by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Like a thick fog dissipating, the fresh and clear air of an ideal change seems to slowly be creeping into the minds of business executives around the country – and North Florida stands to benefit.
Cornerstone Executive Director Jerry Mallot gave members of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Downtown Council that potential good news as well as other news and notes during the organization’s bimonthly meeting last month at the Aetna Building.
As leader of the Cornerstone – the Chamber’s economic development arm – and at the forefront of luring business to the area, Mallot’s discussions have both shifted in tone and direction over the course of a year. He’s considered the area’s top person in recruiting outside businesses that bring people, and the new people need homes.
“The last two to three months, I’m finding there’s been a directional change,” said Mallot, referring to discussions with business clients regarding the economy. “It’s gone from ‘Oh, my God, where are we going to be next?’ to planning for the future ... there’s been great fear and uncertainty, but we’ve reached a new point.”
While he said he does expect unemployment numbers to dip a bit further due to staggering, business officials are “feeling better” about the future and have better, less-bleak attitudes about the economic future.
“It (the attitude) is one where the recovery begins,” added Mallot.
Mallot noted that Cornerstone officials are currently in talks with 45 different clients – with around 71 percent being new to the region, 20 percent as expansion and 9 percent as retention projects – but that along with the shift in attitude of business executives comes an approach shift in the way Mallot and his team go about business pursuit.
“It’s time to get aggressive,” said Mallot, with enthusiasm.
While the future is looking brighter, he also stressed the importance of the projects that have affected Jacksonville within the past five years – even during a recession.
“We’ve had a lot of very good things happen here,” he said. “When we’re in a recession, we kind of forget all the good things.”
Such new achievements, he said, included an influx of headquarters relocating like Fidelity National and Rail America; the lack of wide-scale job loss in the city’s financial sector (“We’re within 100 jobs of what we were a year ago”) and the burgeoning logistics and distribution industries, are all positive developments that help lessen the negativity of a recession.
In addition, Mallot alluded to another potential company coming to Jacksonville when discussing automobile parts distribution plants like Volvo and Volkswagen.
“There might be another one in our future,” he hinted.