An incentive deal struck by Mayor Donna Deegan and EverBank to stop the company from leaving downtown will face a tougher path in City Council after the Downtown Investment Authority rejected the proposal.
The 7-2 vote by the panel in charge of downtown development isn’t the final word but it does send a message to City Council members who would decide on awarding $9.8 million in incentives over a 10-year period for EverBank to keep at least 800 employees in downtown.
“As one of the largest employers, we still want EverBank to remain downtown,” city spokesman Phillip Perry said Feb. 19. “We are waiting to hear back on how they would like to move forward after the DIA board vote yesterday.”
EverBank executives met with Deegan about six months ago to give her a heads-up they were considering a move to the suburbs. That meeting sparked negotiations on incentives that would tip EverBank in favor of staying in the 32-story office tower that bears the bank’s name.
Mike Weinstein, chief financial officer for the city, told the DIA board at its Feb. 18 meeting the retention grant for EverBank is “the right choice at this particular time with this particular employer.”
He said the city must “do what we can within reason” to avoid further deterioration in the downtown office market, which would go above 30% if EverBank leaves, while giving time for other investments to bolster the core.
“Wish we weren’t here but I feel it’s important to keep the momentum going and and we have momentum that we haven’t had in the past,” he told the DIA board.
DIA board members said the momentum comes from the strategy of boosting residential development so downtown becomes more vibrant, which board members said will convince companies to choose downtown even if the cost of office space is higher than the suburbs.
Board Chair Patrick Krechowski said awarding a retention grant to a company already in downtown runs counter to the city’s long-running strategy.
“I think it looks bad,” he said. “I think what we’re doing is paying someone to tolerate being downtown when instead they should want to be here. They should see the value in downtown, they should see the value of what downtown is becoming and they should want to be part of it.”
He said if it costs companies “a little more” than being in the suburbs, “that’s a decision for them to make. It’s not a decision for us to make, not in this way.”
Council member heading downtown committee praises DIA
City Council member Joe Carlucci, who is chair of the council’s special committee on downtown, praised the DIA board for “asking the right questions and carefully weighing” the short-term and long-term impacts of the proposed incentives.
He said a proposal may at first “appear justified on paper” and the “scales can seems balanced at first glance.”
“But when you step back and take a broader view, you realize it’s slightly off,” he said. “This was one of those instances where a wider perspective made the imbalance clear.”
Deegan has made downtown development a top priority and she’s won support from City Council for a series of incentive packages geared mainly to residential development while also steering money toward riverfront parks.
But the occupancy rate in downtown office building is much higher than other big Florida cities. Downtown Jacksonville once had higher occupancy rates than the suburbs but after the COVID-19 pandemic, downtown has struggled to reverse the trend of offices going dark.
The city approved incentives in late 2024 for Haskell to keep its headquarters in downtown. Haskell moved from leased space in the Brooklyn part of downtown to a Southbank office tower.
The DIA board and City Council both unanimously approved up to $4.25 million in incentives for Haskell in a deal that will keep 600 Haskell employees in downtown with plans by the company to add another 150 employees at the headquarters.
EverBank is not proposing to add employees but the proposed incentives would maintain it as one of downtown’s biggest employers. EverBank would commit to lease a minimum of 139,000 square feet for at least 800 employees whose daily presence would continue to support downtown restaurants and stores.
DIA board member Sondra Fetner supported the proposed incentives by saying downtown faces “dangerously high vacancy rates” in the near term until progress in downtown eliminates the need for such financial assistance.
“Our incentives before were about attracting new officer users and I think we really need to look at how do we continue to retain the existing officer users in those office buildings so they don’t become vacant,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Deegan’s attempt to keep EverBank downtown meets resistance
Reporting by David Bauerlein, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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