VanTrust Real Estate paid $4.58 million for Southside property from the Skinner family for development of an office building at 5201 Gate Parkway.
Through JO Town Center 160 LLC, VanTrust bought 10.5 acres Aug. 31 from the Arthur Chester Skinner III Trust, which comprises members of the Skinner family. The deed was recorded Wednesday with the Duval County Clerk of Courts.
VanTrust Real Estate LLC wants to develop an office structure on the site, near a building occupied by Deutsche Bank.
Plans filed with city show a five-story, 164,211-square-foot building on the property. No tenant was listed, indicating it might be developed on a speculative basis.
Jacksonville VanTrust executive John Carey has declined comment.
Chip Skinner said he was excited about the potential for additional office space in the market. “We could certainly use some,” he said.
VanTrust has applied for a preliminary site plan and traffic capacity approval, a first step toward applying for a building permit. England, Thims & Miller Inc. is the civil engineer.
Plans showed 947 parking spaces.
VanTrust, based in Kansas City, Mo., maintains a regional office led by Carey as executive vice president. He also is founding partner of Whitehall Realty Partners LLC in Jacksonville.
$7M deed recorded for Regency church buy
Impact Church of Jacksonville Inc.’s purchase of the former Belk store at Regency Square Mall was recorded Tuesday with the Duval County Clerk of Courts.
The church paid $7 million for the two-story, 191,130-square-foot building, which bridges the East and West malls at Regency. Counting the loading platform and canopies, the square footage is more than 195,000 square feet.
Compass Bank made a $5.6 million mortgage to the church the same day as the sale and also recorded Wednesday.
Property records show the structure sits on almost 2.7 acres. Its 2016 assessed value was almost $3.7 million.
Impact Church of Jacksonville bought the space Aug. 31 from Regency Mall Realty LLC, Regency CH LLC and Regency Nassim LLC, all based at Namdar Realty Group of Great Neck, N.Y.
The Arlington-based church said the former Belk store will become The Impact Center to function as its international headquarters.
The first phase, with a new auditorium, could be completed by the third quarter of 2017.
The church also said it would work with Regency Square ownership to provide a walkway between the West and East malls, which Belk had done.
Regency Square, at 9501 Arlington Expressway, is the area’s oldest regional shopping center. Belk closed its store there in February 2015 and opened in a new center east along Atlantic Boulevard.
Impact Church is now at 8985 Lone Star Road.
Restaurant notes
• Dickey’s Barbecue Pit intends to open at 7111 Bonneval Road, in the Southpoint area, next to Corner Bakery Café. The almost 2,000-square-foot restaurant will be built-out at a job cost of $200,000.
• Red Robin International Inc. will receive a permit from the St. Johns River Water Management District for its Red Robin at Town Center Promenade restaurant.
• A Tropical Smoothie Café and a Mattress Firm will lease space at a new 6,000-square-foot retail building to be developed at River City Marketplace. Edward Eickhoff, senior vice president of development with Marketplace developer Ramco-Gershenson Inc., identified those companies as the tenants in the structure to be built at 13000 City Station Drive. Tropical Smoothie will lease 1,800 square feet and Mattress Firm will rent the remainder. Able Construction Inc. is the contractor for the almost $800,000 shell project.
• Grabbagreen, a food and juice restaurant, should open this fall in Brooklyn Station on Riverside. Franchise owner Randy Jeppesen also intends to open in the St. Johns Town Center area and in Jacksonville Beach. The 2,000-square-foot Brooklyn Station location will open at 90 Riverside Ave., next to Burrito Gallery. Franklin Street is Grabbagreen’s North Florida tenant representative.
RaceTrac looking at Philips site
RaceTrac Petroleum Inc. intends to build in Southside at northeast Philips Highway and Freedom Crossing Trail.
Engineer Connelly & Wicker Inc. filed site plans with the city for the project, comprising an almost 5,500-square-foot building.
The site is 4.5 acres. A previous mobility-fee application showed RaceTrac would take 1.71 acres of the property, which is south of Baymeadows Road.
The property is owned by Freedom Corners Corp. Inc., which is part of Fort Family Investments.
Amkin buys more Dames Point land
Amkin Dames Point LLC bought more than 187 acres Friday adjacent to 63 acres it already owns near the JaxPort Dames Point Marine Terminal.
Miami-based Amkin Dames Point, led by investor Ramon Llorens, paid $7.5 million for the undeveloped land at 9595 New Berlin Court. A fraction of an acre is along Irving Road.
It includes waterfront property along the shipping channel of the St. Johns River. The Duval County Appraiser’s Office shows a 2016 assessed value of almost $8.5 million.
The property is north of Amkin’s previous purchase, assembled from four transactions last year along New Berlin Road.
With the purchase last week, Amkin owns 250 acres of industrial property in a prime area for water-related development.
An Amkin representative declined comment.
Amkin bought the land from Whitney Bank in Gulfport, Miss. Property records identify the owner as Nichols Creek Development Corp.
The deed was recorded Wednesday with the Duval County Clerk of Courts.
The city certified a conditional capacity availability statement for the property in August that indicated improvements with horizontal development and a new building. The capacity statement said the enclosed area of development is 323,000 square feet.
That statement and the original 2009 city development agreement on the property said the net acreage is 84 acres, which are uplands.
In the application for the statement, Nichols Creek Development LLC listed the same address as Amkin’s local agent.
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