THURSDAY December 6, 2018
The Basch Report: CSX wants more decisions made in field PAGE 6
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Daily Record JACKSONVILLE
INFRASTRUCTURE FEES Daily Record JACKSONVILLE
Hinduja Global Solutions hiring 350
A NEW TOOL FOR DEVELOPERS Daily Record Daily Record JACKSONVILLE
Company based in India renovating Southpoint space for customer service center. BY KAREN BRUNE MATHIS EDITOR
JACKSONVILLE
DON’T CALL IT A TAX
Shoppers at the new Walmart in The Pavilion at Durbin Park in St. Johns County will find a 0.5 percent public infrastructure fee added to their bills. The fee is added to the same goods as the sales tax, so it isn’t added to food.
A fee added to purchases at The Pavilion at Durbin Park is being used to fund the development. BY JAY SCHLICHTER ASSOCIATE EDITOR
C
ustomers of the Walmart in The Pavilion at Durbin Park in St. Johns County will see a different kind of fee on their receipts if they buy taxable goods. As the receipt explains, it’s a public infrastructure fee of 0.50 percent and it pays for the development’s public improvements. It’s relatively new in Florida, as is retail development in northern St. Johns County.
“Durbin Park is in a new growth area where it was extraordinarily expensive to develop, in an area that did not have the infrastructure to support a development of this magnitude, thus the structure we chose was necessary,” said Bobby Bennett, chairman of the community development district that administers the fee. Other retailers opening in Durbin Park also will be required to charge their customers the fee. Walmart is the first retailer to
Hinduja Global Solutions is hiring for its 350-job Southpoint customer service center as it builds-out the office space. HGS USA has posted jobs for several job categories — human resources, trainers, information security, compliance, facilities, client services and customer service representatives and bilingual specialists who speak Spanish. Recruiters were scheduling meetings with candidates Wednesday. The company’s senior vice president of operations said in September the center will manage inbound customer-service phone calls in addition to customer contracts over other channels, such as social media, chat and email. India-based Hinduja Group, announced in September it would hire 350 people by summer 2019 for the Jacksonville operation and eventually increase that to 500 employees. U.S. headquarters are in Lisle, Illinois, near Chicago. The city issued a building permit Tuesday for Auld & White Constructors LLC to renovate 38,468 square feet of space for HGS at a cost of $605,100. HGS will lease at 6680 Southpoint Parkway in the Parkway Place office park, which is at Interstate 95 and Butler Boulevard. Job postings say it is hiring cus-
SEE FEE, PAGE 10
SEE JOBS, PAGE 10
THE BAR BULLETIN
Add to the holidays by helping others PAGE 14 VOLUME 106, NO. 15 • TWO SECTIONS