• Renovations to the South Jacksonville City Hall in San Marco are nearly complete. Almost all of the exterior improvements to the Hendricks Avenue building are done and it now looks as it did when it was dedicated in 1915.
• State Attorney General Bill McCollum will be in town next Thursday for the grand opening of the Jacksonville Child Predator CyberCrime Unit. The newly-expanded office is in the Riverplace Tower.
• Gander Mountain will open its 110th sporting goods store in the country Friday at the corner of I-95 and Duval Road. The festivities start at 8 a.m. and include coffee, donuts and a ribbon cutting.
• The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville is bringing back Sunday ArtFusion. ArtFusion is a free Sunday afternoon program for families and it is held every Sunday from Noon-4 p.m. ArtFusion began last Sunday and runs through Dec. 16. Admission to the museum is free to families on Sundays courtesy of Bank of America.
• Sometime Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning someone showed their displeasure with the City Council’s decision to approve new fees. Near the Laura Street entrance to City Hall they wrote, “To bad stone doesn’t burn.”
• The McCormick Agency has added Kelly White to its staff as an account executive. White was formerly a news producer with Ch. 30/47. She’s a University of North Florida graduate.
• AM-930 has been running a big contest the past two weeks and the winner will get to attend both the Florida State-Alabama and Florida-Auburn games Saturday courtesy of Craig Air Center and limo rides to and from the game. Making both games will be tricky after the announcement that FSU and Bama play at 5 while the Gators kick off at 8. Host David Lamm said the station will allow the contest winner to dictate when they leave the Florida State game to head to Gainesville, which is a 19-minute flight from Craig Airport.
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida executive Mike Hightower will be the 2009 chair of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce. He’ll succeed Miller Electric’s Ron Autrey.
• Danis has been selected as the construction manager for the new duPont Trusts’s home office building for The Nemours Foundation. The new, three-story building is on Riverside Avenue and will be done in July of next year.
• Speaking of the duPont family, Mary Lynn Huntley has been selected by trustees of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to serve as a trustee. Huntley, president of the Southern Education Foundation, Inc. in Atlanta, begins a five-year term Jan. 1. Huntley fills the vacancy created when Robert Franklin resigned in June to become president of Morehouse College in Atlanta.
• Downtown Vision, Inc. will celebrate its seventh anniversary with a party next Thursday at The Strand. Things get underway at 5:30.
“Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche