Aug. 18–The Laura Street Trio, three historic and vacant buildings at the heart of downtown, will become a complex featuring a Courtyard by Marriott hotel, two restaurants, a commercial bank and a rooftop bar, its owner told the Times-Union exclusively.
The entire project, which will include adding another building and a parking garage, will cost about $40 million, said Steve Atkins, who heads Southeast Development Group that purchased the three buildings, along with Barnett Bank, in March for $3 million.
The money was borrowed from Stache Investments Corp., which is headed by Jaguars owner Shad Khan. But Khan is not involved in the redevelopment of it, Atkins said. Atkins said he will seek incentives from the city but did not elaborate. His plans, which he is revealing for the first time, are this:
— The Marble Bank, built in 1902, will become a high-end restaurant.
— The ground floor of the Bisbee Building, built in 1908, will be another restaurant. The other nine stories will be the hotel.
— The 12-story Florida Life Building, built in 1911, also will be part of the hotel.
— An eight-story building is planned for the now-empty corner of Laura and Adams streets. The ground floor will house the bank, while the top seven floors will be part of the hotel. The roof will feature a bar with open and covered space.
— A new structure will house elevators and connect the Florida Life and Bisbee buildings. And a four-story parking garage will be erected on an empty lot between Forsyth and Adams streets.
The Barnett building is across Laura Street from the planned development. Atkins is not ready to announce what it will become, but past reports have hinted at some type of educational use.
Atkins said he has contracts with the bank and the companies that will bring in owners of the restaurants and bar, but he would not reveal who they are.
“I want to roll these out and keep the momentum going,” he said.
Atkins did say they are three separate companies with multiple locations, with none in Jacksonville. The restaurants, he said, would be new concepts here.
The contract with Marriott has not yet been signed, but Paul Breslin with Horwatch HTL, the hotel consultant who helped arrange the deal, said Marriott has agreed and anticipates no problems.
“It still has to be approved by a committee, but the application has been accepted, and Marriott’s written a very strong letter to the city. We’ve been doing this a long time and we’re very confident,” Breslin said.
The hotel ?– the Courtyard by Marriott at Trio — will be a boutique hotel with 131 rooms and be a Marriott franchise. Atkins’ group will own it and hire a third party to manage it.
Among other things, the Marriott name brings in that company’s rewards program, which is popular with business travelers, Atkins and Breslin said.
Though many Courtyards are more modern buildings, Marriott increasingly is targeting older downtown buildings for “adaptive reuse,” Breslin said. He recently was involved with a Courtyard opening in the 1924 Carnegie building in downtown Atlanta.
Breslin believed Courtyard would fill a niche that downtown is without. Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront has 963 rooms. Omni Jacksonville has 354.
“With the Hyatt, you have a large convention hotel,” he said. “Then you have upper scale, almost luxury, in the Omni.”
Courtyards are known as select or limited service, Breslin said. There’s no concierge, bellman, doorman or 24-hour room service.
“Business travelers today are looking for different amenities,” he said. “Clean room, free wi-fi, a place to grab and go [for] lunch.”
He said he liked the idea that the hotel had restaurants as part of the complex, without affecting the running of the hotel.
Prices for Courtyard rooms average $135-$175 per night, he said.
Atkins has been attempting to purchase the Trio for four years and he has considered multiple options for the buildings’ use.
“We started out with apartments, a hotel, office and retail,” he said. “But once you run all the numbers, what bubbles to the top is the hotel.”
Part of the problem, he said, was that the Florida Life Building has only about 2,000 square feet per floor, which limited its options.
Atkins has filed applications to get the Trio on the National Register of Historic Places, which would mean a 20 percent tax credit for money spent on rehabbing the buildings.
The credit would apply only to any work on existing buildings and not to new construction.
Roger Bull: (904) 359-4296
