A rendering shows the towers that Fleet Landing envisions for its proposed senior community on Jacksonville's Southbank, on the site of the current Duval Schools headquarters. | Fleet Landing, submitted
Published on September 16, 2025 at 10:10 pm
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Several Duval School Board members are expressing doubts about the proposed HQ sale and purchase of a building in Baymeadows that would move district staff from Downtown to the Southside.
On Tuesday, five of the seven Duval School Board members — Reggie Blount, Melody Bolduc, April Carney, Cindy Pearson and Darryl Willie — expressed some skepticism about draft contracts that Superintendent Christopher Bernier presented for the two real estate transactions, copies of which were later provided to Jacksonville Today.
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The Atlantic Beach nonprofit Fleet Landing, which runs a well-established community in Atlantic Beach and is building another in Nocatee, proposes to build a pair of high-rise towers on the Southbank site currently occupied by Duval Schools’ aging four-story headquarters. The riverfront community would include residences, assisted living facilities and space for shops and restaurants.
Board members expressed the most doubt about these provisions in the contracts:
- The district will pay a real estate firm’s 6% commission on the sale of the Prudential Drive building — $1.2 million — and a 1% commission for the purchase of the Prominence Parkway property — $140,000.
- Fleet Landing would pay for the Southbank property in two parts: $12.5 million at closing and the remaining $7.5 million three years later.
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“I’m curious about why we’re getting into the mortgage business,” Carney said. “I have an issue with this part of the contract…and I’m really curious to know what the terms were for our other offers.”
Bernier said Fleet Landing had “moved from a previous bid of $17 [million] and change to $20 million total in their best and final” offer — but the company did not agree to pay interest during the three-year gap between payments.
“These were the terms they brought to us,” Bernier said, adding that he would let the district’s real estate consultant “at some point, potentially tomorrow, talk more about how that deal was made.”
Bernier said Fleet Landing’s offer was the highest, even before they upped it to $20 million. But because the district has so far not publicly released any of the 10 offers, details are unclear.
Jacksonville Today first requested copies of the documents a month ago — a request the district denied, citing an exemption to Florida’s public records laws that allows agencies to withhold records while negotiating the purchase of property. Seemingly, the exemption does not apply in this case, where the district is working to sell property. City of Jacksonville General Counsel Michael Fackler did not respond to several requests to review the exemption by this story’s deadline.
Bernier has said the second- and third-highest offers were both in the $15 million range.
Carney also asked if another offer might have closed sooner — and thus helped the district avoid the cost of a loan to bridge the time between buying a new building at the end of this year and selling the current one at the end of next year.
“I don’t know that we got into all that negotiations with them because once we determined this was our best and highest offer, that’s who we primarily worked with,” Bernier said. “So we wouldn’t be able to answer the question of what the terms for closure would be around the $15.7 or the $15.1, because we didn’t enter into those types of negotiations with those individuals.”
A taxing question
Another sticking point for some board members, and among community members, is whether choosing Fleet Landing as the buyer would cheat taxpayers out of revenue on prime riverfront land.
One of the major reasons the district says it needs to move off of the river is that doing so would allow the land to go back on Duval County’s tax rolls. But Fleet Landing is a nonprofit organization, and many nonprofits don’t pay property taxes.
Fleet Landing pushed back on that idea. In a news release, it said its “independent living units and amenity spaces” would generate several million dollars in tax revenue for the city each year. At Tuesday’s meeting, board members Bolduc and Carney each said they had received a letter from Fleet Landing with similar reasoning.
Duval County Property Appraiser Joyce Morgan tells Jacksonville Today the answer to the question of whether nonprofits pay property tax depends on what their building is used for. State statutes allow exemptions for churches and charitable causes — including assisted living facilities.
“That’s what you have to look at: Is it predominantly for a charitable purpose, or is there another underlying purpose?” Morgan says.
Nonprofits must apply for exemptions. In Fleet Landing’s case, Morgan speculates that the assisted living portion would likely qualify for an exemption, but other parts would be subject to tax. Even then, residences on site may be eligible for exemptions, if they are independently owned like condos. Florida’s homestead exemption is up to $50,000 annually, and some additional exemptions may also apply, like for senior citizens and veterans.
Tax records show Fleet Landing’s owner, the Naval Continuing Care Retirement Foundation, is due to pay more than $1.3 million in Duval County property tax this year, but it also receives some exemptions.
The board will meet again Wednesday for a detailed review of the contracts before they are scheduled to vote on the sale and purchase on Oct. 7.
