The emergence of a new prospective buyer partnering with a local construction company with a proven track record of historic restoration work has kindled new hope that the Laura Street Trio of early 20th-century buildings in Downtown Jacksonville can be brought back to life.
Alan Cottrill, president and CEO of Avant Construction Group of Jacksonville, confirmed reports that his company is working with an out-of-state party interested in acquiring the Trio from longtime owner SouthEast Development Group and its principal, Steve Atkins.
The deal would also include the sale of the renovated former Barnett National Bank building.
Cottrill declined to identify the possible buyer but said they are well-capitalized, have completed two development projects and have experience in adaptive reuse projects. The buyer’s principal owns a home in Ponte Vedra, he said.
Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico, who has years of experience with the Trio as a second-term Council member and former chair of the Council Special Committee on the Future of Downtown, said there is reason to believe the partnership between the prospective buyer and Avant could bear fruit.
“I’m optimistic about the prospects for the Trio this time,” he said in a text message. “I have a great deal of faith in Avant’s expertise and commitment. I believe the prospective buyer, whom I’ve had the opportunity to meet, brings credibility, solid resources, and experience in historic preservation.”
As Carrico and generations of Jacksonville residents are well aware, this isn’t the first movement toward a breakthrough on the Trio. In the decades that the buildings have sat vacant, several redevelopment attempts have bubbled up only to fail to move forward.
All the while, the Trio decays. The buildings at Forsyth and Laura streets, which were among the first built in Jacksonville after the 1901 fire that destroyed much of the city, stand as a prominently visible testament to the complexities of resurrecting properties with historic protections and the decades-long effort to revitalize the city’s Downtown.
Efforts to find a financially feasible way to adapt the Florida Life Insurance, Bisbee and Marble Bank buildings to modern use have dissolved amid rising construction costs, the increasing deterioration of the structures and requests from SouthEast for an escalating amount of public funding to make the project pencil out.
Two levels of historic protections buffer the buildings from being demolished.
The situation surrounding the building can be boiled down to two sentences.
Can’t bring them back.
Can’t tear them down.
But for Carrico and others who would like to see the corner come back to life, its potential to advance Downtown revitalization keeps it from being written off as a lost cause.
“Reviving these landmark buildings would be a major boost for Downtown’s entertainment and commercial district, creating momentum that will benefit the whole city,” he said by text message. “I look forward to working with the administration, Avant, and the development team to help bring this vision to life.”
One buyer out, another in
The last spark of hope for the Trio came in late 2024, when Downtown-based Live Oak Contracting announced it was negotiating with SouthEast to acquire the Trio.
In January 2025, Live Oak President and CEO Paul Bertozzi told Council members he had entered into a purchase and sale agreement with SouthEast and expected to close on it within 45 days.
At that time, the city paused a foreclosure lawsuit it filed months earlier alleging SouthEast-affiliated Laura Trio LLC, which owns the buildings, had failed to pay code violation fines on the property that exceed $800,000.
SouthEast countered that the city unfairly used incidents of vandalism and graffiti that were beyond its control as the basis for the suit.
In March 2025, the city said the potential sale of the Trio to Live Oak Contracting had stalled and that the city was resuming action on the lawsuit.
On Aug. 5, a Live Oak spokesperson said the company was no longer involved in negotiations for the property.
“We continue to support meaningful efforts to revitalize Downtown Jacksonville and hope to see positive momentum for the site moving forward,” the spokesperson said in an email.
In early August, Carrico announced on the WJCT News talk show “First Coast Connect” that the new out-of-state buyer had stepped forward.
“It’s complicated,” Carrico said when asked about a possible timeline for the project to move ahead.
“I don’t think anything happens soon, but I think something happens.”
On Aug. 13, a spokesperson for the city said the potential buyer had met with Mayor Donna Deegan’s chief of staff, Mike Weinstein, to discuss the project.
Melissa Ross, director of strategic initiatives and press liaison, said Weinstein “advised them to come back to us with more details once they’ve made the decision to purchase.”
Enter Avant
Cottrill, president and CEO of Avant Construction Group, said Aug. 12 that his company had begun work on behalf of the potential buyer to perform due diligence for the potential sale.
Cottrill said that among other tasks, Avant’s work involves a cost, structural and historical analysis that will be conducted partly through use of artificial intelligence-powered 3D imaging technology.
A key question is whether all three buildings can be saved.
In hours of discussions on the buildings over the past two years in Council meetings and special committees, the general consensus is that the Marble Bank building is the most easily resurrected of the three, followed by the Bisbee Building next door to the bank on Forsyth Street and the Florida Life Building north of the bank on Laura Street.
Cottrill said it was too early to tell which of the buildings could be preserved, but Avant hoped to save all three.
“We’re committed to keeping what can be kept,” he said. “We’re not looking for an easy way out.”
Avant is well familiar with the challenges of preserving Downtown’s older buildings. Their adaptive reuse projects include:
• The Federal Reserve Bank at 425 N. Hogan St., which is being redeveloped into a members-only social club called The June.
• Sweet Pete’s at 400 N. Hogan St., formerly the circa-1909 Seminole Club.
• The Porter House Mansion, the 1902-built home at 510 N. Julia St. and owned by JWB Real Estate Capital.
• The adaptive reuse of the Hillman-Pratt and Walton Funeral Home at 525 W. Beaver St., which is being converted into apartments and a restaurant.
• The planned restoration of the Juliette Balcony building and adjacent former Mag’s Cafe building in the 200 block of North Laura street into short-term rentals and restaurant space.
Asked about Avant’s interest in historic preservation, Cottrill provided a quote from former President Ronald Reagan.
“The presence of historic properties as working and productive assets in our communities gives us an important link between the past and present, and reminds us of what we were, who we are and where we hope to be.”
A fourth building
SouthEast, working in partnership with The Molasky Group of Companies, adapted the 18-story Barnett building at 112 W. Adams St. into offices, retail space and residences. That work began in 2017 after City Council approved $9.8 million in incentives for the $90 million project.
Now called The Residences at Barnett, the building includes a Chase Bank branch on the ground floor along with one- and two-bedroom apartments and an outdoor patio, among other amenities.
Cottrill said three floors of the structure remain undeveloped and would be finished off in the purchase. Two of those floors are planned for residences and the other for amenities, he said.
The work ahead
If a sale is finalized, questions will turn to the new owners’ plans for the buildings and how much public funding they would seek to bring those plans to reality.
Times and the economy have changed drastically since 2017, when SouthEast started work on the vacant Barnett building.
The city approved two incentive packages over the years for Atkins, who purchased the Trio in 2013.
They were:
• 2017: $5.8 million for a $44.6 million project focusing on restoration.
• 2021: $26.6 million for a $70.4 million plan that included a Marriott Autograph Collection hotel.
Neither set of incentives resulted in reconstruction, and the city did not pay them out.
In 2023, SouthEast sought $63.5 million for a $175 million project that added 149 apartments.
In 2023 and 2024, after negotiations with the Downtown Investment Authority and the city, SouthEast brought back requests that included $85.77 million in incentives toward total development costs of $188.67 million, and $88.9 million in incentives toward a development cost of $194.2 million.
In 2024, the DIA and city administration announced they were cutting off talks with Atkins and SouthEast for failing to address their concerns that his requests relied too heavily on public funding and did not include enough private investment.
Since then, as the Live Oak bid came and went and the potential new buyer emerged, thousands of motorists and pedestrians have passed by the three buildings only to see them as they’ve appeared for many years.