The former home of the Florida Times-Union stood on the banks of the St. Johns River since the 1960s, housing the newspaper offices and production facility for some 50 years.
That building is almost totally demolished now, preparing the site for what comes next: a $182 million project that will bring apartments, a grocery store, restaurants and more to the site in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
Ground was officially broken Thursday morning on one part of the project, which will see 270 residential units and a restaurant built at the former newspaper office.
The leadership of Tribridge Residential — which is developing the apartments — were joined by representatives of Live Oak Contracting, Prosser, Dwell Design Studio, Banko Design and Land Design for the ceremony.
W. Gardner will soon begin working on clearing and doing utility work at the site, setting the stage for the foundation to be laid and construction to begin.
The multifamily development and 130-seat restaurant should be competed by the end of 2024, TriBridge Residential partner Katherine Mosley said.
More apartments as well as the grocery store are slated to come later.
As well as bringing more residents to the growing Brooklyn neighborhood on the edge of downtown, the project will help connect Brooklyn and Riverside with the urban core, with public access to the riverwalk included in the project.
“It will provide a heightened sense of community,” said Mosely, who has been working on developments in Jacksonville for the past decade. “I think it’s very exciting to see the activation of the river.”
A decade ago, there was little development in that part of Jacksonville, with the area across from the Times-Union building just vacant land.
Then, 220 Riverside opened in 2015, kicking off a wave of projects. That apartment complex was joined by Vista Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Station retail center brought shops and restaurants to the area.
Along the river, the multimillion-dollar Winston Family YMCA replaced the 60-year-old building that had been on that site and — more recently — FIS built a 12-story, 300,000-square-foot headquarters.
“This is going to be the cherry on top,” said Paul Bertozzi, CEO of Live Oak Contracting, which will be building the Tribridge project.
And the apartments are just part of the development, with three projects taking place at the 18.84-acre site. Fuqua Development of Atlanta will be developing a retail center anchored by a Whole Food Market, while the city is slated to uncover McCoy’s Creek and develop a park that will connect with the Emerald Trail.
That will amount to a “transformation” project, said Lori Boyer, CEO of the Downtown Investment Authority, which is providing $31.59 million in incentives for the $182.2 million project.
“We are so excited to see this ground breaking and development come to fruition,” Boyer said. “There’s all the naysayers about what is happening downtown and are things really going to get built. I think TriBridge is a wonderful example of the fact that once it gets to our approval process, it may take a while for all the permitting, but they are in fact happening.”
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