ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. \u2014 The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners has officially signed a lease for the future site of the Florida Museum of Black History in West Augustine. <\/p>\n
County Commissioner Sarah Arnold made the trip to Miami, where the foundation behind the museum is now based, to sign the lease on Friday.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax reported back in February<\/a> <\/a>about renewed competition over the museum\u2019s proposed site, and accusations of biased scoring towards the governor\u2019s appointed Florida Black History Museum task force.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt was always West Augustine. It was always St. John\u2019s County, and it was always going to Florida Memorial University as our partner,\u201d Arnold said Friday. \u201cTo be down here today at their homecoming alumni luncheon, be able to sign this lease, and get the ball rolling, we feel so honored and privileged.\u201d<\/p>\n The new museum will look to transform the space of the former Florida Memorial College off West Kings Street and North Holmes Boulevard into a unique center for Black history in one of Northeast Florida\u2019s most historic neighborhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe envisioned a campus-style museum with separate buildings for a performing arts center, an art gallery, perhaps, you know, a restaurant in it, the museum itself,\u201d Arnold explained Friday. \u201cWe envision gardens, sculptures. That\u2019s, that\u2019s really kind of what we have in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n County officials celebrated in September a one-million-dollar appropriation<\/a> to fund the planning and design phase of the museum. That\u2019s all set to begin as soon as Commissioner Arnold makes her way back from her visit to Miami.<\/p>\n However, Arnold told Action News Jax there\u2019s still a way to go in securing both state and private funding needed to complete the project.<\/p>\n \u201cWe expect to have more state support,\u201d Arnold said. \u201cWe also have established a foundation to raise money in the private sector and from the community and from the entire state of Florida to just make sure that this all happens. So, it\u2019s definitely going to be a combination of state legislature dollars as well as private funding.\u201d<\/p>\n Arnold says they\u2019ll be seeking that funding in the next state legislative session, come January.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. \u2014 The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners has officially signed a lease for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-311479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115391142732892820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}