Two major companies — Sam’s East and Vistakon — are considering significant Jacksonville expansions.
Sam’s East Inc., which is part of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Sam’s Clubs, is shown on permitting plans as a potential 129,665-square-foot tenant for a North Jacksonville warehouse.
Vistakon, the Jacksonville-based division of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., is working toward a distribution center expansion of 104,227 square feet at its Southside campus.
Sam’s East
The City is reviewing a permit for The Conlan Co. to construct office space, a truckers’ lounge and a dock office within Building 1 at Alta Lakes Commerce Center in North Jacksonville.
The center, off of the Interstate 295 East Beltway and Faye Road, consists of four buildings.
Plans show Sam’s East Inc. as the tenant in one of them, which has been vacant. Sam’s Clubs is the warehouse-club segment of retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The office-lounge build-out shows a construction cost of $1.1 million. The address is 2550 Cabot Commerce Drive.
The property ownership group is shown as Cabot II-FL3L01 LLC, based in Boston. J.J. Conners was part of the original development team on the project and is working with Cabot through his current company, Chestnut Hill Investments LLC.
Conners said there is no signed lease yet.
He also said Sam’s East is represented by the Atlanta office of Colliers International and Alta Lakes Commerce Center is represented by Grubb & Ellis Phoenix Realty Group of Jacksonville.
As of July, Sam’s Club operated 613 clubs in the United States and Puerto Rico. It employs more than 100,000 people and averages 175 per club.
It reports 47 million Sam’s Club members.
According to Wal-Mart’s annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Sam’s Club business segment was supported by 25 distribution facilities across the country as of Jan. 31.
Of those, the company owned and operated eight. Third parties owned and operated the remaining 17 distribution facilities.
The filing said the principal focus of the Sam’s Club’s distribution operations is on cross-docking merchandise, a distribution process under which shipments are directly transferred from inbound to outbound trailers. Shipments typically spend less than 24 hours in a cross-dock facility, sometimes less than an hour. That minimizes stored inventory.
Florida is a big market for Sam’s Clubs. For the 2012 fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, the company had 611 Sam’s Clubs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Of those, Texas had the most, at 73, followed by Florida, at 44, and California, at 33.
Vistakon
Vistakon proposes to expand its Southside distribution center by almost 105,000 square feet, according to the company and plans filed with the City and the St. Johns River Water Management District.
Vistakon operates a 661,174 square-foot facility in Deerwood Park where it makes the ACUVUE brand of disposable contact lenses as part of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc.
Spokeswoman Betsy McNiel, manager of global communications and PR for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, said Monday the company has asked the City to review proposed expansion plans for the Jacksonville distribution facility.
“The additional space will be used to meet growing capacity requirements,” she said.
The company has about 1,800 employees in Jacksonville. “No significant increase in hiring is expected for the distribution center,” McNiel said.
The Jacksonville campus consists of office, research, laboratory, manufacturing and distribution areas.
Another state-of-art manufacturing facility is in Limerick, Ireland.
The expansion boosts its presence in Jacksonville on the 68.87-acre complex at 7500 Centurion Parkway.
The project engineer is ETM and the architect is RS&H.
The JNJvisioncare.com website outlines Vistakon’s history.
According to the history, what ultimately became known as ACUVUE Brand Contact Lenses were first manufactured at Frontier Contact Lens Company in Buffalo, N.Y., in the 1950s.
As Frontier grew, it opened a branch in Jacksonville and was headed by Seymour Marco, an optometrist with significant experience fitting what were then hard contact lenses.
The site said that after a few years, Marco bought out Frontier’s owners and grew the business dramatically.
“During the 1970s, Marco developed a new hydrogel material, etafilcon A, and Frontier began making soft contact lenses. In 1981, his health failing, Marco sold Frontier to Johnson & Johnson,” it said.
Johnson & Johnson renamed the company Vistakon, acquiring “an exceedingly manual manufacturing process.”
Vistakon then implemented “a major overhaul in its production lines, facilities and staff,” creating a new method that allowed Vistakon to increase production from 100,000 contact lenses a day to 1 million lenses a day.
In 1987, it launched ACUVUE, the first seven-day extended wear disposable contact lens.
Production and products continued to evolve and today the company makes millions of lenses daily. According to the website, the production process has been “miniaturized and nearly fully automated, with advanced robotic technologies that enable more lenses to be produced more quickly.”
