General Manager Richard Notar doesn't have a bank robber on staff, so when he needed someone to crack a safe in the former bank building that is now Nobu restaurant, he had to look elsewhere for help.

He found some experts, but they were so slow that Notar says he joked with them, threatening, "I'm going to fire you guys and go to Riker's Island and get someone who can open it." Eventually the safe was opened (it had been locked by the former tenants), and the building's metamorphosis from bank to restaurant began. Some two years later, that same vault — now dubbed the "Sake Safe" — acts as the service bar for this popular New York City Japanese operation.

Nobu is one of several restaurants around the country that is housed in a former bank building. Does a defunct Columbia First or First Savings & Loan make a good restaurant space? You can bank on it, say restaurant consultants. "Restaurants are expanding. Banks are contracting. They're providing a glut of prominent real estate," says Richard Phipps, a restaurant consultant based in Arlington, Virginia. "The locations are a big factor because banks typically are located in prominent locations with high visibility and good parking."

Dick Ledford, founder and CEO of Creative Industries, a restaurant consultancy in Glen Allen, Virginia, echoes those sentiments. "I just think it's a real-estate opportunity more than anything else," he says of the phenomenon, which he recalls first seeing in Underground Atlanta in the 1960s. "There's a good opportunity and you can run with it. A lot of them have built-in ambience."

Dinner amidst the dinero

The safe at Nobu is the only reminder that the restaurant, designed by renowned New York City architect David Rockwell, was once a bank. There is no other bank paraphernalia in the 74-seat restaurant owned by Robert De Niro, Nobu Matsuhisa, Meir Tepper and Drew Nieporent.

The restaurant's interior features a lot of natural textures, such as scorched ashwood and birch, Notar says. The sushi bar situated in the middle of the restaurant and the open kitchen are both functional and entertaining. "We like people to see the theater of a meal being prepared," Notar says. "We like people to get involved in the energy of the restaurant."

One of the biggest obstacles of this million-dollar project was converting the safe into a service bar, Notar says. Built to withstand just about anything, it was difficult drilling through all that metal to install plumbing and refrigeration equipment. The whole renovation project took about four months.

Coffeehouses bubbling up in banks

Trendy, upscale restaurants aren't the only ones cashing in on bank buildings' appeal. Several coffeehouse chains are converting old greenback buildings into foodservice operations.

Caribou Coffee Company, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, opened a coffee shop in a Raleigh, North Carolina-bank building in March. The chain is also looking at two locations in Detroit and two more bank buildings in Atlanta.

Collin Barr, vice president of store development for Caribou, says banks make good restaurant sites because they are normally corner properties located in areas with lots of consumer traffic and are easily recognizable landmarks. Often the older buildings have a great deal of character and interesting detail. The built-in drive-thru windows in many of the buildings are another big plus, Barr says. And some of the old banks are situated on enough land that operators can have outside seating on a patio or a deck, Barr adds.

"Our mission is to be the best neighborhood gathering place," Barr says. "Our purpose is to create an efficient space for people to get through the line quickly if they need to be on the way to work, but at the same time create comfortable seating nooks for those who want to rest and relax" — and former bank buildings are perfect for that.

Caribou's Raleigh restaurant took about eight weeks to remodel, at a cost of about $350,000 to $400,000.

Java-purveyor Starbucks Coffee Company operates 830 outlets around the country and in Canada, including a flagship store housed in a former bank building in its headquarters city of Seattle, says Susan Goodell, public-relations coordinator for Starbucks. The chain has at least three other coffee shops located in bank buildings, including one store in New York City.

Arabica, a coffeehouse chain based in Cleveland, is also looking into leasing bank space, says Marvin Schwartz, executive vice president. The company, which has 17 outlets in Ohio, hasn't found the right location yet, but is scouting out former money-changing establishments.

Next window, please

Teller's of Hyde Park is a micro-pub and eatery operating in what was once the Hyde Park Savings and Loan in Cincinnati. The savings & loan opened in 1922, says co-owner Vince Bryant, and he and partner David Leurck reopened it as a restaurant this year.

"It's a great building, and it's always going to look like a bank," Bryant says. "We wanted to play into that design."

The duo added a mezzanine and moved the kitchen into the basement to make the most of the space. Inside, the designers played on the bank theme by using what they call "tellers' tables," which are cocktail tables that mimic steel teller windows. The vault was converted into an intimate seating area for 25. The area, with the huge vault door still intact, is a little quieter, a little softer, Bryant says, and the remaining safe-deposit boxes add to the bank atmosphere.

Other bank touches include steel condiment holders made to look like a teller's window and tellers' windows used as frames for some of the restaurant's artwork.

There is also a Teller's restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas, but it is not affiliated with the Cincinnati operation — they just share the same affinity for bank buildings and clever names.

The bank housing the Teller's in Lawrence was built in the 1800s and had been vacant since 1972. Teller's owner Brad Nelson chose the building because it was located in the heart of a still-vibrant downtown and he thought it would be an ideal location for a restaurant. "It was a building that I think everybody walked by for many years. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time," says Nelson.

Gould Evans Associates, a Kansas architectural firm, handled the renovation for Teller's. "It was an empty building for many years. It was very exciting to see life come back into it," says Karen Gould, the interior designer for the project.

The vault was converted into restrooms, but the safe door was left intact, and tellers' windows were incorporated into the design. Instead of searching for matching tile to replace the missing floor pieces, the company opted to use quarters to fill in the holes. Before they used those coins as tile fillers, the firm checked with the Federal Reserve, Gould says. The renovation cost about $300,000.

Coincidentally, the original office of Gould Evans Associates was also located in a former bank building, Gould says. It seems that restaurants aren't the only ones discovering that using bank buildings for their business makes dollars and sense.

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