Duval Schools considered the Suddath Building at 815 S. Main St. under a land swap offer that the superintendent rejected. | Google Maps
Published on September 22, 2025 at 9:35 pm
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The offers for Duval Schools’ Southbank headquarters sale included a land swap for an office building within walking distance of its current HQ, along with eight other offers that the district rejected in favor of the $20 million winning bid from retirement home operator Fleet Landing.
The details of the offers, which Duval Schools did not previously make available to the public, were provided to Jacksonville Today under a public records request that the district repeatedly denied before ultimately fulfilling on Friday, at a cost of $57.73.
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Explore the offers:
As recently as Saturday, school board members had not received details of the offers either.
Without being able to compare details of the 10 offers that the district received, the board was being asked to vote on selling the riverfront property to Fleet Landing, a nonprofit organization, and on purchasing a new HQ building in the Prominence office park on the city’s Southside. That vote is expected in a couple of weeks.
Supporters of the deals say moving into the current headquarters for Winn-Dixie parent company Southeastern Grocers is a good deal — $14 million — and would give the district a more modern building. Critics caution that moving operations away from Jacksonville’s urban core would create a tougher commute for many employees and visitors, especially those who use public transportation. And reservations about the plan to sell the Prudential Drive building leaves some school board members reluctant about the two transactions.
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Superintendent Christopher Bernier and the district’s real estate consultant, Dan O’Berski with Trinity Commercial Group, told the board there weren’t any viable options to keep the headquarters Downtown. In the search for a new HQ, school board members toured two options: the old JEA headquarters and the Prominence building, which Dream Finders Homes purchased as part of a larger sale in June 2024.
Southbank land swap
The land-swap offer, which came from Chase Properties, would have seen the district move from Prudential Drive to the similarly sized Suddath building, within walking distance, next to Treaty Oak Park. That offer included $3.5 million cash for Duval Schools in addition to the trade. Chase’s proposal described the Suddath building as “newly remodeled.”
Duval Schools spokesperson Sonya Duke-Bolden tells Jacksonville Today in an email that the Suddath building is “considerably smaller” than the Prominence building on the Southside, which has a “modern, open design” and was “fully renovated in 2015.”
The Suddath building won’t work as a district HQ because its “layout consists of fragmented, inefficient spaces that would require costly renovations,” Duke-Bolden says.
Bernier “did personally tour the Suddath building,” she wrote. “However, after thorough analysis by our contracted real estate firm and district leadership, the Suddath proposal was determined to be less cost-effective and less aligned with the district’s long-term operational goals.”
According to building inspection records, the Suddath building got a new roof three years ago, following more than $800,000 in updates to its air conditioning system. Chase Properties’ proposal says the six-story building is worth about $2 million more than the district’s current riverfront HQ, which the district says costs a lot to maintain. The Suddath building includes amenities like an employee fitness center and a cafeteria. It’s unclear whether the building has space for an auditorium to host the school board’s monthly meetings.
Other offers
In the first round of offers, a company called Stash Self Storage offered $30 million if the district would commit to leasing back a newly constructed building for 30 years. Jacksonville Today could not independently verify Stash’s ownership.
The second-highest purchase offer was for $14 million from Bainbridge Communities, near Orlando. Chase Properties and Fleet Landing both initially offered $12 million to purchase the riverfront property outright.
The documents show that after the district eliminated lease-back offers like Stash’s and other smaller offers — and after two rounds of negotiations — four bids were left standing:
- Fleet Landing: either a lump sum of $17 million or $20 million in two installments three years apart
- Bainbridge: $15.5 million
- Chase Properties: $15 million
- Ashco: $14 million, minus up to $3 million for environmental cleanup
Barry Ansbacher, a local real estate lawyer who’s not involved in the district’s search, independently reviewed the offers for Jacksonville Today. He says several factors go into picking an offer beyond the money. Reputation is important, for example, because buyers should “have a track record of being able to pull off these projects,” including documented “access to the capital and the sophistication to make these deals happen.”
Deposits are also an important part of commercial real estate deals, and especially the timing of when they become non-refundable — in real-estate lingo, “hard.”
Ansbacher says deposits will often be “soft” until after an inspection, or sometimes until after government approvals are received for the buyer’s project.
