Paramount Bank Nevada, a wholly owned subsidiary of Michigan-based Paramount Bancorp, opened for business in early July, operating out of a temporary, vaultless (and hence, cashless) office offering loans.

It wasn't until about a month ago when the bank moved into its permanent home at 7795 W. Sahara Ave. that it started to accept deposits as a full-service bank from its growing customer base.

The locally managed bank celebrated its opening with a private reception Nov. 28.

Paul Kadavy, Paramount's president and chief executive, said the bank has $3 million in loans already on the books, with another $8 million in the pipeline.

Kadavy is no stranger to banking in Nevada.

He first moved to Las Vegas in 1967 to teach at Clark High School. After a couple of years, he left teaching to become a banker with Norwest Corp., which later acquired Wells Fargo, taking on that name. Kadavy moved a few times, following banking opportunities in other states, and returned to Las Vegas in 1995 with Norwest when it started to acquire banks, he said.

He was the second person to come to Las Vegas when the bank acquired American Federal, then acquired PriMerit Bank in the mid-1990s.

"We went from having no presence whatsoever in the state of Nevada to being the second largest banking organization in the state," he said of Norwest (later Wells Fargo). He was president of the Nevada region at the time.

He took early retirement and wrote 10 books.

When this opportunity came up, he thought, "That's for me. I'm going to do that again. I've had several reincarnations in Las Vegas, and this is the latest one."

Paramount will focus on the business side of things, he said.

"One of the issues in Las Vegas is that it's relatively competitive on the loan side," he said.

"The issue for most banks is not whether you can grow the loans, it's how you fund them with the deposits," he said. "Both the consumer and business deposits are going to be very important to us."

The bank has about 30 individual and business accounts, but expects to grow as it becomes better known.

"We're babies in that respect," he said.

Two ways the bank plans to expand its business are by entering the commercial real estate lending business and the home mortgage business, Kadavy said.

The bank is also counting on tapping into Las Vegas' growth, with the valley's long-term record of adding 5,000 to 7,000 residents a month.

He acknowledged that a lot of investor activity and adjustable-rate loans went bad as the residential real estate market tanked, but the commercial real estate lending business and the home mortgage business are "a couple of things that you have to do in the banking business if you're going to be in Las Vegas."

"We're optimistic long term about both of those areas, and expect to participate heavily," he said .

Paramount thinks it's entering the real estate loan market at the right time, he said.

"We're certainly biding our time a little bit. We're definitely going to be in that business, and have hired some real estate mortgage originators.

"We're thinking this is the time to start getting into that."

The bank is lining up some investors and selling off its fixed-rate mortgage loans, Kadavy said. It will probably focus on adjustable-rate (mortgages) in its loan portfolio, he added.

"We're organizing that now," but the bank is not in any hurry given the market, he said. Paramount still foresees some softness until 2009 or 2010.

"It's going to take awhile to work through that," he said. "But in the meantime, we're going to gear up and get in that business. We certainly think it's the right business to be in in the long term."

The bank is keeping its business plan simple, and although there are no plans to open another branch, it is keeping open the possibility.

"We want to focus entirely on exceeding the expectations of our customers right where we are," he said. "We're not going to rule that out down the road, but we want to be very intensely focused on doing the very best we can."

Paramount has the opportunity to serve its customers in an extraordinarily individual way that a larger institution finds difficult to do, he said.

"That's really core to what our purpose is here, and a lot of banks, both big and small, give a lot of lip service, 'Oh, we're going to serve the customer better than anybody else,' " he said.

The bank's motto: Service exceeding expectations is paramount.

"We want to surprise on the upside," Kadavy said. "That's what I've got my staff fired up about."

The board of directors includes Henderson Police Chief Richard Perkins, Luxor President Felix Rappaport and Sierra Pacific Resources Senior Vice President Tony Sanchez III.

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