JAX Chamber CEO Daniel Davis says Jacksonville’s economy is in a good position to “come back stronger than ever” from the coronavirus pandemic.
“I love the fact that Jacksonville is so diverse and that our foundation is so strong. Our competitive cities may not be in as good a spot as we are and we should capitalize on all that moving forward,” Davis said. “I think the pent-up demand is going to help us out tremendously.”
Davis, along with JAX Chamber Vice President of Entrepreneurial Growth Carlton Robinson, spoke April 30 at a virtual Chamber luncheon.
He shared with nearly 100 members on the Zoom meeting how he is representing business owners’ needs on Mayor Lenny Curry’s reopening task force.
Davis discussed the possibility of a “major capital improvement plan” to help stimulate the economy. That would involve pushing forward funded, shovel-ready projects to put people back to work.
“The procurement process when you’re dealing with government sometimes takes a long time and we don’t have a long time,” he said. “I think we need to get people to work as quickly as possible.”
He mentioned JEA, Jacksonville Transportation Authority and JaxPort projects that could help create or sustain thousands of jobs.
Davis said he would recommend to Curry’s task force that small, local businesses would be involved in those projects.
“Those are the ideas we’re bringing,” Davis said. “How do we bring those all together in a package and make the biggest impact on our community?”
JAX Chamber is working on helping its businesses sort through government lending programs and streamlining its own operations, he said.
“We’ve done a lot at the chamber,” he said. “The first things we were doing was a lot of clean up, like things we haven’t had a chance to get to. Our entire team was cleaning up their divisions and how can we work smarter and more efficient.”
Now that most of the issues with lending are fixed, Davis said the chamber is developing guidelines for what returning to the workplace might look like.
“There’s going to be more announcements during the next couple days that lead us back to a sense of normalcy, back to the workplace,” Davis said. “Our No. 1 issue is how do we do it safely. We’re focused on that right now.”