In the shadow of ‘banktown’, a banking desert grows near Charlotte. Why?

About an hour southeast of Charlotte, in the heart of downtown, small-town Wadesboro , stands a two-story building for Liberty Home Care & Hospice . The exterior still echoes its former life as a BB&T bank with a two-lane drive-thru overhang, teller window and a weathered deposit box.

Other buildings in the town of about 5,000 hold similar reminders. Over on South Greene Street, a steel bank deposit box is mounted on the brick wall of Woodsmen Forestry ’s building. Two blocks away, a State Farm office was once RBC bank.

“Banks used to be on almost every corner,” said Carl Gibson, the longtime co-owner of Lacy’s gift shop on South Greene Street…

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