Three months after a prospective buyer of Downtown Jacksonville’s Laura Street Trio of historic buildings announced he had reached a tentative purchasing deal with the owner, city officials say the sale still hasn’t closed and negotiations have faltered.
In mid-January, Live Oak Contracting President and CEO Paul Bertozzi told City Council members he had entered into a purchase and sale agreement with SouthEast Development Group Inc. on the long-vacant structures at Laura and Forsyth streets. At that time, Bertozzi said he expected to close on the deal within 45 days.
On March 19, city Chief Communications Officer Phil Perry said in an email that the agreement appeared to have stalled, prompting the city to resume action on a lawsuit alleging SouthEast-affiliated Laura Trio LLC has failed to pay $827,500 in fines for municipal code violations stretching back several years.
The city originally filed the suit in August 2024, then refiled it in November 2024 but opted not to serve the defendants the suit at that time after coming to an agreement with Live Oak that allowed the contractor to pursue the sale. In late February, Perry said, the city served the suit after determining that “the next best action is moving forward again on the lien lawsuit while we wait for an agreement to be reached on the sale of the property.”
Live Oak Contracting did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
In response to a question from the Downtown Investment Authority board at its March 19 meeting, DIA CEO Lori Boyer said “nothing is moving forward” on efforts to revive the Trio. Boyer said Mike Weinstein, Mayor Donna Deegan’s chief of staff, told her recently that negotiations on the sale had run into difficulties.
Jacksonville City Council member Kevin Carrico, chair of the Council Special Committee on the Future of Downtown, said the obstacles included liens on the property that SouthEast had been unable to satisfy. The liens had been placed on the property by an architect, he said.
Dasher Hurst Architects P.A. filed the lien Feb. 6 saying it is owed $474,149.45 for work done between 2013 and 2024.
“Those created some hiccups with the development team and the new lender, and they are trying to work through those things,” Carrico said.
Carrico said Live Oak remained dedicated to saving the buildings, giving him optimism that a deal could still be reached.
Court records show a citation for a public nuisance infraction for graffiti filed March 18. There are seven similar citations open from 2024.
The lawsuit
The city refiled the suit in November 2024 after the latest of numerous rounds of negotiations between the city and SouthEast on an incentive package for the redevelopment fell through.
The city named Laura Trio LLC and Red Oak Capital Fund II LLC as defendants. Red Oak Capital Fund II LLC is part of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Red Oak Capital Holdings. Red Oak is a commercial real estate financing and investment company.
In the refiling, the amount of fines allegedly owed to the city increased $22,250 from the original filing in August. In the November refiling, the city said fines were accruing at a rate of $250 per day.
SouthEast principal Steve Atkins says his group had worked diligently toward a redevelopment agreement only to be cut off by the city. He also has accused the city of unfairly using incidents of vandalism and graffiti as the basis for the suit.
Live Oak's involvement
Live Oak entered the picture in August 2024, when it announced it had partnered with SouthEast.
The emergence of Live Oak prompted hopes that the company could inject new capital into the project and reduce SouthEast’s reliance on public incentives to move it forward.
That optimism faded in October 2024 after Atkins and his group returned with a new redevelopment proposal that requested more city incentives than they had asked for previously.
At that point, Deegan’s office announced that the city was permanently cutting off talks with SouthEast and refiled the foreclosure suit.
In November 2024, Live Oak announced it was negotiating to buy the buildings in a deal that would leave Atkins with no ownership stake in the property.
Live Oak’s involvement prompted the city administration to propose an agreement that would pause the city’s suit for up to two years in exchange for a commitment by Live Oak to correct the code violations during that time.
The agreement set timelines for Live Oak to close on its financing by the end of 2024, then negotiate a new incentives package agreement with the DIA and launch construction in 2025.
The deal was designed to allow Live Oak, which is based Downtown in offices with a view of the Trio, to obtain private financing to facilitate the sale.
The deadline on closure of the deal elapsed with no sale, but on Jan. 14 Weinstein said the city planned to meet with Live Oak to revisit the deal on the lawsuit. He said both parties had already agreed in principle to the terms.
Trio's history
The Trio comprises the Florida Life Insurance, Bisbee and Marble Bank buildings at northeast Laura and Forsyth streets. The buildings, which have been vacant for decades, were among the first built after the 1901 fire that destroyed much of Jacksonville.
The three buildings are shielded by historic preservation protections under two separate classifications, having been identified as local historic landmarks and listed as contributing structures within the federally designated Downtown Jacksonville Historic District.
Requests to demolish any of the buildings would be subject to approval by the city Historic Preservation Commission. If approved there, the Council Land Use and Zoning Committee would review the request and make a recommendation to the full City Council on whether to grant final approval for razing.
Atkins purchased the buildings in 2013.
In 2017, Council OK’d $5.8 million in public incentives toward a $44.6 million project that included only the restoration of the historic buildings.
In 2021, the Council-approved incentive amount increased to $26.6 million for a $70.4 million version of the redevelopment that included new construction for a Marriott Autograph Collection hotel.
In 2023, SouthEast returned with a request for $63.5 million in incentives for updated plans that added new construction for 149 apartments with market rate and workforce housing units. The price for that version of the project was $175 million.
In June 2023, the Downtown Investment Authority board voted 5-1 to send a term sheet for that version of the project to Council with neither a recommendation for or against it. DIA staff reported at the time that SouthEast did not meet certain DIA criteria for incentives, including the level of private investment and the return on public investment.
After rejecting legislation aimed at moving the project forward, Council voted in January 2024 to send the issue back to the DIA.
That prompted another round of negotiation in which the total cost of the project rose to $191.2 million and SouthEast’s requests for incentives climbed to $87.2 million, which would be almost 46% of the cost being backed by the city.
As the asks for incentives went up, Atkins faced rising concerns among city leaders that he was not bringing enough private capital to the project and that his requests for public funding would put the city at increasingly outsized financial risk.