SHARE:
Northeast Florida
Northeast counties internet service coalition frays
JACKSONVILLE — EverBank sold its $13.4 billion in mortgage service rights and its service platform to Green Tree. Green Tree will also subservice EverBank’s Ginnie Mae and government loan servicing portfolio with an unpaid balance of $6.9 billion. Green Tree will hire at least 500 employees as part of the deal and plans to take over three of the bank’s Floors in the EverBank Center in downtown Jacksonville. California-based Clean Energy Fuels will build a natural gas processing and fueling terminal in north Jacksonville. It is the first plant on the Eastern seaboard focused on supplying the transportation industry. Odyssey Investment Partners sold Jacksonvillebased One Call Care Management to private equity fund Apax Partners in what Reuters news agency reported as a $2-billion deal. One Call provides cost-containment services in the workers’ compensation industry.
>> Despite a setback in Congress, the Jacksonville Port Authority has agreed to pay $5 million for preliminary engineering and design work for dredging its channel from its current 40-foot depth down to 47 feet.
>> Jacksonville-based APR Energy will buy General Electric’s power rental business in a $314-million deal. Called GE Power & Water, the unit provides temporary power generation through mobile gas turbines. Jacksonville-based Rayonier has sold more than 21,000 acres of timberland in Georgia to Conservation Forestry.
>> Coryell-Ouachita Group of Jacksonville has partnered with Decisive Explorer, a company backed by an investment from a royal Malaysian family,to develop and acquire leases for offshore oil fields in Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.
>> AmeriHealth Caritas is planning a call center in the Baymeadows area, bringing anywhere from 300 to 400 jobs.
MARION — The city of Dunnellon voted to sell Greenlight Communications, its fiber-optic business, to Florida Cable for $1 million.
OCALA — The Ocala City Council will ask the county to place a referendum before voters in March to pay for a five-year, half-cent sales tax to build a $60-million stadium for a Yankees minor league team. >> ProFab Plastics, which makes and assembles plastics and medical components, will move its headquarters to Ocala from Wisconsin. It plans to bring about 60 jobs. >> Call center company Sitel plans to hire 250.
SUWANNEE COUNTY — The county rejected a proposal by Integrated Waste Management Systems to build a medical waste incinerator.
PROFILE - Avondale Travel
The arrival of the internet in the late 1990s nearly rendered travel agencies extinct. Why call a travel agent when you can book a flight, hotel room and rental car online in less than five minutes with no fees? Not only has Leigh Bryan taken over her father’s travel agency, Avondale Travel (formerly Orange Park Travel) in Orange Park, but she has seen sales grow 30% in the last year — by focusing on affluent clients.
Her agency is a member of concierge travel agency network Virtuoso, which offers partnerships with vendors and suppliers to get clients “added benefits and amenities they can’t find anywhere else,” Bryan says. “If they dream of something they think would be cool — a private tour of the Vatican, World Cup tickets that are sold out, we can do it,” she says.
Players
Kirk Wendland is director of business development for Stellar, a design-build and engineering firm. He had been president of the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce. >> Kathy Viehe is the head of Gainesville Regional Utilities. Viehe was the interim general manager and will replace Bob Hunzinger.
