by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The City has narrowed its list of architects for the new county courthouse to four and hopes to name a winner of the design competition sometime this spring.
At today’s meeting of the Professional Services Evaluation Committee, the decision will be made on which four firms to approve for the design competition.
“They are asking that we short list this to four companies,” said Jacquie Gibbs, chief of procurement and supply for the City.
The four architectural firms expected to be on the short list are Rink Reynolds Diamond Fischer Wilson, P.A., KBJ Architects, Inc., Cannon Florida, Inc. and Spillis Candela & Partners. Rink Reynolds is located in the Riverplace Tower, while KBJ is on North Julia Street. Spillis is based in Orlando, while Cannon is headquartered in Grand Island, N.Y., which is near Buffalo. Cannon has an office in Independent Square and is licensed to practice architecture in Florida. That license assures, should they win the design competition, that they can legally work in the state of Florida.
Gibbs stressed that while the list likely won’t change, it’s not set in stone either.
“PSEC has not approved this list yet,” said Gibbs.
Audrey Moran, Mayor John Delaney’s chief of staff, said the design competition will be very similar to the one held for the main library.
“We would like to have the design competition dates by the end of the month,” said Moran. “We need to finalize the rules and then we’ll have presentations like we did for the library out at UNF [the University of North Florida].”
If a decision is made by then, that will mean that all four major projects within the $2.2 billion Better Jacksonville Plan will be well on the way to becoming reality. Although it will be months before ground is broken on the new library and no definite timetable has been established for a courthouse ground breaking, there are visible signs that progress is being made on the four projects that will total $435 million when completed.
In November, ground was broken on the new arena. In early December, ground was broken on the baseball park. Late in December, an architect was chosen for the new main library.
Within the next few months, construction will begin on the ball park and the arena. Once a decision is made regarding the fate of the two LaRose buildings that are on the site of the new library — there is talk of moving rather than demolishing them — construction will begin on the new facility.
Of the four major projects, the new county courthouse is by far the most expensive. At $190 million, the courthouse exceeds the arena ($125 million), ball park ($25 million) and library ($95 million) in cost estimates.
By this time next year, the arena, ball park and library will be under construction. Construction on the courthouse will follow sometime after that.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” said Moran when asked if ground would be broken on the courthouse this year. “I’ll know more in May or June. We will definitely break ground on the courthouse before the mayor leaves office [June 30, 2002]. The library groundbreaking will be this year, but there is not a definite date.”
Moran did admit that there is a good possibility that there could be three major projects underway at one time. Combine that workforce with what the $860 million Shipyards project will demand, and Jacksonville will become one of the nation’s best locations for construction workers of every skill level.
“We will make sure we have the workforce to do the work,” said Moran. “That will be good for Jacksonville. All that action insulates us from economic issues.”
Courthouse project manager Chris Boruch said of the four, no one firm stood out above the others, but the top four firms scored well above the other seven. Out of 10 criteria, Rink Reynolds rated best with a score of 77, while Cannon and Spillis both scored 75. KBJ came in at 73 with Fentress Bradburn Architects, Inc. a distant fifth at 65.
“They were all real strong proposals mostly because of who they teamed with,” said Boruch. “The teams they all brought in were extremely strong.”
Boruch would not venture a guess as to which, if any, firm had an advantage over the other three, despite the fact two of them are local.
“At this point for the design competition we have four excellent candidates; let the best one win,” said Boruch. “The whole point of the exercise [putting
out requests for proposals] was to get to this point.”