Jayson Meyer’s dream of creating a “Google-style” headquarters campus in Holly Hill for Synergy Billing has finally become a reality.
Well, part of it, at least.
The medical billing and coding company on June 3 completed its move into the new campus’ first two buildings.
The new Fountainhead at Holly Hill headquarters is on the site of the old Holly Hill Middle School, 1200 Center Ave., just north of LPGA Boulevard.
Synergy Billing’s new digs at present are twice the size of the 9,000-square-foot offices the company had been leasing in the Tomoka Commerce Center along LPGA Boulevard in Daytona Beach.
But it’s just the start of fulfilling Meyer’s vision for his Fountainhead campus, which he intends to expand to include additional office buildings, an 88-unit apartment complex, a business incubator, a fitness center and possibly a restaurant and community health clinic.
Gazing out the windows while standing on the mezzanine of one of the two buildings that have become his company’s new base of operations, Meyer proudly noted, “From up here we’ll be able to see all the Fountainhead campus.
“This is only a small piece of where it’s going to evolve into,” he added while watching a crew outside dig up mounds of dirt to soon begin construction on a third building.
It’s been a long time coming. Meyer said he began sketching ideas for his dream campus in 2006, shortly after launching Synergy Billing, which at the time had a staff of just three.
Those initial ideas included a monorail, which Meyer, now 36, long-since discarded, chalking it up to youthful exuberance.
His company’s steady growth prompted Meyer to step up efforts to build the new campus four years ago when he publicly announced plans for Fountainhead.
By then, his company had grown to 85 workers, essentially maxing out its leased space. The company managed
to squeeze in a few dozen more workers, thanks in part to temporarily leasing a satellite office space at The Market commercial complex at Second Street and Riverside Drive in Holly Hill.
Synergy Billing’s revenue growth earned it a spot in Inc. magazine’s ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies a few years ago, but Meyer said his inability to add more staff, which wound up holding steady at 118 the past couple of years, forced him to turn down potential contracts from new clients.
The company specializes in providing medical billing and coding services to nonprofit community health centers across the country.
To create more space to allow his company to get back into growth mode, Meyer and his father, Michael, a licensed general contractor, proceeded to completely gut and rebuild the interiors of the old media center and gym at the former middle school, which closed in 2012.
Meyer and his father, the chief financial officer for Synergy Billing, recently invited The News-Journal to check out the new Fountainhead campus.
Painted in various shades of gray and illuminated by whimsical hanging pendant lights that resemble floating stars, the new headquarters sports a sleek, modern look combined with what Meyer described as a dash of “steampunk,” including light fixtures on the walls made from old pipes.
“The theme is the industrial revolution meets the technology revolution,” Meyer said.
His wife, Misty, created the light fixtures and has been overseeing the interior decor of the new buildings.
Meyer’s goal for Fountainhead is to create an environment that encourages collaboration and innovation and where employees and their families could potentially live, work and play, similar to the headquarters campus for technology companies such as Google in California’s Silicon Valley.
Meyer originally hoped to move his company into the new campus by the end of 2016 with plans to add more buildings in subsequent phases. Meyer also originally pledged to create at least 500 jobs by the end of 2020.
Those timetables continued to get pushed back because of delays, both in completing his negotiations with the city to buy the property in phases, as well as in securing the necessary building permits.
Meyer eventually bought the initial 9.4 acres for the project with an option to purchase the former school campus’ remaining 16.4 acres for $60,000 an acre.
Meyer also originally intended to take out a bank loan to help pay for the $6 million first phase of his project but wound up opting instead for “alternative financing” via a bridge loan from local investor Ty Lohman, one of the former owners of the Lohman Funeral Home chain.
Lohman is a longtime friend who coaches a youth baseball team that his son and one of Meyer’s sons play on.
“They’re doing a great job and I think it’s going to be great for the City of Holly Hill,” Lohman said of Synergy Billing’s move and plans to add workers.
Meyer acknowledges he underestimated the amount of work required to build his dream campus.
“I’ve been honest about this from the beginning,” he said. “I’ve never done something like this before, but I have a vision for what it can be, and I’ve stayed true to that throughout the whole process.
“It’s important to me that it’s done right, not fast,” Meyer added. “I just want to make sure it comes together as I’ve imagined it, and so far it is.”
Lohman said delays in a project as ambitious as Fountainhead were to be expected.
“Any project of that size, if you think you can do it in 12 months, it’ll probably take 18,” Lohman said, adding that he had been regularly monitoring the progress of construction. “I think the finished project is going to be cool and we need nice new projects like that along LPGA (Boulevard).”
Holly Hill city officials have been anxious to see Fountainhead become a reality as well.
City Manager Joe Forte, who once hailed the planned campus as “the most important project the city has been involved with” in years, said he was excited for the move-in and how Foutainhead fits with other new projects in the city.
“With the new owners of the (Marina Grande riverfront condominiums) making positive strides forward in leasing their commercial property, the development of the pickleball facility (at Hollyland Park), the development of the town homes on Flomich, the warehouse on Holly Avenue off of Nova Road, and the rehabbed warehouses on Commercial Drive and now the Fountainhead, I feel Holly Hill is making a positive move in the area of economic development,” Forte wrote in an email.
Meyer said he still intends to fulfill his pledge of growing his workforce to several hundred workers in the coming years, adding that the new jobs created would pay an average of at least $40,000 a year.
Meyer is a Daytona Beach area native who dropped out of high school at age 15 to start his own custom computer/computer repair business called Meyer Technologies, which he initially ran on weekends at the Daytona Beach Flea Market.
By age 17, his then-company’s annual revenues had grown to more than $1 million, earning him national media attention in the Wall Street Journal as well as appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and CBS’s “48 Hours.”
He got the idea to create Synergy Billing in 2006 after being asked to create custom medical billing software for physicians.
After enjoying a big growth spurt in revenues and hiring, the company has continued to increase its revenues, but has held steady in terms of its overall number of employees.
Under an economic incentive agreement with the city, Meyer could earn back the money he spent to acquire the land for Fountainhead provided he fulfills his pledge to create at least 213 new “high-paying” jobs and can show that those new hires continue to be employed for at least a year.
“If we hire Holly Hill residents, there’s a slightly higher increase in the incentive amount,” Meyer said. The deadline for meeting that hiring target is July 1, 2026.
“We haven’t been able to grow and add more people because we didn’t have the physical space,” Meyer said. “We have people that want our services, but we haven’t had the capacity to add workers to fulfill (the additional work orders).
“Now that we’re in here (the new headquarters) and have more space for growth, the sky’s the limit, really. But it’s all going to be based on market needs.”
Standing inside his new Fountainhead headquarters, looking from the mezzanine at his employees sitting in their new work spaces, he said, “It just feels surreal. (The move) hasn’t quite set in. It is a relief just to be here.”
