Dennis + Ives in the Rail Yard District depended on market forces for its success during the pandemic, and they delivered.
Work on the project’s first phase, a former cold-storage warehouse renovated into offices, began five years ago.
Now it is fully leased.
“The market has embraced it,” said Dennis + Ives investor and partner Trip Stanly.
Dennis + Ives is a multiphase adaptive reuse project on 7.25 acres at 1505 Dennis St., in the Rail Yard District west of Interstate 95 and Downtown Jacksonville.
Its location at Dennis and Ives streets inspired the name.
The renovated 30,000-square-foot first-phase warehouse continues to be built-out for custom tenant suites along with 17 individual furnished flex offices that will be operated by Regus, a global operator that manages flexible office uses.
Stanly said multiple tenants in the first phase are women-owned and minority-owned local businesses.
The focus on the first building has been on the creative class.
“We’ve leased up an office building post COVID,” Stanly said during a tour Aug. 5.
Tenants now include:
• Rebecca Davisson Interior Design
• Luxury Point Studio
• Thomas Duke Architect
• Workscapes
• VanCamp Commercial
• Reinel Architecture & Design
• Jan Rice, Realtor
• Paradigm Vision Group
• REVA Development
• Roswell Risk Services
The next and final tenants are:
• Ruckus, a local marketing firm
• Mark Carson English Gallery & Studio, a regional artist
• The Regus center, which will be its fourth in the Downtown area, with two on the Northbank and one on the Southbank
• A national wealth management is signed but its name has not been disclosed.
The Urban Division of the Colliers real estate company is the leasing agent.
Investment partner Tom Finnegan of Charleston, South Carolina, is one of three development partners, along with Stanly and former Jacksonville resident Ken Grimes.
Finnegan said the group made some strategic adjustments because of the coronavirus pandemic, targeting space such as that for Regus, which Stanly said offered “work from here” rather than “work from home.”
“The creative class has found us,” Finnegan said.
The project
The Dennis + Ives Creative Office is Phase 1 of the multiphase mixed-use project.
The next phases will likely again focus on class, this time an educational one.
The University of Florida graduate campus is planned around the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center, a third of a mile east of Dennis + Ives on the east side of I-95.
“We are the largest private parcel near that campus,” Stanly said.
“If we don’t support that campus, we are missing an opportunity.”
The development team intends to develop Dennis + Ives as a mixed-use destination of office, retail, food and beverage, entertainment, multifamily and possibly a hotel.
The site is near the Emerald Trail, a planned series of parks and pathways connecting neighborhoods around Downtown.
Dennis + Ives Phase 1B, which is expected to be completed next summer, is a 1,200-square-foot cafe building with 10,000 square feet of covered outside space that will connect to the first phase.
“We are curating to make sure we have the right operator,” Stanly said.
Stanly said the phase after 1B could include multifamily development with ground-floor commercial and food-and-beverage uses.
“We will see what best supports this campus,” Finnegan said of the UF property.
The four or five food-and-beverage concepts could create a critical mass and a diversity of choices.
Stanly said the goal is to make the site a destination. “‘Let’s go to Dennis + Ives.’”
He said potential residential development would support what the UF campus needs, whether that is student, workforce or market-rate housing.
“We are first and foremost, market-driven,” he said.
“We aren’t betting on hope.”
Stanly said Dennis + Ives is entitled to develop up to 500,000 square feet of commercial space and 435 residential units.
Plans are at dennisandives.com.
Another project that has been in consideration at Dennis + Ives is a concert and event space managed by Nashville-based Marathon Live, which recently opened the Five music venue in Five Points.
Marathon Live said in 2022 it planned construct a 26,000-square-foot concert hall at Dennis + Ives.
Stanly said that project is in active negotiations.
The history
In September 2019, the development entity for Dennis + Ives, 95 Arch Partners LLC, bought the former Caribbean Cold Storage property.
Property records showed several existing structures totaling about 72,000 square feet. The largest buildings were built in 1965 and 1985 with an office developed in 1945.
Work began in late 2020 and early 2021 with demolition of some of the property and the conversion of a vacant cold storage warehouse into office space.
Auld & White Constructors LLC was the general contractor. Design Cooperative LLC was the architect. Almond Engineering was the civil engineer.
Auld & White renovated 30,000 square feet into shell office space.
For that space, Stanly said at the time the group would replace the roof, add windows, install new mechanical systems and improve the on-site parking.
Lockwood Quality Demolition Inc. demolished one building and part of another, keeping the slabs for reconstruction on top of that footprint.
The Dennis + Ives ownership and development team comprises Finnegan; Stanly, managing member of Blackwater Capital LLC in Jacksonville; and Grimes, senior managing director and partner of Patterson Real Estate Advisory Group in Charleston.
The Rail Yard District
Dennis + Ives is in a federal Qualified Opportunity Zone, which could provide tax benefits to investors. The 95 Arch Partners QOZ Fund advises potential tenants to consult with tax professionals for guidance.
The Dennis + Ives site is next to I-95 and the arch bridge, a visual worked into the Dennis + Ives logo. It is also near I-10.
The properties are at 1505, 1620, 1710 and 1720 Dennis St. and 74, 76 and 96 Ives St.
The Rail Yard District is in the industrial Beaver Street area west of I-95 near Downtown.
District organizers say it dates to 1858 as a railroad junction and the district is named for the train tracks and terminal that continue to operate.
“The Rail Yard District is rising and we’re hoping to be a part of that,” Finnegan said Aug. 5.
Stanly also places the project within the larger context of the city.
“Jacksonville is changing,” Stanly said.
As a city, he said, “we can’t rest on our laurels. We have to keep working harder.”