Evaluators from the Downtown Investment Authority voted April 30 to recommend a proposal from a Baltimore-based group to build and operate a restaurant on city-owned property in Riverfront Plaza.
The evaluation committee made the recommendation after scoring Atlas Restaurant Group’s proposal for a seafood restaurant higher than a submission from St. Augustine-based PK Hospitality Group for the property on the southwest corner of the park on the Downtown Northbank.
Atlas, which operates more than 50 restaurants, proposed to build a shell building that the city would own, then build-out the shell and lease it. The group’s terms include being reimbursed $8 million from the city to design and construct the building. Atlas would spend $4 million on the build-out, then pay a base rent of $560,000 annually with a 3% escalation per year.
If revenue reaches $11.2 million annually, the rent would switch to 5% of that revenue.
Atlas would provide maintenance and pay for insurance.
Its restaurant would include a waterfront raw bar and casual dining component, a full-service dining room with seafood and steaks and a rooftop bar and lounge.
The three-member evaluation committee comprised Jill Caffey, DIA board member, Allan DeVault, redevelopment manager, and Wade McArthur, property disposition manager.
The committee voted 3-0 to recommend to the DIA board that staff enter further negotiations with Atlas for building construction and lease terms. The board is expected to consider that recommendation at its May 20 meeting.
The vote came after the DIA issued a notice of disposition for the restaurant site. Disposition is the process by which the city transfers publicly owned property for private development.
In January 2026, the DIA board voted 9-0 in favor of a resolution calling for the notice of disposition. Under that resolution, the expectation was that the city would construct the shell building, with the operator building it out and leasing it.
Committee members said Atlas’ terms and its track record of developing restaurants earned it a higher rating than PK Hospitality Group, which presented the only other proposal.
Atlas operates in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C. Several of its restaurants are on waterfronts.
Caffey said Atlas presented “a way to get it done and get it done right.”
“That’s incentive for me to move in that direction,” she said.
The groups were scored on six criteria, including experience, their lease proposals, financial capacity and operational viability. Each category was scored on a scale of zero to 20.
Cumulatively, Atlas scored 90 to PK’s 71.7.
PK’s concept was for Prohibition Kitchen, an entertainment-driven gastropub including a main dining room with live music, a private dining space, rooftop cocktail lounge and rum-focused tasting environment.
Its proposal included a full abatement of rent for the first two years, with rent of $120,000 in year three, $144,000 in year four, $168,000 in year five and a 2.5% increase annually thereafter.
According to the DIA, the facility will include 6,000 square feet of interior space, a 1,500-square foot patio and a rooftop bar.
Caffey said she was concerned that Atlas would draw criticism that the group’s menu prices were too high for some diners. An online menu for Atlas’ Choptank restaurant in Annapolis, which the restaurant group’s proposal cited as a brand that would influence the Jacksonville location, shows appetizers starting at $16, sandwiches starting at $20 and fresh catches starting at $34.
DeVault said restaurant concepts elsewhere in Riverfront Plaza and at St. Johns River Park would provide less expensive options.
Allan Iosue, director of business development at Jacksonville-based Haskell, represented the Atlas project at the committee hearing. He said DIA CEO Colin Tarbert’s connection to Baltimore, where Tarbert worked for more than 20 years in public development before coming to Jacksonville, helped attract Atlas’ interest in Jacksonville.