photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

An Envista Credit Union branch is shown on south Iowa Street in Lawrence on Oct. 3, 2024.

One of Lawrence’s larger credit unions has taken over the operations of one of the community’s smaller credit unions. Envista Federal Credit Union has recently begun serving the members of the Wakarusa Valley Credit Union.

If you are not familiar with Wakarusa Valley Credit Union, it had just one location in Lawrence and it wasn’t very prominent. It had its sole branch in the small office complex at 2721 W. Sixth St.

The credit union had about 500 members — as a reminder, credit unions are owned and operated by their depositors, who are also called members — and it had about $2.1 million in assets, according to the most recent report it filed with regulators. On both accounts, that made Wakarusa Valley pretty small by today’s credit union standards.

Envista, for example, has about $600 million in assets and about 47,000 members with branches in Lawrence, Topeka and Hutchinson.

The idea of getting bigger to offer more services to its members was the main idea behind Wakarusa Valley striking a deal to become part of Envista Federal Credit Union, said Val Williams, associate vice president of marketing with Envista.

“It came about through conversations,” Williams said of the deal for Wakarusa to join Envista. “It is a smaller credit union, and that sometimes can be limiting in terms of the products and services you can offer.”

Wakarusa members now have become Envista members, and will have access to all of Envista’s offerings. Locally, that includes two Lawrence branches, improved ATMs and online banking services, among other offerings.

For Envista, the deal made sense given the credit union’s desire to grow in Lawrence.

“We’ve been in the market for about 10 years now, and we always are looking to grow our footprint in Lawrence, where feasible,” Williams said. “It just seemed like a good opportunity.”

Wakarusa Valley’s lone branch has closed as part of the deal. However, Wakarusa Valley’s manager, Denise Bonner, has joined Envista and will work out of Envista’s Wakarusa Drive branch.

Envista will host an open house at its Wakarusa branch, 1555 Wakarusa Drive, from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday to help Wakarusa Valley members transition to Envista.

Wakarusa Valley Credit Union, while small, did have a lengthy history in the city. It had been in operation since 1956.