Commercial bank launching in Valley.

Byline: GREGORY J. WILCOX

A group of west San Fernando Valley business people hopes to boldly go where few have gone during the Great Recession: into the commercial banking game.

If successful, this would be the first business bank in Chatsworth in the last decade and only the sixth in the San Fernando Valley.

The 25 founders of El Camino Bank have hired three key executives, appointed a board of directors, leased a building and secured about $5 million in start-up capital.

But there's still a tough road ahead, with $15 million more in investment capital needed to get the bank up and running.

But in true entrepreneurial fashion, the bank's organizers are confident they'll succeed.

"It's kind of slow, but we're getting there," said Cole W. Minnick Jr., the bank's president and CEO.

El Camino Bank, which will serve the Northwest Valley and Simi Valley, is trying to sell 1.6 million and 2 million shares at $10 a share. Organizers originally planned to close the offering on Oct. 30 but now will extend it at least through November, Minnick said.

Roberto Barragan, president of the Van Nuys-based Valley Economic Development Center, would especially like to see El Camino Bank succeed.

He describes the Northwest Valley as being "underbanked" when it comes to financial institutions that cater to small- and medium-size businesses.

"The Northwest Valley is an area I have been pushing to get branches open," he said.

At the same time, Barragan conceded that raising money is still a dicey process, given the slow pace of the economic recovery.

"It's going to be difficult for them - or anybody else - raising capital right now," he said. "It's a very tough environment."

Maybe so. But Minnick and the other partners say there are some numbers on their side.

Minnick said the bank will focus on businesses with up to $15 million in annual sales and will operate in a target-rich environment of about 31,000 potential clients.

Their presentation to investors notes that:

The target markets have a total population of 549,510.

Within the Northwest Valley are 43,166 households with an average annual income of $108,606 and average net worth of $892,439.

Five big banks in the primary market have $3.8 billion in deposits.

27 percent of the population in the primary market is Latino.

Armida Colmenares-Stafford, the bank's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, came up with the idea of forming a bank several years ago.

Businesses in the primary market have sales of 8.6 billion last year and sales in the secondary market totaled $29.8 billion, she said.

"It was a great opportunity for a bank to be located in that area," Colmenares-Stafford said. "It's a gold mine as far as we are concerned."

That may be true. But mining that gold might be tough.

Charles Fenton, chief executive officer of TomatoBank N.A., based in Diamond Bar, knows many of the El Camino investors and wishes them well.

But he also has first-hand knowledge of how challenging it is to open a new bank these days.

In summer 2008, Fenton and his partners received regulatory approval to raise money to open SoCal Business Bank in Van Nuys. Their goal was about $20 million.

But Fenton said when he used the word "bank" in the latter part of 2008 - a time of bailouts and general mistrust of the financial sector - "I was reminded that 'bank' was a four-letter word."

Today all the remains of that effort is a Web site listing phone numbers that have been disconnected.

"We never got more than $5 million into it so we were off by a lot," recalled Fenton, who was president and chief executive officer of that fledgling bank.

"We just got caught in a horrific set of circumstances as it related to capital raising."

Maybe today the time is right to venture again into the fundraising arena.

And for the organizers of El Camino Bank, only time will tell if they are right.

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