Downtown Development Review Board meeting Thursday<\/a> for a Hard Rock hotel and condo building.<\/p>\nFor a man who spent a lot of time here in the past, he’s looking forward to the opportunity to spend some more time here again.<\/p>\n
“I come out here now and then to fish,” said John Maple while fishing near the property Saturday. “I worked on the building that collapsed here years ago.”<\/p>\n
Maple put a lot of work in toward building up the Berkman II, but never got to see it completed.<\/p>\n
Instead, the property is little more than a fishing spot for him along the river.<\/p>\n
“They should’ve put something on it right away,” Maple said. “The property has been empty for so long.”<\/p>\n
Every time he looks at it, he has the same vision for what he thinks should go there.<\/p>\n
“District with a Ferris Wheel, a movie theatre and some putt-putt,” Maple said.<\/p>\n
That’s not quite what’s on the table, but a developer is hoping to add a 30-story Hard Rock Hotel.<\/p>\n
The building would be split with hotel rooms for the bottom half and condos for the top half.<\/p>\n
Between those halves on the 18th floor is the key feature – a vinyl record shaped club sticking out of the side of the tower with a bar in the middle and restaurant on the same floor.<\/p>\n
“We got a lot of people who want to live in Jacksonville,” said Maple. “It’s a good city, a growing city, but we need to develop along with the people that’s coming.”<\/p>\n
It would also feature tennis courts, pickleball, a spa, gym, a couple pools and of course, a Hard Rock Shop.<\/p>\n
The proposal does not include any plans for a casino, however.<\/p>\n
“The field has been empty for too long, something needs to be done with it,” Maple said.<\/p>\n
Maple figures he’ll have to catch plenty of fishing before the tower goes in.<\/p>\n
“When they put the Hard Rock there, fishing over with,” Maple said. “I’ll be right there in the Hard Rock too, spending money.”<\/p>\n
A city spokesperson said they’ve had some preliminary conversations with the developer, but there’s nothing concrete on the city investment front.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The plans call for a split of hotel and condo space with a vinyl-shaped bar and club on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-418259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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