• The work is under way already. Jerry Mallot, president of the Cornerstone Regional Development Partnership of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce, will work with the Northeast Florida Regional Council to administer a $200,000 grant from the Economic Development Administration for a targeted industry submarket study and implementation plan. The study will identify the region’s growth industries and develop steps needed for sustainable job creation. The process to select a firm to conduct the study is under way and the study completion will take a year.
• Spring starts Sunday. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the spring equinox is 7:21 p.m. March 20.
• For those planning ahead, the summer solstice is 1:16 p.m. June 21. The fall equinox is 5:05 a.m. Sept. 23. The winter solstice is 12:30 a.m. Dec. 22.
• Mya Surrency was promoted from senior director of marketing to vice president of tourism marketing and development at Visit Jacksonville. It’s part of President and CEO Daniel O’Byrne’s reorganization of the City’s tourism arm. Visit Jacksonville will consolidate its efforts in two categories: tourism marketing, focusing on the individual, leisure visitor market; and destination sales, focusing on group meetings and conventions. Surrency had also served as interim president and CEO from March until O’Byrne joined in November.
• The Jacksonville Economic Development Commission sent a notice that a special meeting for next week has been canceled. “The company for which we were calling a special JEDC meeting on March 24 has asked for more time to evaluate our local proposal before moving forward with the public process,” it said. “As such, we need to cancel the meeting.” The next regularly scheduled meeting is 9 a.m. April 14.
• Gov. Rick Scott launched the www.FloridaHasARightToKnow.com website to provide access to state employee salary information; contract records, including approved, denied and “under review” contracts; information on rulemaking status and procedures; annualized retirement benefit calculations of $100,000 and more for state and local employees (the personal information is redacted); and links to more government resources.
• The Northeast Florida Association of Realtors said single-family and condo sales rose almost 13 percent in February over the year before to 1,156. Lender-mediated sales accounted for 60 percent of the sales while traditional sales were 40 percent. The median sales price for traditional sales rose almost 2 percent to $165,000 while the lender-mediated price fell 24.2 percent to $82,900.
• Mayo Clinic and St. Andrew’s Lighthouse Inc. announced the official opening of the 30-room Gabriel House of Care along Worrall Way on the clinic’s Jacksonville campus. There’s a public open house 4-7 p.m. today. The facility provides extended-stay housing for visiting transplant and cancer patients and their families who must remain in town for long periods to receive specialized medical treatment.
• Flagler relocated its Jacksonville office from the Deerwood South office park to the Deerwood North office park at 4601 Touchton Road E. near the St. Johns Town Center. Deerwood North is one of seven business parks owned by Flagler in Northeast Florida and consists of about 500,000 square feet of office space. Flagler is using more than 14,000 square feet of space for its offices.
• First Florida Credit Union’s Southpoint branch recently hosted a “Mad City Money Workshop,” in which teens from the Jacksonville area learned how to budget a household income, balance a checkbook and establish a savings plan. Students learned how to purchase food, clothing, transportation and other necessities. “It’s always exciting when you can assist in teaching our youth valuable lessons in a fun way that they will remember” said First Florida Credit Union Senior Vice President, Michelle Troha. First Florida has held 14 workshops reaching more than 1,000 teens in Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Orlando and Miami.