July 9, 2020 (Courtesy of The Jacksonville Business Journal)
Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (NYSE: FIS) has received permits to start building a $145 million headquarters in downtown Jacksonville.
Gilbane Building Co. will construct the 12-story office tower as well as an eight-story parking garage at 323 Riverside Ave. in Brooklyn. FIS bought the 4.5-acre riverfront site for $14 million earlier this month.
FIS is receiving $30 million in city and state incentives, including a $23.4 million tax rebate grant, a $3.5 million completion grant and $3 million in tax refunds; the state is covering $2.4 million of those incentives.
Florida Blue, which sold the land it was using as a parking lot to FIS, is receiving another $3.5 million from the city to construct a parking garage for its employees nearby, which was the encouragement it needed to vacate the site.
The city has also demolished a 110-year-old vacant firehouse to reconfigure the roadway going into the headquarters site and is giving FIS $30 million in incentives for headquarters construction.
FIS, the largest fintech in the world, is expected to employ 1,700 people in the 300,000-square-foot building by the end of 2030. That includes its 1,200 employees already in Jacksonville and 500 new jobs, which will be paid an average of at least $85,000.
The new headquarters is expected to open in the summer of 2022. FIS will then vacate the nearby building it shares with Black Knight Inc. (NYSE: BKI), allowing that mortgage servicing software provider to expand as well.