ST. JOE COMPANY

'The St. Joe Company' is a real estate company and Florida's largest landowner, owning about in the state [1].
The company was originally founded in the early 1930s, by Alfred I. du Pont and then passed on to his brother-in-law Edward Ball in 1935 [2]. What eventually became the St. Joe Company bought its first piece of land in 1923 [3]. The company continued to snap up land that nobody else seemed to want throughout the 1940s and 1950's, sometimes for "mere dollars an acre." [4]
From 1938 to 1996, the company operated a paper mill in Port St. Joe [5].
Under Ball the company invigorated the local economy, employing thousands at its paper mill, but wreaked havoc on the environment. The mill released sulfurous exhaust and dioxins, a toxin, used in the paper bleaching process. By the 1950s, the company was drawing 35 million gallons of water a day from underground sources, seriously depleting the water table. St Joe Paper also clear-cut millions of acres of forest, engaging in silviculture to replant the areas with slash pine. The practice decimated the native longleaf pine stands, reducing the species to "2 percent of its former range." Because of this, the Department of Interior designated parts of the region a Critically Endangered Ecosystem [6].
Under Ball, the company also kept workers at the mill racially divided [7].
The paper mill hit its heyday in the 1960s with products being directly marketed to company-owned box plants. However, when a 9-month millworker strike slowed the company in the mid-1970s [8] it signaled the beginning of the end for the mill. Following Ball's death the company sold off most of its industrial operations and eventually struck a deal with the federal government to sell its sugar business for $40 million, as part of a Everglades restoration project.
The mill was sold in 1996 to Florida Coast Paper for $390 million. After three years marked by labor strife, the facility was shuttered for good in 1999 and demolished in 2003[9].
Since then the company has focused primarily on land development. In one of its largest deals St. Joe sold the state of Florida 90,000 acres (360 km²) for $182 million [10].
As a developer, St Joe has distinguished itself as catering to more well-heeled clientele, but has also established a reputation as more environmentally friendly than under Ball [11]. Since the national downturn in the real estate market, the company's sales have suffered, with its earnings dropping off by 60 percent in 2006 [12].
The company has begun trying to market the panhandle region as "Florida's Great Northwest" and is involved with plans to relocate and drastically expand Panama City-Bay County International Airport in the hopes that a larger airport will attract wealthier home buyers. St. Joe owns about of land in the area surrounding the new proposed airport site, and has announced plans to build 5,800 homes and 4.3 million square feet of commercial space. The company has also offered to donate about 40,000 acres (160 km²) for preservation[13].

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External links

External links

★ http://www.joe.com

★ http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=JOE - Company profile at Yahoo!Finance