Aetna leaving Downtown for Southside by next week

One Call will anchor 841 Prudential Drive, but a block of Aetna space remains vacant.


The Aetna Building on the Southbank will be rebranded as Eight Forty One and One Call Care Management will be putting its name on the top of the building.
The Aetna Building on the Southbank will be rebranded as Eight Forty One and One Call Care Management will be putting its name on the top of the building.
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Aetna is making its move.

The insurer is relocating its 800 Downtown employees from the Aetna Building on the Southbank to Gramercy Woods in Southside and expects to complete the transition by July 7.

Spokeswoman Anjie Coplin said the move is taking place in waves. A number of employees already are set up in the new office.

Aetna’s lease for about 169,000 square feet expires Aug. 31 at the Downtown building, which has been rebranded Eight Forty One. It announced the move in May 2016.

The Aetna name is coming down and One Call Care Management, which has expanded into half of the vacated Aetna space, will put its name on top of the building at 841 Prudential Drive.

One Call will occupy more than 200,000 square feet of space upon the expansion and have 1,175 employees in the building, according to city documents and One Call.

Baptist Health, the second-largest tenant in the tower, has its name on top of two sides of the structure.

Aetna’s name will be removed at the end of the lease. Coplin said its new sign in Gramercy Woods, at 9000 Southside Blvd., will go up by early fall.

JLL is marketing 841 while Cushman & Wakefield is the on-site property manager for the building, a 22-story tower with 19 tenant floors that was developed in 1955 on the riverfront.

The building’s rentable space is 509,973 square feet.

JLL is marketing 89,018 square feet on the second and third floors that Aetna is vacating.

JLL’s Michael Loftin, executive vice president, and Jesse Shimp, senior vice president of brokerage, said the floors are available with plug-and-play furniture, which makes the space conducive for call-center operations.

“The available floors are some of the largest floor plates available in the market, which is attractive to efficiency-seeking call centers,” Shimp said.

The 35,202 square feet on the second floor offers 192 workstations and the 53,816 square feet on the third floor has 308 stations, according to marketing information. The station count could change slightly.

Parking is available in the adjacent landlord-owned garage and there will be parking rights in the garage that Baptist Health is building across the street, next to its medical campus.

That will provide a parking ratio of five spaces for every 1,000 square feet of leased space for tenants.

Parking also is available by shuttle service to the public Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s Kings Avenue parking garage.

Loftin and Shimp said that one or multiple tenants could lease the available office space. “We are exploring and keeping open all options for lease-up scenarios,” Shimp said.

Signage for a tenant is negotiable for the lower fascia and the garage.

The 841 building features a restaurant and full-service catering, a deli and coffee shop, a fitness center available for a fee, a sundry shop, and an ATM. It also offers conference, meeting and banquet facilities. 

Its two-story marble lobby is a familiar site for weddings and events and will be upgraded by year-end.

Loftin, Shimp and Caryn Carreiro, senior property manager with Cushman & Wakefield, said the lobby will retain its marble presence while being made more tenant-friendly with lighting, a seating area, rugs and furniture.

The security and reception area will be updated. Digital screens will be installed for tenant directory and other information.

Along with the building’s amenities, Shimp said the location along the St. Johns River is a competitive advantage with available Northbank towers because none of those are directly on the waterfront.

A piece of the rock

The building was developed for Prudential Insurance Co. — and a piece of the Rock of Gibraltar will remain on the riverfront side of the tower. The rock is Prudential’s logo.

“The rock stays,” Loftin said.

The 2.5-ton rock on the site was presented to the city on Jan. 7, 1955, by the British Consul. It was later dedicated to E. William Nash Jr., the former president of Prudential’s South-Central Home Office.

The tower was heralded as the tallest building in Florida when it was built for Prudential, which now occupies a nearby structure built in 1985. 

Aetna Inc. bought the Prudential HealthCare business from Prudential in 1999 and consolidated operations at the tower. 

Prudential owned the building until 1998 and it was sold twice before IP Capital Partners LLC of Boca Raton bought it for $55.5 million in December 2013.

Renovations pending for One Call

In addition to Aetna, One Call and Baptist Health System, another leading tenant is University of Florida Health Jacksonville.

One Call, a provider of workers’ compensation care management services, will consolidate its two Jacksonville locations there. 

City records show that One Call now leases about 120,000 square feet.

The additional 83,000 square feet will take up some of the space that Aetna is vacating.

Building occupancy will reach 83 percent upon the expansion, which is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2018.

The Downtown Investment Authority approved up to a $1 million Commercial Revitalization Incentive grant over 10 years to help pay for relocation costs for One Call, the lease of the additional 83,000 square feet of space and $3 million in tenant improvements and building upgrades.

 

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