City Notes
04/25/2008
• Each month, Visit Jacksonville publishes a list of the conventions and other large groups that are coming to town. For April and into May, the list includes the names you’d expect to see like the American Public Works Association, the Order of the Eastern Star and several military veteran reunion groups. There are also two weddings on the list, according to Lyndsay Rossman, Visit Jacksonville director of corporate communications. “When we work with weddings, it’s for larger functions who need to reserve large blocks of rooms or arrange for ground transportation. We point them toward the resources. But we’re not – I repeat not – wedding planners,” she said.
• Danielle Dolan, education coordinator for St. Johns Riverkeeper, is embarking on a mission trip to an orphanage in San Martin, El Salvador in June. Dolan said she’ll be providing clothing, food and education to the youth. She needs $1,200 to make the trip, and her group needs $18,000. For more information, e-mail danielledolan@gmail.com.
• Whether it’s people hurting for work or the smell of opportunity at Jacksonville’s growing port, nearly 2,000 people have already signed up for the job fair Wednesday at the University of North Florida. That’s double the participants from last year.
• Prosser Hallock Inc., a Jacksonville planning, engineering and landscape architecture firm, donated a $58,000 endowed scholarship to the University of North Florida in the name of Azeb Tekie. An Ethiopian immigrant, Tekie graduated from UNF’s civil engineering program and put her two sisters through school at UNF. She died from pneumonia in 1998 at age 45, and since then Prosser Hallock has organized golf tournaments and other activities to raise money for scholarships in her memory.
• Downtown workers who enjoy a good game of free poker can now find one at Nicky G’s on Friday nights. The restaurant is holding free admission Texas Hold ‘em tournaments beginning at 8 p.m. in association with the Jacksonville Poker Association for prizes including $1,500 and $750 gift certificates to the Poker Room of St. Johns and Orange Park Kennel Club and other weekly prizes. The restaurant is the newest venue for the tournaments, with over 25 others around Jacksonville on varying days. For more information on the tournaments and how to enter, go to www.pokerjax.com.
“Friendship among nations, as among individuals, calls for constructive efforts to muster the forces of humanity in order that an atmosphere of close understanding and cooperation may be cultivated.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president
