Bank of Hawaii’s “branch of tomorrow” is starting to take shape.

The bank, which last month in Pearl City held the grand opening of its first futuristic branch, is planning to spend $100 million to transform branches, relocate others into new facilities and renovate its 22-story downtown tower.

As part of that transformation, Bank of Hawaii is increasing the budget for its ambitious five-year statewide branch project to $60 million — up from the $50 million forecast a year ago — as it prepares to adapt to technological changes and improve customer interaction.

“We have 64 branches in the state of Hawaii and our plan over the next five-plus years is to significantly touch, relocate and/or renovate all of them,” Peter Ho, chairman, president and CEO of Bank of Hawaii, said in a phone interview last week. “The idea is to upgrade and update the branches to fit into the way our customers ask to be served in the 21st century.”

The most prominent of the six branches due for a face-lift next year is the main branch on the corner of King and Bishop streets in downtown Honolulu. The 10,500-square-foot ground floor of the 48-year-old building will be scaled back to just over half its size. Honolulu design firm G70 will move its headquarters from nearby Bethel Street into about 4,300 square feet of the soon-to-be vacant portion on the ground floor.

On top of the statewide branch improvements, Bank of Hawaii plans to spend another $40 million to upgrade the 100,000-square-foot Bank of Hawaii Tower, which is adjacent to the bank’s six-story branch building. There is no timetable for the tower renovations, although one floor already has been transformed.

“We are in the process of reinvesting in our business so that we can be as effective in the next 120 years as we have in the past 120 years,” Ho said of the state’s second-oldest bank, which was founded in 1897 and now has about 2,100 employees. “Looking forward, we are focused on exceptionally serving our customers as they wish to be served, whether in person, digitally or on a mobile platform. Secondly, we want to unlock the power of technology and the convenience that technology can create for our customers. And thirdly, we really want to dramatically increase our interaction between our customers and our employees in better and more meaningful ways.”

The other branch projects next year include improvements in Kihei, Hawaii Kai’s Safeway in-store branch, Manoa, Pearlridge and Marine Corp Base Hawaii. Work on a stand-alone Hawaii Kai branch already has started with an opening date scheduled for March. The main branch build-out, which is expected to take at least six months, will start with preconstruction planning before the end of this month and move into the actual construction phase around Presidents Day in February. The targeted completion date is August.

“If you go back 30, 40 years, traditional branches required about 50 percent of their overall space to be back-office operations space,” Ho said. “Today, with technology, we can shrink almost all of that back-office space and turn it into customer-facing space.”

G70, which has 120 employees and just marked its 45th anniversary, had been looking for a new home when the Bank of Hawaii opportunity fell into its lap.

“It was really sort of generated at a luncheon with our bankers,” said Linda Miki, principal and vice chair of G70. “We said we were thinking about looking at new office space and Peter kind of joked that they may have some space for us. It seemed like it was kind of a wild idea, but we were excited about it and put a proposed imagery proposal to Bank of Hawaii to see if they’d entertain the idea.”

Besides occupying nearly half of the main branch’s ground floor, G70 also will take residence in a portion of the second floor of the tower. The tower already includes homebuilder D.R. Horton and Starbucks as tenants on the ground floor. Ho estimates the tower upgrades will cost about $2 million for each of the 20 floors not occupied by other tenants.

“It is an important project for us,” Ho said. “The reason why is because the way people work is different today. The new floor plans will be very open. Gone will be cubicle city. It’s built for more social interaction among team members and they’ll have digital tablets with the latest in technology capabilities so people won’t be restrained by old-fashioned brick and mortar in a 21st-century workplace.”

All main branch operations will be open during construction, including parking and safe deposit box access. While work is underway on the Bishop Street side of the branch, customers can enter through the Fort Street side. Once the Bishop Street side is completed, the reverse happens.

“It will be a significantly larger version of what we put in in Pearl City,” Ho said. “It will be our largest ‘branch of tomorrow.’”

G70 is expected to move into the renovated space on the Fort Street Mall side of the branch building sometime in the fourth quarter of 2017 or in early 2018.

“The premise of this (partnership) is that both businesses are looking to the future with a unique vision and thinking outside the box,” said Craig Takahata, principal of G70. “For both sides, it’s a quirky and unusual proposition to be located not only side by side but together in such an iconic building.”

No bank layoffs are expected because of the projects next year, Ho said.

Under the current branch model, roughly 40 percent of the floor is devoted to in-person customer service. But over the next five years or so, this will grow to between 70 and 75 percent, according to Kevin Sakamoto, senior executive vice president of branch delivery. Customers will see a larger face-to-face meeting area and be able to interact with employees throughout the branch using added conference space and mobile tablet technology, he said.

That’s the case now at the Pearl City branch, where there is no traditional teller line but rather display towers in the middle of the branch where tellers greet the customers when they arrive.

“Our branch staff today at Pearl City can do transactions with a tablet and can do it anywhere in the branch,” Ho said. “They can do it in a conference room, small meeting room and at the teller window. They are no longer tethered at their teller stand.”

Bank of Hawaii has been continuously looking for new ways to reach customers and has 17 in-store branches — more than any other bank in the state. The bank also has been aggressive in adapting to technology. Over the past year, deposit transactions using the easy deposit ATM (which doesn’t require an envelope) and mobile app have increased by nearly 100,000 per month, a gain of 333 percent, according to Sakamoto.

Ho said the bank is also trying to better connect each of the newly designed branches to the neighborhoods they serve.

“When you walk into our new Pearl City branch, there’s a lot of Pearl City-type of nostalgia and paraphernalia,” he said. “We intend to do that same thing with each of our renovated branches for their respective neighborhoods. The intent is to be much more neighborhood-focused. Another way we do that is through digital signage to the neighborhood so we can highlight events happening in the neighborhood. That’s a feature we’re looking to embed into the new format. We’re also trying to make our branches more of a community center so we can use the branches off-hours for educational seminars.”