Jax board greenlights initial plans for UF campus and Riverfront Plaza tower

A city review board has approved preliminary designs for two multimillion-dollar development projects that Jacksonville leaders say are pivotal to the future of Downtown. 

The Downtown Development Review Board voted 7-0 Thursday to advance initial designs for Building 1A of the University of Florida’s multiphase graduate campus in LaVilla. 

The review board, responsible for ensuring Downtown construction projects follow city design rules, also voted unanimously to approve Gateway Jax Inc.’s preliminary proposal for the Riverfront Plaza Hotel and Residences.

UF’s proposal would be the first of two new buildings in the university’s estimated $345 million plan to build a graduate campus and semiconductor institute in Downtown’s historic LaVilla neighborhood.

UF held a ceremony this week to officially open the campus for classes in a renovated office building at 801 Bay St. that once housed Interline Brands. The university’s 15- to 20-year plan also includes renovating Prime Osborn Convention Center with restaurants and retail fronting the Emerald Trail and LaVilla’s historic train station added to the campus.

Documents the university filed with the board show, once the project gets through final design review and city permitting, UF hopes to break ground on the 185,000-square-foot building in December. 

For Gateway, the review board’s vote on a 17-story residential and hotel tower complex connecting to Riverfront Plaza’s public park is the latest step in the developer’s $2 billion-plus investment to reshape large swaths of Downtown Jacksonville’s Northbank.

The company obtained the 1-acre riverfront site from the city last year in a land swap deal for the former Interline building, which allowed UF to launch its Jacksonville graduate campus.

Both projects will have to return to the review board to receive final design approval before they can break ground.

UF Jacksonville graduate campus

The review board praised the overall UF building design, led by Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate. The 2.34-acre property bounded by West Bay and Forsyth streets and North Lee Street will feature the six- to eight-story academic building and lawns, plazas and shaded seating open to the public.

But the conceptual design approval was contingent on addressing two issues. 

The building’s 137-foot-tall design exceeds the 75-foot height limit for the LaVilla neighborhood. The structure is also not built to the edge of the property line — a design esthetic that was signature to the LaVilla neighborhood when it was a thriving, diverse commercial and social hub before World War II.

City officials said that because the Prime Osborn also exceeds 75 feet, UF designers would likely be allowed to deviate from the code. Where the building sits could be a tougher sell for community organizations trying to revive the LaVilla neighborhood.

UF could get a deviation because of a provision in the code that could allow the open space to substitute for the building’s position off the street.

Adrian Swanigan is a LaVilla neighborhood leader who has advised the city Downtown Investment Authority’s LaVilla Heritage Trail project. Ernest Smith III is the city’s Urban Core Community Planning Advisory Committee chair. They asked the board and UF representatives to keep guidelines meant to protect the neighborhood’s history in mind in the building’s final design. 

“We want to make sure the setback for this building fits the natural aesthetic of LaVilla,” Smith said. “I want to make sure us as a community, especially within the Urban Core CPAC, have some say in making sure LaVilla is built the way it should be built.”

LaVilla leaders have been working for years to get the historic Black neighborhood recognized on the National Register of Historic Places to access federal tax credits and other resources to restore more of the neighborhood’s few remaining historic buildings.

Smith said that although UF is doing “great things” in Jacksonville and LaVilla, outside groups should still be working with the neighborhood to retain its historic character.

“This is a historic neighborhood that unfortunately, through (Interstate) 95, through redlining, through other ills of the history of our city, has been decimated,” he said. “Again, I thank the DIA for doing that, I thank the DDRB for doing what you’re doing to make sure that anything that comes up in this neighborhood makes sense.” 

The board spoke overwhelmingly positive about the project. But when asked about the community’s feedback, the review board’s staff told board member Ivy Henderson they did not have their feedback and concerns offered during a community meeting in August to include in their report.

The UF design team agreed when board Chair Linzee requested they meet again with members of the LaVilla community and “mitigate, address and incorporate” their concerns and suggestions “however appropriate.”

Review board member Ennis Davis, a certified planner who’s been one of the figures leading the revitalization of LaVilla, abstained from voting and discussing the project on Thursday. Davis employer Community Planning Collaborative has been retained by UF as a consultant to work on the project.

Riverfront Plaza Hotel and Residences 

The hotel portion of the proposed Riverfront Plaza tower will sit 17 stories above the building’s pedestal aligned with Main Street to the east. Gateway says it will have 130 to 170 hotel rooms with 50 to 150 residential units.

Gateway has been coordinating with the Riverfront Plaza park design firm, Perkins and Will, and the city’s parks department to integrate the landscaping into the building’s design. 

Plans call for two full-service restaurants accessible from the park, part of a 5,000-square-foot public skyview terrace.

Gateway CEO Bryan Molls told the board Thursday that the company has whittled down a pool of potential hotel brands for the project from seven to two. According to Moll, the majority were five-star hotels. Gateway has negotiated terms with both of the finalists and hopes to make an announcement soon.

Two members of the review board, Carl Dawson Jr. and Frederick Jones, called the project “a grand slam.” The board staff is asking Gateway to resolve what would look like large empty walls on at the base of the building visible from the park.

Gateway’s attorney, Cyndy Trimmer, said Thursday that when the Jacksonville officials asked Gateway to partner with the city on the land swap for the UF campus’ development, they saw a benefit to the $2 billion Pearl Square development it already had underway to the north of the river near City Hall. 

“They recognize that this site promotes a tremendous opportunity both to activate the park itself, but also to bring the energy from Riverfront Plaza and all of the foot traffic and the people that are finally coming to Jacksonville because of this amenity that we’ve built, into the Pearl Square District,” Trimmer said. “And everything that we’re doing on this site is part of a unified plan that is elevating the offers that we have for hospitality, food and beverage in our urban core.”

Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration supported the swap and has been a proponent of the project as part of the revitalization of the centralized riverfront site. 

Bill Delaney, the mayor’s City Council liaison, speaks critically of the decision by then-Mayor Lenny Curry’s administration to demolish the Jacksonville Landing shopping center in 2019 that stood on the site at 2 Independent Drive for 32 years. 

But he called the hotel tower that will integrate into the park that replaced the Landing “a fantastic addition.”

“Every time we come back here (to the review board) for Riverfront Plaza, it takes us one step away from the unfortunate decision we made years ago to demolish the Landing and set ourselves back,” Delaney said Thursday. 

Phase II of the public park is under construction.

Gateway is also negotiating an incentives package with the Downtown Investment Authority to provide city dollars to the hotel-apartment project. It’s scheduled to go before the DIA board on Sept. 16, but final details of the deal had not been released as of Friday afternoon.