For many years, downtown Jacksonville’s beautiful historic buildings were left to rot away without a purpose. For a variety of reasons, most of them had been vacant since the 1970s.
The ones that weren’t left to wither away either retained their original tenants or were unceremoniously demolished to make room for something new – usually a poorly-designed parking garage.
But within the past few decades, the tide has begun to turn on historic preservation within Jax’s urban core. Several of those long-vacant buildings have been painstakingly restored and revitalized, and they now live on with new purposes that will likely keep them around for decades to come.
To honor the growth of adaptive reuse and historic preservation in downtown Jax, we’ve compiled a giant collection of our existing downtown-centric Jax Evolved pieces.
Sweet Pete’s location just north of Hemming Park is a fantastic spot, but up until a few years ago, its building laid empty and out of use.
The building, which Sweet Pete’s took over in 2014, had previously sat vacant since 2004.
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Its longest-running tenant, the Seminole Club last made an unsuccessful attempt at a revival in 1998. The club had previously shut down in 1989.
In its heyday, the Seminole Club operated as an elite social club for Jacksonville men; it was described by members as being like a fraternity. The club was formed in 1887 and opened in its building at 400 N. Hogan Street in 1903. The building was constructed at a cost of $25,000.
They later renovated the building to add a third floor with “bachelor” rooms.
Membership was exclusive but still numbered in the hundreds. It was all men; women weren’t allowed to join until about a year before it shut down. The interior featured a full bar and a basketball court. Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy spoke from the building’s balcony on campaign stops.
After years of thriving the club eventually shut down for good in 1989, with the exception of that one comeback attempt. The building was designated by the city to be preserved as a historic structure around a decade ago as it sat vacant.
In 2014, Marcus Lemonis of CNBC’s “The Profit” partnered with Sweet Pete’s to purchase and renovate the historic building into a massive confectionary shop. The design for the store was created by New York-based Maximum Impact and also included restaurant space which has been occupied by The Candy Apple Café, MLG, and most recently 10/Six Grille.
The renovation cost $2.3 million and included about 23,000 square feet of space. The finished product is one of the largest candy stores you’ll ever see, right in the heart of downtown Jax.
Lemonis has since sold the building to locally-based JWB Real Estate Capital. Today, Sweet Pete’s continues to serve up local sweets from its historic location.
