Investments by the city of Jacksonville and Jaguars’ owner Shad Khan are transforming Downtown’s Sports and Entertainment District and its surroundings into an area that will be economically vibrant beyond game days and concert nights, said panelists at the Urban Land Institute North Florida’s 2025 Trends in Real Estate seminar Jan. 15.
About 290 people attended the event at the San Jose Country Club.
Mike Weinstein, Mayor Donna Deegan’s chief of staff, called the district “the most valuable property we have in the county right now” as a stimulator of economic activity for Downtown and the entire community.
Similar to how investment on the other end of Downtown has changed Brooklyn, he said the $1.4 billion “Stadium of the Future” and its companion $300 million community benefits agreement for improvements in the Eastside neighborhood and Shipyards area will help lift the Sports and Entertainment District and Downtown in general.
Jaguars President Mark Lamping said Downtown revitalization was a key motivator for both the team and city in last year’s stadium negotiations.
“The Jaguars are going to go as far, we believe, as Downtown Jacksonville goes,” he said.
Weinstein, Deegan’s lead negotiator in the stadium deal, agreed that improving Downtown through the deal was a top priority for Deegan.
Deegan has stated that Downtown revitalization is among her top priorities and that investing there will generate economic benefits for the entire community.
Lamping said the shared interest in Downtown and the Eastside neighborhood adjacent to the stadium was among the reasons he felt fully confident entering the stadium negotiations that there would be a good outcome.
“The reason I was confident in that is our interests were 100% aligned,” he said. “The city 100% wanted the Jaguars and the Jaguars 100% wanted to stay in Jacksonville and need Jacksonville."
Weinstein likened what’s happening in the Sports and Entertainment District to investments that transformed Brooklyn over the past five to 10 years.
“Brooklyn’s done unbelievably well,” he said. “The (Sports and) Entertainment District has been going well, and it’s going to go even better.”
Among the developments, construction is underway on the One Shipyards Place office building and adjacent Four Seasons Hotel and Residences along Gator Bowl Boulevard. The projects are by Khan’s development company, Iguana Investments.
The city issued a permit for the Jaguars to build-out three floors of the six-story One Shipyards Place for the team headquarters, which are now in EverBank Stadium.
The permit is for 63,500 square feet of space on the second, third and fourth floors at a project cost of $12.2 million.
The building also has been in review for a fitness center on the ground floor.
The office building is designed with 132,493 square feet of enclosed space and 10,185 square feet of unenclosed space on the riverfront near EverBank Stadium.
Elsewhere in the district, the developer of the Rise Doro apartments said early this year that reconstruction of the fire-damaged property would begin soon.
The wood-framed portions of the mixed-use development, which includes ground-floor retail, were destroyed by a fire in early 2024. The city ordered demolition of those portions of the building to prevent a collapse onto nearby structures.
In September 2024, Jacksonville City Council approved a $15.45 million incentive package to rebuild the apartments. That amount was nearly three times more than the $5.75 million in incentives the city approved in 2020 for the project. The increase was attributed to rising construction costs.
The community benefits package also includes funding for construction and maintenance of Metropolitan Park and Shipyards West Park, both high priorities to the Jaguars. Another attraction in development is the new Northbank location of the Museum of Science & History.