In an age when “consolidation” seems to be the banking industry’s watchword, Enterprise Bank is looking forward to opening its 17th branch in as many years.

The Lowell-based bank announced this week that it would open a branch in Windham, New Hampshire in the spring of 2017 and that it would relocate its Salem, New Hampshire branch to a larger site. Earlier this year, Enterprise Bank opened its second location in Nashua, New Hampshire, its 16th in 16 years. The Windham branch will be its 24th branch in total.

CEO Jack Clancy told Banker & Tradesman said that those recent moves reflect the bank’s organic growth, as well as its overall branching strategy. Enterprise had already surrounded the town of Windham with branches in Derry, Salem and Pelham, he said. This branch will be its seventh in the state of New Hampshire.

“Our branches are pretty tight, they all touch each other. The bank started in Lowell and we’ve just been mushrooming out into Southern New Hampshire,” he said. “In the last 15 years, we’ve opened 15 new branches. We always say we try to do one a year, but it comes in fits and starts. Some years you don’t do any, some years you do a couple of them.”

The branch has changed over the years. Enterprise Bank’s coming Windham location will feature cash recycling machines, video conferencing capabilities and intelligent ATMs, in addition to drive-up lanes. Its new Salem location, which is slated to open in the early half of 2017, will offer the same. The latter location, Clancy said, was necessary because Enterprise Bank effectively outgrew its first Salem branch.

“We’ve grown on average at a rate of about 10 percent a year. It’s very steady and consistent growth, and a big part of that is growing existing branches and opening new branches,” he said.

Clancy said that while new branches today may be smaller than they were 10 or 20 years ago, he thinks the branch is still an important component of community banking.

“To us, the branch is a big statement and we hold a lot of community events in our branches,” he said. “We build conference rooms that nonprofit groups can use. There’s a real difference between community banks and the large banks.”