Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Lake City Bank leaders and employees gathered with city and county officials Tuesday afternoon for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Lake City Bank Innovation & Technology Center.
Formerly a 35,600-square-foot office building for CenturyLink and other businesses, Lake City Bank announced back in September 2025 that it planned to invest $12 million in modernization upgrades and renovations to the building for its Innovation & Technology Center as part of its downtown Warsaw headquarters campus expansion.
Originally constructed in 1968, the building at the southwest corner of Center and Indiana streets was purchased by Lake City Bank in 2024.
Lakeland Financial Corp. and Lake City Bank Chief Financial Officer Lisa O’Neill said in the four-story building, including the lower level, “We’ve got our technology teams, our cybersecurity teams, our project management, application management, our One Call Center and our data team.”
She said the One Call Center takes care of all the calls that come in from the bank’s clients so they’re the first line of defense for customers.
“The technology teams are continually making sure the employees have access to applications and that our network is protected from a cybersecurity standpoint.”
O’Neill said the building has the capacity for about 100-130 employees and as of Tuesday not all open spots are filled because they left some room for growth.
“In five to 10 years, I think it will be a little more fuller than it is today. Each department has some capacity for growth, but these teams were all scattered throughout the Warsaw campus and it’s great to bring them all together in one place,” O’Neill said.
Over the past 25 years, she said technology has been such an important piece of allowing the customer to do their banking whenever they want to do it.
“Lake City Bank is a community bank so we feel that our presence with brick and mortar and branches are also very important where a client can come in and everybody knows their name and they can interact with humans,” O’Neill stated. “So we think we have to offer both.”
The digital teams make sure the app is up and working for both personal and business use.
The Innovation & Technology Center is a centralized function for the 55 branches Lake City Bank has in its footprint.
“So, yes, they’re supporting all 700 employees from this building,” she stated.
In the lower level of the secure building is a conference room for 25 people and a meeting area that will be used for training.
“We have also invited the community to use the building if they have meeting needs,” she said. “You noticed the podcast room, which we are using a lot to highlight different roles in the company and share those on our intranet, so people working in other teams can sort of learn about our different leaders throughout the bank. So, the podcasting is a newer feature, but we’re starting to use that more frequently.”
She pointed out there’s also space in the lower level for bankers that are coming in for meetings to have a place to sit down and connect while they are in Warsaw.
Lake City Bank, a $7 billion bank headquartered in Warsaw, was founded in 1872 and serves central and northern Indiana communities with 55 branch offices and a digital banking platform, according to a previous news release. The bank is the single bank subsidiary of Lakeland Financial Corporation.
For more information, visit www.lakecitybank.com.
