• Did you read where the local real estate market was lagging? It certainly wasn’t for Watson Realty, which had another record year in sales with a total of $3,826,103,041.56. That’s a 29 percent increase.
• The Pentagon’s plans to retire the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy hasn’t just been making headlines locally. Reporters from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper have been in town, chasing a different angle on the story. The carrier is scheduled for about $400 million worth of work in Virginia shipyards next year.
• Kudos to City workers who responded to our story last week about the scruffy-looking palm trees along Bay Street. Some trimming and TLC brought the brown to green.
• Was that the new Florida football coach, Urban Meyer, in the UPS store on the Westside? Sure was, but he wasn’t mailing anything — a prime prospect from Edward White High works there. Another college coach was at the stadium last week. Alabama’s Mike Shula dropped by to visit with Jaguar film chief Mike Perkins, son of former Alabama Coach Ray Perkins.
• We’re getting a J.Crew when the new mall off Butler Boulevard opens.
• The Chamber is passing around growth figures from the first nine months of 2004 which show Jacksonville grew at 2.4 percent compared to Florida’s 1.5 and the nation’s .5.
• Riverside/Avondale Preservation Inc. responded to the mayor’s call for volunteers to help clean up Jacksonville next Saturday. The group has volunteered to help clean up Memorial and Riverside parks as well as Five Points.
• Charleston, S.C. Chief Financial Officer Steve Bedard has contacted the mayor’s office regarding the same position in Jacksonville. Mayor John Peyton has been without a full-time CFO since Walt Bussells retired last August.
• The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals delivered some news last week for the Spohrer, Wilner, Maxwell and Mathews law firm. The Court upheld a $9 million award for their client, Henry Boerner, in his suit against tobacco giant Brown and Williamson. The decision is the first federal court tobacco award upheld on appeal for a single plaintiff. Boerner sued after his wife died following 36 years of smoking Pall Mall cigarettes.