Daily Record Financial News &
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Vol. 103, No. 184 • One Section
Amazon.com may open more Jacksonville centers
Committee to resume talks in couple of weeks
Amazon.com announced Wednesday it will open a fulfillment center in North Jacksonville like the one in Ruskin, near Tampa. That facility opened in 2014.
The company’s Jacksonville fulfillment center will employ 1,500 workers, plus many more during the holiday season.
Amazon.com will generate more than 1,500 full-time jobs in an area where double-digit unemployment has created a need for opportunities and income. “Those jobs are going where the region needs them most,” said Candace Moody, vice president of communications for CareerSource Northeast Florida. The city, in reviewing and approving incentives for the positions in April, said unemployment in some areas near the North Jacksonville site exceeds 15 percent. “It’s going to have a tremendous effect on the Northside,” Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, said Wednesday. “It will have an overall effect on people’s lives and their lifestyles,” he said.
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Rumlin said the location is convenient, too. The 12900 Pecan Park Road site under development is just north of Interstate 295 and off of International Airport Boulevard. It is south of Jacksonville International Airport. “Folks are going to be able to get decent jobs. That means more money will flow into the economy in this area, folks will be able to buy homes and do other things with their families,” Rumlin said. He said the project also is a big deal for the city and said it’s typical that such developments spin off more construction. That leads to the need for additional services and jobs. JAXUSA Partnership President Jerry Mallot said the city, JAX Chamber, North Jacksonville area pastors, CareerSource and others have been discussing how to Jobs continued on Page A-4
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Folks are going to be able to get decent jobs. … Folks will be able to buy homes and do other things with their families.
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Facility in double-digit unemployment area
Isaiah Rumlin NAACP branch president
Special to the Daily Record
By David Chapman Staff Writer
Jobs will have ‘tremendous effect’
By Karen Brune Mathis Managing Editor
www.jaxdailyrecord.com
No clear path for Hemming group
By Karen Brune Mathis Managing Editor
Amazon.com might not stop at just one e-commerce center in Jacksonville. At least, not if economic developers can help it. “We are continuing to encourage them to do other things. They do other centers for large projects, so our work with them is not finished,” said JAXUSA Partnership President Jerry Mallot, who leads the economicdevelopment division of the JAX Chamber. Mallot said there was no timeframe for additional regional projects by Amazon. com, which announced Wednesday what has been expected since at least April when City Council approved its part of the $18.4 million incentive package for the codenamed “Project Rex.” The Seattle-based global e-commerce retailer will open a fulfillment center in North Jacksonville that will create more than 1,500 full-time jobs. Mallot and JAX Chamber President Daniel Davis said it was the single largest jobs announcement in Jacksonville’s history. The center will be an 855,000-squarefoot footprint, with enough height to boost capacity to almost 2.4 million square feet of space, to pick, pack and ship small items such as books, electronics and consumer goods. Amazon.com didn’t confirm more plans for Jacksonville on Wednesday, although the company appears to announce projects through news releases once those deals are well underway. “We don’t comment on our future roadmap, but I can tell you that we are thrilled to be bringing 1,500 full-time jobs to the Jacksonville community with the opening of our fulfillment center,” said spokeswoman DeAnn Baxter. Asked about the shipment territory from Jacksonville, she said Amazon.com’s fulfillment centers ship orders all over the world. Baxter said Amazon.com operates more than 50 fulfillment centers and 23 sortation centers in the U.S., with more than 90,000 full-time employees working in fulfillment centers. Fulfillment centers are where Amazon. com packages items for delivery. At a sortation center, it takes packages heading to Centers continued on Page A-4
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Friends of Hemming Park leadership didn’t receive an answer Wednesday about its short- or long-term future running Downtown’s iconic park. What did it receive from City Council members? Bouts of harsh criticism intertwined with a little support to at least see the group through the next couple of months. And, a week after a critical council auditor’s report highlighted a slew of questionable expenses in the past year and a half, the revelation that a hallmark project is in financial jeopardy certainly didn’t help the situation. The council’s Hemming Park Special Committee met for the first time to determine what direction the park should travel and what entity should be the driver. It was the first opportunity for council members to directly question Friends leadership about the audit. The nonprofit has received $1.1 million in taxpayer dollars to operate the park, but thousands of dollars spent for items like meals and trips for furniture drew varying levels of scrutiny. Council Vice President John Crescimbeni was the harshest, asking both Friends board President Wayne Wood and CEO Vince Cavin how they had the “audacity” to show up at the meeting after the auditor’s report. He asked if either had considered resigning. Wood said he Cavin had not. He said he believed the group has a plan to “do something great for the city” that the government couldn’t pull off. “We have made great strides,” he told the committee. Cavin noted the nonprofit had raised more than $400,000 to date. However, Wood admitted some of the group’s early faults. While he told the committee last month that Friends had been frugal and efficient, he said Wednesday that some expenses were “wrong.” Such missteps, he said, are typical of a young start-up that didn’t have clear lines of expectations — a reference to how the contract was crafted. There were no stipulations outlined in the contract on how taxpayer money could be spent. Wood said the group for some time was under budget, which led to expenses not being heavily questioned. But when money tightened, a review showed expenses like community outreach was too much and wouldn’t be happening in the future. Several on the eight-member committee took the opportunity to show their dismay in those expenses, but another issue Hemming
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