• Michelle Kalil Taylor, formerly with the Public Defender’s Office Fourth Judicial Circuit, has opened the Law Offices of Michelle Kalil Taylor in San Marco. She is specializing in all areas of criminal defense.
• The numbers are in. About 800 people attended the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce annual meeting Tuesday at the Florida Theatre.
• U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a speaker at the chamber’s annual meeting, said that he and U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw have a long friendship. Nelson said that when he married Grace Cavert of Jacksonville in 1972, Crenshaw and his wife, Kitty, were in the wedding party.
• Nelson provided another personal link to the area and specifically to incoming chamber Chair Hugh Greene, CEO of Baptist Health, whose system includes Wolfson Children’s Hospital. Nelson’s wife is the daughter of Ellen Cavert, who formed The Women’s Board of Wolfson Children’s Hospital in 1973 when one of her twin granddaughters died following a premature birth. Cavert and 40 friends decided to raise funds for continued improvement at Wolfson. Nelson says Greene is a personal friend.
• The Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida added Virginia Holland as its new community planner. Since moving to Jacksonville in 2008, Holland has worked as the project coordinator for Duval County’s adolescent suicide awareness and prevention project and research study with Daniel Memorial and the University of South Florida.
• Duval County Public Schools’ new $69.5 million Atlantic Coast High School, designed by SchenkelShultz Architecture in conjunction with its design-build construction partner, W.G. Mills Inc., was named “The Southeast’s Best K-12 Education Project” at the “Best of 2010 Awards” by Southeast Construction magazine.
• The Haskell Co. completed a $23 million Armed Forces Reserve Center in Muskogee, Okla. that will be designated a LEED Silver Certified project by the U.S. Green Building Council. The 97,000-square-foot reserve center includes training areas, a drill floor, arms vaults, administrative areas, a kitchen and classrooms, all to house more than 450 National Guard members and Army Reserve soldiers.