Pinnacle Financial Partners will expand its presence from one Duval County location to four once its merger with Synovus Bank is complete in Spring 2026. | Submitted, Pinnacle Financial Partners
Published on August 11, 2025 at 4:15 pm
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The recent merger of two of the South’s emerging financial institutions will not slow efforts to beautify the Myrtle Avenue corridor.
Pinnacle Financial Partners will continue to finance landscaping, façade enhancements and parking lot improvements for businesses in Durkeeville and Moncrief through a $1.17 million partnership with the city of Jacksonville.
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Here’s how it works: Business owners apply through the city; Pinnacle pays for the enhancements; the city reimburses the bank. There is a $25,000 cap for individual businesses.
Despite the city’s budget circumstance, the funding will remain open until 2027 or until the money is spent.
Jacksonville created the Moncrief Area Business Improvement Program in 2021 with $150,000 in funding to beautify businesses. City Council has added money to the program in each of the subsequent years. However, businesses were not applying in the numbers that were expected.
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Brenda Bellard-Harris, Pinnacle’s community engagement adviser, attributed the reluctance to either a lack of trust in the prorgram or lack of liquidity. Businesses may not have the cash flow to pay for thousands of dollars in enhancements up front and wait for repayment.
The beautification program has been a desire of Councilmember Ju’Coby Pittman’s for years. She introduced legislation last year to expand the program to its current capacity. Pittman’s Republican colleagues, Matt Carlucci and Kevin Carrico, served as co-sponsors.
“It’s a game-changer in having a bank like Pinnacle come in and invest in that community,” Pittman says. “As long as I’m here, I’m going to continue. … We are almost to the finish line. We have several people in the pipeline that are going to be able to utilize their funding source to be able to invest back into their businesses.”
Pinnacle entered the Jacksonville market in December 2023. It opened its first office space in Riverside in March 2024. Around that time, the city of Jacksonville’s Office of Economic Development sought a private lender to provide short-term financing as part of a beautification effort in Arlington.
The Mandatory Compliance Grant Program through the Renew Arlington Community Redevelopment Area has since expired. However, Bellard-Harris says Pinnacle’s efforts there provided the blueprint for its current Myrtle Avenue work.
Meanwhile, Ed Randolph, executive director of the city’s Office of Economic Development, applauded Pinnacle for immediately stepping forward.
“Since the partnership with Pinnacle and the Arlington CRA property owners was going so well, the city decided to ask Pinnacle to widen its aperture and consider helping with those property owners included in the Myrtle-Moncrief Avenue B Business Corridor Improvement Program,” Randolph said in a statement to Jacksonville Today.
Pinnacle’s commitment to the business corridor in Northwest Jacksonville will continue.
Last month, Pinnacle announced its intention to merge with Synovus Bank. The $8.6 billion transaction is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2026. Pinnacle’s Jacksonville market president, Scott Keith, will oversee its north and central Florida operations once the transaction is complete.
In a prospectus after the announcement, both banks announced an intention to continue what it describes as its philanthropic commitments and community development initiatives. Bank officials say the merger will allow for further community investment in Jacksonville because it will grow from one location in Duval County to four.
Bellard-Harris says her belief in Pinnacle’s community commitment lured her out of retirement.
Bellard-Harris is a Jacksonville native who recalled eating curly q’s at Holley’s barbecue as a child and who graduated from Eugene Butler High School in Newtown, before embarking on a decades-long banking career.
Bellard-Harris’ grandfather owned Buster Ford’s Bird Land on the Eastside. Her roots provide the understanding that trust needed along the corridor before any façade could be fixed.
“I think the key for us being here is to give our community what they’ve never had before, (which is) to intentionally be a partner with the people that we serve,” Bellard-Harris said. “We’re not salespeople. We are relationship people.”
