A local investor and philanthropist aims to bring middle-class mid-tier housing to a long-overlooked portion of town. Rabbi Rob and Lauren Thomas have announced plans to redevelop an area just south of the JHS Bowl that takes up most of an entire city block.
The Thomases have purchased several lots and derelict houses in the block bordered by College Avenue, Church Street, Beecher Avenue, and Fayette Street.
Thomas says the plan is to create new housing to help fill a void in the Jacksonville housing market. “As I’ve talked to businesses around town as well as businesses that would like to come to town, they all say the same thing- there is no place for anybody to live. We have no place for our employees to live and raise their families.
So we’re going to start with this project to prove that development can be done here at that price point to provide the housing we desperately need.
On West College Avenue will be three new homes that are detached [from each other], single-family homes with attached garages, and they will be sold to families. Around the corner, going down Church Street, will be Chicago-style brownstones. Still single-family homes but attached, two or three-story, we’re just not sure yet, and again, those will be sold to families, not as rentals, but as homes.”
Thomas says new construction planned for Beecher and Fayette will be a little more sporadic, with blighted or empty lots mixed in among existing private homes. He says to that end, the new homes will feel more like the older structures they will have replaced.
“The key thing on the homes, just like the brownstones, the architectural design will fit the neighborhood. Each home will be unique; we’re not taking a cookie-cutter approach, but we want them to fit into the neighborhood. So if you think about American Victorian, Italianate, those styles of architecture, that’s what you are going to see on these homes. On the inside- all modern. Ideally, when we are done, you’ll drive by and you won’t be able to tell where we built a new home.”
Thomas says he and his team have had a lot of support from residents in the immediate area who are thankful that the blighted or even abandoned houses have been removed. The neighborhood has been rife with issues for several years, including people squatting in the abandoned and even burned-out structures.
Thomas says the two remaining structures on College facing the JHS Bowl will come down in the coming weeks. He says a lot of work goes into remediating each structure of things like asbestos and lead paint before they can be taken down.
Thomas says his team also goes into the existing structures and removes anything with historic or architectural value for reuse either in the new homes or other projects in Jacksonville, such as buildings on the downtown square that are currently being renovated.
Thomas estimates that groundbreaking will start on the first home in the next six to eight weeks, with the goal to have their first new house completed by the end of this year, with the two others following shortly behind. After that, work then moves to the brownstones planned for South Church Street.
Thomas has also been working to redevelop a number of buildings downtown, including the Kresge Building that now houses Pizza Records. The Andre & Andre building on the north side of the square, more commonly known as the “old Sears building”, and several including the old Osco Drugstore on the southeast quadrant of the square.
24 new apartments will soon be finished and ready for rent on the upper stories of these buildings. Thomas says it is another way he and Lauren are attempting to help with the housing shortage area residents face, as more businesses try to attract new college graduates and young families to work and play in the Jacksonville area.
For more information about the project, contact the Garrison Group’s Jacksonville Office.