A former shipyard along the Intracoastal Waterway at Atlantic Boulevard would become a mixed-use development with multifamily units, a hotel, a waterside restaurant and marina with public access under a rezoning request and land use map amendment approved by a Jacksonville City Council committee on July 16.
The Land Use and Zoning Committee voted 7-0 in favor of Ordinances 2024-0395 and 2024-0396, which would amend the land use map and rezone 43.8 acres of land at 13911 Atlantic Blvd. to Planned Unit Development for the project. The vote sends both ordinances to the full Council.
A conceptual site plan with the legislation dated June 23, 2023, calls it Moody Marine Harbor.
The property was previously zoned Planned Unit Development limiting it to 590 residential units, 6,000 square feet of commercial uses and a marina with 250 wet slips and 400 dry slips.
Planning staff and the Jacksonville Planning Commission recommended approval of the ordinance with several conditions, including that residential development be limited to 560 units, nonresidential commercial use – not including marina slips – be capped at 106,000 square feet and the total number of marina slips not exceed 650.
The Planning Commission voted 6-0, with three members absent, to recommend approval.
Site plans filed with the ordinances show a hotel and offices on the west side of the property, apartments with two swimming pools on the north, a waterside restaurant on the southeast corner, a structured parking garage and public boat parking on the southern edge, and a boat ramp into the property’s Intracoastal basin.
The land, once the site of the Bellinger Shipyards, is directly across Atlantic Boulevard from The Views at Harbortown apartments on the Intracoastal.
LUZ committee members praised the project, saying it would enhance the area by providing dining, parking and access for boaters, kayakers and users of personal watercraft.
“This is a missing piece of the puzzle in development out at the Beaches,” committee member Rory Diamond said.
City documents list the owner of the property as Jacksonville Intracoastal LLC. State records list Jeff Klotz as the LLC’s registered agent. Klotz is founder and CEO of The Klotz Group of Companies, an Atlantic Beach-based real estate investment company.
The project is shown on the website of New Jersey-based KABR Group. It says it acquired the property with The Klotz Group.
Cyndy Trimmer, a representative of the developer, told LUZ members that the developer and city had negotiated a term sheet dividing costs of building the public boat ramp. The two parties would evenly split the costs of the $1.63 million marina under the term sheet.
Trimmer said a condition of the earlier PUD to cede 45 acres of land adjacent to development for wetlands had been satisfied.