“Our Picasso”

The Laura Street Trio

Sep 08, 2023

A Unique Perspective: screenshot from *Arbus Magazine*, May/June 2017. Wayne Wood’s “Jacksonville’s Greatest Works of Art”

Perspectives differ.

Take the Laura Street Trio. Some folks see three dilapidated buildings; others see the most important architectural trio in the entire southeast.

Despite these differing perspectives, everyone agrees that the three buildings and their central location at Forsyth, Laura, and Adams Streets are the linchpin to creating a renewed sense of place, and when finally-if-ever restored will have a catalytic effect on downtown re-development.

It’s probably why we keep talking about them.

The successful restoration of numerous downtown structures—the Barnett Bank Tower, 218 Church Street, the Haydon Burns Library, the Carnegie Library, the St. James Building, the Federal Reserve—should give folks comfort in knowing “adaptive reuse” of historic architecture is not only feasible, but essential to giving places their uniqueness, distinguishing one place from every other place.

Downtown Jacksonville’s history is different from Savannah and Charleston, Birmingham and New Orleans. We know it by our downtown architecture, buildings that tell our story and help define us as a people.

“Our Picasso”: “Breathtaking” and “Rare”

In their singularity, the Marble Bank, Bisbee, and Florida Life buildings are architecturally and historically significant. As a trio, they are priceless.

“Our Picasso,” exclaims local architectural historian Wayne Wood.

With good reason.

The perspective offered by the Laura Street Trio is unique. One of a kind. In all of the South and in urban America.

As explained by Wood’s late friend, architect, and John Henry Klutho biographer Robert Broward, “all three buildings can be visualized from a single vantage point.” Generally not true in American cities, where “the tallest buildings are located at the intersection of two streets” leaving “only the facades of the adjoining buildings” visible. “However, on the corner of Laura and Forsyth,” writes Broward, Jacksonville enjoys something rare and beautiful: “a low-rise classical building (the Marble Bank) perfectly framed by two soaring skyscrapers of similar height and proportion.” 1

The unique visual result: “a grouping that is breathtaking in its symmetry and rare in its composition,” writes Broward.

But that’s not all: the Klutho-designed Bisbee and Florida Life Buildings also represent Jacksonville’s first skyscrapers. Notably, the Bisbee Building was “the first reinforced-concrete-frame high-rise building in the South,” and Florida Life tower “is the city’s purest statement of a skyscraper,” “narrow,” “beautifully proportioned,” and soaring skyward “giving an impression of being much taller than it actually is.”2

A unique perspective and a first. Something to be proud of.

Tenacity

Not only are they architecturally unique, the Trio buildings, together with their Barnett Bank Tower cousin situated across Laura, tell a story of a tenacious people, folks who seized the opportunity to build a new town of brick and stone and concrete in place of the wooden town ravaged by the devastating Great Fire of 1901.3

Ironically, the Laura Street Trio buildings were constructed on the very spot where firefighters stopped the Great Fire from destroying even more than the nearly 2400 buildings it already reduced to ash.4 And yet, during our time these four buildings have suffered decades of abandonment and neglect.

Complete devastation was arrested, new life rose from the ashes, but in that very same location, we struggle—to understand, to appreciate, to restore.

But we keep talking about it.

If At First You Don’t Succeed . . .

When asked about restoring the Trio, Southeast Development Group principal Steve Atkins says “if it were easy, it would have been done by someone before me.” Atkins, the developer of the successful restoration of Barnett Bank Tower, bought the Barnett and the Trio a decade ago.

He’s correct of course: no fewer than 4 mayors (John Delaney, John Peyton, Alvin Brown, Lenny Curry) served while no fewer than 8 owners faced a David versus Goliath-size challenge in trying to redevelop what is arguably the most important real estate half block in Downtown Jacksonville.

From their construction in the early 1900s until the late 1990s, ownership of the Trio remained relatively stable. The three historic structures were occupied and contributed to the economic vitality of downtown for almost a century, and this despite bank mergers and name changes.

That stability changed when Nations Bank sold the Trio to German investor Angela Schneider. Schneider bought the buildings in 1999 with plans to redevelop or sell the properties. When in 2002 she announced plans to demolish the three historically significant structures, the City of Jacksonville stepped in and purchased the buildings.

But why?

Our collective conscience? Maybe a deep sense that willful demolition of the heart and soul of Jacksonville is simply wrong. Especially in the very location that marks the rebuilding of Jacksonville after the Great Fire.

It’s conjecture for sure, but obviously someone in charge thought tearing down the place of our new beginnings unwise, maybe even detrimental to our future. Surely nothing good would come from it.

After coming to the rescue, the City gave up after two years of attempting to reach a financial incentive agreement with a developer and transferred ownership of the Trio to our local Fire and Police Pension Fund in 2004. The Pension Fund, recognizing it’s not in the development business, eventually elected to sell the buildings to an Orlando developer in 2007. A year later, that developer found himself bankrupt and the Trio fell into the hands of his Chicago-based lender.

