jimfree.com

Mary Scott Speigner – bio
mspeigner@wmbb.com

Bay County, Fla:

The St. Joe Company has talked the talk, bringing in a new airport with a low cost air carrier, now they say their walking the walk.

“We can lead by example… that’s what we’re doing. We’re showing people that there is a reason to be here and I can’t think of any better reason than to have a major corporation put their headquarters,” said Britt Greene, President and CEO.

That’s why it’s moving its home base 300 miles away to Bay County and setting up shop right next to the new airport. It is also consolidating their offices in Port St. Joe, Tallahassee, and South Walton. That’s about 140 jobs moving to Bay County.

“We expect while the positions will move, not all individuals who are currently working will make the move. So there’s going to be some opportunity,” Greene said.

He says this move is bigger than their company. He believes the move will encourage other companies to the region.

“We’ve had great conversations with a number of aviation aerospace leaders and other types of companies looking at logistics and multimodal opportunities with the airport, port, and rail,” Greene said.

Bay County leaders agree. “It really speaks a major commitment of the St. Joe Company to this community and to the West Bay sector. We’re very excited,” said Janet Watermeier of the Economic Development Alliance.

More people means more money spent in our region.

“They will have kids that will have to go to school and they will have homes that they will have to live in and they’ll shop in our shopping centers and they’ll have to get their haircut. All of those things that should help raise the level of money that we’re all able to take advantage of,” she said.

The construction on the 50,000 square foot project will begin this summer making their home here by 2011.

This is all part of St. Joe’s West Bay Sector Plan. The project is 71,000 acres which is bigger than Washington D.C. But they’re starting with 1,000 acres for phase one.

Read more: http://www.panhandleparade.com/index.php/mbb/article/st._joe_company_moving_to_new_airport_site/22058/#ixzz0iX7ZXFGs

NEW YORK – March 5, 2010 – Two years after swallowing the troubled mortgage giant Countrywide Financial, Bank of America trails other major U.S. lenders in resolving troubled home loans through short sales or modified loan terms.

The lender, one of the nation’s biggest banks, holds more than a million mortgages that are months behind on their payments – twice as many defaulting home loans as any other lender in the country. But it has given permanent mortgage modifications to only about 1 percent of those borrowers – one of the lowest rates among lenders nationally, according to a report released last month on the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

The issue is key in Metropolitan Orlando, which has the nation’s 11th-highest rate of mortgage modifications, with 18,000 homeowners in trial modifications and 2,468 in permanent ones, the report stated.

Loan modifications aren’t the only way of out a foreclosure. In January, about a quarter of all Orlando-area home closings were short sales, which occur when the lender allows a homeowner to sell the property for less than what’s owed on the mortgage.

But when it comes to short sales, Bank of America also lags other lenders, real-estate agents say, by taking too long to respond to offers.

“Realtors that I work with, if they hear Bank of America, they won’t even show the property,” said David Pruett, a broker for D.A. Pruett Properties.

The chairman of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, Kathleen Gallagher McIver, said recently that Bank of America has the worst record for expediting short sales, “and there’s not anyone out there who will tell you otherwise.”

Bank of America acknowledges it needs help with its short sales.

“We clearly recognize the need to improve the short-sale process for both our customers and the real-estate professionals who are critical to a successful transaction,” said Jumana Bauwen, a bank spokeswoman.

The company said it has updated its training, enhanced its technology and established a short-sale team to help customers and real-estate agents navigate the process. It is piloting a short-sale program for owners who don’t qualify for new mortgage terms. And it has established a 24-hour phone line so agents, buyers and sellers can track the status of their short sales.

Bank of America is not alone in its struggles to deal with the avalanche of defaulting home mortgages, according to the February modification report by the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Wachovia Corp., now owned by Wells Fargo & Co., has approved permanently modified terms for fewer than 1 percent of its 86,461 defaulting mortgage customers. American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. has a similar track record with the 127,521 mortgages headed toward foreclosure that it holds. Among the nation’s largest lenders, GMAC Mortgage Inc. had the best rate: 17 percent of its 65,751 defaulting home loans have been permanently modified.

Bank of America, which inherited much of its mortgage portfolio from Countrywide, says part of the problem is that many homeowners have not been diligent about submitting the documents needed to convert a trial mortgage modification into a permanent one.

Clermont resident George Simmons said he is now totally frustrated, having tried for more than a year to get Bank of America to convert a series of trial modifications into something permanent.

“Let’s see, the last correspondence I had from them said they didn’t have my income-tax return and my Social Security records,” Simmons said. “I sent it to them so many times. I’ve got my fax receipts and my certified postal receipts. They just keep asking for the same paperwork over and over and over again.”

Overall, about a fifth of Bank of America’s defaulting-mortgage customers have received temporary, three-month trial modifications. To address the huge volume of troubled loans needing permanent solutions, the company has hired about 15,000 staffers. Workers knock on doors and call homeowners with trial modifications at least 10 times before the temporary terms expire in three months.

At one point, Bauwen said, Bank of America was behind in getting homeowners into trial loan modifications. But it has ramped up those efforts, she said, and many of those trials will be converted into permanent modifications.

More importantly, Bauwen added, the company is not ramping up its foreclosure efforts unnecessarily.

