By Karen Brune Mathis
Times-Union business writer

What's going up in 2001?

Not counting two huge JEA projects, we found that more than $1.84 billion of office and industrial projects in Jacksonville are in progress this year, a record since we began measuring such development volume in 1995.

While there were definite signs of a slowdown in some areas this year, the 2001 volume hit a record thanks to the $855 million being invested in two JEA power plants in North and West Jacksonville.

Counting the power plants, the actual total soared to $2.7 billion. Without those projects, the volume still reached $1.84 billion, up 38 percent from $1.33 billion last year.

This year's record rate also can be attributed to some big plans by Flagler Development Co., which is developing the large Gran Park at Jacksonville and recently added property for another $100 million in development.

By number of projects, this year we counted 119, just one shy of the 120 we found last year, reflecting the national economic slowdown.

--------------------------------------------------
  Work continues on the America Online facility at the First Coast Technology Park. It's scheduled toin March. --Will Dickey/staff --------------------------------------------------

Welcome to our seventh year of attempting to answer the question of "What's Going Up" in Jacksonville. Our survey is unscientific, but it can provide an unofficial benchmark.

Our goal has been to compile an annual directory of the larger office and industrial projects either completing or starting construction during the calendar year, or remaining in progress.

Again this year, Southside ranked the highest in dollar volume and projects, accounting for about half of all the deals we counted.

Here's what we've found since we began our efforts. We started in 1995, when we found that at least $460 million of major projects were taking place. Volume rose to $475 million in 1996, to $1 billion in 1997, to $1.34 billion in 1998, to $1.41 billion in 1999 and then dropped to $1.33 billion last year.

And this year, government projects and deals such as the JEA power plants contributed strongly to the results and will continue generating volume as the Better Jacksonville Plan continues.

For our survey, we cover just Duval County, although it is important to note that large projects are taking place in neighboring Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties.

--------------------------------------------------
  For a map of the Economic Development in Jacksonville, click the image above. --------------------------------------------------

Here are some of our guidelines:

We track office and industrial projects of at least 25,000 square feet in size, although some smaller deals are included because of expansion plans or because the project might have started with a larger goal in mind.

Only industrial and office projects are included, meaning that churches, retail centers, apartments, medical facilities, recreational and other non-office and non-industrial projects are not.

There are inconsistencies in the way projects are reported. Some sources provide total investment estimates, while others might provide only construction costs and yet others decline to provide any figures. As well, some projects, such as Flagler Development's deals, are shown as long-range build-outs, which make for big numbers.

Because of deadlines due to the production challenges of a report this large, some projects might not be on the list, although we attempted to be as current as possible.

As we've said before, we're not perfect. We may have missed some large projects or miscalculated the volumes. To update this report, we attempted to call as many project representatives as possible and logged at least 200 calls or attempts to leave messages. (It should be noted that some project representatives didn't return repeated -- more than a half-dozen -- telephone calls over a period of weeks.)

Let's look at some of the details for 2001.

North Jacksonville

North Jacksonville soared in volume, thanks to the $630 million JEA power plant project.

That deal boosted the overall 2001 volume in Northside to $812.14 million, about 630 percent from $111.3 million last year.

--------------------------------------------------
  Click to enlarge --------------------------------------------------

Not counting the power plant, volume still rose 64 percent, to $182.14 million.

The number of projects grew from nine last year to 15 this year.

Thanks to JEA, North Jacksonville accounted for 30 percent of the overall volume this year. If we don't count the JEA plans, Northside accounted for 10 percent of the volume.

South Jacksonville

South Jacksonville volume topped the $1 billion mark this year, up more than 33 percent from $750 million last year. That accounted for 37 percent of the overall volume for the city.

Excluding the power plant investment in North Jacksonville, South Jacksonville grabbed the lion's share of overall volume at 54.4 percent.

This year, Flagler Development Co. reported about $500 million in pending or planned development. If we don't count Flagler's significant Gran Park at Jacksonville figures from this year or its smaller figures from last year, the Southside volume would run about $501.5 million for 2001, down 23 percent from an adjusted $650 million last year.

That is reflected in the number of projects: 60 this year, down from 72 last year.

Downtown/East Jacksonville

Downtown/East Jacksonville logged a 62 percent increase in the value of investments.

We found 18 ongoing projects at a volume of $288 million, compared with 13 at a volume of $177.9 million, in 2000.

Downtown/East Jacksonville represented 10.7 percent of the total volume, and almost 16 percent of the non-JEA volume.

We can expect the downtown volume to pick up once the Better Jacksonville projects take place.

West Jacksonville

West Jacksonville projects remained the same in number at 26 this year.

Volume, however, more than doubled to $596.91 million from last year's $290 million.

Not counting the $225 million Westside JEA plant included this year, volume still rose more than 28 percent this year vs. last.

Overall, West Jacksonville accounted for about 22 percent of the overall volume and 20 percent of the non-JEA volume.

With that backdrop, here's a closer look at what's going up.