A map of Jacksonville shows where the district is searching for a new headquarters building. | Duval County School District
Published on August 20, 2026 at 9:09 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
The Duval County school district is considering a handful of places to move its headquarters — including the old Regency Square Mall — while it considers two new purchase offers for its current Southbank building.
On Wednesday, the district’s real estate consultant presented four relocation possibilities with the School Board.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
- The same Midtown office park as the Schultz Center, where the district already has some office space;
- Part of the old Regency Square Mall;
- A new building on Jacksonville Transportation Authority-owned land Downtown;
- Or the Prominence Parkway office park on the Southside, where the district had planned to move earlier this year before its headquarters sale fell through.
The new proposals come a year after Superintendent Chris Bernier presented the board a plan to sell the Prudential Drive property to Fleet Landing and buy the Prominence Park building in Baymeadows. That sale fizzled, but the district soon found a new buyer in Chase Properties — which also then backed out six months ago. To avoid owning two headquarters buildings, Duval Schools canceled its contract to buy the Baymeadows building.
The search
Earlier this summer, Dan O’Berski, with Duval Schools’ real estate consulting firm Trinity Commercial Group, told the board his team was trying to “uncover any hidden gems” by inquiring about buildings not officially on the market within in a certain geographic area. He showed the board a map of Jacksonville with much of the Urban Core, as well as a large portion of the Southside, highlighted.
“We’re not considering all aspects of every point of the county. We’re trying to funnel this down to some reasonable geography,” O’Berski said at the time, saying the search was for “facilities that provided points of access, that met a threshold to try and become proximate to a center point.”
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
In with the new?
O’Berski said Wednesday the four presented locations weren’t fully negotiated, but they generally represent the most viable options after his team sorted through 88 potential sites within the search area.
Buying up to four additional buildings in the Midtown office park with the Schultz Center would create a one-stop headquarters campus for Duval Schools. The cost of that plan would vary depending on the number of buildings, but O’Berski said it would come in around $16 million with space for up to 400 staffers.
Last year, some community members were concerned with a lack of public transportation to public meetings at the Schultz Center.
Bernier said that before recently departed JTA CEO Nat Ford left, he’d said JTA would add a bus stop nearer to the Schultz Center after the district relocated. (They will talk to the new director, he promised.)
“They’ve always promised that when we relocate, they would re-look at their bus transportation routes and make us part of the stop,” Bernier said.
Next, O’Berski said his team is talking with the new owners of the old Regency Square Mall in Arlington. That site would require significant renovations and comes with a similar cost to the Schultz Center: about $16 million with space for 400, and more space is available should the district choose to spend more.
The most expensive option presented Wednesday was partnering with JTA to create “purpose-built civic/public partnership” space on JTA’s land in LaVilla, similar to an idea floated a few years ago during the last round of consideration for a headquarters move. That idea was so expensive — north of $40 million for the district’s portion alone — that O’Berski told the board he didn’t calculate details like exactly how many employees the space could hold.
He flashed an AI-rendered mockup of a headquarters building on the screen.
Bernier told the board that public transportation would be one of the “attractive things” about partnering with JTA in LaVilla: “Every bus in the city starts and ends there,” Bernier said.
That idea didn’t get much traction from board members because of its price tag, though.
And, finally, the cheapest option presented was the Prominence Parkway building, owned by Dream Finders Homes. That building is still available at the price the district offered last year: $13.6 million.
With room for 1,000 staffers, it could accommodate more than twice as many employees as the current HQ. In theory, all district employees could be moved to Prominence and the district could sell some satellite office space as well. But because the Prominence building doesn’t have an auditorium or meeting space, public meetings would still likely be held at the Schultz Center in Midtown.
For that reason, and its distance from Midtown, the Prominence Office Park location was never popular among board members or the broader community. The building provided a lot of space for a comparatively low price, though, so board members had approved the purchase despite their map misgivings.
School Board District 3 rep Cindy Pearson said she’s concerned that if they go with the Baymeadows building again, future boards will wish they’d chosen differently.
“Penny-wise, pound-foolish comes to mind,” Pearson said Wednesday. “We may save some money or make some money in the short term, but in the long term, I think it’s going to cost us to be separated like that, and we’re going to be committed to a building that currently nobody else wants either…It’s still not occupied. We rejected it a while ago.”
Out with the old
The two offers to purchase the Prudential Drive property are $15.5 million from Bainbridge, a Central Florida firm, and $15.6 million from Ashco, a local family-owned developer. Both deals would see the district sell all of its riverfront land, including a smaller parcel with a parking lot that was the point of contention that soured the district’s deal with Chase Properties.
On Wednesday, board members seemed to favor Ashco’s offer, with plans to build a “mid-rise” building taller than the apartment building Bainbridge proposes, as well as space for retail stores and possibly condos.
