by Bailey White
Staff Writer
Plans for the future of the Haydon Burns Library will have to wait until the new mayoral administration settles into the fourth floor of City Hall.
Last fall, the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission issued an open-ended Request for Proposals to get an idea of the interest surrounding the redevelopment of the property.
And although the JEDC accepted three responses to the RFP earlier this year, Mayor John Delaney’s administration plans to leave the future of the site in the hands of Mayor-elect John Peyton.
“Mayor Delaney hopes a creative use for the building can be found,” said Audrey Moran, Delaney’s chief of staff. “His desire is for a proposal that calls for the reuse of the building because he thinks it will bring eclectic flair to that part of downtown.”
“In the grand scheme of things, the administration had a lot of projects requiring their attention, some of them with more of a priority to get finished under the current mayor’s watch,” said Al Battle, managing director of the Downtown Development Authority. “They felt this was something they wanted to delve into, but there wasn’t enough time to address it before the term was up. Besides, the RFP is only a request for ideas, it isn’t a guarantee for projects.”
Battle said he has yet to talk with anyone from Peyton’s staff, but said the RFP proved the site has the ability to draw attention.
“I think it’s fair to say we’ve got a good amount of interest in the project and a degree of unfinished business for the new administration to deal with,” said Battle.
“The mayor-elect is aware of the situation and has made downtown revitalization a priority,” said Peyton spokesperson Susie Wiles. “It will be looked at very early in the next term and is something of great interest to him.”
The three proposals submitted for the library included one from The Vestcor Companies, which developed the Lynch building into the 11 E. Forsyth lofts. Vestcor proposed demolishing the library to make way for a residential and commercial project.
The Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund suggested using the library’s existing structure for general office space and the JAX-Metropolitan Group’s plan called for the converting the building into creative commercial and retail space.
Whether or not a new RFP will illicit the same or more responses has yet to be determined.
“It’s not been that long since we issued the first RFP, so unless their are some dramatic changes in the market, we can probably expect similar responses,” said Battle. “Still, the beauty in doing this is that we never know what might be out there and that makes it interesting.”