Buyers of about 10.7 acres at Gateway Town Center in the Brentwood area are starting work toward redevelopment as the California investor intends to add retail stores, self-storage and affordable housing.
City utility JEA issued a service availability determination letter Sept. 3 for the revitalization of the property at 5156 Norwood Ave. to include day care, an office building and an affordable living facility.
The letter provides details about service connections.
GAI Consultants Inc. of Jacksonville is the civil engineer.
Gateway Retail Center LLC sold the acreage July 25 for $6 million to Global Building Jacksonville I LLC, which is part of Global Building LLC of Carlsbad, California.
Global Building bought an estimated 263,000 square feet of vacant space that served as the indoor mall and other uses.
Duval County property records show that Gateway Retail Center LLC, led by Gator Investments President and CEO James Goldsmith, had owned 53.4 acres.
“It will be a full mixed-use project and I think it will be a nice fit for what is already there,” Global Building LLC President Joseph Zummo said July 30.
“We are still trying to look at all of the different possibilities and come up with the best mix of uses,” he said.
Global Building CEO C.W. Tucker Lewis and Zummo filed the Jacksonville LLC with the state June 25.
Gateway history
Much of Gateway Town Center opened more than 60 years ago, in 1959, at the Golfair Boulevard and Norwood Avenue exits east along Interstate 95 and north of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.
Gateway developed an indoor mall on the site in 1967. The rest of the Gateway stores opened between 1980 and 2005.
As the neighborhood struggled, Gateway closed the indoor mall and other retail space.
Global Building specializes in mixed-use and self-storage center development and ownership.
Gateway Town Center, north of Downtown and Springfield, comprises an increasingly active shopping area where several retailers opened recently.
Gateway Retail Center has been adding new retailers that include Burlington, Five Below, Roses Discount Store, Planet Fitness and a larger Hibbett Sports.
Winn-Dixie has leased a grocery store there since 2020 with city incentives to replace Publix Super Markets Inc., which closed in 2019. The store was built in 2000.
“We are finalizing what Jim Goldsmith started in taking over the most difficult part of the property to redevelop, to finish that back part of the mall,” Zummo said July 30.
“And watching the Jacksonville area and the tremendous growth going on, we thought it was a good city (in which) to acquire our first Florida property.”
Zummo said the project will complement the existing retailers that Goldsmith has attracted.
Envisioned are:
Self-storage: Zummo said Global Building will convert the former JCPenney building into a two-story, 100,000-square-foot indoor climate-controlled self-storage building that likely will be branded either Public Storage or Extra Space, which will operate under a third-party agreement. Global Building owns it and the operator would manage it. The two-story department store comprises 132,456 square feet, property records show.
Retail: About 30,000 square feet of adjacent vacant retail space will be marketed to retailers, such as a furniture store and other discounters like Ross Dress For Less. “We want to add at least one more major retailer,” Zummo said. He said Gateway Town Center caters to discount retailers.
Early learning: A former Duval County Tax Collector’s Office, comprising 8,044 square feet on 1.5 acres, will be turned into an early childhood learning center, Zummo said. He said the child care center operator is under contract and the project will happen earlier than the self-storage project.
Affordable apartments: The rest of the former mall buildings on the Global Building property will be demolished for development of affordable housing, Zummo said. Global Building will partner with a developer, which he declined to identify, for about 90 to 95 units among one or two three-story buildings on 3.5 acres. Pending approvals, construction would not start until mid-2026. He said the company is working with a Jacksonville development partner with experience in tax credits. He said Global Building will sell the property to the developer.
Strategy and reuse
Zummo said Global Building specializes in redevelopment.
“We look for large commercial buildings that have been vacant and in a good location,” he said, explaining that the Jacksonville project is visible along I-95 north of Downtown.
He said Global Building has done similar projects where closed retail stores were redeveloped with self-storage and retail projects.
The global-building.com site shows investments in California, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey and Tennessee.
“We like to find opportunities to reuse old buildings and give them new life and give them a mix of uses, usually self-storage, too,” Zummo said.
Global-building.com says it is buying office properties and converting them to “lifestyle office buildings” to capitalize on emerging trends.
“Additionally, we acquire vacant retail properties and convert the properties into third-generation, climate-controlled self-storage facilities,” it says.
Gateway retail
Gator Investments of Miami Lakes took control of the Gateway Town Center property in 2012 through a certificate of title.
After the Global Building sale, property records indicate Gator Investments continues to own almost 43 acres there.
The total mall property comprised 640,320 square feet of space.
It appears that the Gateway retail component will continue with more than 370,000 square feet of strip-center space and stand-alone buildings, such as an almost 9,400-square-foot former auto service center.
“We feel good about it because we are doing something most people don’t want to do,” Goldsmith said in 2023 when Burlington and Five Below plans were confirmed for the center, which is in ZIP code 32208.
At the time, Census data showed per capita income of $21,923 and median household income of $36,316.
It says 29.1% of the population was below the poverty line.
“We are able to help rebuild some of America that has been neglected,” Goldsmith said.