Citing a cost differential between operating in Downtown Jacksonville versus a suburban office campus, EverBank is seeking $10 million in taxpayer funding from the city of Jacksonville to remain in its corporate headquarters on the Northbank.
City and bank officials presented the proposal at the Feb. 9 meeting of the City Council Special Committee on the Future of Downtown, where it prompted discussion about the effect that losing EverBank and its 800 employees in the EverBank Center at 301 W. Bay St. would have on Downtown revitalization.
The issue arises amid planned moves out of Downtown by Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the Duval County School District and Regency Centers. In the third quarter of 2025, Jacksonville industry market reports show Downtown vacancy rates of 28.1% to 28.8%.
Saying Downtown is at a “critical moment” with several public and private projects coming online, Downtown Investment Authority CEO Colin Tarbert said he worried that having another large employer uproot to the suburbs would hurt the momentum.
“It’s absolutely a step in the wrong direction, and I’m just not sure how far it will move us back,” he said.
Committee members and city officials said they were concerned that the incentives would set a precedent that would prompt other employers to seek city assistance to stay Downtown.
“I just worry that other people are going to come asking for the same thing,” member Raul Arias said.
“If I was in an office space Downtown … I’d say, ‘Hey I’m going to relocate too. What can you offer me?’”
Member Matt Carlucci said he could accept the incentive but requested a review at five years to determine whether it was still necessary. By then, he said, he believed Downtown redevelopment will have reached a point at which it will attract and retain employers without public assistance.
“This city has got really great momentum going, and we don’t want this hiccup to trip us up,” he said.
EverBank responds
Michael Cosgrove, EverBank senior vice president of corporate communications, said in a Feb. 9 statement after the committee meeting that the bank was “committed to keeping our corporate headquarters in downtown Jacksonville” but had “made no decisions yet about our future headquarters location in Jacksonville.”
The statement said EverBank put “considerable energy and investment” into Downtown and had been “discouraged watching other downtowns, like Charlotte, flourish in recent years while businesses here have abandoned Jacksonville’s core.”
Cosgrove said the economic and social vitality of Jacksonville was important to EverBank, which has remained Downtown “because we love and believe in our hometown.” He said talks between the bank and city “are ongoing and positive.”
“We’re especially pleased that everyone is focused on one common goal: creating a vibrant and economically thriving downtown Jacksonville,” he said. “One thing is certain: As we move ahead, we look forward to growing our company here and supporting the Jacksonville community.”
‘Cost avoidance’
Attorney Steve Diebenow, a representative of EverBank, told committee members that bank executives approached Mayor Donna Deegan’s office about the incentives in 2025 as they prepared to renew the corporation’s 10-year lease.
Miami-based Amkin West LLC owns the building. It bought it in 2014 for $47.4 million.
Diebenow, of Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow, said EverBank determined that the annual cost of operating Downtown is $1.4 million higher than in a suburban commercial property. Parking and security costs are part of the differential, he said.
Diebenow and city Chief Administrative Officer Mike Weinstein said that after the initial meeting, EverBank and the city negotiated an agreement in which the city would provide $10 million over 10 years to offset the extra costs of operating Downtown.
Under a proposal being prepared for the DIA’s Feb. 18 board meeting, the funding would be drawn from the city’s general fund.
Asked for specifics on the cost differential, Diebenow said EverBank employs seven security guards for its Downtown headquarters. In an access-controlled suburban office campus, he said, the bank would likely pay only for one security guard to operate at an entry gate. That cost would likely be split between the bank and other tenants at the campus, he said.
He said a move would provide “cost avoidance” for EverBank operating Downtown. The incentives would offset a portion of the cost differential.
“Rather than just leaving, EverBank has come to the city and given us an opportunity to talk about it,” he said.
Diebenow said the homeless population Downtown was not one of EverBank’s considerations in exploring a possible move. Citizens cited security issues involving homeless individuals in its move, but Diebenow said initiatives undertaken by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in recent years “have made a world of difference.”
“That is not part of this conversation from EverBank’s standpoint,” he said of the homeless.
