JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The skyline of downtown Jacksonville is one step closer to having a major change. The future of Riverfront Plaza, where the Jacksonville Landing used to be, was put to a vote today.
Today Riverfront Plaza is entirely green space, but after Wednesday's unanimous vote the Downtown Investment Authority has a little more than 3 months to negotiate with a developer based out of New York City to build a residential high rise building on the eastern portion of Riverfront Plaza.
The face of Jacksonville's skyline could change forever. The developer American Lions plans to build a residential high rise that's more than 40 stories tall on 1 acre of land at Riverfront Plaza.
This isn't a done deal right now, but as the only bidder for the development project, the Downtown Investment Authority is now negotiating with American Lions on the project valued at more than $160 million. Board members said that this project can become "the grand jewel of downtown" and that "it has to be right".
"I've watched downtown for more than 30 years and it's been a long time since we had a great addition," says DIA board member Ron Moody.
"From the initial designs it's going to be an iconic design with 300 residential units," says DIA member Jim Citrano, "we continue to stack residential units downtown, which is very important."
This high rise project would not affect the proposed "Lerp" statue; that's the modern art design that's supposed to look like "Jax", which has been the source of jokes, tattoos and socks. In fact, the design of the proposed high rise is supposed to flow into the rest of the plaza, and yes, that includes the potential "Lerp" statue.
"The interesting part about that is we had a lot of positive comments and negative comments," says Moody "and that's what we want to do, we had a conversation."
The discussion of "Lerp" will have to wait for a different day. Today's meeting was about a potential high rise, and negotiations are now underway to bring more than 300 residential units to more than 40 floors of a new downtown building.
The American Lions high rise project is expected to encompass 1 acre of a space that is 7 acres in total. As of right now the city of Jacksonville plans to keep the remaining 6 acres as public park space.