Horizon Credit Union members and the community gathered recently to cut the ribbon on a new headquarters building and branch in Farmington.
The two-story, 15,000-square-foot building sits on an eight and a half acre lot at 225 S. 200 W. Horizon will also celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2026.
“In 1956, the credit union started with Davis School District employees,” said President/CEO Page Bennett. “We started out serving the school district then; about 25 years later the name was changed to Davis Schools Credit Union. In the early 2000s, we changed our name to Horizon Credit Union and served the whole community.”
By the time the name was changed, the credit union was four generations into the school district, he said. “Their family members had joined and their family members had joined. We were down to less than 50 percent of our school district employees, but we were able to serve the whole community at that point, so the name change was just to reflect our membership.”
Page said he thinks the credit union’s longevity comes from being member-owned. “Our philosophy is people helping people. We’re not owned by stockholders or anything like that, so our members are our bosses. So everything we do is with a focus on the member, not the bottom line.”
There are five branches in Davis County. “But we’ve got members all over the United States,” he said. “Once a member, always a member. So once you have a membership, you can use our services. We’re part of the ATM network so they can use ATMs all over the United States with no charge.”
IBG (Integrated Builders Group) helped design and construct the new building. “Our company partnered with Horizon and some other partners in the design,” said Tyler Mills, director and general manager of the Central Division. “We met with them on and off the last two years to come up with the design and go through all of their staffing requirements and needs. We came up with this design and then we executed the construction over the course of a year.”
It was a big project for them, he said. “Their old building was very tired and they needed more light and more space. They needed to be able to integrate their technology with the building and their old building just wasn’t cutting it. It also had a lot of ADA accessibility
issues.”
So being forward-thinking and creating more of a flat parking lot, more approachable building was key, said Mills. “Throughout the whole build, they were very concerned with their members to make sure that they were serving the community.”
There were a lot of decisions and a lot of thought that was put into it, he said. “Like, ‘How does this affect the community and what can we do to help our members?’ So that’s integrated throughout the whole design — kind of how people are going to use this space today, tomorrow and 10, 20 years from now.”
“We’re here for the long haul,” said Bennett. “We’ve been here for 70 years and we’ll be here for many more to come. Our tagline is ‘Big enough to compete, small enough to care.’ We know our members — they have a voice here.”