Garden may be renamed -- again

TD Banknorth said it will change its name to TD Commerce Bank following its $8.5 billion purchase of a New Jersey institution, the company said today.

TD Banknorth of Portland, Maine, is a unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank, headquartered in Toronto, and is the fourth largest lender in Massachusetts behind Bank of America Corp. of Charlotte and other companies. It disclosed plans to purchase Commerce Bancorp Inc. of Cherry Hill, N.J., in October. The purchase is expected to be finalized at the end of March.

The name change will occur at the banks' combined operations through next year. A spokeswoman said the company is still studying how it might change the name on the Boston arena where it has naming rights, now known as the TD Banknorth Garden.

The arena has gone through many name changes in its brief existence. Originally to be known as the Shawmut Center, it was renamed the FleetCenter in 1995, before it even opened, after FleetBoston Financial Corp. purchased the former Shawmut Bank. When Fleet in turn was acquired by Bank of America Corp. in 2004, the bank gave up the naming rights. TD Banknorth agreed to pay $6 million a year for the naming rights, triple the price Fleet was paying.
(By Ross Kerber, Globe staff)