As cities age, they must figure out what to do with historic buildings that have outlived their original purpose.
For many years, Jacksonville’s most common solution to this dilemma was to just demolish the buildings. It’s why there are so many surface parking lots and parking garages downtown, and why LaVilla is full of empty lots rather than the historic buildings that once sat there.
But increasingly, over the past few decades, local historic properties have begun to receive the respect they deserve. Adaptive reuse projects – that is, projects wherein an existing building is repurposed after losing its original tenant – have sprung up across the city, from downtown to San Marco to Springfield and beyond.
These are just a few of the prime examples of what can happen when a developer is willing to put in the time, money, and patience required for an adaptive reuse project.
Few buildings have endured as many “false starts” as The Barnett Tower.
The building, constructed in 1926, was once Jacksonville’s tallest building, but like many downtown Jax buildings, it wound up mostly empty by the ‘90s.
The building was supposed to be redeveloped – first by LB Jax Development which couldn’t get enough funding, then by Orlando developer Cameron Kuhn, who would remove many of the building’s architectural flourishes during demolition before going bankrupt, then by Capital City Partners who never got beyond offering a concept. Even Shad Khan’s Stache Investments briefly owned the building.
But now, after so many false starts, the building has been successfully redeveloped into apartments, a UNF annex campus, and – still under construction as of now – a Chase Bank branch location and Vagabond Coffee. The project, led by SouthEast Group, cost $43 million and is the first phase of the planned redevelopment of the nearby Laura Street Trio buildings.
