After several years as the OceAnna Restaurant & Grill, an historic bank building in the New Bedford landmark cobblestone district is returning to its origins, with Citizens~Union Savings Bank as its new tenant, leasing from a local real estate firm.
The building, which features high ceilings, massive windows, marble flooring and grand columns, was originally the Merchant Bank and still has three working vaults in its lower level. Since November of 2001, however, it had been known as OceAnna, a seafood restaurant.
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OceAnna was owned and operated by George Karousos, master chef at the International Institute of Culinary Arts and owner of the Sea Fare Inn in Portsmouth, SeaFare’s America Café in Newport, and three Fall River restaurants.
Karousos closed OceAnna last month, telling the New Bedford Standard-Times that he’d gotten “an excellent offer” for the building – $1.25 million. Karousos had bought the building from the city for $250,000 in 2000, after it had been vacant for a decade. He has said he will try to reopen the restaurant in another location.
Citizens~Union, a 154-year-old bank with total assets of more than $531 million and nine branches in Massachusetts’ South Coast area and Tiverton, now has an office at 355 Acushnet Ave. in New Bedford. It will move to the Merchant Bank building, at 95 William St., in the coming months.
The new owner of the building is William Street Investments LLC, a partnership of area real estate executives who acquire and develop retail, industrial and residential properties. The details of the bank’s lease were not disclosed, except that it is “long-term.”
“When Compass Bank was acquired by Sovereign, we seized that opportunity to bring community banking back to New Bedford,” President and CEO Nicholas M. Christ said in a news release. “The William Street building will give us a greater presence in the market.”
