• Mayor John Peyton and new Landing owner Toney Sleiman will unveil future plans for the Landing at a celebration Nov. 13 in the Landing courtyard.
• Bill Bates may be just a Jaguars assistant coach, but he’s not holding back on housing — he just bought a $1.15 million home at the beach.
• Big week for at least two small restaurants: Ann’s and Russ-Doe over on Talleyrand Avenue. The RV City around the stadium sends plenty of customers to the eateries.
• The Big Easy Cajun location in the Food Court at the Landing didn’t stay vacant for long. Charlie’s Cajun opened this week in the same spot.
• The Jacksonville Orthopedic Institute, which provides team doctors for the Jags, has hired The McCormick Agency to publicize the organization’s many programs and changes coming up in the next year. The Institute, with 42-plus surgeons in Jacksonville, also used McCormick to help publicize its position during the medical malpractice reform sessions earlier this year.
• Council member Jerry Holland ran in a leukemia fund raising marathon last weekend in Dublin, Ireland and did pretty well both in his finishing time and in the amount of money he raised. Holland crossed the finish line in four hours and 19 minutes and brought home over $8,000 for the boy he was sponsoring.
• A little surprise for Bob Baughman, deputy director of Parks, Recreation and Entertainment, who was up for reappointment at Tuesday’s Council meeting. Instead of getting his old job back, Baughman was named director of the department at the Council’s urging.
• It appears everyone’s getting in on the Florida-Georgia frenzy, this weekend. The London Bridge Pub is expanding their parking lot and will have additional tables to feed the masses. They might sell some parking, too.
• The mayor’s office is offering complimentary Florida or Georgia pom–poms to visitors this week. By Wednesday the basket holding red and black poms was still full while the orange–and–blue basket had only a few left.
• Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin invited Mayor John Peyton to a Nov. 19, think tank strategy session about implementing wireless Internet communications. Atlanta has already committed to using the technology citywide.
• City Council is collecting goods to donate to needy families at Thanksgiving. The Council wants to collect enough to fill 19 gift baskets — that’s one for every Council district.
• In addition to handling the mayor’s press relations, spokesperson Heather Murphy has been teaching a night class at the University of North Florida, covering the relationship between media and politics. Mayor Peyton spoke Wednesday night to her class.
• It’s been active around the Jaguars practice fields lately with the fair and the Georgia-Florida activity, so has it distracted our pro players? Coach Jack Del Rio, obviously thinking of the latest string of incidents including the arrest of a starting linebacker: “We create enough distractions of our own.”