A pair of divergent news developments, one about a business deciding not to relocate and the other about Jacksonville’s main homeless shelter uprooting, combined recently in what City Council member Jimmy Peluso described as a win for revitalization of Downtown Jacksonville.
The business is EverBank, which confirmed this month it is renewing its lease at 301 W. Bay St. rather than relocating to the suburbs. The shelter is Sulzbacher, whose homeless services campus is being built in Brentwood as it prepares to leave its longtime Downtown headquarters.
“Not only is it a good couple of days, but we also saw that in September it looks like the first of the Pearl Square properties is going to come online,” said Peluso, whose District 7 includes central Jacksonville. He spoke July 10 at a ceremonial groundbreaking for the second phase of construction on Sulzbacher’s homeless services campus in Brentwood.
“People have seen the investments and seen articles about what is happening, but we’re at a place now where they are really going to start to see (redevelopment) happen. We’re about to come into a new age of Downtown.”
Council President Nick Howland, who spoke at the Sulzbacher event, said afterward the nonprofit’s departure from its headquarters at 611 E. Adams St. would clear the way for new projects Downtown.
“Sulzbacher Downtown is in the path of what is inevitable development in our city as we grow out in Downtown in the Bay Street corridor and in the Sports and Entertainment District,” he said. “And moving it here to new facilities focused on rehabilitation and new careers is fantastic for our city.”
With Sulzbacher on about a two-year timeline for its move, the question is whether EverBank’s benefit to Downtown will only be temporary. The bank did not disclose whether its new lease was for the short or long term.
For such leases, short-term is considered four years or less.
But for now, the city retained EverBank in Downtown without providing nearly $10 million in public incentives the company sought from the city to stay in its current headquarters.
“What do you know? Shocking that they didn’t need the incentives they asked for,” Peluso said.
“I continue to say this about some of these landlords: If they really want to make sure they have folks occupying their buildings, they need to make sure those buildings are in the right condition and are conducive to getting top-tier talent and top-tier businesses.
“That’s not a city of Jacksonville responsibility. That’s up to them.”
The two news developments occurred as several Downtown projects move forward, including Gateway Jax’s Vandeveer seven-story multifamily building at 515 N. Pearl St., which is nearing completion.
Here are more details about the EverBank lease and Sulzbacher’s project.
Lease renewal
Michael Cosgrove, senior vice president of corporate communications for EverBank, confirmed the lease renewal July 9 but declined to answer questions about the size of the space involved, the length of the lease terms and the status of a rejected incentives request to the city to stay Downtown.
A second-quarter office market report by real estate company CBRE referred to key lease transactions that included EverBank as a renewal of 174,000 square feet of space at the 30-story Downtown tower.
“We are happy that EverBank continues to be in downtown today and we’ll do everything we can to keep them here,” city Chief Communications Officer Phil Perry said in a July 9 email, adding that the city had no further updates and referred questions to the company for specifics.
Incentive ask rejected
On Feb. 18, the Downtown Investment Authority board voted 7-2 against recommending approval of $9.8 million over 10 years to entice EverBank to stay at its offices. EverBank said it requested the incentives to offset a cost differential in operating Downtown versus in a suburban office location.
The bank said it approached Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration during 2025 as it began deciding whether to renew its 10-year lease in the Bay Street building, prompting negotiations that led to the proposed incentives.
DIA board members who voted against the recommendation expressed concern that it would create a precedent that would prompt other Downtown employers and property owners to request public assistance to stay Downtown.
The DIA board vote came on Resolution 2026-02-09, which called for the city to enter a Conditional Grant Agreement with EverBank to provide $980,000 annually to the financial institution over the 10-year term of the deal.
The funding would not be offered under a DIA redevelopment program, but rather would be drawn from the city general fund. Because a grant from the city fund would require Jacksonville City Council approval, several DIA board members said they did not believe the DIA’s recommendation was necessary or appropriate.
That legislation was not filed with Council.
Terms of the deal included EverBank retaining a minimum of 139,000 square feet of leased and occupied space and investing $7 million in its space for tenant improvements.
In addition, the building owner would have been required to invest $7 million in EverBank’s space and an additional $5 million in the remainder of the building for security, systems, amenities and site improvements.
Miami-based Amkin West LLC owns the building. It paid $47.4 million for the property in 2014.
Supporters of EverBank’s request said the retention grant was needed to maintain the momentum of Downtown redevelopment.
DIA CEO Colin Tarbert said losing the bank’s roughly 800-member workforce based Downtown would be a setback amid completion of such projects as riverfront parks and substantial progress on private developments such as the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences, the Whole Foods-anchored One Riverside mixed-use project in Brooklyn and Gateway Jax’s $750 million-plus Pearl Square district in the North Core area north and west of City Hall.
Downtown office vacancy
Downtown’s office vacancy rate was 25% as of the second quarter of 2026, CBRE found in its market report. The Northbank, which includes EverBank Center, was 26.2% while the Southbank was 21.6%.
The suburban rate was 23.1%.
DIA board members questioned whether the property owner offered a competitive lease rate to EverBank, considering the high vacancy overall, the difference between rates Downtown and in the suburbs, and that a relocation by EverBank would leave the building more than 90% vacant.
Oliver Barakat, a former DIA board member who is senior vice president of CBRE, said in February that the property owner factored in the higher cost of building operations in Downtown compared with the suburbs, costs of the agreement and contributions for building improvements.
