The city of Jacksonville would spend about $34 million to fully build a proposed Downtown Northbank marina that is being planned in three phases, a city official told the Downtown Development Review Board on May 8.
Brian Burket, waterfront project manager for the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Department, said $12 million in funding for the Hans Tanzler Marina is in the city’s Capital Improvement Plan for the first phase of the project.
Burket said project organizers hope to finish permitting and design of the initial phase this year, with a goal of doing the bulk of construction in 2027.
The marina’s first phase would create two sets of floating docks and a harbormaster house in the 200 block of East Bay Street between the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront and The Plaza Condominiums.
The second and third phases would add slips along the north and eastern portions of the marina, and create a floating dock on the south side that would also serve as a breakwater.
The 2,000-square-foot harbormaster house would be on the northwest corner, where the single-story building would be clad with metallic screens that could be illuminated with multicolored lighting. The building, designed along with the rest of the marina by Jacksonville-based Pond & Co., includes a roof-mounted, mast-like pole that could also could be lighted.
Pond architect Eduardo Ponce described the harbormaster house to DDRB members as “a small building, but it has a big impact.” He said it was designed to be “like a jewel within the city.”
Tanzler’s son, Hans Tanzler III, said the marina and its location were a fitting tribute for his father, who served as mayor for 11 years beginning in 1967.
Tanzler said his father’s efforts to clean up the river led to the creation of 230 miles of sewer lines, elimination of 78 outfalls of raw sewage into the river and stopped an inflow of 20 million gallons of sewage per day to the river.
Tanzler noted that near the marina site, his father marked progress of the cleanup by staging an event in which he went waterskiing on the river to show that it was safe for recreation.
The marina is sited on a demolished parking lot. That lot served the Duval County Courthouse building that was also demolished in 2018.
The grounds of the courthouse, now known as The Ford on Bay property, have been vacant since.
Bill Delaney, a DDRB liaison for Mayor Donna Deegan, said the administration wanted to ensure the project was being designed with an eye toward potential development around it.
“We want to make sure it will fit with the wider context of the area as it gets more build-out in future years,” he said. “We don’t want to do something now that will tie our hands … in the future.”
A mixed-use project, The Hardwick at Ford on Bay, was proposed for the courthouse site but was abandoned by its developer, Atlanta-based Carter.
Guy Parola, director of operations for the Downtown Investment Authority, told Delaney that between the modest size of the harbormaster house and required height restrictions of developments along the riverfront, the DIA did not believe that the designs of the structure and a future project on The Ford on Bay site necessarily needed to be architecturally similar.
Parola also said previous proposals from developers for The Ford on Bay “blurred the line between public and private” uses. When the property is offered to private owners again, he said, the DIA would be seeking responses that also meshed public and private use.
The marina was on the DDRB’s agenda for discussion only. The board took no action on it.