“If the buyer walks away for any reason or no reason, the seller gets no money beyond the deposit,” Ansbacher says. “You truly haven’t sold it until all those contingencies have expired.”
The documents detailing the offers show bidders progressively offered higher deposits and terms more advantageous to the district as negotiations progressed.
By the last round, both Fleet Landing and Chase Properties offered $1 million in “earnest money.” Chase’s was refundable for a 90-day inspection period, and half of Fleet Landing’s was refundable until government approvals were complete.
In its final offer, Fleet Landing agreed to a shorter period of refundable deposits.
Getting the deal done
At a pair of meetings last week, School Board members questioned Bernier and Trinity Commercial Group consultant O’Berski about the pending transactions.
Documents provided to Jacksonville Today by Duval Schools show the district received proposals from two real estate firms who wanted to perform the search: TCG and Prime Realty. While serving as the superintendent of Lee Schools in Southwest Florida, Bernier contracted with TCG for similar real estate services, TCG said in its proposal to Duval Schools. In addition to managing the current HQ sale and purchase, TCG is also helping the district offload surplus properties.
Board member questions
Some board members last week said they are nervous about waiting three years for all of the money under the Fleet Landing deal. Board member April Carney characterized the gap as giving Fleet Landing an “interest-free loan.” She asked Bernier if the two back-up bidders might be willing to negotiate.
“Has there been any conversation with our runner-up offers since this has come into fruition?” Carney asked. “I’m just curious to know if there has been any interest in those two other offers, of them coming up in price or a quicker close.”
Bernier told her they negotiated for better terms only with Fleet Landing.
“When you go into a good faith discussion, you don’t then, behind the scenes, entertain other offers. We’ve proceeded on this particular deal because we had a certain amount of money for this building and an expected purchase price for the other. If this were to move in a different direction, we would reopen those, but we have not been negotiating with the other members,” Bernier said.
Bernier told the board Fleet Landing had “moved from a previous bid of $17 million and change to $20 million total in their ‘best and final.’”
The documents provided to Jacksonville Today show Fleet Landing’s original offer was $12 million, and after a round of negotiations they raised it to $15 million. After a second round of negotiations, the $17 million offer came concurrently with a $20 million offer, depending on the structure of the deal. If the district chooses $17 million, Fleet Landing will pay it in one lump sum; if it takes the higher number, though, payment will come in two parts — $12.5 million at closing and $7.5 million three years later.
Bernier did not mention the $17 million lump-sum offer as an option at Tuesday’s meeting last week. The board learned of it through a presentation by O’Berski the next day.
The split transaction concerns Ansbacher, the real estate lawyer.
“So, it’s not truly a $20 million purchase because you don’t get a significant portion of that money for years — which means it’s worth significantly less because it would be the equivalent of you having to borrow that money over that time period,” Ansbacher says. “I would encourage them to have the buyer deal with their financing through banks or commercial investors and not put the government in that business.”
O’Berski told the board, when his firm listed the Prudential Drive building for sale, it did not set a price; instead, it solicited offers through an “open-market, negotiated process.”
O’Berski said his firm had conversations with “at least four development groups” who ultimately did not make official offers and then met with each of the remaining groups.
“We had a phone call, interview, Zoom with our team and their team to say, ‘OK, we know where you came in. Where are you really landing?’” O’Berski said, adding that his team also asked each bidder about their project plans.
The remaining six offers increased in a second round of bids, O’Berski said, including three development groups who each offered $15 million. O’Berski described the other three as $10 million or $11 million offers, but his numbers do not exactly align with the records provided by the district, so it’s unclear which companies he was referring to.
Environmental concerns
Last week, O’Berski described having eliminated a bidder who offered $14 million with a $3 million contingency for “environmental, geotechnical or other issues.” He didn’t name Ashco, but the documents show their last offer fits that description.
“Really transparently, everybody knows, there was a JEA facility next door. There’s gonna be environmental issues, geotechnical issues and increased cost,” O’Berski said. “So that $14 million offer that would close quickly, we automatically knew there was a high likelihood we could be in the million-to-$3 million reduction from that.”
A map maintained by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows the district’s property sits in an area designated as a brownfield, and is sandwiched between two brownfield sites.
The school board is set to vote on the sale and the purchase on Oct. 7.