The negotiated amount, he said, was competitive with other Downtown buildings.
Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which moved about 1,000 employees into the EverBank Center in 2015, is relocating to the former Florida Coastal School of Law building at 8787 Baypine Road in Baymeadows.
A DIA analysis projected that EverBank’s 800 employees would spend $1.66 million per year Downtown, based on an assumption that employees would work at least four days per week Downtown and would spend an average of $40 on goods and services there weekly. Over 10 years, the annual spending would amount to $16.64 million.
During the Feb. 9 meeting of the Council Special Committee, an EverBank representative said the bank determined that the annual cost of operating Downtown is $1.4 million higher than in a suburban commercial property.
Lawyer Steve Diebenow, of the Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow firm, said then parking and security costs contributed to the differential.
‘Strong preference’
During the Feb. 18 DIA board meeting, EverBank executive Mark Gordon said the bank’s “strong preference” would be to remain Downtown.
He said factors in that preference included EverBank’s ties to the community, its proximity to the majority of its employees’ homes and its connection to EverBank Stadium, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ home stadium.
“Downtown makes the most sense to us,” he said.
Responding to a question from DIA board member Sondra Fetner, Gordon said EverBank explored other offices Downtown but found them insufficient. Some fell short because of older infrastructure that would have increased build-out costs, he said, and others had layouts that would have spread staff across more floors when the company wants to consolidate into a more contiguous stack.
EverBank moved its headquarters to 501 Riverside Ave. in 2006.
Six years later, EverBank Financial Corp. became the Bay Street building’s anchor tenant and put its name at the top of what became EverBank Center.
After being acquired by TIAA Bank and then sold to a group of investment funds in 2022, EverBank’s signage returned to the building in 2023.
In August of that year, the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium was named EverBank Stadium.
Sulzbacher Phase 2
City, state and congressional leaders gathered July 10 for the ceremonial launch of Sulzbacher Enterprise Village, the homeless services campus under construction in Brentwood.
U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Florida, state Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, Mayor Donna Deegan and Howland were among those taking part in the groundbreaking event.
The $28 million second phase will bring health clinics, a Goodwill job training facility and a culinary program to the 17-acre site at 4785 Walgreen Road, west of Interstate 95 and east of the Brentwood Golf Course.
Major sources of funding for the project include the city of Jacksonville, which contributed $15 million, and the state of Florida, which provided $3.85 million.
Duggan, who led efforts to secure the state funding, said the concept of a campus providing wraparound services was neither a Republican nor Democrat idea but rather “a Jacksonville idea.”
“When I advocated for this funding, my colleagues understood this is how you actually solve a problem, not just put a roof over someone’s head,” he said. “It’s healthcare, job skills, a path, a future — all for the people the world so often walks past.”
The new campus was conceived as a replacement for Sulzbacher’s Downtown facilities, which board Chair Barney Smith described as functionally obsolete, flood-prone and in the path of Sports and Entertainment District development.
Officials expect the relocation to be completed in about two years.
Plans call for Phase 2 to be carried out in two parts. Phase 2A includes a 30,000-square-foot medical facility in collaboration with Mayo Clinic, which provided $5 million in funding, and a 14,000-square-foot job training facility.
The medical facilities will be open to both the Sulzbacher campus and the community and will serve both insured and uninsured individuals, speakers said.
Plans for Phase 2B include emergency housing, tiny homes, case management, corporate headquarters and an assisted living facility. The capital campaign for that portion of the project is scheduled to begin in fall 2026.
Jacksonville-based Auld & White Constructors is the contractor.
Phase 1 is scheduled for completion in the fall, said Smith.
That phase includes 100 affordable studio and one-bedroom workforce housing apartments serving homeless men. Cost of that phase, for which Sulzbacher is partnering with The Vestcor Cos., is $37 million.
The third phase is a for-profit manufacturing business to employ the people Sulzbacher serves.
The groundbreaking ceremony was held against a backdrop of a cleared construction site, showing that horizontal work is well underway.
Howland said housing and feeding homeless individuals was noble, but “it’s a next-level thing to provide substance abuse treatment, mental health care, medical care, dental care and job training.”
“The result should never be just to house someone or to feed them. That should not be the primary metric tracked, because that is not the ultimate goal,” he said. “The ultimate goal or the result should always be to get someone back on the path of self-sufficiency into their own house and into a productive and fulfilling life.”
Truist provided a $6.5 million bridge loan for the project, which also drew $2 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Community partners included the Terry Family Foundation, Lauren and Ted Baker and The Jim Moran Foundation.
Sulzbacher also obtained New Markets Tax Credits for the project from Truist Community Capital, the Local Initiatives Support Corp., the Black Business Investment Fund and the Corporation for Supportive Housing.
Other attendees at the July 10 event included Council members Ju’Coby Pittman, whose District 10 includes the new Sulzbacher campus, and Chris Miller; Sulzbacher President and CEO Cindy Funkhouser; Mayo Clinic of Florida CEO Kent Thielen; Kathleen Shaw, executive vice president of The Terry Family Foundation; Elisha Gonzalez, Truist senior vice president of community affairs; Ryan Hoover, president of TVC Development Inc., part of Vestcor; and Nate Marty, CEO of Auld & White Constructors.