“Let’s talk about Oak Street”
Community meeting held to discuss plans for The Local restaurant
The buildings that once housed Deluxe Laundry and Dry Cleaners and Deluxe Launderette remain an eyesore on Oak Street, but developers and restauranteurs Ted Stein and J.C. Demetree hope to begin making progress on transforming them into a third restaurant location for The Local.
In 2016, the Jacksonville City Council approved the Planned Unit Development (PUD) rezoning request for the mixed-use development of the 0.89-acre site, which includes the trio of historic buildings on Oak Street between Osceola and Copeland streets.
Despite the city council approval, the project – intended, at the time, for The Roost restaurant – met with considerable community opposition in 2016 and ensuing years.
The developers returned to meet with the neighborhood to discuss the project at a community meeting hosted by new District 7 Council Member Jimmy Peluso at Riverside Presbyterian Church on Thursday, July 27.
“We really want to see this building done correctly,” Demetree said during the meeting. “I think eight years ago, there were a lot of concessions we would have made for that building just to get it done, just because A) we didn’t have the money to do it and B) we didn’t have the experience. But today that’s different…I for one am very excited about this project. I compare it to Charleston, Savannah, things like that. We don’t have many of these buildings left and I’m really excited to see what we can do there.”
Stein and Demetree discussed changes they are seeking to the already-approved PUD, which include slight changes to the hours of operation, the allowance of televisions in the restaurant and minor changes to the site plan to allow for a larger kitchen.
Residents at the meeting posed questions, shared feedback and expressed concerns related to the project, including the project’s intensity, parking and traffic and the on-site sale of liquor.
With the ongoing issues the 5 Points District has seen regarding late-night bar crowds, neighbors were concerned about those crowds drifting into their streets as well with the addition of The Local.
“Our explicit goal is to not attract the 5 Points party crowd…That’s not the demographic we’re going after,” Stein said.
Riverside resident Dr. Wayne Wood shared his concerns regarding the scale of the project, noting the minimum 150 seats outlined in the PUD Development Criteria and asking developers if they would consider scaling it down to 120 and altering the alcohol sales to only beer and wine. While Stein said making those changes “would not make the restoration possible,” he did commit to changing it to a maximum of 150 seats instead.
The project’s parking, which remains unchanged from the original 2016 PUD, will include 59 parking spaces: 35 off-street spaces in a renovated parking lot where the current dirt lot sits besides the now-condemned buildings with new and existing on-street parking along Oak Street. Residents like Yvette Primus expressed concerns about overflow parking.
“I just wanna make sure that you guys are…thinking outside the box,” she said. “I love the idea that you guys wanna do something with that but I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page coming up with a plan on how we can deal with this parking situation because I don’t want it to be like Avondale.”
Other residents expressed their support of the development.
“I am super excited about this because it is an abandoned building and it looks awful,” resident Vickie Mangin said during the meeting. “This is an urban area. I think in an urban area, you are going to have restaurants and you’re going to have stores. I think it’s awesome for Jackosnville; I think it’s amazing for Riverside. There are beautiful homes in this neighborhood and people doing fabulous things with their homes and bringing something like this is great.”
In a telephone interview following the meeting, Riverside Avondale Preservation (RAP) Executive Director Shannon Blankinship said the comments shared at the meeting echo what she’s already heard from nearby neighbors regarding “the need to improve Oak Street in its entirety” between Copeland and Osceola streets
“It may not be directly a part of the process that we’re learning about from the applicant but what I really hope to see come out of this project is number one, a preserved historic structure in our community that’s able to tell the story of its previous life… Number two, I do hope that we see an improved streetscape that benefits the entire neighborhood and that incorporates improvements to the sidewalks, improvements to parking, better access for bike parking through bike racks as well as accommodations for the Oak Street bike lane and of course, wider landscape islands and the ability for some tree canopy.”
Blankinship added that several features have already been added to the project that “recognize and minimize” some of the impacts the project may have to nearby residents, including the addition of a masonry along the rear of the property both for safety and noise reduction, a restricted schedule for waste management to collect the dumpers behind the neighboring fitness center and the introduction of pedestrian-scale lighting to the parking lot.
“I think what we heard last night were a few more requests from neighbors to take into consideration some of their needs in the process,” she added. “I think the applicant is pretty open to making some of those changes. They’ve been pretty receptive to wanting to hear from people.”
During the meeting, Stein said that once the permitting process is complete, he anticipates construction will take roughly one year.
The Resident News will continue to report on this story as it develops.
By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News
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