It is like moving back to the old neighborhood for Rick Mandelbaum. Once a senior vice president of Scripps Bank in La Jolla under CEO Ron Carlson, Mandelbaum helped Carlson open Landmark National Bank in Solana Beach in August of 2002. He held the chief credit officer and chief operating officer chairs at Landmark before becoming president of the bank last November.

This spring, Landmark revealed its plan to merge with another La Jolla de novo, Legacy Bank, where another former Scripps exec, Martin Dickinson, was serving as acting president. “We just got approval from the regulators for the merger,” says Mandelbaum. “It goes to the shareholders at our July 12 meeting, and assuming they approve, would be official on the 15th.”

It is a date Mandelbaum has been looking forward to because he estimates that Legacy will add roughly $40 million in assets, which “puts us in a different league,” he says. Specifically, Mandelbaum says the bank is looking to double its lending limit to about $2 million with the Legacy merger.

Mandelbaum is the heir apparent to Carlson, now 70.

“We have a great relationship,” Mandelbaum says. “Fortunately or unfortunately, we think alike. But we also govern by the committee process because we like to involve our executive team in making decisions and gathering all the information.”

Carlson is expected to relinquish his CEO title in the next year or so, allowing Mandelbaum to assume the dual titles of president and CEO while Carlson becomes a full-time chairman of the board.

Landmark’s merger with Legacy is a harbinger of the consolidation of banks to come in the local market, Mandelbaum says. “We’re looking for other acquisitions,” he adds.

These days, Mandelbaum says he’s spending a chunk of time dealing with the details of the Legacy merger. A challenging part, he says, is merging the vendors of the two institutions. “The biggest decisions are looking at our systems and taking what’s best for the bank regardless of egos and what’s going to work for us five years down the road,” he says.

Although Mandelbaum characterized loan demand as slow in the first quarter, he says the wet weather was partly to blame. He likes what he sees in the region’s low unemployment and apartment vacancy rates.

Meanwhile, Landmark is subleasing Legacy’s office space on Prospect Street in La Jolla and rolling the Legacy staff into Landmark’s Ivanhoe Avenue office, which is really the old Scripps office. “It’s like going back home,” Mandelbaum says. “The Scripps Bank name is still over the vault.”