It was 2008, and though now a fading memory, many of us do remember the economic collapse that began in fall 2008. Locally, it took years for us to climb out. Maybe a good decade. And then of course the world experienced an unprecedented pandemic, supply chains seized up, goods were hard to come by, labor tight, and eventually borrowed money was expensive again, all making large repurposing construction projects EXPENSIVE. Developers live and die by interest rates. When rates are high, project costs escalate. And many projects do not come to fruition.

It’s Now or Never

It’s possible that Southeast’s plans, which include restoring the Trio and constructing two new buildings, is a last chance. As presently conceived, the new complex will include a Marriott Autograph Hotel; 169 multifamily apartments, 51 of which will be affordable to folks who live on a policeman, teacher, or nurse’s wages; street level stores; a grand restaurant; and indoor and rooftop bars.

A place to live, visit, play, and have fun. And maybe learn a little something about our local story.

Unlike the Barnett Tower restoration, which included no local taxpayer investment, the salvation of the buildings across the street will need public help, and maybe some special extra help. That’s not unusual. Much of downtown’s historic restoration depends upon a combination of grants, loans, and tax relief brought to the table by local and federal taxpayers alike.

In June, our local Downtown Investment Authority (DIA) reviewed a set of public incentives that will provide roughly $63 million for this $175 million project. In an unusual move, DIA forwarded the project to City Council without making a recommendation, for or against. Importantly, DIA did not kill the idea of a public investment in the Laura Street Trio, but rather left the decision to City Council. That body will now wrestle with what size public investment to make in restoring downtown’s heart and soul.

Clearly the Trio’s singular importance nags at our conscience. We’re not comfortable providing the amount of subsidy required, and we’re not comfortable walking away.

So how should we think about this? From what perspective? And how, pray tell, do we end this conundrum?

Framing the Public Debate

Over the next few months we will debate the value—communal, economic, psychic—of investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild a publicly-owned football stadium not 30 years old. Completed in 1995, the stadium cost Jacksonville taxpayers $121 million to build ($239 million in 2022 dollars). No doubt our elected officials will be convinced that we simply must find the wherewithal to build the Stadium of the Future because, because if we do not—the risk of the NFL abandoning Jacksonville is simply too great. We will convince ourselves that the risk of losing is simply too great to our community psyche, regardless of whether or not the investment will produce a reasonable rate of financial return.

We will also debate the publicly-owned county jail, currently being framed as another “zero-sum” proposition. We’ve already been told that this 32 year-old building is “dilapidated” and “outdated” and that we are one step away from a federal court order.5

The public should ask: how do rather expensive publicly-financed and publicly-owned buildings become “dilapidated” and outlive their usefulness in a mere 30 years? Maybe the stadium is not what we want, and maybe we built the jail in the wrong location. But dilapidated? And if dilapidated, how long can we expect their replacements to last?

Which brings us back to the Laura Street Trio. As City Council takes up the public’s financial role in maybe—finally?—getting this right, we will hear two narratives: one will tell us that we cannot afford to make the size public dollar investment necessary to breathe life into these critically important buildings, the heart and soul of Jacksonville; the other will tell us that we cannot afford not to.

And since the City and Pension Fund owned “our Picasso” for five years, and managed to not restore the Trio in that five years, the City clearly knows the nature of this challenge. Restoration simply will not happen without the public’s assistance.

It ain’t easy. Or cheap. But neither is building a new stadium or a new jail. And it goes without saying that we want the Laura Street Trio and its two new adjacent companions to last longer than a mere 30 years. After all, they’ve stood proudly, at times occupied and at times dilapidated, for 100+ years.

If they could speak, they might say “rescue us.” “We saved you once, and we can save you again.”

Compared to building a new stadium, the public amount needed to ensure the economic success of the Trio, and downtown for that matter—to bring them back into production—will look like pennies on the dollar. Not to mention: the stadium will be occupied periodically and episodically compared to the occupancy rates of an apartment building and hotel.

A New Opportunity:

Mayor Deegan and City Council have the singular, unique opportunity to break our historic downtown cycle of woe. They can champion restoration of the Laura Street Trio and provide the public financing necessary to bridge the gap between what traditional lenders will provide the developer and the capital investment required to succeed. They can do what none of their predecessors have accomplished.

Just as the 1901 Great Fire firemen saved the remainder of Jacksonville at Forsyth-Adams-Laura, just as the City stopped willful demolition in 2002, local government can do us all a favor and end this sad tale of woe.

When a bill is introduced to City Council and debate on the Trio’s future occurs, JaxLookout will keep you informed. In the meantime, read Wayne Wood’s piece in the May/June 2017 issue of Arbus. You will be glad you did.

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