THURSDAY August 19, 2021
Mathis Report: Marshalls spending $1.6 million to renovate Staples PAGE 5
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Daily Record JACKSONVILLE
REDEVELOPMENT
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JEA fills final leadership team spot
‘WEDaily ARE HERERecord TO STAY’ JACKSONVILLE
Industry West plans to renovate and occupy a historic Southbank building.
Laura Schepis is named the utility’s chief external affairs officer.
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JACKSONVILLE
BY MIKE MENDENHALL STAFF WRITER
JEA says its executive leadership team is complete. The city-owned utility announced Aug. 17 it hired Laura Schepis as chief external affairs officer. Schepis will manage JEA’s government affairs, media relations, communications, environmental operations and compliance monitoring departments with a $283,254 annual salary. Schepis, 50, was senior director of National Security Policy for the Edison Electric Institute in Washington, D.C., for the past three years where she focused on industry preparation for natural disasters and attacks on the energy grid, the release says. JEA Managing Director and CEO Jay Stowe, hired in November, now has filled his eightmember executive team.
MMENDENHALL@ JAXDAILYRECORD.COM
JEA EXECUTIVES Photo by Karen Brune Mathis
Corner Lot Companies CEO Andy Allen and Industry West co-founders Anne and Jordan England bought the historic building at 1001 Kings Ave. in July. The online furniture retailer plans to move its headquarters there from San Marco next summer. Allen will move Breeze Homes to the top floor.
BY KAREN BRUNE MATHIS EDITOR
O
nline furniture retailer Industry West, which opened a new, larger headquarters in San Marco in March 2018, is moving again, this time to the historic building at 1001 Kings Ave. on the Southbank. “This building brought us an opportunity to plant a bigger footprint here and let people know that we are here to stay,” said Industry West co-founder Jordan England.
The 10-year-old company has grown to 42 employees and sales this year of $35 million to $40 million. Jordan and Anne England started the company as an e-commerce venture, moving from home to leased space and then to San Marco Square. That’s where they and investor-developer Andy Allen bought a 4,300-squarefoot building at 1407 Atlantic Blvd. in 2017, moving in the following year. Allen, CEO of Jacksonville-based Corner Lot Companies, is involved in the
next move, too. The Englands, Allen and Corner Lot COO George Leone, through ALE Kings Holdings LLC, bought the Kings Avenue property July 6 for $2.25 million. They anticipate a more than $1 million investment in renovating the three-story, 13,500-square-foot building that was developed before 1912 and hope to move in during summer 2022. “Jacksonville is ready for more urban
■ Jody Brooks, chief administrative officer ■ Laura Dutton, chief strategy officer ■ David Emanuel, chief human resources officer ■ Raynetta Curry Marshall, chief operating officer ■ Joseph Orfano, vice president of financial services ■ Theodore B. Phillips, chief financial officer ■ Sheila Pressley, chief customer officer ■ Laura Schepis, chief external affairs officer
SEE INDUSTRY WEST, PAGE 4
THE BASCH REPORT
Redwire gets a date for merger that will take it public COVID not hurting TV advertising sales. PAGE 3 VOLUME 108, NO. 194 • TWO SECTIONS