Tom Ogaard’s bank has financed everything from fishing boats to grocery stores in Indian Country. Its next project may come in someplace a little more urban.
“When I got here, we had 16 people, and now there’s over 40. We need to think about what it looks like three to five years down the road or even longer, and plan for that,” said Ogaard, the president and CEO of Native American Bank.
The bank, headquartered at 201 N. Broadway in Denver since 2019, purchased a 0.55-acre site a block north at 341-351 N. Broadway for $4 million last month from a family that had owned the property for decades.
Enterprise, the car rental firm, has a lease on the site that runs through late 2026. In the meantime, Ogaard will decide whether to build a new headquarters for the bank on the site.
“We’re going to assess our options and see if that, in fact, is the case,” he said. “We wanted to secure the property with that in mind, and so we’re going to take some time now and assess what that looks like.”
At 201 N. Broadway, space in the bank’s existing 14,600-square-foot building is filling up fast. Ogaard said he recently remodeled 4,000 square feet into 40 new cubicles. Now, just two remain empty, with between four and six new staff members coming on board.
“There’s not enough space in any one of our conference rooms to accommodate our staff,” Ogaard said.
Kentwood Commercial’s Jim Tyler and Bobby Bolyard represented the bank in the deal. Their client’s search stayed pretty close to home, with the bank looking at another Broadway property before landing on the 341-351 site, Tyler said.
“I showed him things on paper everywhere. He goes: ‘Jim, we’re not going to move out of this location, we’ve built a community here and we want to stay there,’” said Tyler, who also represented the bank when it bought its current headquarters.
Native American Bank works with customers of all types, both businesses and individuals. But it specializes in financing large capital projects in and around Native American reservations. In 2024, $26.7 million in construction loans were dished out, according to its annual report. The bank’s total assets sit at $404 million, with $361 million in deposits.
Ogaard said recent projects the bank financed include a $10 million opioid treatment facility in northern North Dakota and a northern Minnesota grocery store that eliminated the need for a 75-mile round trip for fresh food.
“We are a mission-oriented bank, and our mission is simply to provide access to capital in Indian Country,” he said.
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