Legislation will be filed with the Jacksonville City Council to amend a 2022 economic development agreement between the city and Allegis Group to reflect a change in the company’s plans on where to station part of its workforce.
On Oct. 21, the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee approved a request to revise the agreement with Allegis, an international recruitment company, to expand its workforce in Jacksonville.
According to an Office of Economic Development summary of the amendment, Allegis originally planned to expand in four Southside offices under the 2022 agreement, including 7077 Bonneval Road and 10375 Centurion Parkway North.
The city agreed to provide the company with $750,000 in incentives for the expansion plans, comprising a Targeted Industry Employment Grant of $1,500 for each of 500 new jobs the company committed to create.
The company also committed to retaining the 715 employees on its staff, and to making a capital investment of at least $1.3 million.
When leases for the Bonneval Road and Centurion Parkway North spaces expired in 2023, the company determined it would be better to relocate the business operations for its sales team into a single facility at 4655 Salisbury Road. Plans for the support and administrative staff remained unchanged, with those employees working at 10401 and 10752 Deerwood Park Blvd.
The amended agreement would replace the Bonneval Road and Centurion Parkway locations with the Salisbury Road offices, which would allow Allegis to count new jobs at that location toward its benchmarks for receiving the incentive funding.
The amount of the incentives would remain unchanged at $750,000, payable in 25% increments over four years pending verification by the city on the number of new jobs created and the wages for those positions. The return on investment is listed at 83 cents per $1 of incentive funding in city documents.
To date, the city has awarded $37,500 of the incentives to the company.
The memo states the rationale for the amendment as follows: “As of calendar year 2023 the Company reported approximately $3,9 million of private capital investment and 1,040 jobs at an average wage of $56,850, with 325 new full-time equivalent jobs.
Of the jobs reported, 114 were located at the Salisbury Road location; however, since that location is not specifically designated in the EDA (economic development agreement), the jobs cannot be counted towards the annual benchmarks. This negatively impacts the company’s average wage, as the sales team typically earns higher salaries than the support/administrative staff.”
With the MBRC’s approval, the request will be filed for consideration by City Council.
This story was updated with the results of the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee meeting.