by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Being a part of downtown’s revitalization is important to the St. Joe Company.
It is building its new $24 million headquarters at 245 Riverside Ave. next to the YMCA.
“As a headquarters, we wanted to stay here,” said Michael Shalley, vice president of St. Joe Commercial, the giant real estate company. “Our executives made a commitment to stay in downtown Jacksonville.”
The company made its search throughout downtown including Southbank, Northbank, Riverside and San Marco for a suitable location to build a new headquarters and found it in on the edge of Riverside.
An earlier plan by another developer for an office building and parking garage on the same piece of property was never developed, leaving the property available for St. Joe to step in.
“Of all the available alternatives, this site did a couple of things for us,” said Shalley. “It kept us downtown, provided riverfront exposure which I think will be good for the company and it’s in the Enterprise Zone. Being in the Enterprise Zone, we can be a catalyst for the redevelopment of Riverside Avenue and achieve some economic benefits that are provided.”
Enterprise Zone benefits include a rebate of a portion of the real estate taxes, job credits and investment in personal property tax credits.
The company has a request to be refunded $750,000, half of the taxes that will be paid over the first five years of the building’s life. The request has been passed by the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and is now in front of the City Council.
“If the building assesses for what we think it’s worth, then we will get that,” said Shalley. “It completely depends on us building the building, getting it leased up, getting it assessed, paying taxes and getting a portion of those taxes back. We are creating an income stream for the city with our $24 million investment that we will get $750,000 of taxes back over the next five years.”
Even though Riverside Ave. is in the process of undergoing a major renovation, Shalley said they are looking toward the future.
“It’s a great location,” said Shalley. “The renovation (adding lanes on the west side of the street) will affect us negatively in the short term, but when it’s completed, it will be the primary corridor in from the Ortega/Riverside Avenue area. Locating here now before values get crazy will be a good thing for us.”
The new building, to be named 245 Riverside, is a Class A office building and will have 140,000 gross square feet with 135,000 of rentable space. Spaces will lease for approximately $21 a square feet.
The St. Joe Company’s headquarters will take the 3,000 square feet on the top floor, leaving the rest to be leased out to tenants.
They expect the tenants to mirror the typical downtown employees, including law firms and professional services such as architects and accounting firms.
Even though retail wasn’t in the original plans, St. Joe is talking to a high-end restaurant.
“We’ve talked to them several times,” said Shalley. “Full-service restaurants in office buildings are real difficult, but they are doable, especially if you plan on them from the beginning. We are considering them and they are considering us. We are doing sort of a mating dance with them right now. We aren’t sure we want them and they aren’t sure they want us.”
The building will be constructed by The Haskell Company, starting in January or February and should be complete by February or March of 2003.
St. Joe’s headquarters is currently housed in the DuPont Center I on Prudential Drive.
Departments in the headquarters consist of executive offices, commercial, creative services, accounting, finance and legal divisions totaling about 80-85 employees.
“We don’t own our current building so what we are trying to do is to develop a building that we own and are a tenant in our own building,” said Shalley.
An amenity to the new building will be a conference room with patio and a kitchen overlooking the river that will be available to the building tenants.
It will be a 4,000 square foot space that can be separated into two 2,000 square foot rooms for the tenants to use for meetings or social functions.
Another perk to the building will be a two-story underground garage which will have about 420 spaces.
Shalley said parking is always tight downtown, and most buildings in the downtown area only provide one or two spaces per 1,000 square feet.
“This building will be 3 to 3 1/2 spaces per 1,000 square feet,” he said. “So we are providing more parking than typical downtown, but there aren’t any surrounding parking lots like you have downtown in Riverside, so we are having to accommodate almost all of our parking on-site.”