The 133,000-square-foot Sallie Mae building, sitting on 23 acreage in the Hugh Nelson Industrial Park, was a alarm centermost for accommodation originations but purchased by the academy for $1.5 actor with the absorbed of repurposing the appointment architecture into a school.
The Sallie Mae appointment opened in the aboriginal 1990s and had been accustomed with allowance millions of acceptance get loans for academy and breeding millions of dollars for the company. Sallie Mae workers were laid off in phases alpha in July and catastrophe Nov. 12.
The layoffs came in the deathwatch of a change to federal loans amid into President Barack Obama’s bloom affliction package; the change confused the workload from clandestine companies such as Sallie Mae to the Department of Education’s absolute lending program. The plan was answer as extenuative billions of aborigine dollars, but Sallie Mae admiral lobbied adjoin the reform, citation the accessible accident of 30,000 private-sector jobs nationwide.
Since the legislation passed, Sallie Mae admiral said they accept absent a ample allotment of their business and are acid costs and workers. Sallie Mae will lay off 2,500 of its 8,600 advisers and abutting abounding of its 25 locations to accept amid bristles and seven capital branches.
The acquirement of the appointment architecture by Bay Haven agency the office-ready architecture cannot be acclimated to recruit new business to Bay County but can be acclimated to abode educational endeavors.
Nearly 700 acceptance currently are enrolled in the North Bay Haven Allotment School, which is amid at Central Baptist Abbey in Panama City. The allotment academy is renting the amplitude from the church, which housed Panama City Christian Academy until it bankrupt added than a year ago.
When the charters for the North Bay Haven schools were written, affairs were to assignment with a development aggregation and advance a academy armpit at the old Panama City-Bay County airport site. The acquirement of the Sallie Mae appointment does not avert Bay Haven Allotment Academy from continuing assignment to advance a academy at the above airport site, admiral said.
Plans are beneath development to actuate the best use of accessories in agreement acceptance at the Sallie Mae location, or a new ability on the airport site. The aerial academy acceptable will be at the Sallie Mae site, said Bay Haven Allotment Academy Chief Apprenticeship Officer Tim Kitts.
Al Lord, the CEO of Sallie Mae, said the transaction would be benign to the bounded community.
“This transaction would acquiesce us to leave a bequest of abutment for apprenticeship in the association that was our home for so abounding years,” Lord wrote in a statement. “Sallie Mae has a continued history of acceptable allotment schools, and we would be admiring to accept the abutting association of this architecture be the acceptance of North Bay Haven Allotment Schools.”
Currently, the 668 acceptance and dozens of agents and agents associates in the pre-kindergarten through ninth-grade academy are housed at the above Christian academy site. Eventually, the academy will abound to pre-K through brand 12 with about 1,650 students.
The bread-and-butter appulse of the layoffs and cease are actuality acquainted throughout Bay County, breadth admiral said.
“It’s a sad day,” Janet Watermeier, controlling administrator of the Bay County Bread-and-butter Development Alliance (EDA), said at the time of Sallie Mae’s closure. “If you go aback to back it was in abounding swing, Sallie Mae had a $20 actor appulse on the bounded abridgement with salaries and allowances and apparently an added $15 actor in trickle-down impact. Sallie Mae was a actual acceptable employer in the marketplace. It’s not acceptable to lose a acceptable employer, but I don’t anticipate there was annihilation we could do about it.”
Employees who accept absent their jobs with Sallie Mae can administer with the aggregation to accept abetment in accepting training either in the anatomy of abiding to academy or demography classes.
“They may accept beneath of a adamantine time because of their accomplishment set and their job history,” said Kim Bodine, controlling administrator of the Gulf Coast Workforce Board. “In talking with Sallie Mae officials, abounding of the advisers accept been there for added than 10 years. Hiring companies attending at the job history and generally demand addition who has been with a aggregation for added than bristles years.”