Copyright © 2010 The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., Mary Shanklin. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

PAT KELLY and SCARLET SIMS / News Herald writers
WEST BAY — The St. Joe Co. is working to widen the profile of the new airport and the entire West Bay Sector Plan by hosting several media tours for industry writers, including one today.

The effort coincides with plans by the Bay County Tourist Development Council to sponsor trips by travel and tourism writers to tour Panama City Beach and tell its story to a wider national audience, including a tour in April.

The media blitz by the TDC and St. Joe, running on separate but parallel tracks, is being conducted to capitalize on the opening of the new airport near West Bay and the announcement by Southwest Airlines, the nation’s largest domestic carrier, that it will begin operations there.

“This is part of our ongoing strategy to bring writers into the market,” said TDC executive director Dan Rowe said of the TDC’s efforts to market Panama City Beach by sponsoring tours for travel writers.

New York City public relations firm Spring O’Brien, working for St. Joe, has arranged three tours of the $318 million Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport by out-of-market industry writers before the airport’s scheduled May 23 opening.

Rowe recently attended a New York City media luncheon sponsored by the TDC’s public relations firm, New York City-based Lou Hammond & Associates, to promote the region to tourism writers.

Spring O’Brien official Martin Elder said the airport tours will include meetings with airport officials and Kevin Johnson, St. Joe’s vice president of economic development.

Johnson said St. Joe began targeting specific media outlets this year, particularly magazines.

“The interest in the new airport and the adjacent property for the industrial park has increased. People want to know what we’ve done, how far we’ve come and what lies ahead,” he said.

In addition, Gulf Coast Community College and other economic development groups are planning a conference in April on how airports attract businesses to nearby property.

Rowe said a second tour sponsored by the TDC for tourism and travel writers is scheduled for the summer.

St. Joe Co. owns about 577,000 acres in Northwest Florida and 71,000 acres surrounding the new airport. The property in the West Bay Sector Plan is a mixed-use, master-planned project in Bay County.

“This is a global play for us,” Johnson said. “We’ve had research done on what types of industry best suit Bay County and a labor study to validate infrastructure and skills here. Aerospace is our No. 1 target.”

Since last year the TDC, the county’s premier marketing vehicle, has been repositioning Panama City Beach as a year-round “family-friendly” designation, hoping to move beyond the notion that the area is primarily a lure for college-age partiers.

Lou Hammond & Associates, a public relations firm based in New York City, and Fahlgren, an Ohio-based advertising company, have been hired by the TDC to widen the area’s appeal beyond the traditional drive markets.

The West Bay Area Sector Plan is a state-sanctioned land-use plan for conservation and development of about 75,000 acres surrounding West Bay, the cornerstone of which is the airport.

The plan includes residential, commercial and business development and the conservation of about 41,000 acres of shoreline, wetlands and watershed.

SCARLET SIMS / News Herald Writer

PANAMA CITY — St. Joe Company is gearing up to promote West Bay as a premier location for industries and plans to have infrastructure in place before 2012.

“What we are creating in West Bay is a new central business district for Bay County,” said Kevin Johnson, St. Joe vice president of economic development. “This is the largest mixed-use facility in the United States of America.”

Johnson spoke to a packed room of more than 200 government and city leaders during the Bay County Chamber of Commerce’s monthly First Friday event.

“The most exciting news is they have a timetable and they are investing in infrastructure,” said Janet Watermeier, Bay County Economic Development Alliance executive director.

St. Joe has a timeline to complete infrastructure for the first 100 acres at the new industrial park adjacent to the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport by about mid-2011, Johnson said. Another 300 acres are planned to be ready by the end of that same year, he said. Eventually, 1,000 acres will be developed for industrial, flex-commercial office and retail use.

The timetable is an estimate because of the magnitude of the project, Johnson said. In the next three years, St. Joe hopes the state will release money to move State 388 to better facilitate the airport.

“This is not like baking a cake – there is no timing on it,” Johnson said of the project. “What we want to do is get all the ingredients so that when the time is right, we have all the necessary ingredients to bake the cake.”

The date release is exciting for economic officials because it indicates the industrial park will become a reality, Watermeier said.

St. Joe is actively courting particular companies, using a Dallas real estate group whose corporate clients St. Joe hopes to attract. To draw attention, St. Joe is targeting trade writers to tour the new airport and, beginning Tuesday, plans to make presentations directly to specific companies, Johnson said.

Bay County is best positioned for aerospace and defense industries, followed by transportation and logistics, financial, health services and environmental, Johnson said. St. Joe hopes to see a cluster of aerospace firms at the new airport. That means a focus on education and advanced training and research, he said.

The local workforce is only one element on which Bay County plans to focus, Watermeier said. The alliance recently revealed a comprehensive plan that looked at everything from ready-to-build sites and existing structures to telecommunications and infrastructure needs.

St. Joe is working with the alliance to develop incentives to attract businesses, Johnson said. He would not give any specifics about what St. Joe wants in any incentive package.

“We want to be able to respond to the bottom-line needs (of companies),” Johnson said.

Bay County has relied on beautiful beaches to build its tourism industry, but sugar sand and green water isn’t enough to draw diverse, high-wage companies and keep them, Johnson said.

“Don’t just turn on the sunshine light — that’s not enough,” Johnson said. “We have to change how we compete and you can’t do it by standing still. We have to think about how we compete for jobs. We can’t just wait for them to come.”