Daily Record FINANCIAL NEWS &
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2017
Vol. 104, No. 047 • Two SecTioNS
35¢ www.jaxdailyrecord.com
Daily Record has new owner
Bailey sells 104-year-old family business
James Bailey Jr., left, has sold the Financial News and Daily Record to Matt Walsh, owner of Sarasota-based Observer Media Group Inc.
Formativ Health bringing 500 jobs
Photo by Max Marbut
From Staff James Bailey Jr., third-generation publisher and owner of the family’s 104-year-old Financial News and Daily Record, has sold the newspaper to another familyowned Florida publisher. Bailey announced Wednesday the sale of the assets of Bailey Publishing & Communications Inc. to Daily Record & Observer LLC, a newly formed company headed by Matt Walsh, CEO and owner of Sarasota-based Observer Media Group Inc.
“I grew up in this business and after taking over the leadership over 40 years ago, I feel strongly that new energy is needed to fully see the potential of this company,” said Bailey, 63. “I have known and worked with Matt since I sold him the Tampa Bay Review in 2001 and I believe Matt and his company were the logical choice,” he said. Walsh’s Observer Media publishes 10 weekly newspapers in Florida, including the Business Observer, a business and legal weekly similar to the Daily
Record. Walsh and his wife, Lisa, started their company in 1995 with the purchase of the Longboat Observer near Sarasota. “I thought one day Jim would decide to make a change and I let him know a few years ago our interest in the Daily Record,” he said. “The Daily Record is a 104-yearold Jacksonville institution and that has a special appeal,” Walsh, 62, said. “We want to perpetuate the Bailey family’s legacy.” NEWSPAPER CONTINUED ON PAGE A-3
Company praises city’s personality Formativ Health began looking in November for a city where it would open a 500-job patient access service center. A visit during the Notre Dame-Navy football game that month sold the company on Jacksonville. “You can’t beat personality and this city has personality,” Formativ Health CEO Dennis Dowling said at a news conference Tuesday announcing the company’s venture. “It has enthusiasm. It has excitement.” Formativ Health will provide practice management services for physicians around the country. It will begin hiring immediately so employees can begin training in February to be ready for an April launch. The company will lease four floors of an office complex at 4875 Belfort Road, which formerly housed Deutsche Bank. Dowling said he found everyone he met Dowling impressively accommodating. He even offered a job on the spot to a female employee at the hotel where he was staying, who personally oversaw the resolution of an issue there. He also credited JAX Chamber for his positive impression. They “put this place over the top for us,” he said. Formativ was founded by Northwell Health as a for-profit joint venture with Pamplona Capital Management, a private equity firm, Dowling said. Northwell Health is the state of New 500
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Photos by Fran Ruchalski
By Maggie FitzRoy Contributing Writer
Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville executive director Tony Allegretti stands in his office in the Times-Union Center in front of the wall-to-ceiling photographic mural of James Weldon Johnson created for him by local artist Matt Abercrombie.
OK with being a bit unorthodox
Cultural Council's Tony Allegretti learned lessons from James Weldon Johnson’s life By Fran Ruchalski Contributing Writer
Allegretti stuck two masks left by an art teacher as part of a proposal for a project on a piece of cheap 1970s sculpture and keeps them on a corner of his desk.
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When you enter Tony Allegretti’s office in the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, one thing is clear. He has a fascination with the life and work of James Weldon Johnson. The entire back wall is a photographic mural of the Jacksonville native. There are several copies of Johnson’s autobiography, “Along This Way,” which he frequently loans out. “On every page, there’s Jacksonville,” said Allegretti, executive director of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. “There’s the river, there’s all sorts of historic markers. So you’re reading about your neighborhood.” Johnson was the first African-American lawyer in Florida and the first black leader
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of the NAACP. He wrote the words to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” long considered to be the “Black American National Anthem.” He can recount story after story of Johnson’s life. “It’s a bit of a crime that we don’t celebrate him more,” he said. Allegretti was raised in the Florida Panhandle and kicked around in a few large cities like New Orleans and Miami. In the late 1990s, he landed in Jacksonville. “It’s a large city, but if you work hard and you’re passionate, you can do an incredible amount of things here,” he said. Allegretti said he has found for every person who challenges a project or idea, there are 10 interested people who want to see things happen. “I’ve learned that there’s success in being the change that you want to see,” he said. “I think there’s an easier path to that
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