JTA and DIA partnering on new life for LaVilla


  • By Max Marbut
  • | 12:00 p.m. December 22, 2015
  • | 5 Free Articles Remaining!
Brad Thoburn
Brad Thoburn
  • Government
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Two of the city’s independent authorities are working together to establish a plan for Jacksonville’s oldest suburb — and they have quite a head start.

The Downtown Investment Authority and Jacksonville Transportation Authority are splitting the $20,000 cost of hiring a consultant to provide a master plan for LaVilla. The area is west of the urban core, north of the Prime Osborn Convention Center, east of Interstate 95 and south of Union Street.

Both organizations have plans in place for the neighborhood. The DIA has approved development agreements for two apartment buildings and JTA is planning a Regional Transportation Center.

What follows those projects will be the focus of the master plan for the acres of historic urban real estate that have been neglected for more than 20 years.

The history of LaVilla can be traced back to an 1801 Spanish land grant of 350 acres, described as a triangular tract stretching north from the mouth of McCoy’s Creek.

Over the years, LaVilla became a center of North Florida’s railroad and shipping industries, then later an entertainment and nightlife area known as “Harlem of the South.”

By the late 1980s, the neighborhood had deteriorated and was mostly bulldozed as part of the city’s 1993 River City Renaissance urban renewal program.

After the area was razed, a host of developers proposed projects from workforce housing to luxury convention hotels, but none followed through.

The Florida Department of Transportation was among the first to consider developing in the area, said Brad Thoburn, JTA vice president of long-range planning and system development.

The transportation authority’s impending development revives the transportation concept.

“We’re taking an old plan and breathing new life into it,” Thoburn said.

Construction is slated to begin in January 2017 on an intercity bus terminal expected to be complete a year later. The facility will allow the Greyhound Bus station to move out of the urban core as the first phase of the regional mass transit center, Thoburn said.

The second phase will include a new JTA administration building, improvements to the Skyway station near the convention center and moving the Rosa Parks bus hub currently along Union and State streets to a new bus transfer facility in LaVilla.

The entire project, budgeted at more than $32 million, should be substantially completed by September 2019, said Thoburn.

The architecture for the first phase of the development will come out of a design competition expected to be finished by March.

With the DIA approving the two residential developments and JTA close to scheduling the groundbreaking for the mass transit hub, ensuring what happens next makes sense is the reason behind the partnership.

Wallace said LaVilla represents a rare development scenario not available in other cities so close to Class-A office towers.

“It’s a unique opportunity — almost a blank canvas,” he said.

The transportation center and JTA’s offices will be the “major anchors” for the new LaVilla, but Wallace said the focus of the master plan needs to be less about planning and more about action.

“We want it to be a real estate development implementation plan,” he said. “It’s a heck of an opportunity. There are some great parcels just waiting to be developed.”

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