Daily Record Financial News &
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2016
Vol. 104, No. 021 • oNe SectioN
35¢ www.jaxdailyrecord.com
CSX could bring 550 workers Downtown
Consolidation could mean employee influx in Northbank urban core By David Chapman Staff Writer and Karen Brune Mathis Managing Editor CSX Corp. has a large presence Downtown — and it would like to increase it. The company is consolidating its operations and seeking to shift at least 550 employees from its Southpoint facilities to a Southside or Downtown site.
The location would provide a “safe, comfortable accessible workplace that promotes collaboration in the best, most cost-effective facilities available,” said CSX spokeswoman Melanie Cost in a statement emailed late Monday. If “all else were equal,” she said, that would mean bringing those employees to about 120,000 square feet of vacant space on the Northbank of the St. Johns River. Cost said the employees work
in the company’s finance, technology, labor relations and corporate real estate organizations. According to a city report, the Downtown Investment Authority could offer a grant of more than $271,000 a year for five to seven years from its Northbank Tax Increment Financing Fund to the landlord CSX selects. The incentives would have a $1.9 million maximum indebtedness to the Northbank Commu-
nity Redevelopment Area, which operates the fund. Such a deal would be contingent on CSX relocating a minimum of 550 employees Downtown and the company would have to provide written notice that it wouldn’t seek other city incentives for the move. “They are sincere about looking Downtown,” DIA CEO Aundra Wallace said Tuesday morning. CSX CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
Wallace
Expanding offering of Downtown property
Met Park may be added to Shipyards for project
State-of-the-art cranes operating at Blount Island
Special to the Daily Record
By Max Marbut Staff Writer
The Jacksonville Port Authority’s new 100-gauge cranes are now operating at Blount Island Marine Terminal. The state-of-theart electric cranes are equipped to service the wider, post-Panamax vessels calling on the port through the expanded Panama and Suez canals, according to a news release. Each of the three cranes can lift up to 65 tons and reach 22 containers across a ship’s deck. On Friday, stevedores used two of the three cranes to move containers from Maersk Line’s Sea-Land Comet. JaxPort spent $37.9 million on the purchase and installation of the cranes, the news release said, including a $15 million grant from the Florida Department of Transportation. The port wants 10 of the cranes within the next decade.
GEM Products buys land in Flagler Center Ownership of Orange Park-based GEM Products Inc. bought property Wednesday in Flagler Center, where the marine hardware supplier has submitted plans for a new facility. President and CEO Matthew Bridgewater said in late November that GEM would move its primary operations to the new facility, which it hopes to complete by the end of 2017. It also intends to keep its current facility for now. He had no comment Monday. Owners, through EmBee Industries LLC, paid almost $1.7 million for the property from FDG Flagler Center Land LLC. Compass Bank issued a $1.1 million loan. The address is 12770 Flagler Center Blvd. The company filed plans with the city in November for an almost 71,000-square-
Public
foot office-warehouse to be built in two phases on 5.36 acres at Flagler Center Boulevard and Corklan Drive. The first phase would be 38,400 square feet, comprising 26,000 square feet of warehouse and industrial space and 12,400 square feet of office space. A second phase would be 32,167 square feet, consisting of 23,167 square feet of warehouse space and 9,000 square feet of
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office space. England, Thims & Miller Inc. is the civil engineer. Craig Meek, principal with Meek Development Group, represents GEM as the broker in the land acquisition and will serve as project manager. He said Collis McGeachy and Jess Simmons with CBRE represent Flagler Center. Meek expects the builder, D.W. Meyers Constructors Inc., to break ground on the first phase of the project by early in the second quarter of 2017 and complete it by year-end. The second phase would be developed when needed, he said. GEM Products was founded in 1961 and says on its gemlux.com site that it has MATHIS
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If offering the Shipyards property on East Bay Street for redevelopment was a good idea in 2015, expanding the offer to include the city’s riverfront property from the west boundary of the Shipyards all the way to the west property line of WJCT may be an even better idea. The Downtown Investment Authority board of directors will consider Wednesday a resolution to do just that based on a request from the mayor’s office. The resolution also would close negotiations authorized in 2015 with Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s Iguana Investments Florida LLC. Khan’s firm won the right to negotiate redevelopment of the Shipyards property when its plan was selected best of three proposals submitted. Iguana’s proposal included up to 600 apartments and/or condominiums with a marina, a hotel, commercial office and retail space and community football fields. The project was an estimated private investment of $428 million to $663 million. Boylan Soon after Iguana was selected for the project, questions were raised about the city’s financial contribution to the plan, such as improvements to East Bay Street to accommodate the development, and the environmental mitigation that might be required before construction could begin. Authority CEO Aundra Wallace said last week when there was no contract with Iguana eight months after he was authorized to negotiate an agreement, Khan’s focus shifted to the amphitheater and flex field project at EverBank Field, now under construction as Daily’s Place. The mayor’s office said last week the results from the environmental study conducted more than a year ago have not yet MET PARK CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
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