According to the city and the building's landlord, The Lomax project remains underway. | Casmira Harrison, Jacksonville Today
Published on September 26, 2024 at 11:25 am
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Q: Last August, restaurateurs got approval from the city to build The Lomax restaurant where a Wells Fargo bank once stood in Five Points. Construction on the 2-story venue – estimated to cost nearly $2.22 million – began. But then it appeared to stall out.
Jacksonville Today reader Emily B. says the site has been lingering with no activity for some time as a “two story shell of a structure.” She and her neighbors have been wondering what’s going on.
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“Any details you may be able to find would be appreciated by so many!”
A: While an exact timeline for finishing the project remains elusive, what is clear is that the company that owns the property and the city believe The Lomax is still underway.
The founders of Roost Restaurants LLC – which has locations in Miramar and Neptune Beach – are developing The Lomax at the northwest corner of Oak and Lomax streets. The company received a permit to build an addition onto the building at 803 Lomax St. in August 2023.
City Limits, LLC owns the property, as well as several storefronts nearby, including the restaurant Taqueria Cinco and an optometry business next door. City Limits is managed by SDEV Commercial, a real estate investment firm based in Georgia.
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Reached by phone, SDEV CEO Giles Stevens says the tenant has assured him as recently as this past week that the project will come to fruition.
“They’re just redoing their plans,” Stevens says. “It’s still happening. It’s just slowed down as they’re repricing some steel (for) the mezzanine upstairs, some of that kind of stuff.”
Plans filed with the city in 2023 show a 160-seat, two story restaurant with three bars and a raised performance platform viewable from the upper level.
Roost Restaurants, founded by Martin E. “Ted” Stein II and Jack Charles “JC” Demetree III, could not be reached for comment on the status of their project.
According to the Jacksonville Daily Record, Demetree said in the spring of 2023: “As a restaurant group, we’ve strived to introduce new and exciting concepts to Jacksonville and we can’t wait to bring our newest addition.”
According to the city’s building department, permits for the site remain active, and the latest site inspection was completed in May of this year.
Unhappy neighbors
In response to an inquiry from Councilman Jimmy Peluso, Thomas Register, chief of municipal code compliance, said in an Aug. 5 email, “It looks like they have active permits and occasionally have permit inspections completed…They will be permitted to stage so long as the permit is in good standing.”
Asked what prompted his inquiry into the site work, Peluso said he had received a message from a constituent that construction items had been blocking the sidewalk, causing concern about access. Peluso said the items were relocated to a less intrusive location.
And just next door to The Lomax construction site, the owners of Davalt Optical are considering moving their business Downtown to Bay Street.
Clinton Ross said the work on the Lomax has put not only his business in jeopardy but also his health and the health of his patients. He said the work on the project seemed to stall in the middle of some asbestos remediation work and never really picked up since.
He said he and his wife, Kelly, who co-owns the optometry business with him, are not trying to be difficult. But running a business next door to a construction site with an undefined timeline of completion has been challenging.
The project’s delay also comes at a transition period for Five Points, with several vacant storefronts and other construction projects nearby and the pending partial demolition of the Five Points Theater to convert it from Sun-Ray Cinema into the forthcoming FIVE live music venue.
Another restaurant, another delay
The Roost Restaurant Group is also working on a different restaurant on Oak Street, less than a half mile south of The Lomax construction site. That site – a former laundromat at 2220, 2242 and 2246 Oak Street – seems to be moving at a snail’s pace, too.
On Sept. 5, Stein emailed the city’s building division to address the need for a fire suppression system in the building and a delay in the project.
In the email, Stein mentions original plans for the restoration of the building. He said those plans had not yet been paid for and the company needed to add a fire suppression system to them.
“We were already redoing the plans that were ready in July, that made a smaller footprint and restored the historical skylights. We should have a new set of plans ready to submit by December 1st,” Stein wrote in the email to Register, the building official. “Apologies for the delay, but with the curveball of the fire suppression system we want to make sure we restore this historic build in the best possible way.”
A planned compliance hearing for an “unsafe building” issue at the Oak Street site was later suspended by the city department.
Casmira Harrison is a Jacksonville Today reporter focusing on local government in Duval County.
