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Driven by a belief that its culture is key in attracting and retaining workers, Fidelity Bank’s announcement of a major building project is the bank’s biggest salvo in the battle for talent — while also planning Wichita’s biggest skyline change in years.

Bank President Aaron Bastian says the expansion plans, which add on to recent downtown momentum, are as much about the next 50 years as it is the next five.

And after years of promoting the importance of investing in Wichita in its “Bravely Onward” campaign, the bank, run locally by the Bastian family for 77 years, is putting $51 million of its money where its mouth is.

“This will absolutely be a beacon of progress for our business and our people, but also for our town,” he says. “This is a call to action.”

A downtown snowball

Fidelity’s announcement continues a trend toward major local employers betting on downtown — something that wasn’t always the case.

A major catalyst was the decision by Cargill Inc. to not only keep its protein division in downtown Wichita, but also choose to build a $70 million headquarters in Old Town.

The Spaghetti Works development at Douglas and St. Francis, and the planned four-story, mixed-use building at Douglas and Emporia are more recent projects.

Jason Gregory, executive vice president of Downtown Wichita, says that when he joined the organization eight years ago, a $500,000 investment in the city’s core was reason to celebrate.

“The order of magnitude ... it’s just been awesome,” he says. “It does lend a whole other level of credibility to this transformation that has been occurring in downtown for, really, the last decade.”

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