Rendering of Sulzbacher Enterprise Village, to be completed by the end of 2026. | Sulzbacher
Published on December 18, 2025 at 11:39 am
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Q: Phase I of the Sulzbacher Enterprise Village project is a workforce apartment component that will provide housing to unhoused men. It is on track to be completed by November 2026.
Phase II will be a 16,000-square-foot skilled trade and jobs training facility in partnership with Goodwill Industries of North Florida and Florida State College at Jacksonville. It is still nearly two years away, likely in late 2027 to early 2028. And a tiny house manufacturing facility that will employ up to 150 people is further into the future.
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Jacksonville Today reader Ann C. notes that skilled trades jobs are supposed to be available to the community. During a Q&A with the Brentwood Neighbors Forum on Dec. 2, she posed a question:
“How is the community to know about the jobs when they come about?”
A: Sulzbacher CEO Cindy Funkhouser tells Jacksonville Today that the nonprofit expects “a good deal” of media coverage when it cuts the ribbon on the manufacturing phase. But she says news of the job openings also will be sent out on social media and the Sulzbacher website.
She says jobs and skilled trades training at the facility will be resources not only for Enterprise Village residents, but open to the neighbors in the surrounding communities.
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“We want the Enterprise Village to be a benefit to the entire area, which is also why we’re bringing Mayo (Clinic) in there,” Funkhouser says. “All of that will be open to anyone in the surrounding community.”
Job training and manufacturing
Sulzbacher has provided housing, health care and essential services for people experiencing homelessness in Northeast Florida since 1995. The nonprofit announced in June that it had secured funding to start building the $37 million Enterprise Village Phase 1.
Eventually, Sulzbacher plans to move all of its services for men from Downtown to the Enterprise Village at 4785 Walgreen Road off Interstate 95 and Golfair Boulevard. Existing Sulzbacher clients will be considered first when the apartments open.
Funkhouser was onsite at the Enterprise Village with a prospective donor when she spoke Wednesday with Jacksonville Today. She says the nonprofit has raised $18 million of the $23 million to build out a portion of Phase II — the job training facility. The funding will include new market tax credits, she says.
The programs at the Goodwill Industries/FSCJ jobs training center will be open to the public, and Funkhouer says the certifications earned there will allow trainees to be eligible for jobs in the manufacturing facility, once it opens.
It will provide training in construction specialties like drywalling, plumping and other trades, Funkhouser says
“When (program participants) learn the trades they’ll be able to go over there and help to build out the units. And so anybody in the community will be eligible to be able to come to the Goodwill/FSCJ job training just as they are with any of the Goodwill sites around town,” she says.
Sulzbacher has partnered with Goodwill to provide jobs training for its clients for years, and Goodwill posts schedules for all of its North Florida training classes on its website.
Funkhouser says talks are continuing with a South Carolina-based tiny house manufacturer to operate the Enterprise Village plant, which will have up to 150 jobs when it hits capacity.
