For decades, Davenport Park in St. Augustine was known to many as Carousel Park for the ride owned and operated by Jim Soules. When he died in 2019, the carousel was taken apart and moved to Soules’ longtime home of Port Charlotte. 

Nearly five years later, Jacksonville native J.W. Brinkley is working to bring a carousel back to Davenport Park. Thanks to the city’s Corridor Review Committee, Brinkley got one step closer to his dream Thursday. 

Brinkley pitched the city on the carousel earlier this year, but he was asked to come back with more information, like a specific site plan and safety specs. Now, with his specifics in place, and the design of the project approved, Brinkley is optimistic the city will greenlight his plan. 

“I’ve been told that once we get this approval that it should go pretty smooth,” Brinkley told Jacksonville Today.

The road to fulfill Brinkley’s dream of restoring a carousel to Carousel Park hasn’t been entirely smooth, though. 

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When he first embarked on his quest, Brinkley started with people familiar with the circus. His initial goal was to fix up an antique carousel to stay true to Carousel Park’s original installation. 

“It just didn’t pan out from a financial viewpoint,” Brinkley said. 

Restoration would have been costly, and he learned that it was hard enough to find insurance for a new ride, let alone an old one. Brinkley told the Corridor Review Committee that he only managed to find a company to insure the ride through a connection who had ridden the carousel as a kid.

So Brinkley settled on working with a company in China to build a carousel from scratch that has modern bells and whistles. Instead of wood, the electric carousel will be made of fiberglass, Brinkley said. The ride will also be ADA-compliant and come equipped with LED, color-changing lights — although the design board said they would prefer if he just kept them white. The ticket booth will even be air-conditioned.  

Once it’s shipped over to the U.S., Brinkley estimates the endeavor will have cost him around $50,000. He said he’ll be happy if it breaks even, because his goals are to preserve the history of Carousel Park and to work with organizations like The Ronald McDonald House and Nemours Children’s Health to let as many kids as possible enjoy the installation.