City considers $3 million for 350 jobs Downtown

[fsu813]

Lender Processing Services could receive almost $3 million in city and state financial incentives for adding 350 jobs in Jacksonville.

The Jacksonville Economic Development Commission is scheduled to consider the incentive package at its Wednesday meeting. The JEDC’s recommendation would go next to the City Council.

LPS would add 175 jobs by the end of this year and another 175 in 2011. The average wage for the jobs would be about $44,807. The new jobs would result in a total of about 2,100 positions for LPS in Jacksonville. The company has 8,900 employees nationwide.

The incentives would come through a state program that aims to increase jobs in industries Florida has targeted for expansion.

LPS would get $8,500 per job for a total of up to $2,975,000. Of that amount, the city would pay up to $595,000 and the state would pay the rest.

Mayor John Peyton met with LPS executives in January and officials said at that time they were discussing incentives for the company to add hundreds of jobs in Jacksonville. The upcoming JEDC agenda is the first time the city has pegged the incentives to a specific number of jobs.

LPS processes roughly 50 percent of residential mortgages in the United States by dollar volume, according to a JEDC staff summary of the proposed incentives.

In addition to increasing jobs at a time of double-digit unemployment, the expansion of LPS would bolster downtown by continuing redevelopment of the Brooklyn neighborhood, according to JEDC.

http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-03-08/story/city_considers_3_million_for_lps_to_add_350_new_jobs_downtown

[fsu813]

Wow. Good job Mayor!

That would make up for Modis moving out....

[fsujax]

Now give Modis some incentives to stay Downtown! I am tired of seeing the name changing on that building.

[Captain Zissou]

Nice.

Is there space to house these jobs on the Fidelity/ LPS campus, or would they be located elsewhere?

[Jason]

I was about to ask the same.  I wonder if the 200 Riverside guys may be courting them?

[Joe]

It's always good to view corporate incentives with appropriate skepticism about whether they are truly necessary - as we should with any government program or subsidy.

However, this proposal seems very worthwhile.

It amounts to about $1,700 per job in city funds. It's hard to imagine that these 350 extra workers won't indirectly generate that amount of tax revenue alone in just a few years. Add that to the fact that LPS is essentially a subsidiary of another Jacksonville-based company which has shown strong commitment to downtown, and I think we have a real winner.

For what it's worth, by comparison, the city would probably end up paying 2 to 3 times this amount for the hire of a single public safety employee over the course of their career.

[zoo]

fsus, the $ incentivizing LPS are coming through the State Enterprise Zone program for adding jobs, and more specifically via the QTI -- Qualified Targeted Industry -- pot.

If Adecco/MPS (Modis) were to add more of the Adecco jobs to the Downtown location, that would qualify for jobs being added. Otherwise, I don't think staffing/recruiting is one of the QTIs, which means any other incentivizing would have to come from COJ coffers (which seem to be empty).

And those C-level folks and boardmembers prefer a shorter commute from their St Johns County residences, so it's awfully kind of Duval to sprawl/fund that JTB corridor for them.