The city issued a building permit June 11 for Miami-based The Related Group’s residential high-rise on the Downtown Southbank site of the demolished River City Brewery.
The permit for Southbank Residences is for 261,209 square feet at a project cost of $150 million. The contractor is Coastal Construction of Tampa Bay LLC.
The project is named South Bank Residences on the permit, but Related identified it as Southbank Residences during a May 20 ceremonial groundbreaking at the site at 835 Museum Circle.
Related says total investment in the project will be $202.7 million. The construction estimate does not include all of the costs involved and such estimates typically are adjusted as reviews progress.
A permit application listed RD River City Brewery LLC of Miami as the owner and developer. GAI Consultants of Jacksonville is the civil engineer. MSA Architects Inc. of Miami is the architect. Universal Engineering Sciences is the private plan review provider.
Designs call for 395 apartments across a 25-story tower and an eight-story building, along with an outdoor pool, top-floor sky lounge and bar, ground-level restaurant, marina office, kayak area, small movie theater with seating for 15 viewers, sports lounge and other amenities.
“We threw everything at this, including kitchen sinks,” Related President and CEO Steve Patterson said during the groundbreaking ceremony. “This has it all.”
The project emerged in 2020 as a $92 million, eight-story apartment community. In June 2021, Jacksonville City Council unanimously approved a redevelopment agreement and $18.27 million in taxpayer incentives for that version.
In April 2023, Related dropped those plans in favor of a project that added a 24-story tower to the mid-rise apartment building, along with other new elements.
That proposal stalled when projected construction costs came in $30 million higher than Related originally calculated.
In 2024, Council approved $58.79 million in public funding for an early iteration of the current version of the project. The estimated cost was listed at $202.75 million.
The incentives comprise a $39 million completion grant and a $19.79 million Recapture Enhanced Value Grant.
A REV Grant is a refund on ad valorem tax revenue generated by a new development. The grant for Related is based on 75% of the increased real and personal property taxes generated at the project site over 15 years.
Related is among the largest developers in the Southeast, having built more than 100,000 units and 17 million square feet of living space since its founding in 1979. Coastal Construction is one of Florida’s largest general contractors, having completed more than 50 million square feet of vertical projects.
Speakers at the May 20 event said that attracting a developer the caliber of Related was a signal of progress in Downtown’s redevelopment, with Mayor Donna Deegan saying there was “nobody I’ve been more excited to bring into this city than Jorge Perez (Related’s founding executive chairman) and the Related Group.”
Southbank Residences would be the second project for The Related Group in Northeast Florida, following the Azure Oceanfront Residences in Jacksonville Beach. That condominium project was completed in 2024 and is sold out.