If and when the decades-long effort to revitalize the core of Jacksonville reaches fruition, a pair of events 25 hours apart in October 2024 will represent mileposts on the road to rebirth.
At 10 a.m. Oct. 29, government and community leaders gathered for the groundbreaking for Gateway Jax, the proposed $2 billion-plus mixed-use development in Downtown’s NorthCore district near City Hall.
The next day, many of those same individuals turned out for an 11 a.m. ribbon-cutting for the proposed $37.9 million Phoenix Arts & Innovation District in North Springfield.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said the two developments were among numerous public and private projects that were changing the face of Downtown and its immediate surroundings, including Springfield and the Eastside neighborhood near EverBank Stadium.
“When I was a little girl, Downtown was all that,” she told reporters after the Gateway Jax event.
“We used to come down here and shop and eat and do all the things. So that’s always been my hope and my vision for Downtown is that we see it once again become a place where people want to gather.”
She said the back-to-back celebrations marked progress toward re-establishing the urban core “as the place to live, work and play in Northeast Florida and beyond.”
Developers inspire confidence
In many ways, Gateway Jax and the Phoenix district are markedly different.
Gateway, at least in its initial phase, is mostly new construction, while the Phoenix revolves around adaptive reuse of warehouse and industrial buildings.
Gateway, if fully built-out, comprises 28 acres across 24 city blocks. The Phoenix footprint is a fraction of that size, at 8.3 acres.
One shared element is that each is led by an outside developer who had successes elsewhere and has created public-private partnerships in Jacksonville.
Gateway Jax principal Bryan Moll led the Water Street Tampa downtown redevelopment and the Amazon HQ2 National Landing site in the Washington, D.C., area.
Phoenix developer Tony Cho, the CEO of Miami-based Future of Cities, is the visionary behind such revitalization projects as the Wynwood arts, entertainment and dining district in Miami.
In a city where numerous projects in and near Downtown have failed to emerge from the drawing board or have been abandoned during construction, Moll and Cho have instilled confidence in local officials that their projects will be delivered as promised.
City Council member Jimmy Peluso, whose District 7 includes both projects, spoke to that at both events.
“This is how you do it,” he said at the Phoenix event.
“I said it yesterday and I’ll say it today as well. When you have developers who have a plan and a vision and they work with the city, the public sector, this is how you make sure you get projects done,” he said.
“For any developer who wants to know how you turn renderings into reality, they’re showing you how to do it.”
The two projects
The Gateway Jax groundbreaking was for the $45 million Block N11 building at 515 N. Pearl St.
The seven-story building will include 205 apartment units and 24,086 square feet of retail, commercial and storage space.
Moll and his team are working to obtain permits for three other buildings on the property, including a minimum 21-story tower that will include at least 508 residential units and about 30,000 square feet of ground floor leasable retail space.
It will be part of Pearl Square, the first phase of the Gateway Jax project.
Fully built-out, the first phase would include 1,250 residential units, about 200,000 square feet of retail space, a curbless festival street with outdoor dining, and new public spaces.
Among the new spaces are Porter House Garden at southeast Julia and Church streets, the site of the groundbreaking.
Moll, who is working to land a fitness center and a grocery store with a pharmacy, said he expected to announce the tenant names in the next four months.
The event attracted U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Florida, along with Deegan, several Council members and more than 100 people.
As for the Phoenix, Oct. 30 marked the ceremonial opening of Emerald Station, a repurposed 17,000-square-foot warehouse that features offices, a 10,000-square-foot event space, a kitchen, conference rooms and more.
Plans for the full district include 10 properties, including conversions of four warehouses and green spaces into office space, artist studios, galleries, retail establishments and restaurants. Affordable housing also will be included.
The site is bordered mostly by Main, 15th and Liberty streets and an east-west rail line.
Attendees at the ribbon-cutting included Deegan; Council members; Ed Randolph, executive director of the Office of Economic Development; and members of community organizations such as Springfield Preservation and Revitalization.
A work in progress
At the Gateway Jax event, at Church and Julia streets, Peluso and other attendees didn’t have to look far to see signs that Downtown revitalization is by no means close to completion.
Directly south and southeast are a pair of derelict projects, the Ambassador Hotel and Independent Life Building. Both were abandoned by their developer, Augustine Development Group, after being permitted and approved for city incentives.
Today the buildings stand with missing windows, graffitied walls, debris-strewn grounds and boarded-up doorways.
Asked if he was concerned that Gateway Jax could end up in the same state, Peluso dismissed the idea.
Where the Ambassador and Independent Life were led by a developer he described as a “mom-and-pop” operation and faced fiscal headwinds brought on by the pandemic, he said Gateway Jax was a different story thanks to a development team led by Moll and partners JWB Real Estate Capital and DLP Capital LLC.
“They have the money, they have the political capital and they have the direction with Bryan Moll in charge,” he said.
Peluso said the progress in revitalization efforts was a product of mindset change among Jacksonville’s political leadership to invest in Downtown.
