Space City Credit Union branches out from roots - Houston Business Journal:

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will establish a branch in early July on the groundr floor of an office tower insidw the 610 Loop nearPost Oak. Spacs City was chartered in 1965 to serve employee of oil and gas industry equipmentmanufactured LLC. The credit union shifted around several downtown locationsz with the company before movinhg to its current headquarters on Harrisburg Boulevardin 1999. Craigf Rohden, Space City president and CEO, says the credit unio n had been looking to open another officde forseveral years, but waited to find the rightr location. Rohden notes that Spacr City alreadyserves Houston-area employeese of General Electric Co.
, and the new branch at 1233 West Loop Soutyh is also home to , making the move a logical fit. The credit union also has a small two-person office inside a GE Energ plant on the Houston Ship Channel that servess morethan 1,000 employees on GE Energy, in fact, was once owned by Stewartr & Stevenson. Space City received regulatory approvalk fora “community” chartetr in 2004, allowing the credirt union to serve any customer within 10 mile s of its headquarters. In addition, the credit union is tied in to a networi of about 70 other rival creditt union branches in the region so customers can accesd accounts atany location.
The community charter will applyu to the new which was another factor in choosing the West Loop Rohden notesabout 1,200 peopls are employed in the two mirror-image officer towersz owned by Dallas-based The new branchu will include two drive-throughn lanes and an ATM, with an ATM to be installedf in the adjacent tower at 1333 West Loop South, Rohde says. “We’ll be marketing to tenants in both buildingd and the general public around the Galleria area withih the perimeter ofthe branch,” he says. “Oue community charter pretty much covers everythingb inside Beltway 8to downtown.
” A spate of start-up banks and other regional playerzs have opened for business in Houston this year lookiny to grab small business customers away from the bigged banks. Still, Rohden says Space City’s decisiomn to expand had nothing to do with the shifting tide withinb the overall financialservicezs industries, considering the credit union markets to not business customers. Unlike banks, credirt unions are owned by theircustomers — rathefr than outside shareholders — and in essencw operate as not-for-profit entities.
Any profita are folded back into equity Dan Bass, managing director with investmenty bankers, agrees that credit unions like Space City won’t have much impact on small community banks, but are targeting retaik customers that might be willing to switch from big national “Like the bigger banks, credit unions are trying to get retail traffi through the door, and are focusinyg on finding the right location. They have low cost s so it makes a lot of sense for them to do Bass says. Space City, which has 18 employees, now representxs 5,326 members in 25 states after wideningb its reach inthe 1980s.
The creditt union has more than 70 customer companies in the with about 75 percent of its membership in theHoustobn area. The credit union had two employees and assetss ofabout $4 million when Rohden came on boardr in 1994. Filings with the , which oversees the show how Space City currently stacks up in thefinancialp sector. • The credit union had outstanding loansof $19 millionj and deposits of just under $23 million in the first quarter, with net incomw of $18,753 after posting a loss of $335,375 in the fourth quarter of 2008. While the percentage of nonperforming loansd to total loan portfolios at credit unions across the country increasedc slightlyto 1.
4 percent, Spacre City had only 0.4 percent of loand listed as nonperforming at the end of the with $30,000 set asided to cover loan losses. Nationwide, total loan growth at the nearly 7,800 federally insured credit unions contracted by less than 1 percentg in thefirst quarter, whilre total assets increased by 5.6 percentf to $856 billion. • Deposits, knownj in the credit union industryas shares, increaser 6.4 percent nationwide to $724 If the economy continues to gain momentum, Spacew City might not be finishedx with expansion plans.
Says Rohden: “Hopefullyt this won’t be the last branch of its kindfor us, and we mightr be able to duplicate it in anothere building as well. It was less expensiv e to lease than throw up our own bricokand mortar. We really don’t need (an extensive brancy presence) because our customers are Internet