Surprise in East Palo Alto: Banks

March 24, 2000
Eager to step into a fast-growing city, and win points with regulators to boot, financial institutions are lining up to go where few banks have gone before: East Palo Alto.
That's right. The same East Palo Alto that was for years a veritable no-man's land for economic development, the East Palo Alto with the dubious distinction as 1992's murder capital of the country, the same East Palo Alto left bank-less for a dozen years.
But thanks to a handful of commercial, office and residential developments and a declining crime rate, the city is slowly shedding its old image. And financial institutions now are virtually climbing over each other to get in on the ground floor.