“We kept building out (of Downtown),” he said.
“Meanwhile, our peer competitor cities – the Nashvilles, the Orlandos, the Tampas of the world – were investing in their cities. And admittedly, being a consolidated city and county only made things harder. So to be standing here today at a site where we’re about to build a 22-story tower in our city of Jacksonville is an incredible feat.”
City backing
The developers of both projects said they would not have been possible without city incentives.
Council approved $98.58 million for Pearl Square, comprising $59.63 million in Recapture Enhanced Value Grants and $38.95 million in completion grants that were recommended for approval by the DIA board in mid-November 2023.
The incentives break down as:
Block N11, the site of the groundbreaking: A $9.06 million REV grant and $4.63 million completion grant.
Block N4: A $14.1 million REV grant and a $6.84 million completion grant for a minimum six-story building to include at least 266 residential units and 19,155 square feet of leasable retail space. The block is bounded by Union, Pearl, Beaver and Clay streets.
Block N5: A $2.57 million REV grant and a $1.9 million completion grant for redesign and redevelopment of the 800-space former First Baptist Church lighthouse garage bounded by Union, Julia, Beaver and Pearl streets. The garage would include 15,000 square feet of leasable space.
Block N8: A $33.88 million REV grant and a $25.55 million completion grant for the tallest tower in Pearl Square. The block is bounded by Beaver, Pearl, Ashley and Clay streets.
A REV grant is a refund on ad valorem tax revenue generated by a new development.
The Phoenix received approval for $5.5 million in incentives, with a $1.5 million REV grant plus $2 million completion grants for each of two phases of construction.
In addition, Phoenix drew support from the Local Initiatives Support Corp., which provided a $7 million loan for the project.
The developers and city leaders said that collaborations involving Deegan’s office, Council, the Downtown Investment Authority and the city Office of Economic Development were pivotal.
“Those incentives, even though some say we don’t need to provide them, are absolutely critical to make the numbers work in Downtown today,” DIA CEO Lori Boyer said during the Gateway Jax event.
“But let me tell you, it’s about a 10-to-1 return. We do an ROI (return on investment) number where we’re only looking at what the real estate taxes are that are generated to the city, but when you look at the investment that is made in relation to the amount of the incentive, it is a far greater return than that.”
Boyer’s comments reflected questions raised by some members of the Council Special Committee on the Future of Downtown, which former Council President Ron Salem formed in mid-2024 to address progress he described as “at best, debatable.”
Committee members have asked whether incentive programs should be discontinued in certain areas where progress has been made, primarily Brooklyn and the Southbank, and whether the DIA should be given a set sum of incentives and authority to distribute them.
Under the current approach, there is no cap on incentives, which are approved by Council.
Some Council members say that after years of Council approving incentive requests, they’re planning to examine packages much more closely to ensure the city can afford them.
With Council auditors having projected budget deficits of up to $109 million over the next four years, some members say they are particularly concerned about how completion grants could affect the city’s coffers.
A growing list of projects
Construction is happening in each of Downtown’s seven main districts and in Springfield, where developers and the city are investing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Major projects include the upcoming $1.45 billion renovation of EverBank Stadium; the $254.3 million Four Seasons Hotel Downtown and office building by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s Iguana Investments Florida LLC ; the nearly completed, $26 million Lofts at Cathedral apartments in Cathedral Hill; the $38 million first phase of Riverfront Plaza in City Center; the Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s $40.5 million U2C Autonomous Innovation Center in LaVilla; and the $250 million One Riverside mixed-use development in Brooklyn.
Jake Gordon, CEO of Downtown Vision Inc., recently told the JAX Chamber Downtown Council that $465 million of developments had been completed Downtown since 2023, with $2.23 billion under construction.
Deegan made Downtown redevelopment a high priority in her campaign, and she’s pushed it forward during her 16 months in office.
As part of her strategy, she developed a series of “chop-chop” meetings that bring together city department leaders to work through issues hindering progress of key projects.
“I’m not very patient,” she told reporters at the Pearl Square groundbreaking.
“I feel like the city has been very patient as far as waiting for things to happen Downtown.”
She said she and her team also maintained close communication with developers to identify and resolve problems during approvals and permitting.
“In terms of this particular project, we made sure to stay in touch with Bryan and his team,” she said.
“Any little hitch in the giddyup, we tried to move through it quickly. Things can bog down in a number of different places, so our goal has been to move through the bureaucracy as quickly as possible to try to get these projects done, and I think so far it’s been successful.”
Moll said that contrary to some local opinions, Jacksonville has “a pretty good system in place” for moving Downtown developments forward compared with other cities where he has worked.
“Are there things you can change around the edges? Absolutely,” he said after the groundbreaking.
“I know the special committee is looking at ways we might be able to tweak the way we do things Downtown. I have been in support of looking at ways we can do that. But I wouldn’t support any kind of blowing up of the DIA or anything like that. I think they and the DDRB work really well.”