The upcoming construction of a University of Florida graduate campus where the Prime Osborn Convention Center has anchored downtown since 1986 will finally force the city’s hand on building a new convention center, but the decision on where to do that still is years away because the UF campus will rise up in phases.
A portion of the planned graduate campus will overlap the convention center building, which could either be converted for the school’s use or partially demolished. Either way, the plan calls for leaving intact the historic Jacksonville Terminal train station that dates back to 1919 and makes up the front part of the convention center.
“It’s a beautiful building, inside and out,” UF Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Kurt Dudas said of the train station during a UF board meeting Thursday.
The current convention center, which opened in 1986, has faced criticism for years as being inadequate for Jacksonville to compete with other cities in the hyper-competitive convention market. The city has not taken any of those studies to the next step for construction of a new convention center.
UF and the city announced they had picked the Prime Osborn Convention Center area as the site of a $300 million graduate campus and $80 million Florida Semiconductor Institute. The convention center site is a big part of the 22 buildable acres the city will convey to UF, but the graduate campus won’t be built all at once.
Mayor Donna Deegan said the university will build the campus in stages. She said the portion of the campus that would go on the non-historic part of the convention center probably won’t be affected for a decade.
“This is a vision that would probably be, in terms of the convention center itself, about 10 years down the road,” she said.
She said UF intends to start first by constructing two buildings on lots across Bay Street from the convention center before moving to the convention center site for future phases of the campus. Even at the convention center tract, a large amount of property is filled with acres of parking, creating space for buildings before the growth of the campus reaches the convention center building itself.
“It will evolve with the needs of that campus,” Deegan said.
Current jail site is one potential site for new convention center
One potential site for a new convention center would be where the Police Memorial Building and county jail stand off Bay Street on the other side of downtown.
The city also has looked at the possibility of building a smaller convention facility on vacant land where the old City Hall Annex was demolished next to the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront hotel. The city doesn’t have any money set aside for a new convention center.
The closest the city came to building a new center was in 2018 when it picked a development team lead by Dallas-based Jacobs for a convention center, hotel and parking garage off Bay Street on the old City Hall Annex and county courthouse sites.
Jacobs said it would pay the up-front cost of building the convention center complex, and the city would pay about $1.2 billion over a 25-year period to use it for booking big conventions. The high cost caused city officials to say downtown needs more attractions to convince groups they should book their meetings in Jacksonville.
The opening stage of UF campus construction would take place on two parcels currently owned by the city that are used for parking. One lot is bordered by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority headquarters building, Forsyth Street, Bay Street and Lee Street. It is a mix of grass and rough asphalt for a makeshift parking lot.
On the other side of Lee Street, a parcel that is a paved, fenced parking area is bordered by Forsyth Street and Bay Street as it stretches toward an office building. That lot is usually empty but offers a place for people to park while using the Emerald Trail paths.
Together, those parcels total about 3.6 acres. The tract that contains the Prime Osborn Convention Center covers nearly 19 acres, according to Duval County Property Appraiser records.
In addition to the city-owned convention center site, a 2.1 acre parcel owned by VC Cathedral LLC, which is affiliated with The Vestor Companies, is located off Bay Street and bordered on three other sides by the convention center land. But that privately owned property, which VC Cathedral acquired in 2019, is not part of the land the city will convey to UF for the future campus.
UF campus will keep historic Jacksonville Union Terminal building
While the future build-out of the UF graduate campus will take over property where the convention center stands, the university won’t demolish the historic train station that gives the building its architectural heritage.
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Dudas, who has been the school’s point person for establishing the new Jacksonville campus, said the terminal building has been “well preserved and has tremendous potential” to become a “dynamic hub and resource, both for our campus and for the city of Jacksonville.”
Deegan envisions that historic structure having restaurants, offices and similar uses along the lines of how Denver brought activity to its Union Station. The city will keep land next to the terminal to possibly build a future train station for passenger rail service.
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Jacksonville a $1.25 million grant in September for exploring a return of the site into being the rail station is once was while connecting it to other transit options. Deegan has called it an “exciting opportunity to restore the Prime Osborn to its glory.”