Maintaining momentum
Weinstein said the Deegan administration did not like the incentives, but felt they were necessary “to protect all the other things we’re doing” Downtown.
“We’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into Downtown, and we didn’t feel we could turn our backs,” he said.
Weinstein said that in five years, such assistance wouldn’t be necessary to keep employers Downtown.
“But until things change, we have to play this game,” he said.
Diebenow said EverBank occupies about 170,000 square feet of the Bay Street tower. He said he did not know how many of the 800 employees who are stationed there work on a hybrid basis.
In the latest Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data, issued in October 2025, EverBank ranked second in deposits in the Jacksonville metropolitan area with $29.1 billion, or 24.5% of the market.
Bank of America ranked No. 1 with deposits of $63.1 billion, or 53.2% of all deposits in the market.
Differing opinions
Council Vice President Nick Howland said he was “highly unlikely” to approve tax funding to keep the bank in place, calling it a bad precedent.
He said he also found the request troubling in that EverBank should be benefiting from such city-funded improvements as Riverfront Plaza park, the refurbished Friendship Fountain on the Southbank, the proposed Music Heritage Park near the Performing Arts Center and the University of Florida graduate campus planned in LaVilla.
Council member Jimmy Peluso, whose District 7 includes the Downtown Northbank, said Council had approved similar incentives to keep businesses Downtown, including $4.25 million to Haskell in December 2024 to relocate from the Northbank to the Southbank.
He said the city’s $1.45 billion stadium deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars, which included $775 million in public funding, could also be considered an example of the city providing tax funding for a business not to relocate.
“I too am a little upset that we have to do this, but it’s certainly well within the policy decisions we’ve made for our Downtown,” he said.
If the DIA board approves the incentives, Council would have final approval authority.
Council members urged Tarbert to research companies whose leases are coming up for renewal and speak to them.
Other moves
Citizens, which moved more than 1,000 employees into the EverBank building in 2015, planned to start relocating its offices in January to the former Florida Coastal School of Law building at 8787 Baypine Road in Baymeadows, completing the move in June.
In a failed attempt to persuade Citizens to remain Downtown, the DIA approved parking discounts for its employees in the city-owned Water Street garage.
In November 2025, the school board voted to sell the district’s Southbank headquarters and purchase a building at 8928 Prominence Parkway in Baymeadows. About 600 district employees work in the central offices, according to district documents related to the sale proposal.
In August 2025, Jacksonville-based Regency Centers announced it will relocate its headquarters from Downtown to The Village at Seven Pines, its retail development at southeast Butler Boulevard and Interstate 295. A statement from the city indicated the move will be in 2028. Regency Centers has 260 employees Downtown.
Not all Downtown movements have been exits. On Feb. 2, JWB Real Estate Capital moved its headquarters into The Greenleaf at Laura and Adams streets, which the company revived through a $7 million adaptive reuse. The company’s 120 employees were previously headquartered at 7563 Philips Highway in Deerwood Center in the Southside.
EverBank and Jacksonville
The EverBank building opened in 1983 as the Southern Bell Telephone Building.
In 2006, EverBank moved its headquarters to 501 Riverside Ave. in Downtown’s Brooklyn district, with its chairman and CEO at the time saying the move was “an important part of our ongoing commitment to the local area and evidence of our core strategic plan to grow our Florida and Southeastern banking business.”
In 2010, EverBank signed a five-year agreement for naming rights to the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars’ stadium, which was named EverBank Field. Two years later, the bank became a publicly traded company.
EverBank Financial Corp. became the Bay Street building’s anchor tenant in 2012 and put its name at the top of what became EverBank Center.
TIAA Bank acquired EverBank in 2017 and announced a year later that it would keep the TIAA Bank name. Also that year, New York City-based TIAA replaced the EverBank signage on the Bay Street building, and the Jaguars’ stadium was renamed TIAA Bank Field.
In November 2022, TIAA sold EverBank to a group of investment funds to focus on its retirement and asset management business and said the bank would be renamed.
In mid-2023, the Downtown Development Review Board approved an exception to allow EverBank signage to be installed on the building.
In August of that year, the Jaguars stadium was named EverBank Stadium.