? by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Trevett Companies has a long history in Jacksonville and now in Amelia Island as well.
The founder and president of Trevett Companies, Harry Trevett, has had a residential building and development company since 1982 which originated in Jacksonville. He built in Jacksonville through the late 1980s and in 1987 he moved to Amelia Island.
“We were looking for a smaller market where we could make a presence. I purchased a couple of properties to develop and build on and was engaged in the home building business from the late 1980s until the last few years,” said Trevett. “I have wound down my home building company and now we have become a multi-faceted development company.”
He and his partners, Jay Mock, president of Prudential Island Realty, and Mike Cassella, vice president of Trevett Companies, are always on the lookout for lucrative deals to get involved in.
As the president, Trevett identifies opportunities, does the strategic planning and then incorporates the relationships they have with others in the business needed for the project.
As a partner, Mock spends his time out looking for new opportunities for he and Trevett to get involved in. Mock’s background is in real estate marketing, so he handles the marketing for the properties they have developed as well as finding new deals.
“If I see an opportunity, I’ll bring it to Harry and we will discuss it and decide what we want to do,” said Mock.
As vice president, Cassella is the liason between Mock, Trevett and the end users of the developments.
“I help them execute the plans that they come up with,” said Cassella, who has been with the company for seven months.
This new partnership has taken the company from home building to a whole new direction.
“We buy land, do the infrastructure and develop it into residential lots to sell to third party builders,” said Trevett. “We have a wonderful repertoire with people who have been in the building business over the last 20 years.”
They are doing this type of development in Nassau County, North Jacksonville and St. Johns County.
Developments they have built include 30 to 40 percent of the residential homes surrounding the Summer Beach golf course, Villages of Marsh Lakes, Beachwalk, Natures Walk, Amelia Apartment Homes and Harrison Cove to name a few.
Projects Trevett has developed on the Northside are Newport Harbor and River Enclave.
“It is just exploding on the Northside,” said Trevett. “Residential growth is exploding, but if that leads to some commercial opportunities we may look at the Northside for commercial development. That is the beauty of what we do, the relationships and expertise that we have. We can look at any opportunity and are not confined to residential or commercial. It can be whatever the market will support.”
They developed the Winn-Dixie shopping center on the corner near the North Hampton community and also have 300 acres yet to be developed into 1,000 residential lots on Amelia Concourse. Trevett said to look for them in the next few years.
Currently, they are developing a 10-acre commercial site in Brunswick.
“It’s our first project north of here that we bought,” said Trevett. “Jay and I are just completing a 12,000-square foot retail center which is called Southport Market.”
Other projects that they are working on project is a 485-lot residential development called Hideaway on the intersection of U.S. 17 and A1A, the Yulee corridor and development of a 10,300-square foot medical building directly across from the Nassau Baptist Hospital on Amelia Island.
“Amelia Island has had a tremendous amount of growth since I came to town in the mid-1980s,” said Trevett. “A lot of that growth the last four or five years has began to take place off the island because the land is more affordable and readily available. There is a lot of commercial development along the corridor and just west of that is the shopping center that we own and we are very active in that corridor.”
They also have a retail warehouse flex space that is on the books in that area as well.
“We are multi-faceted in that we do a lot of different things, but we are really real estate opportunists,” said Trevett. “We look for a niche in the market place, an opportunity or residential demands that are not being met.”
In addition to the development side, they are also getting into rehabilitation of commercial and very large residential projects.
Trevett started his real estate career while in college. He got his real estate license and started selling real estate. He became a broker and then became associated with a builder, Griffen Sasser of Homes Beautiful Construction, and then was a partner in Trevett-Sasser Homes. He bought out his Sasser and has been on his own ever since 1982.
He, Cassella and Mock have a strong background in marketing and sales, construction and finance.
“We are tying all those disciplines together to do what we do,” said Trevett.
Trevett feels that his learning curve has been very systematic.
“Market sales, learning the construction process, having a strong business background,” he said. “All those things have been complementary. My learning curve has been very gradual but very stepped and that has played an important part in our success. I have some very long standing relationships with business people who I have done business with who are in and around the home building business. They have provided great counsel over the years. I have tapped their wisdom and emulated them in the ways that they conducted themselves and their business.”