Northeast Florida

ECONOMIC LIFE

Aviation
• Northrup Grumman Corporation will open an "Aircraft Integration Center of Excellence" in St. Augustine, generating 400 new jobs and a capital investment of $80 million.

• Flightstar Aircraft Services is expanding its aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul operations at Cecil Airport with a new 150,000-sq.-ft. hangar and the addition of 300 permanent jobs and 100 contractors.

• Embraer has opened a 40,000-sq.-ft. assembly facility at Jacksonville International Airport to build 20 of its A-29 Super Tucano aircraft for the U.S. Air Force in partnership with Sierra Nevada Corporation. The expansion represents Embraer’s first U.S. military contract and 50 new jobs.

Financial/Business Services
Forbes ranked Jacksonville No. 5 on its 2013 list of "Cities Winning Finance Jobs from Wall Street," citing the region’s 11% growth in finance jobs between 2009 and 2012.

The sector continues to grow:

• Deutsche Bank is expanding its Jacksonville footprint with an infusion of $10 million in capital and 300 jobs over the next three years. Since 2008, Deutsche Bank has created more than 1,000 jobs in Northeast Florida.

• Bank of America will expand operations at two southside Jacksonville campuses to accommodate multiple lines of businesses and create at least 200 new full-time jobs by December 2015.

• Alorica, a leading provider of customer management outsourcing solutions, is adding 200 new employees — mostly inbound customer service representatives — at its Palatka facility.

Healthcare
Approximately 20% of Northeast Florida’s workforce is employed in the healthcare sector. Recent developments:

• UF Health Jacksonville, formerly Shands Jacksonville, is constructing a six-story, 210,000-sq.-ft. medical office complex in north Jacksonville with an opening date of early 2015. The $60-million facility will offer imaging services, emergency and urgent care and office space for University of Florida faculty and community physicians.

• Wound-care management services company Healogics, which relocated its corporate headquarters to Jacksonville in 2012, has already expanded by another 10,000 square feet. The company manages 500 wound-care centers throughout the U.S. and brings approximately 150 physicians and other medical personnel to Jacksonville for training monthly.

• Vistakon, a division of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, plans to spend $12 million on expansion at its Jacksonville campus. The firm, which makes Accuvue® disposable contact lenses, has 4,100 employees worldwide, including 1,800 in Jacksonville.

Logistics/Distribution
Across Northeast Florida, approximately 40,000 are employed in distribution-related jobs. Advantages here include:

• Two deepwater ports — Fernandina and Jacksonville. In 2012, a record 8.2 million tons of cargo, including 923,660 containers, passed through JaxPort. In 2013, Bradford, Putnam and St. Johns counties were added to the Foreign Trade Zone based here.

• Multiple airports, including Jacksonville International Airport, offering daily non-stop service to 27 destinations.

• CSX, Norfolk Southern and RailAmerica, providing rail service to a potential 45 million customers within eight hours.

• Three interstates — I-95, I-295 and I-10 — intersect at Jacksonville; I-75 is just 60 miles away.

Tags: Business Florida