by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Heyward Cantrell and Randy Evans specialize in win-win situations.
Combining their years of experience and expertise, their goal is to open some eyes and close those often-complex deals that will benefit everyone involved.
“When you think of any kind of real estate or transportation development project, you’ve got a series of people with different interests,” said Evans. “They’ve got different objectives. They have different processes, different vocabularies, different ways of thinking about issues.
“One of the things Heyward and I pride ourselves on is doing the simultaneous translations, understanding the different interests, understanding the different ways success is measured. Then we put all those things together into projects that make sense.”
Evans and Cantrell recently announced the formation of J.R. Evans & Associates, a real estate consulting firm, “to advise land owners, businesses, government agencies and nonprofits in real estate, transportation and economic development.”
Both men come with the credentials to make good on their intentions.
Heyward Cantrell has been in Jacksonville for 35 years and developed one of the first properties in Southpoint.
“Historically, I’ve been in the development business and brokerage,” he said. “But we’re not here to be a developer. We’re here to advise government and private property owners who need government assistance.
“We each have the real estate background but different perspectives. We thought we could work together to bring that to all parties.”
Evans most recently was with CSX for 12 and a half years. For the last five, he was vice president of real estate and industrial development. He left CSX during the company’s ongoing “reorganization.”
The railroad has three distinct real estate companies. The first deals with real estate in the conventional sense. The second overseas 300,000 agreements in 23 states that the railroad had with water and utility companies that crossed its lines. The third division manages the
regulated track business.
Industrial development at CSX worked with state and regional economic development agencies as they explored the possibility of locating plans and businesses along the rail lines.
“The biggest success we had in the last couple of years was Hyundai locating their North American manufacturing plant on the CSX Railroad just south of Montgomery, Ala.,” said Evans. “That was a big issue.”
It was also a complex issue.
“You have a Korean auto manufacturer, the State of Alabama, the citizens of Montgomery, Ala., and a railroad that wants to bring in steel and take out automobiles,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of different issues. How do you meld all those things together?
“That’s what we hope to do, using the foundation of the real estate experience, the market knowledge and the valuation knowledge, along with the experience I’ve had in public service.”
During the last four years he was at CSX, the groups he oversaw sold more than $1 billion in real estate.
“That was very important for the railroad,” he said. “I’m very proud of my career at the railroad and what we did.”
Back in 1977, Evans was land development officer under “a benign despot,” William Donald Schaefer, who was mayor of Baltimore.
“I was buying property, assembling blocks, turning around and selling it to developers at the time we did the whole Inner Harbor,” Evans recalled. “It was a go-go time. It was great fun to be involved with that.”
He moved to Richmond, Va., in 1982 and ran Richmond Renaissance, a not-for-profit that found ways to get blacks and whites to work together on downtown development.
When Schaefer was elected governor of Maryland, he asked Evans to return. He became the state’s secretary of Economic and Employment Development, a blend of the Labor and Economic Development departments.
“I was the guy they were looking to for economic development, international trade and tourism,” he said.
The new department worked with the community colleges and vocational schools on customized training. Staff worked with those who were out of work and looking for work, getting them job training.
“When the federal government passed the welfare-to-work initiative, rather than give that to the State Welfare Department, they gave it to me,” said Evans. “So we did a lot of self-esteem training, basic mathematics, and reading, writing and arithmetic to get people up to a level where they felt good about themselves . . . and they had some skills to become employable.
“The state was ranked the best for economic development and was the best managed state at the time I had the opportunity to work for Schaefer. That was a great experience.”
Since moving to Jacksonville in 1992, he helped found the Housing Partnership of Jacksonville and was chairman of HabiJax and the Public Housing Agency. Mayor John Peyton most recently appointed him head of the Jacksonville Housing Commission. He’s also on the board of the Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“I think Mayor Peyton is onto something that’s very important, this effort he’s had with early childhood education,” said Evans. “Where the housing commission intersects with the mayor’s concern is that stable communities create a better environment for children to learn.
“I’ve always been involved in working on housing for poor residents. Home ownership for poor people, which I think is eminently achievable, is right politically, ethically, morally and economically.
“I think it also really creates the right environment where, for instance, the school systems have a better chance to do their job. It all ties together. We’ve got to build stable communities.”
Several projects already await the touch of those with experience and the right negotiating touch.
“There’s lots of areas of our city where there exist streets, water, sewer and electrical,” Evans said. “We can work on infill housing in those communities and stabilize those communities and make them safe and improved.
“Economically, that’s going to be less expensive than building new roads, sewer, water, gutter, stormwater collection, electrical systems — all that infrastructure. On the other hand, if you’ve got underutilized capacity, that can’t be very good, either. So this whole thing sort of works together.”
J.R. Evans & Associates is an affiliated company with Cantrell Real Estate and Cantrell Morgan.
Cantrell Real Estate will continue to be one of the larger commercial real estate appraisal firms in Florida. Cantrell Morgan is a brokerage firm that specializes in land acquisition for residential and commercial developers.
“With government trying to be as efficient and lean as it can be, the public sector lots of times doesn’t have the staff, or the staff with the experience of the private property side,” said Cantrell. “And the private property side doesn’t have the governmental experience.
“Our thoughts are we could advise them how to come together so both their goals could be accomplished.”
There is plenty of fertile ground in North Florida for J.R. Evans & Associates to show what it can do.
“Many of the public agencies have extensive real estate holdings,” said Evans. “The school board has a lot of real estate. The Port Authority has a lot of real estate. So does the airport and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority.
“Each of them has a primary function — educating, working on ships, landing planes, moving buses. Rightly, they’re going to put their focus on their primary mission. Real estate becomes a byproduct or a staff-type function.
“What we’re offering is our expertise either on individual programs or on a project-by-project basis.”
One example would be a project Evans completed for CSX in 1999.
“I would describe it as an asset management survey,” he said. “We went over all 23 states and looked at all the property the railroad owned. Then we determined how much is necessary for the railroad to operate, how much could be used for customers and how much could be sold off for other uses.”
Cantrell and Evans will provide something similar on a local level.
“We would do that kind of survey for these agencies and offer some real estate advice,” said Evans. “Not as someone who want to buy it from them, but as someone adding expertise, some bench strength, on a variable cost basis.
“We believe our services will more than pay for themselves — first of all, just understanding the inventory and managing it. Secondly, either being able to get the sale proceeds or income stream from getting some of that productivity going.”
J.R. Evans & Associates shares office space with Cantrell Real Estate at 121 N. Hogan St. About 16 staff members are spread among all the divisions, and Cantrell is looking to add four more.
“We’re looking for people all the time,” he said. “We’ve got almost more business than we can handle right now.”
Being downtown is a “super convenient” place to have a business, said Cantrell, who also appreciates the friendly way in which business is conducted.
“Nobody has to get in the car to go eat lunch, get their hair cut or their shoes shined,” he said. “Kinko’s is right across the street.
“All the brokers are friendly competitors as opposed to adversaries. The attorneys are friendly, too. Everybody’s gentlemanly in their business practices.
“You don’t find that in the other areas of Florida I work. It’s different when you hit South Florida.”
Evans appreciates the location, too.
“In the month I’ve been here in downtown, I just walk out the door and run into four people I want to see,” he said. “You want to know how to get on the calendar, how to have a meeting? Just walk out of the door at lunchtime, and there they are.”