Global Axcess appoints new CEO
Jacksonville-based Global Axcess Corp., an independent provider of self-service automated teller machine and DVD Kiosk networks, said Monday that Kevin Reager was appointed president, chief executive officer and director effective today. He replaces Lock Ireland, who will remain on the board of directors.
Unemployment rate rising
Duval County’s unemployment rate, adjusted for seasonal factors, rose to 9.4 percent in July from 8.81 percent in June but was down from 10.85 percent in July 2011.
The state reported unemployment numbers Friday. University of North Florida economics professor Paul Mason adjusted those numbers for seasonal changes.
The state reported that Duval’s rate rose to 9.7 percent in July from 9.3 percent in June, but was down from 11.5 percent in July 2011.
According to the state, Duval County’s labor force stayed relatively stable over the month, falling slightly to 453,038 in July. While down by 110 over the month, it was up 1,705 over the year.
Employment, however, fell by 1,835 over the month and the number of unemployed people rose by 1,725.
Still, the numbers were stronger than the year before. The number of employed people rose by 6,919 over the year while the number of unemployed fell by 8,624.
Duval is the largest job market within the metropolitan statistical area of Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
In July, Duval’s employment comprised 65 percent of the five-county total of 700,512.
Mason found that rates in the MSA rose as well.
Mason said the adjusted unemployment rate for the metropolitan statistical area rose to 8.5 percent in July from 8.05 percent in June, but the rate was down from 9.92 percent in July 2011.
The unadjusted rates showed similar trends: The rates were 9 percent in July, 8.6 percent in June and 10.7 percent in July 2011.
“Clearly, unemployment got worse throughout the MSA and in Duval, but at a faster rate in Duval,” Mason said.
He said the drop in the number of employed people “suggested discouraged workers who may be largely students who gave up looking for summer jobs, but it may not.”
Putting the rates in another context, Duval County’s unadjusted rate of 9.7 percent ranked the county No. 31 in the state for July. Hendry County had the highest rate at 16.1 percent.
While the metro area consists of five counties, the larger First Coast marketing area includes Flagler and Putnam counties.
Flagler County had the second-highest unemployment rate in the state in July, at 12.7 percent. Putnam was No. 5 at 11.8 percent.
Clay was No. 50 at 8.1 percent, while Nassau was No. 52 at 8 percent and Baker was No. 53 at 7.9 percent.
The lowest rate in the First Coast was St. Johns County, which was No. 63 at 7.1 percent.
The best rate among the state’s 67 counties was Monroe at 5.3 percent.
Walmart markets on the way
We reported last week that the City is continuing to review plans for a possible Walmart Neighborhood Market at 1650 San Pablo Road, and today we report that it also is continuing to review more detailed site-development plans for markets at 8011 Merrill Road and at 10550 Old St. Augustine Road.
Gatlin Development Co. Inc. of Fort Lauderdale is shown as the developer for the Merrill Road store in Arlington and the Old St. Augustine Road store in Mandarin.
Both sites are former Food Lion stores, as is the San Pablo location.
The Merrill Road market is shown as 38,466 square feet on the 8.4-acre site. The Old St. Augustine Road store is shown as 38,640 square feet on the 10.58-acre site.
Meanwhile, the San Pablo store is shown as 49,433 square feet. Plans for that project indicate Wal-Mart Stores East L.P. as the developer. Joseph Maguire, president of the property owner, said there is no deal yet with Wal-Mart.
CPH Engineers Inc. is shown as the engineer for all three market locations.
Family Dollar plans
Another chain that continues expanding is Family Dollar. A building permit is pending for a Family Dollar store at 4302 Moncrief Road in Northwest Jacksonville. The permit application shows an 8,310-square-foot store with a construction cost of $350,000. HJ Construction Inc. of Charleston, S.C., is shown as the contractor.
San Jose road work
Road work is starting on San Jose Boulevard from Interstate 295 south to Claire Lane.
The Florida Department of Transportation will hold a public information meeting about it from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday at the South Mandarin Regional Library.
Topics include changes in traffic patterns, improvements to the ramps at I-295 and San Jose Boulevard, additional turn lanes, traffic signal modifications, median opening changes and constructing additional sidewalks, the department said.
Construction should take about a year, it said. For information, call the department’s public information office at 360-5457.
Dunkin’ Donuts on Sunbeam
The City issued a permit for Oakwell Companies LLC to remodel the Lubi’s restaurant at 3930 Sunbeam Road into a Dunkin’ Donuts. The project cost is $150,000.
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