmSouth Bancorp., with 22 percent. But competition for the market is getting tougher as more banks expand their reach into the county.

Mississippi-based M&F Corp. may soon become a key player in the competitive Shelby market. M&F announced plans in October to acquire the No. 3 bank in the county, First National Bank of Shelby County, and its parent company, Columbiana Bancshares Inc., in a deal that tops $31 million.

The purchase, pending regulatory and shareholder approval, would give M&F its first presence in Alabama and a nearly 10-percent share of the Shelby County market, according to FDIC data.

John Copeland, chief financial officer for M&F in Kosciusko, says the company had planned to expand into boom areas of Alabama and Tennessee for more than a year before the deal for First National was struck.

First National's six Shelby County offices will remain open, operating under the M&F name, after the deal is completed.

Central State Bank, a family-run Calera institution since 1916, has grown with the county around it and ranked fifth in Shelby County market share on June 30, according to FDIC data. Mitt Schroeder, the bank's senior vice president and a member of its board, says the bank has seen competition increase in recent years, but "we feel it can only be healthy. We think it just keeps us on our toes." After adding a second Calera office in 1998, Central State this past fall opened a new, third branch in Pelham, and Schroeder says it is attracting a diverse mix of new business and doing "remarkably well."

A spate of recent Birmingham area bank startups, too, are Shelby-bound. Bryant Bank, one of the latest banking enterprises, founded by Paul W. Bryant Jr., opened for business in Tuscaloosa in June and, last month, opened a second location fronting the Wal-Mart Supercenter on U.S. Highway 280 in Shelby County. The bank plans to open an additional office in Cahaba Village - otherwise known as the "dirt pile" - by spring 2007.

"Obviously, the growth in that area made it an attractive place to locate an office," says Elizabeth Allen, Bryant Bank chief operating officer.