Daily Record Financial News &
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Vol. 105, No. 043 • One Section
DIA wants proposals for a Downtown convention center
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JEA’s former Southside Generating Station property on the Downtown Southbank.
Reboot for The District property Instead of DIA, developer back to buying Southbank riverfront site. By David Cawton Staff Writer
Photo by Monty Zickuhr
The former City Hall Annex on East Bay Street next to the the Downtown Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront could become part of the site of a new city convention center.
Riverfront complex would include 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall, take place of city buildings planned to be torn down on East Bay Street. By Karen Brune Mathis Editor Moving in the New Year to spark Northbank development, the Downtown Investment Authority wants to take steps toward a riverfront convention center. The DIA is scheduled to consider its first resolution of the year — 2018-01-01 — to dispose of the old City Hall Annex, County Courthouse and parking lot site on East Bay Street. As the designated Community Redevelopment Agency for the Downtown Community Redevelopment Areas, DIA
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will solicit proposals for the city-owned properties. What it wants is a plan for a convention center complex. The resolution states DIA will request proposals from firms for the development of a 350-room full-service convention center hotel, parking garage and public convention space on the site. Project area requirements show a minimum 200,000-square-foot public exhibit hall, a minimum 40,000-square-foot ballroom, at least 45 meeting and breakout rooms, food and beverage services that include a full-service restaurant, function
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space and more, including optional transient boat slips. A parking garage would need to comprise at least 400 spaces for the hotel and 1,300 spaces for the convention center. The proposal doesn’t include a cost, but the DIA commissioned a Convention Center Study completed in June 2017 by Strategic Advisory Group that referenced it. The study reported the total cost of a 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall could cost from $250 million to $430 million. It Convention
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A deal for the purchase of JEA’s former Southside Generating Station property on the Downtown Southbank is back where it started. As originally negotiated, Elements of Jacksonville LLC, led by developer Peter Rummell and The Dalton Agency executive Michael Munz, will purchase the property from the utility for $18.5 million. That eliminates a plan for the Downtown Investment Authority to buy the property. The JEA board of directors approved an amendment Tuesday removing the city from the purchase and sale agreement less than a month after assigning the deal to it and the DIA, instead of Elements. Elements is working to develop the site into a mixed-use project called The District. It is the fifth time the agreement has been amended since Elements was awarded the right to buy and develop the land through a JEA Request for Proposal in 2014. Munz made the formal request Tuesday during the JEA board of directors meeting. “It became, as we went through this, from putting all the legal parts to it, more complicated than we felt it should be,” Munz said after the meeting. “So we made this request to the JEA board, and as you all saw they unanimously supported that,” he said. In December, the JEA board agreed to amend the agreement for the fourth time to assign The District
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