EverBank Center is a

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Most modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise bui ...

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

, with

naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization where a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event (most often sports venues), typical ...

owned by

EverBank EverBank is an American diversified financial services company providing banking and investment services, primarily via a direct bank. It is based in Jacksonville, Florida. It is owned by funds managed by Stone Point Capital, Warburg Pincu ...

, the

anchor tenant In North American, Australian and New Zealand retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are ...

. Standing 447 feet (136 m) tall, it ranked third on the

list of tallest buildings in Jacksonville This list of tallest buildings in Jacksonville ranks by height the skyscrapers and high-rises in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, United States. The tallest building in Jacksonville is the Bank of America Tower (Jac ...

, and is the largest in terms of class "A" rentable area with . The building was formerly known as the Southern Bell Telephone Building, the AT&T Tower, and TIAA Bank Center. It takes up an entire city block in

Downtown Jacksonville Downtown Jacksonville is the historic core and central business district (CBD) of Jacksonville, Florida, United States. It comprises the earliest area of the city to be developed and is located in its geographic center along the narrowing point ...

. The building was built by

The Auchter Company The Auchter Company was established in 1929Kerr, Jessie-Lynn"Wilbur H. 'Bill' Glass Jr.: Headed firm that crafted Jacksonville's skyline"Florida Times-Union, October 21, 2010 in Jacksonville, Florida, by George D. Auchter. The company was among F ...

. A notable feature of the structure is that each floor has 16 corner offices. The entrance to the building features a two-story atrium. There is a 280-seat auditorium on the second level and a backup power system for the entire building. The JTA Skyway central station is across the street and an adjoining seven-level parking garage has spaces for 641 vehicles.

History

The building was designed by

KBJ Architects KBJ Architects, Inc. (KBJ) is an American architectural firm founded by Franklin S. Bunch, William K. Jackson, and William D. Kemp in 1946 from Jacksonville, Florida. History Roy A. Benjamin (1888–1963) moved from Ocala to Jacksonville soon a ...

and opened in 1983. The building was constructed on the former site of the Hotel Mayflower. The tower was built for the

Southern Bell Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company was a Bell Operating Company serving the Southeastern United States of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It also previously covered the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, M ...

Telephone company. The following year,

American Telephone & Telegraph AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

(AT&T) was forced to divest its regional phone companies and Southern Bell became a unit of

BellSouth BellSouth, LLC (stylized as ''BELLSOUTH'' and formerly known as BellSouth Corporation) was an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after ...

; the signage was changed to reflect the new name. In 2006, AT&T re-acquired BellSouth and the signage was changed back to AT&T in 2008.

Ownership

In September 2004, the building and a nearby garage were purchased by

El-Ad Group The El-Ad Group is an Israel-based American real estate development company. The group controls many subsidiaries including El-Ad Properties, which is based in New York City, El-Ad National, which is based in Boca Raton, and El-Ad Canada, which i ...

for $90.9 million. In 2014, the building and the nearby parking garage were acquired by Amkin Real Estate for $47.4 million.

Tenants

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens) was created in 2002 from the merger of two other entities to provide both windstorm coverage and general property insurance for home-owners who could not obtain insurance elsewhere. It was esta ...

is a tenant. In 2011,

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

vacated space it had rented in the tower, leaving it mostly empty. Later that year, the City of Jacksonville finalized a deal with

, in which the bank received tax incentives to relocate over 1,200 employees into 9 floors of the building and add 200 jobs. In April 2013,

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

vacated the building.

Gallery

File:JacksonvilleAT&TBldg-Feb2010.JPG, File:JacksonvilleAT&TBldg-Feb2010-a.JPG, File:EverBank Center 1.JPG, File:EverBank Center.jpg, File:TIAA-Bank-Tower.jpg

References

External links