City Council President Scott Wilson filed legislation Friday on behalf of Mayor Lenny Curry for financial incentives to support the code-named Project Quail.
City officials say the unnamed financial services company is considering creating 300 full-time jobs in Jacksonville.
Resolution 2019-491 would allow Quail to qualify for the state’s Qualified Targeted Industry Tax Refund program providing the company $1.5 million in state and city-backed incentives.
The city’s portion of the QTI refund would be no more than $300,000 — $1,000 per job or 20% of the overall award. The refund from the state would total $1.2 million. The combined state and city QTI refund would be $5,000 per job.
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity would verify the jobs were created and wages paid before the refund is distributed starting in 2022.
Officials from the Office of Economic Development ask council to approve the deal.
According to OED, Quail is a web-based financial services company that offers personal loan products. It is considering locating a Southeast Operations Center in Jacksonville.
OED Director Kirk Wendland said the company is looking at “a few” other southeastern cities for the project. A location for Quail’s office has not been identified, but the company would make a capital investment of $5.5 million, including real estate improvements, IT equipment, furniture and fixtures.
Wendland said the average wage would be $54,941 per year plus benefits. Quail will have an annual payroll of $16.4 million.
Council will hold its first reading of the legislation at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall during the first full council meeting of the 2019-20 session. The incentive deal will then go before the council Finance Committee before final consideration.
A bill has not been filed for a second code-named project at OED that would create 20 full-time jobs in Jacksonville by the end of 2021.
Project Pelican is an unnamed international IT software company that works with most of the world’s largest financial institutions and has offices in 18 countries, according to OED.
Pelican is considering Jacksonville for an office to handle software support and cloud-based platform management positions. According to the project summary, these jobs traditionally are established in the company’s New York or India offices.
The Mayor’s Budget Review Committee gave OED officials its approval July 8 to file legislation supporting both project Quail and Pelican.
Pelican is asking for $100,000 in QTI refunds, $5,000 per job. The city would pay up to $20,000 for Pelican and $80,000 would come from the state.
Average pay would be $58,978 and Pelican would create an annual payroll in Jacksonville of $1.1 million.
The IT software company proposes investing $110,000 in real estate improvement, IT equipment, furniture and fixtures.