Developer wants to tie new downtown projects together with $1 billion master plan

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In the adjacent 3 years, residents could spot a precise antithetic downtown Jacksonville arsenic the metropolis gets acceptable to determination up with assorted transformative improvement projects.

The Shipyards, the aged Jacksonville Landing tract and Berkman II are conscionable a fewer projects that volition marque large changes connected the North Bank.

On Thursday, section developer Steve Atkins of SouthEast Development Group presented his $1 cardinal program to necktie each the projects together arsenic good arsenic make caller ones. And helium has unsocial ideas connected however to powerfulness each the caller buildings.

“The decisions that [the city] are going to beryllium making present are going to impact our metropolis for the adjacent 50 to 60 years. What we bash connected the North Bank successful downtown Jacksonville is mostly typical of the metropolis arsenic a full and we judge we person to get this program right,” Atkins said.

People similar Nick Hansen who unrecorded adjacent downtown person galore ideas connected what is needed.

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“I deliberation downtown needs much residential buildings. More infrastructure that would enactment residential similar nationalist transportation, market stores oregon restaurants, mundane surviving things truthful radical tin really enactment downtown and not commute to the suburbs.” Hansen said.

Those are conscionable immoderate of the plans Adkins of the SouthEast Development radical has successful mind.

Last June helium summited his ideas for what helium thinks should spell adjacent the erstwhile Landing and City Hall sites. Now helium has drawn up a caller representation and presented it to the metropolis arsenic a maestro program for the metropolis to follow. 

He believes the metropolis needs to deliberation of the riverfront arsenic a full and not portion retired idiosyncratic projects.

One of Atkins’s ideas is simply a hydrokinetic vigor system. It would usage the beardown currents successful the St. Johns River to powerfulness turbines to make electricity. That could beryllium utilized to powerfulness the caller buildings and prevention wealth arsenic well.

He is besides suggesting:

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• 15 acres of riverfront nationalist parkland and plaza spaces with resiliency infrastructure

• More than 1,000 multifamily units (including apartments and condominiums)

• A 208-room, entertainment-oriented, boutique-style hotel

• 90,000 quadrate feet of well-certified bureau space, which could beryllium converted to multifamily based connected marketplace demand

• 155,000 quadrate feet of retail, edifice and amusement space

• A 280,000 square-foot Exhibition, Entertainment & Technology Center with retail and virtual venues

• Approximately 4,500 structured parking spaces crossed 5 garages

• An expanded pier with retail and amusement venues

Adkins’s ideas were not solicited by the city. He conscionable wants them to beryllium considered.

He estimates the task could outgo much than $1 billion. He is not asking the metropolis for immoderate wealth upfront and said helium does person immoderate fiscal backers and needs to enactment quickly. Adkins has respective palmy downtown projects including the renovation of the Old Barnett Bank building. He is besides progressive successful the Laura Street trio proposals.

News4Jax reached retired to the Downtown Investment Authority and the mayor’s bureau for comment. The mayor’s unit said the task is ambitious and exciting. His unit went connected to accidental that the DIA should perceive from each entities who person a willingness to put successful downtown.

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