Daily Record Financial News &
Monday, June 8, 2015
Vol. 102, No. 146 • Two Sections
35¢ www.jaxdailyrecord.com
Baptist investing $16M in 2 buildings Flagler selling on Southbank
Rose D’Amour, left, is congratulated by her sister, Joanne Herro, after the Young Lawyers Section of The Jacksonville Bar Association named its volunteer award after D’Amour. She is the judicial assistant for Chief Judge Mark Mahon. Herro is visiting from Arizona.
Honoring her legacy
YLS award named for D’Amour By Marilyn Young Editor When Rose D’Amour realized why she was in a room filled with lawyers from a generation younger than her, she was overwhelmed. Pat Kilbane, president of the Young Lawyers Section, said when the group needs to get something accomplished at the courthouse, there is only one place to go. “And that’s to Rose,” he said of the revered chief judge’s judicial assistant. The only appropriate way to honor D’Amour, he said, wasn’t to give her the top volunteer award. It was to name the annual honor the Rose D’Amour Volunteer of the Year Award.
Tears filled D’Amour’s eyes. Her words were halted at times as she collected her emotions. She loves every minute of what she does, D’Amour told the audience. Loves working with Chief Judge Mark Mahon, who drove back from Tallahassee to be at the Thursday event, and Donald Moran before him. “Hopefully,” she said, “I’ll be here for years and years to come.” Those words resonated throughout the third floor of The Candy Apple Cafe on North Hogan Street. The room was packed with dozens of young lawyers, several judges and members of D’Amour’s family. They all knew about the health issue Award continued on Page A-7
Circuit Judge Russell Healey escorts D’Amour to the YLS meeting Thursday.
Photos by Bobby King
By Karen Brune Mathis Managing Editor Baptist Health, whose main campus is on the Downtown Southbank, intends to invest $16 million to buy the duPont Center I and II office buildings nearby on Prudential Drive. Baptist Health CFO Scott Wooten said the purchase should be completed in midJune. “This is a strategic investment for us because of the buildings’ proximity to our Baptist Jacksonville campus, which we have occupied since 1955,” Wooten said. Baptist’s main campus is at 800 Prudential Drive while the duPont buildings are at 1650 and 1660 Prudential Drive. Flagler Development Co., which continues to divest its Jacksonville holdings, owns the buildings, which were developed in 1989. The property comprises two 80,000-square-foot Class A office buildings, totaling 160,000 square feet, on nine acres. There also are another vacant 2 acres. Wooten said the buildings are 89 percent leased. Their 2015 assessed value is $15.2 million, according to property records. Over time, Baptist Health said it plans to occupy some of the available space in the buildings to help centralize some of its administrative offices as well as a few clinical services that are currently scattered in leased spaces throughout the city. “We would look to create efficiencies gradually, over an extended period of time, as space becomes available,” Wooten said. Wooten said Baptist had leased space for a rheumatology office, which is currently the only planned move into duPont Center space. More might be considered for relocation over the next few months. Wooten said Baptist Health wants current tenants to know it is committed to a seamless transition of ownership. Baptist
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Despite cutbacks, Chase growing in Jacksonville
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is looking at cutbacks in its branch network, according to news reports over the last couple of weeks, but that doesn’t seem to be affecting its expansion plans in Jacksonville. The company basically had no branch network in Jacksonville but began aggressively building one two years ago under the Chase Bank name. Although The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that the company is planning to close branches and cut 5,000 jobs, it is actually exceeding its growth plans in Northeast Florida. Two years ago, the company
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had only one Jacksonville branch that was attached to JPMorgan Chase’s large mortgage banking operation in Baymeadows when it announced plans to open about a dozen consumer banking offices in the area. As it turned out, the company just opened its 16th area branch in Fleming Island in April and expects to open another in Bartram Park in the fall, spokeswoman Maribel Ferrer said. “And we plan to open a few more in 2016,” she said by email. Chase Bank had 5,570 branches at the end of the first quarter, but the company is looking to
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close some offices because more customers are doing their banking online, according to The Wall Street Journal story. In addition to branch closings, the company also expects to reduce employment by an average of one job per branch, it said. That’s not the only way the company is looking to cut costs in its branch network. A JPMorgan
Chase executive said at a conference last week the company is eliminating voice mail for many employees because it’s not being used enough to justify the cost, Bloomberg News reported. The company has 136,908 workers in its retail branches and voice mail costs $10 a month per line, so 65 percent of employees had their voice mail deactivated, Bloomberg said.
Medtronic still mum on merger impact
Four months after completing its $49.9 billion merger with Covi-
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dien plc, Medtronic plc is still not saying if the deal will impact its Jacksonville operations. Medtronic moved its headquarters to Covidien’s offices in Dublin, Ireland, after the merger but is maintaining its operational headquarters in Minneapolis. Medtronic has had the headquarters of its surgical technologies division in Jacksonville, but has not said if anything will change locally because of the merger. “If or when we have something to announce, we’ll let our employees know,” Medtronic spokesman Fernando Vivanco Basch continued on Page A-11
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