Almost a year after the Jacksonville Armada Football Club released renderings of the soccer stadium it plans to build Downtown, the professional soccer team applied to the city for a permit to build the project at a job cost of $18.2 million.
The application comes after the city issued a permit Oct. 16 to clear the 4.84-acre site at a cost of $11.5 million.
The site is at 1041 Albert St., at northeast A. Philip Randolph Boulevard and Albert Street, north of the Arlington Expressway and northwest of EverBank Stadium.
The site is in the Sports and Entertainment District.
The construction permit application shows a 14,000-square-foot stadium with 2,545 seats.
The Armada plans to join the MLS NEXT Pro league, a step up from the National Premier Soccer League under-23 team it currently fields.
Armada President and General Manager Nathan Walter said Nov. 6 that groundbreaking would be scheduled after confirmation of the land closing, which he expects in seven to 10 days.
The land is owned by the city of Jacksonville, which has agreed to sell a 5-acre property for $1 to team owner RP Sports Investment Inc. for the stadium.
Walter estimates construction completion by year-end 2025 and play to begin the following year.
“We will start playing in the stadium in 2026, once completed,” Walter said by email.
Groundbreaking has been delayed at least 10 months later than initially expected.
The Armada professional soccer club announced Nov. 2, 2023, that it would break ground on the stadium in January 2024 “with all hopes of final permitting and stadium construction to allow for the club’s first MLS NEXT Pro season to be in 2025.”
News4Jax.com reported Feb. 24, 2024, that the completion date for the proposed stadium was pushed back.
It reported that Jacksonville City Council extended the start date for construction and pushed the deadline for the project to wrap up to March 1, 2026.
The renderings released Nov. 15, 2023, show a stadium with seating on four sides. Two of the sides have two-level covered tiers. There are lower, uncovered seating areas along the other two sides.
Council voted to rezone 7.58 acres to Planned Unit Development to include the soccer entertainment complex as well as commercial, office and multifamily residential uses.
A conceptual map of the stadium showed 2,500 seats in Phase 1 of the project and 6,972 seats in Phase 2 for a total of 9,472 seats. The map says there are 307 parking spaces in Phase 1.
That map showed a 25,000-square-foot office building on the south side of the stadium in Phase 1 and a 95,000-square-foot building on the west side of the stadium for Phase 2.
Stewart Green of Colt-Green Construction will lead the development team and Gilbane Building Co. will be the construction partner.
The project legal team is Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow, led by Steve Diebenow and Cyndy Trimmer.
Waitz & Moye was named the civil engineer for the project’s site planning. Kasper architects + associates is the architect.
RP Sports founder Robert Palmer bought the Armada from the North American Soccer League in July 2017. Palmer is the founder and owner of Lake Mary-based mortgage brokerage RP Funding Inc.
That league folded, and the Armada currently competes in the National Premier Soccer League as an under-23 team.
The team played for several seasons at the Baseball Grounds and EverBank Field before relocating to Hodges Stadium at the University of North Florida.
Jacksonville Armada FC and Jacksonville University announced March 13, 2024, they were facility partners for the 2024 National Premier Soccer League and Women’s Premier Soccer League regular season matches.
Matches took place at Southern Oak Stadium on the JU campus in Arlington.
Walter said Nov. 6 the Armada has not confirmed it is playing at JU in 2025.