A day after the Jacksonville City Council Land Use and Zoning Committee voted to recommend legislation to rezone property to build Blue Angel Road, civil engineer Kimley-Horn and Associates filed revised drawings for it April 3 with the city.
Blue Angel Road is designed to connect Atlantic Boulevard to the Amazon.com last-mile distribution center under construction at JaxEx at Craig Airport in East Arlington. The Jacksonville Aviation Authority owns the land and is leasing it for the Amazon center, which is expected to open about October.
Blue Angel Road will be built on JAA property between Duval Acura to the east and Fields Auto Group, which owns Jacksonville Jaguar, to the west.
The address for the roadway improvements is 11221 Atlantic Blvd.
Kimley-Horn said in its letter to the city that the drawings revise previous ones that were approved. It said the Florida Department of Transportation requested revisions to Atlantic Boulevard, which in turn require revisions to the design and operation of Blue Angel Road.
Among other changes are two east-bound left-turn lanes from Atlantic Boulevard onto Blue Angel Road.
To leave Blue Angel Road to drive east, drivers would head west on Atlantic Boulevard and then make a U-turn.
Documents filed with the Council legislation explain that the new access point will provide one east-bound left-turn lane into the Duval Acura property, one west-bound deceleration and U-turn lane within the Atlantic Boulevard median for travel back to the east, the installation of two additional traffic signals and the unchanged location of the Sutton Road-Atlantic Boulevard traffic signal serving the Duval Acura property.
The Council is scheduled to hear the bill, Ordinance 2024-0153, at its April 9 meeting.
The 80-acre site was rezoned as a Planned Unit Development in 2022 so the 181,000-square-foot warehouse could be built. The new legislation rezones the property as a PUD, but makes necessary changes to allow for Blue Angel Road to be developed.
Erin Abney, the city’s chief of current planning, said Blue Angel Road was originally identified as a potential secondary access point to General Doolittle Drive. Changing it to the main access point necessitated a PUD to PUD modification.
The JAA board unanimously voted to approve a ground lease agreement with Amazon Services LLC in July 2023 to build the warehouse.
JAA CEO Mark VanLoh told the JAA board March 25 it was “moving along rapidly.”
