WASHINGTON — Regulators on Friday shut down two Georgia banks, including one with a Hall County branch.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Park Avenue Bank, based in Valdosta, with $953.3 million in assets, and First Choice Community Bank of Dallas, with $308.5 million in assets.

Park Avenue operates a branch at 4058 Continental Drive, Oakwood.

Bank of the Ozarks, based in Little Rock, Ark., is acquiring the assets and deposits of both Georgia banks. The same company took over Chestatee State Bank in Dawsonville when it failed last December.

The agency and Bank of the Ozarks are sharing losses on $260.7 million of First Choice Community Bank's assets and $514.1 million of Park Avenue Bank's assets.

The failure of First Choice Community Bank is expected to cost the FDIC $92.4 million, Park Avenue Bank another $306.1 million.

Federal regulators also took over banks in Florida and Michigan, a total of five closures that lifted the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 39.

Georgia has been the second hardest-hit state for bank failures 16 in the last year, only behind Florida's 29. Ten banks in Georgia have failed this year.

The pace of closures has slowed, however, as the economy improves and banks work their way through piles of bad debt. By this time last year, regulators had closed 64 banks.

In 2010, authorities seized 157 banks that succumbed to mounting soured loans and the hobbled economy. It was the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago.

The FDIC has said that 2010 likely would mark the peak for bank failures.

The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around $52 billion from 2010 through 2014.