St. Joe Company

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The St. Joe Company (NYSE: JOE)is a land development company and Florida's largest private landowner, owning about 805,000 acres (3,260 km²) 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] Ball despised the thought of paying taxes to the government, so to avoid them, he rarely sold anything; preferring instead to plow profits back into more land purchases.

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]. The mill suffered no labor strife. When Florida Coast Paper took over operations of the papermill they immediately canceled sucessful long term contracts with good paying customers and immediately started the mill producing bag paper. Some of the bag paper was marketed to Italy. As St. Joe Paper Company, the papermill had dominated 30 percent of all domestic production of kraft white special box paper. The Stone corporation was half owner of the new combined Florida Coast Paper company and used that position to dismantle the ability to produce kraft white paper in st joe and sent the equipment to Stones papermill in montana. Upon many bad business decisions and seeing that it was unavoidable to have to close the papermill operation down, the Florida Coast Paper company continued to disrupt lives in the st. joe community by not only shuting down mill operations without notice to all employees and forfeiting obligated payments, they also bailed out on over $500,000 dollars to the community in owed taxes. Its many former employees opinions that the St. Joe Company originally had created this sale of the mill to Stone and 4M (forming the Florida Coast Paper Company LLC) and not accepting higher bids from an Australian based corporation, a Canadian Corporation, and world renowned International Paper Company, so as to assure its demise. Coincidentally enough, as soon as the papermill had closed St. Joe was back in the area as a newly formed development company and creating condominums and private beaches and even making deals with the State of Florida to re-route US 98 from the beach access to behind their many new developments only a very short distance from the same area that was once and successful and dedicated place of proud employment to area people. Since then the company has focused primarily on land development. From their Jacksonville corporate headquarters, the company operates through four segments: Residential Real Estate develops large-scale, mixed-use resort, seasonal and primary residential communities, as well as selling housing units and home sites to retail customers and builders. Commercial Real Estate develops and sells commercial properties, including retail properties, multifamily parcels, office parks and commerce parks. St. Joe also owns a portfolio of office properties located in the southeast US. Rural Land Sales markets parcels for various rural residential and recreational uses in northwest Florida. It sells parcels of undeveloped land and developed home sites within rural settings. Forestry grows, harvests and sells timber and wood fiber. Its’ products primarily include pine pulpwood, timber and cypress products.

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]. As a result, the company is cutting its workforce, exiting the homebuilding market and selling its office holdings.[13]

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 78,000 acres (316 km²) of land in the area surrounding the new proposed airport site, and has announced plans to build 5,800 homes and 4,300,000 square feet (399,000 m²) of commercial space. The company has also offered to donate about 40,000 acres (160 km²) for preservation[14].

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