Duval Schools is considering purchasing this building in the Prominence office park to be its new HQ. | Megan Mallicoat, Jacksonville Today
Published on September 1, 2025 at 7:24 pm
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The Duval County School Board, which was scheduled to vote Tuesday on the sale of its Downtown headquarters and purchase of a Southside location, instead will vote only whether to authorize Superintendent Christopher Bernier to negotiate contracts that the board will consider next month.
Duval Schools spokesperson Laureen Ricks tells Jacksonville Today the district is “on track” to bring the contracts to the board for approval on Oct. 7.
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“The process was updated to provide additional time for the board to review the contracts,” Ricks wrote in an email.
Since the district two weeks ago announced its intention to sell its current Southbank headquarters on Prudential Drive and relocate, it has declined Jacksonville Today’s requests to publicly release the nine other competing purchase offers it received.
A one-pager about the proposed sale, provided to school board members in August, says Duval Schools received 10 offers for the property and selected one for $20 million. Bernier said during an Aug. 19 meeting that the $20 million offer came from Fleet Landing, a nonprofit senior residence management company.
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Fleet Landing CEO Josh Ashby confirmed the company’s intent to purchase the Prudential Drive property and tells Jacksonville Today they would raze the district’s multistory riverfront building.
Other offers hidden
When Jacksonville Today requested the 10 offers it received, the district twice denied the request, citing a public records exemption under Florida Statute 1013.14.
That statute, which allows school boards to keep some records confidential while negotiating the purchase of property, does not apply here, according to an attorney Jacksonville Today consulted. The exemption applies only to the purchase of property — not to sales, she says.
Barbara Petersen is the executive director for the Florida Center for Government Accountability and was for 25 years the president of the First Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that “protects all Floridians’ rights to freely express themselves and access information.”
She says access to information from public agencies like Duval Schools is “both a constitutional right in Florida and a statutory right,” but in practice, getting access is becoming increasingly difficult.
“What I’m finding is the agencies, in my opinion, are intentionally under-funding and under-staffing those offices that are designed to deal with public records requests,” Petersen says.
Research shows public record laws lead to more efficient government and lower taxes, says David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida.
“Transparency is imperative for parents and other taxpayers to see how their dollars are being put to use – to hold government accountable,” Cuillier tells Jacksonville Today. “When in doubt, let the records out.”
Because of Jacksonville’s consolidated government structure, the city’s Office of General Counsel assigns the school board attorneys as their general counsel. The most recently assigned attorney, Ray Poole, resigned in May, and Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler tells Jacksonville Today the school district does not currently have an attorney assigned.
Last month, the school board voted 5-2 to ask the city to change its charter and allow the district to hire its own attorney.
What we know about the move
The property the district is considering buying for $14 million is a four-story, 164,000-square-foot building in the Prominence office park near Baymeadows and I-95 that’s owned by a company controlled by Dream Finders Homes. That building, which Southeastern Grocers currently leases as its headquarters, was part of a $22 million sale last summer.
As the Jacksonville Daily Record reports, Southeastern Grocers’ lease expires at the end of this year, and if the deal with Duval Schools goes through, it will move its HQ to the Westside.
The proposed Duval Schools relocation would take the district out of Jacksonville’s urban core — a move critics say would make it difficult for parents without cars to attend meetings and conduct business with the district. Bernier says he would want to establish a parent resource center at the Schultz Center, a property the district owns off Beach Boulevard about three miles east of its current HQ, and hold the board’s monthly meetings there as well. It’s unclear whether other public meetings would also be hosted there.
Selling the headquarters building is not a new idea; it predates Bernier’s tenure, which began in July of 2024. Last September, he presented to the school board a plan to hire a commercial real estate firm to manage it and other real estate transactions.
Bernier said moving the district off the river — and so allowing commercial or residential development in its place — would “support the economic development of this city.”
Relocating HQ has been a topic of conversation for at least 20 years, Bernier said. Most recently, it was considered about three years ago. Then, instead of using a real estate consultant, the district received bids and evaluated them through a more transparent process. Ultimately, the board opted to not sell.
This time, Bernier emphasized the need to engage a commercial real estate firm — something he said would help the district “work the best deal.”
“Everything we own has been purchased with public tax dollars, and therefore we have a responsibility to ensure that when we sell property, we understand we have a responsibility to garner back as many of those public dollars, or more, in the sale of our property,” Bernier told the board last September.
District records show it received proposals from three real estate firms by its Oct. 15 deadline and recommended the contract be awarded to Trinity Commercial Group one week later. The board approved the contract with TCG on Dec. 9.
TCG is a commercial real estate firm based in Estero, Florida, a suburb of Fort Myers in Lee County. In its proposal, the company listed Bernier’s former district, Lee Schools, as a reference. TCG’s local advisor in Jacksonville is Clint Betlock, who held high-level real estate positions with Southeastern Grocers and MD Now Urgent Care before joining TCG in 2023.
The maximum net proceeds of the sale price of the current building and the purchase price of the new one is $6 million — but that doesn’t account for the commission the district must pay to TCG, the cost of moving its employees 10 miles south and retrofitting the Schultz Center to host school board meetings.
The board is set to vote on whether to authorize Bernier to negotiate both contracts on Tuesday, Sept. 2, at 6 p.m. at 1701 Prudential Drive. Public comment cards will be accepted until about 6:15 p.m.
