by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
For more than seven years, land developer Craig Van Horn has been trying to develop an impoverished three-block area at the intersection of 8th and Pearl streets in Springfield into a thriving neighborhood.
Now that major infrastructure work on 8th St. is finished, Van Horn, president of Symbiosis Investments, LLC, said he is ready to start building and marketing his new pedestrian friendly, mixed-use Springfield neighborhood.
“None of the new construction could start until they finished the new roads,” Van Horn said. “Now that they have finished the new roads, it allows us to start.”
Though the infrastructure and demolition work at the site is complete, Van Horn said he is currently waiting for construction permits to be approved for the project, but he doesn’t expect any problems. So far, Van Horn said he has been through preliminary talks with the city and everything seems to be on schedule.
“We went through the plans with them and they were pretty happy about the project, too,” he said.
If all continues to go well throughout the process, Van Horn will be approved for his permits by April 2005 and will start construction then. He said the project should be finished within one year.
The plans for Van Horn’s mixed-use development include almost 100,000 square feet of space that will be split about evenly between residential and commercial use.
“It will have the old Main Street feel where you have commercial retail generally on the bottom (floor) and residential mixed in there as well,” he said.
Van Horn said the three-block development will feature two-and three-story buildings with roof gardens and built-in intricacies, like shared courtyards. While the ground floor of the building will be occupied by commercial entities such as restaurants and small shops, he said the second and third floors will be built out as a variety of residential apartments.
For the commercial half of the project, Van Horn said he would like to see a few nice restaurants as well as a variety of little shops fill the building’s commercial spaces.
“It will have a St. Augustine feel where you walk down an alley and the alley isn’t an area where you stick trash,” he said. “The alley has storefronts with balconies and moot spaces and little shops. It is going to be interesting.”
Van Horn said commercial tenants will have a variety of options regarding their commercial space but added that he would like to keep a number of the non-residential areas small for tenants with smaller businesses. He said leaving smaller spaces will add to the St. Augustine or feel of the development.
Residential areas in the development will also be varied when it comes to tenant‘s options, he said. After completion, Van Horn said the development should have about 50 apartments ranging from 500 square-foot efficiencies to 1,800 square-foot three- bedroom lofts.
Van Horn said his main goal for the development was to create a pedestrian friendly neighborhood where people can live, work, shop and entertain themselves without having to leave the neighborhood or drive a car.
“There are people that want this life and there just aren’t many options for it here,” he said. “For Jacksonville to be the city that we all want it to be, it has to develop its urban areas.”
While Jacksonville has been a suburban based city for several years now, Van Horn said the city’s urban core — downtown, Springfield, San Marco and Riverside — has grown in popularity during recent years and is ripe for an upheaval in urban living options.
Van Horn has already started to market the new development, as well as the rest of the Springfield area, with a new website, www.thenewspringfield.com.