Rice to speak at Florida Forum
Dr. Condoleezza
Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State, will speak April 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the
Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts. Rice will be speaking as part of
the Women’s Board’s 2011-2012 Florida Forum benefiting Wolfson Children’s
Hospital.
St. Mark’s marks 90th anniversary
A private home on Ortega Point has grown into a flourishing neighborhood church during its 90 years, and this month the celebration begins.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church will kick off its 90th anniversary celebration with a special 10 a.m. service on April 22. Many prominent and familiar Episcopal leaders will be in attendance, including the Right Reverend Samuel Johnson Howard, Bishop of Florida, who will preside over the service. Rector Emeritus of St. Mark’s Barnum McCarty will preach, and other former rectors are expected to be present.
As part of the service, the church will honor living members who were born in or before 1922. A reception will follow and several new buildings and areas on campus —including the renovated McRae-Winston Chapel,
St. Mark’s Green and the Lori Schiavone Commons—will be dedicated. The community is invited to attend all of the day’s events.
St. Mark’s was founded in 1914 when a small group of worshippers began meeting in an Ortega home. The group’s Sunday School Mission evolved into St. Columba’s Mission as an outgrowth of St. John’s Parish in downtown Jacksonville. In 1919, the first services were held near the present site of St. Mark’s in a former Army building. The Rev. Douglas B. Leatherbury was priest-in-charge.
By 1922, the church was organized as a parish and named St. Mark’s, and Leatherbury became its first rector.
Community Hospice, St. Vincent’s partner for Riverside facility
Construction will begin soon on a new, 10-bed hospice inpatient unit at St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside. Staffed and operated by Community Hospice of Northeast Florida and located on the fourth floor of St. Vincent’s Riverside, the unit is scheduled to open in early 2013.
Construction of this unit at St. Vincent’s Riverside is expected to begin in the summer of 2012. It will cost more than $1.9 million and is being funded by Community Hospice.
“Community Hospice is honored to be selected by St. Vincent’s to partner with them in developing these new services and to collaborate with their physicians and staff to help in their mission to bring comfort to patients and their families who are dealing with advanced illness,” said Susan Ponder-Stansel, president and CEO of Community Hospice. “Both our organizations share a long history of providing compassionate care to our community.”
The nearly 6,500-square-foot-facility will include 10 private patient rooms, as well as comforting, home-like amenities, a family lounge and a kitchen for use by family and visitors. The goal is to meet patients’ end-of-life care needs in an acute care setting.
“We are pleased to work with Community Hospice as our hospice provider, whose commitment to delivering excellent care complements our own values,” said St. Vincent’s HealthCare President and CEO Moody Chisholm.
Community Hospice will recruit and train an interdisciplinary team of about 13 staff to provide round-the-clock patient care at the hospice inpatient unit, including medical staff, nurses, certified nursing assistants, psychosocial specialists and chaplains.
Development spurs growth along Hendricks corridor
By Susanna P. Barton
Resident Community News
The retail cup runneth over along the north end of Hendricks Avenue, where a new brewery announced potential plans for a San Marco location. Aardwolf Brewing’s site of interest, the old tile store by the railroad tracks on the northeast side of Hendricks Avenue, is just across the street from a burgeoning retail area set to include Panera Bread and other restaurants.
The renewed developer interest in this stretch of Hendricks has local leaders raising a glass.
“It could really activate that part of Hendricks,” said District 5 City Councilwoman Lori Boyer.
She said the building, owned by local resident Zim Boulos and other partners, requires site plan changes to accommodate the pub and retail portion of the brewery. Currently, the property is zoned Industrial Light or IL. Site developers have not yet applied for the necessary planned unit development (PUD) zoning change, she said.
Aardwolf Brewing is being planned by Preben Olsen and associate Michael Payne, former brewer at Brewer’s Pizza in Orange Park. The brewery would be a tenant in the building “assuming all development issues can be favorably resolved,” indicated Erik Olsen, principal engineer with Riverside-based Olsen Associates Inc. Erik Olsen is assisting Preben, his son, through the development process.
If the site receives a PUD designation, the second step in the due diligence phase of the brewery and tap-room development would be to design and price the construction of a tap room and brewery. The third step, Olsen explained, would be to negotiate a lease. All three components would need to “fall into place before the venture is an absolute certainty.”
As part of those plans, the building’s 2,000-square-foot showroom on Hendricks would be available for lease by another entity. San Marco Station LLC, the building ownership group, is leasing the building.
Word of a pub’s interest in the area bolsters retail activity across the street at Ed Ash’s similarly named retail development, The San Marco Train Station. Plans call for a 14,000-square-foot center, and the re-emergence of Panera Bread in a new building on the 100-year-old site. The San Marco Train Station will include the main building, an outparcel and a 1,200-square-foot hexagonal building and space for 80 parking places. Developers continue to look for additional tenants to occupy space at the center. The project’s PUD still needs to get approval from the Jacksonville City Council. San Marco Preservation Society President Doug Skiles said SMPS worked with Ash to come to an agreement about the driveways, parking configuration, location of the new buildings and enhancements to the South Jacksonville Utility Building.
