After months of community engagement and feedback gathering last year, Corner Lot has released updated renderings of the new hotel coming to the Five Points neighborhood.
These new renderings were shared in a presentation to the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission at its April 22 meeting, reflecting updates based on feedback gathered from community engagement throughout last year.
The new hotel will sit behind the existing eight-story building at 1000 Riverside Avenue, which houses multiple tenants, including the popular neighborhood restaurant River and Post. It was designed by renowned architect Taylor Hardwick and built in 1963.
These refreshed designs have incorporated subtle elements paying homage to Hardwick’s building. This new hotel would be built on that same parcel where the surface parking lot currently exists behind that building, separated by a hardscape courtyard.
“We’ve put the new building as far away on the opposite side of that parcel so that we’re maintaining the space around that Hardwick building, not in any way obscuring it,” said attorney Cyndy Trimmer during the presentation.
A hardscape courtyard between the Hardwick Building and the hotel will absorb the hotel’s incoming and outgoing traffic onto Post Street
In a continued effort to respect the spatial relationship between the historic structure and the incoming hotel, the new building will also be approximately 35 feet shorter than the existing building, incorporating design elements and color palettes that pay homage to the Hardwick building without mimicking it.
Adjacent to the new hotel will be a new parking garage, which Trimmer said had been the “elephant in the room” during community conversations.
“Nobody wants to look at a garage, so we really focused on, what can we do to make the garage as palatable as possible,” Trimmer said.
The design team answered that question by incorporating architectural, design, and landscaping elements to activate the space and avoid the look of a precast structure.
Riverside Avondale Preservation Executive Director Shannon Blankinship spoke in favor of the new designs during the commission meeting’s public comment. Following the meeting, she said the new design elements reflect the property owner’s commitment to the neighborhood.
“So many of the changes that they made as a part of this project are not integral to the overall project being successful, but they are integral to the neighborhood really successfully being able to incorporate this new project,” Blankinship said.
Corner Lot Development Project Manager Cole Blaker said they are still in conversations with different programs for the hotel brand that will occupy this incoming building, adding that it will be a boutique line.
“We’re specifically targeting the soft brands that will allow us that architectural license, and then also working on some active brands that would kind of tie into the [Emerald] Trail and other things that are happening there,” Trimmer added.
Blankinship said that while the idea of a hotel at this location was a popular choice, there had been concern about how the neighborhood would absorb a project of that scale and how the project’s architecture and design would complement the neighborhood.
“I think we have come to see the outcome, which is that they really put design and function and use of people who live here in the forefront of the entire project,” Blankinship said.