Shift in Jacksonville's financial industry also a shift away from downtown
The economic recovery has not brought back all the banking jobs of old, but it has produced 4,800 new high-paid positions since 2011 as more and more financial companies set up shop or expand their operations in Jacksonville.
The city aims to attract financial sector jobs with incentives, taking advantage of big banks' desire for low-cost real estate and quick flights to New York.
But the city still struggles to bring the new jobs into downtown, which has a 10 percent vacancy rate for Class A office space, according to a Colliers International research report earlier this year.
Officially, JAXUSA Partnership, the economic development division of the JAX Chamber, says it focuses on six industries - finance, health care, logistics, aviation, advanced manufacturing and information technology.
But finance growth has led the way since the recession, JAXUSA President Jerry Mallot said. The organization doesn't track layoffs and job reductions, though, he said.
The city office of economic development says it brought in 2,536 finance jobs since 2012. The average wage for those jobs was $56,317.83. (City data didn't include an average wage for Citizens Property Insurance's 148 jobs.)
Census data show those employed in finance and insurance and in real estate and rental and leasing has dropped by about 8 percent from 2009 to 2014, but the median salary has risen 14 percent to $5,228. In 2014, the average salary was $43,197. For those who specifically worked in "finance and industry," the salary rose to $45,710 from $39,103
As technologies like ATMs make traditional low-paying banking jobs obsolete, the city focuses on the corporate jobs that bring more money, said Kirk Wendland, the city director of economic development. "Deutsche Bank now has a trading desk in Jacksonville. Those are definitely very high-end jobs."
The banks aren't looking to expand in the expensive cities of the Northeast, Wendland said, so Jacksonville competes with Tampa, Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta and the other major Sunbelt cities to lasso new banking centers.
Classifying job growth can be difficult, Mallot said.
For example, Fidelity National Information Services, or FIS, is an information technology company. But it provides IT services exclusively to the financial sector.
Should those jobs count as IT jobs or finance jobs?
That depends, Mallot said, on who he's talking to. If he's pitching Jacksonville to another IT company, then those are IT jobs. If he's pitching the city to a bank, then they become finance jobs.
City Council President Greg Anderson, who is also a vice president at Jacksonville-based EverBank, said he wishes more banks were moving in downtown. Many of EverBank's 1,400 jobs are located downtown, which has helped bring more vitality there, he said. Merrill Lynch and Bank of America also have brought jobs downtown.
Anderson said he looks to cities like Charlotte, a banking giant with the main headquarters for Bank of America and the East Coast headquarters for Wells Fargo. Those banks brought high-paying jobs into the downtown area, and as a result, the city built its downtown infrastructure. Even if those jobs go away, the infrastructure will remain and downtown will thrive, he said.
Unfortunately, most of Jacksonville's new banks and financial institutions aren't buying into downtown.
Macquarie Group is on the South Bank, which, technically, according to the Downtown Investment Authority, counts as downtown.
But Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Fidelity Global and Selene Finance all moved to Southside office parks.
"The layout and location accommodate our ongoing growth," said Leslie Slover, regional head of Deutsche Bank in Jacksonville and Cary, N.C. "We are expanding our footprint in Jacksonville and are in the process of moving into additional space at 5201 Gate Parkway. This will give us the ability to increase our capacity, help consolidate our workforce and build a more cohesive operation."
Deutsche Bank plans to add 350 jobs this year, Slover said. The sprawling horizontal office parks allow for amenities like an on-site gym, she said, though downtown has a gym, too.
Anderson hopes the city can offer enough incentives to bring more jobs downtown without giving short-shrift to the office parks of Southside.
Australia-based Macquarie Group, which is in the midst of adding another 30 employees, said it always tries to find downtown locations with open floor plans. "That's the Macquarie model across the world," said Glen Skarott, who is leading the Jacksonville office.
Downtown's biggest challenge, said Wendland, the city's economic development director, is parking. Banks don't want their employees fighting for parking spots. Meanwhile, none of the banks are moving into the impoverished areas in Northwest Jacksonville, so Wendland said he's hoping new manufacturing jobs can instead help bring more life into those areas.
Mallot hopes for a larger impact. Eventually, he predicted, the city will run out of high-quality office space sought by banks, and new construction will be necessary, putting more people to work.
Wendland agreed, "We are getting to the point where if you're looking for major blocks - 80,000 square feet and above of Class A office space - there's not a long list of locations."
Though Jacksonville International Airport severely lags behind other Sunbelt cities, especially Atlanta, it has one saving grace: an abundance of direct flights to New York City. Mallot did not respond Friday to a query about how many flights leave daily for New York, but Skyscanner showed a weekly average of 110 flights flying to metropolitan New York's airports.
Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Group cited the New York flights as prime reasons to move here.
Even the Financial Times of London published a story last month headlined, "Move over NY - here comes Jacksonville." Jacksonville is Deutsche Bank's largest American presence outside New York, and it's much more cost-effective, Slover said.
Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310
