Laura Street Trio finally headed to DDRB

[thelakelander]

A plan to restore the Laura Street Trio into a Marriott branded hotel continues to advance. Here is a look at this month's Downtown Development Review Board presentation for the project's conceptual approval.

Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/laura-street-trio-finally-headed-to-ddrb/

[BridgeTroll]

Looks great... 

Criticism in 3... 2... 1...

[thelakelander]

Built it already! I love how the new buildings architecturally go with the older buildings.

[jcjohnpaint]

I love it!

[marcuscnelson]

From this point in time, about how long should it take to get to ribbon-cutting on this?

[thelakelander]

Probably a good three or four years. If I were the DIA, I'd aggressively work on filling the remaining vacant spaces and retrofitting the ground level of office buildings between the Landing site and JWJ Park. The goal would be to have a cohesive district of complementary pedestrian scale uses within 3 years. Accomplish and program that same compact area and the talk of a dead downtown will be over.

[Steve]

[Steve]

The only nuance this creates is not with this project, but the VyStar garage:

The previous Laura St Trio plan had the motor court exiting onto Forsyth Street. That necessitated the Parking Garage to have it's entrance close to the corner of Forsyth and Main. The result of that was that while the VyStar garage is overall excellent, much of Forsyth Street is ground level parking due to the flow of the garage. Now that the Motor Court Entrance and Exit is on Adams, the placement of the Parking Garage entrance could be anywhere in the garage design. I'd love to seem the DIA/VyStar try to move the entrance closer to Laura, thereby opening up much more of the Forsyth Street frontage to retail, now or in the future.

Aside from that, we don't want to delay any further.

[Steve]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/laura-street-trio-design-granted-conceptual-approval

Granted Conceptual Approval-not surprisingly, the vote was 8-0, with Brockelman recusing himself as his company is a lobbyist for the developer.

[acme54321]

I wish we saw this kind of quality every single time someone submitted

No shit.  Don't we all...

[landfall]

Dare I say it, the Trio would be a great spot for a Starbucks. 

Between the likes of this and Independent Life there's the potential for a few projects to run concurrently.

[thelakelander]

^Quite a few! Add the adaptive reuse projects up that could be underway by summer and there's more coming now, that would have been developed at Lot J and for a fraction of the public expense. This could be a big year for the actual heart of downtown.

[Papa33]

^Quite a few! Add the adaptive reuse projects up that could be underway by summer and there's more coming now, that would have been developed at Lot J and for a fraction of the public expense. This could be a big year for the actual heart of downtown.

Fingers crossed.  All in spite of the Mayor's of office.

[marcuscnelson]

[Steve]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/article/proposal-laura-street-trio-deal-includes-dollar24-67-million-in-forgivable-deferred-loans

A little more taxpayer incentive than I would have expected, but still worth it in my eyes for this project. At least there aren't any Breadbox loans.