from staff
CSX Corp. is celebrating 50 years of a corporate headquarters presence in Jacksonville with events and, most visible to the public, a new sign on its riverfront building Downtown.
Spokesman Gary Sease said hundreds of employees attended an anniversary event Saturday night, capped by a countdown for Chair Michael Ward to throw the switch to illuminate the new sign about 8:30 p.m.
In 1960, on the day after Independence Day, 960 new residents began to arrive in Jacksonville from Wilmington, N.C., to work in the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad’s new headquarters.
Through mergers, the Jacksonville operation became CSX Transportation. In 2003, CSX Corp. moved its headquarters to town.
CSX employs 30,000 people, including 3,500 in Jacksonville. With annual revenues of $9 billion, CSX ranked No. 259 on the 2010 list of Fortune magazine’s 500 largest companies and is the largest Fortune 500 company based in Jacksonville.
Recently, the three large “CSX” letters on the building’s penthouse were removed and replaced with the company’s new logo and its slogan, “How tomorrow moves.”
The new design will appear black during the daylight hours and will be backlit at night with white LEDs. The current lighting system will be modified to cast a “track” on the building under the new logo at night.