VyStar breaks ground on $22 million downtown Jacksonville parking garage jacksonville.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jacksonville.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Shelton Carmen-Owens had long wanted to relocate to Florida from his home state of Wisconsin.
In November 2020, after a series of conflicts with his estranged wife, the 35-year-old and his 3-year-old son made the move to Jacksonville. They arrived in the early morning hours and drove to the beach to see the sunrise.
Then Carmen-Owens, who was once homeless as a child, used Google to find assistance. He had left his life behind and needed a place to live, a place to work and a place to care for his son. I knew I needed help, he said.
Right away he found Family Promise of Jacksonville, a nonprofit that helps homeless families become self-sufficient, and headed to their downtown office. Six months later after a joint effort by Family Promise and other nonprofit partners he has a job at VyStar Credit Union, a two-bedroom apartment and nearby child care.
The credit union that became VyStar needed 43 years to get its first billion dollars in assets back in 1995.
The latest billion apparently accumulated since New Year’s Eve, after the lender stopped trying to slow its growth and delay the added regulations placed on credit unions whose assets exceed $10 billion.
That was before the business announced an agreement March 31 to acquire Georgia-based Heritage Southeast Bank, its 22 branches and another $1.5 billion in assets.
The deal will probably take until late summer to finalize, but the organization that started in 1952 as the 12-member Jax Navy Federal Credit Union inside a barracks-like building at Naval Air Station Jacksonville was already making preparations for new branches in Tallahassee, the Orlando area and Titusville.