#AskJAXTDY | Will stalled Lomax restaurant be fined in Five Points?

Q: Jacksonville Today reader Thea was thrilled to be assured last summer that a restaurant was under construction in Five Points. But she said the neighborhood still has seen no construction work done at the corner of Oak and Lomax streets. Campbell wanted to know if the developer would face any consequences for such a long delay. 

A: There are no incentives in place for the city to remove and no threat of fines for developmental delays, according to a city spokesman. The only consequence appears to be the possibility of the permit expiring.

Back in September, Jacksonville Today answered a reader’s question about what was happening at the corner where a Wells Fargo bank once stood. Construction on The Lomax — a $2.2 million, two-story restaurant — had begun back in August 2023 but stalled.

In Sepember, a representative of the landowner at 803 Lomax St. said he had been assured by Roost Restaurants LLC that the project remained underway. 

Ssince then, no progress has been made, according to residents nearby. And, as of Friday, no documents had been updated on the city’s planning and permitting website, JAXEPICS, since the last inspection listed on May 15. 

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Jacksonville Today‘s efforts to reach Roost Restaurants co-founder Martin E. “Ted” Stein II were unsuccessful as of Friday afternoon. 

Five Points permit

Reached by email, the mayor’s chief communications officer, Phil Perry, said no incentives have been put in place for the construction project, so nothing can be revoked. However, the permit could expire if a timeline is not hit and the developer has not been granted an extension.

“A permit will remain active as long as progress, indicated by a passed inspection, is made within a 180-day period,” Perry said. “The 180-day clock resets with each passed inspection.”

The last inspection for The Lomax was 219 days ago, and the site still lists the permit as active. Why is that? 

Perry said the discrepancy is because the city was giving a new permitting system time to work itself out.  

“Currently, the JAXEPICS system is not enforcing the 180-day limits per the building code,” he said.

“Since JAXEPICS is a new system, some rules were not put in place initially to give permit applicants time to adapt their processes to the new system,” Perry said. He said the city allowed a yearlong testing phase of the permitting site to work out kinks in the system — an effort to make sure the city did not accidentally expire, void or revoke any permits in error, which would have created more challenges for the applicants and city staff.

“We just passed the one-year mark of launching JAXEPICS, and it has passed all the internal and external testing,” Perry said. So now, come the first of the year, the time clock is expected to reset.

“These rules will be put in place after the first of the year. If the Lomax project still lacks progress at that time, the permit will be expired.”