March 28, 2024

Northeast: Opportunity Epicenter

Pro-business attitudes and easy lifestyle prompt decisions to relocate and grow.

JACKSONVILLE/DUVAL COUNTY

A winning combination: Duval is the largest county in Florida’s Northeast region, and its primary city, Jacksonville, is an epicenter of economic activity largely due to its winning combination of a business friendly environment and affordable big city living.

With the costs of housing and utilities well under the national average and significantly lower than other Southern cities such as Atlanta, Charleston, Raleigh, Charlotte and Montgomery, Jacksonville remains an affordable place to live, work and play.

In fact, on a list of 20 super cities (population 500,000 and above) where young professionals want to live and work, Jacksonville ranked No. 15, eclipsing the likes of Los Angeles, San Diego and Houston. Published by Next Generation Consulting, the list rates cities based on assets that are important to 20- to 40-year-olds, including earning, learning, vitality, cost of lifestyle, evening entertainment and social capital.

Expanding in place: Boeing — which has had a presence at Cecil Field in Duval County for 10 years with a facility for modernizing the inner workings of its planes — is expanding in place and hiring 60 additional workers. The expansion comes as Boeing moves its structural repair facility from Mesa, Ariz., to Cecil Field. The Mesa facility was charged with repairing aircraft flight surfaces (skins and wings). At Cecil Field, Boeing employees will now work on both the insides and outsides of F-18 Hornets and Super Hornets.

“We wanted a one-stop shop,” says Boeing executive Brad Mudd, “and Cecil Field made sense. We needed room to grow and we wanted to be closer to our customer, Naval Air Station Jacksonville.”

Sixty new specialized skill jobs (average annual salary approximately $50,000) will be created with this expansion, and Boeing hopes to tap into the retired military population in Northeast Florida to fill them.

The physical size of the facility will grow, too — from approximately 500,000 to 610,000 square feet — in order to accommodate additional shop and warehouse space. Boeing also plans to add 16 airplane hangar bays.

Photo of troops at Naval Station Mayport
Troops from Canada, Chile, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay take part in an amphibious training exercise on the beach at Naval Station Mayport in northeast Florida. [ U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Seth Johnson]

Elsewhere in Jacksonville

  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has opened a satellite office in Jacksonville, adding 525 new jobs. From this facility, FDIC will manage receiverships and liquidate assets from failed financial institutions.
  • Pilot Pen Corporation of America, a division of Tokyo-based Pilot Corporation and 3rd largest writing instrument company in the U.S., has moved its headquarters from Trumbull, Conn., to Jacksonville, creating 66 positions in the process. The company spent $4.5 million to expand an existing building by 50,000 square feet.
  • Hanjin Shipping Company of Seoul, South Korea, will build a 90-acre container facility at the Port of Jacksonville’s Dames Point Marine Terminal. The $300-million project is expected to be completed in time for the Asian liner to begin calling at JAXPORT by summer 2013.
  • New distribution centers under construction or recently completed in Duval include Dr. Pepper/Cadbury Schweppes, ICS Logistics and Georgia Pacific.

Strong military tradition: With 25,245 jobs at Naval Air Station Jacksonville and another 10,000 jobs at Naval Station Mayport, the U.S. Navy is the largest employer in the greater Jacksonville area. And if the Navy’s choice of Jacksonville as the future homeport of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier holds, the number of jobs at Mayport could increase by 3,000.

Healthcare hub: Four major health systems give Jacksonville not only high-quality medical care but also the largest professional employment base in the city. Baptist Health System, which includes Baptist Medical Center downtown, Wolfson Children’s Hospital and three outlying medical centers, employs nearly 5,600. At Mayo Clinic, some 5,000 employees serve approximately 2,000 patients per day, and the staffs at St. Vincent’s Medical Center and Shands Jacksonville number 3,796 and 3,500, respectively. The University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute at Shands is one of only five facilities in the U.S. devoted to this type of cancer treatment.

At more than 840 square miles, Jacksonville is the largest city in the continental United States.

Tags: Northeast, Business Florida

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