by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
One Shipyard Place has a face to go with the name. Developer TriLegacy Group, LLC unveiled a three-dimensional model of the condominium project Thursday, marking another step in the gradual redevelopment of the old shipyards.
“This is as good as it gets from an architect’s point of view,” said Richard Graham of architecture firm Sandy & Babcock.
The first major installment of The Shipyards will contain 100 residences in 11 different configurations, ranging from one bedroom/1.5 baths to 3 bedrooms/3.5 baths. One Shipyard Place will encompass 17 acres, 450 linear feet of river frontage and will have an accompanying 62-slip marina that opens to the St. Johns River.
TriLegacy officials claim 19 condominiums have been reserved — mostly units facing the river — but cannot legally be sold until final plans for the project have been completed.
“The very small ones went very fast,” said Hamilton Traylor, president of TriLegacy Group. “Those were snapped up in a heartbeat.”
The price for the one bedroom/1.5 bathroom, 1,051 square-foot condominiums is $365,000. Prices escalate to $1.23 million for the largest model, which totals over 2,500 square feet of living space.
Traylor expects ground breaking sometime in June or July, with the first residents scheduled to arrive in late 2003.
One Shipyard Place is just the start of the $860-million Shipyards redevelopment project. Other components of the “Billion Dollar Mile” include a public park, Northbank Riverwalk extension, a 350-room hotel, between 220 and 250 boat slips, nearly two million square feet of office space and 662 total residential units that include One Shipyard Place, two high rise towers and clusters of townhomes.
Jeff Spence, CEO of ICS Logistics — the parent company of TriLegacy Group — expects significant progress to be made by the time the Super Bowl comes to town in 2005.
“If our marketing is correct and momentum continues, I would anticipate one of the two residential towers to be built and maybe some of the townhomes,” said Spence.
Spence said advertisements for One Shipyard Place in the Wall Street Journal have drawn inquiries from Charlotte, Atlanta, South Florida and as far away as New England and Chicago.
Nearly 2,000 residential units are planned for downtown over the course of the next decade. Including The Shipyards 662 residences, Berkman Plaza will add 206; 11 East Forsyth, 135; Parks at the Cathedral, 53 and the twin towers of The Strand on the Southbank, 712. Despite the national advertising, Spence maintains that Jacksonville’s market alone is strong enough to support the Shipyards development.
“We’ve done market research locally and it shows there is pent-up demand for waterfront living,” he said, noting that while there is a large amount of residential development downtown happening at once, not all of it is the same. Some properties, like Berkman will be rental-based apartments, which will draw a different demographic than condominiums.