This meeting of the Special Committee on the Future of Downtown Jacksonville convened at 9:31 AM on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, to receive updates on downtown development projects, review the committee's work over the past year, and discuss legislative priorities. Key participants included DIA CEO Colin Tarbert, Council Research Colleen Hamsey, OGC attorney Carla Shell, Council Auditor Billy Peterson, Councilmembers Ron Salem, Joe Carlucci, and Matt Carlucci, and downtown advocate Miss Edgecombe. The committee reviewed progress on several catalytic projects, a downtown governance framework, and deferred a decision on raising direct-contract limits.
All right, good morning, everybody. It is 9 31 on Tuesday, June 23rd. We're gonna go ahead and get started here. Thank you everyone for coming. Let's start with introductions on the left. Colleen Hamsey, Council Research. Carla Shell, Office of General Counsel. Billy Peterson, Council Otter. Ron Salem, group two at large. Joe Carlucci, District 5. Matt Carluccia at large group four. What's that sound? Can we fix the river, please? All right. All right, thanks for being with me. We just had some technical issues up here. We can kind of hear a crackling up here, so that's what we're just addressing. All right. So we will go ahead and get started with a general update from Mr. Colin Tarbert. Come on down. Good morning, everyone. My name is Colin Tarbert. I'm the CEO of the Downtown Investment Authority, and great to be back with you all. We do have a number of DIA staff members as well as our board member here in case you have any questions for us. But in terms of the special committee, we're just gonna this is the general update. The chair had asked just for project update in terms of a number of the things that we've presented before you already. And then we do have one preview as we've been doing at the special committee for uh our board meeting, which is tomorrow. So in terms of project updates, I'll just kind of run down the high-level uh important projects here. We have Gateway N7, which is the mixed-use project 270 units uh anchored with a public grocery store. You see the the rendering there. Uh we did file that legislation, I believe, last week, so that will be making its way uh to the council in in the near future. Uh the second project we have is the Riverfront uh restaurant, which we presented to this uh committee a number of times, and so we are now uh working on our term sheet, which has been drafted, and we've received comments from Atlas Restaurant Group, and so I'm pretty optimistic that we'll be able to uh finalize the lease and bring that to uh the council in the next couple months. Uh Hotel Merydale, which is another project that we previewed uh with this committee, is also known as the ambassador project. That is being drafted. Um, and so we're I'd say probably maybe a month or so away from filing that legislation as well. Um, the Culinary Institute of America, which I know you're all very familiar with. Uh we've we are uh 60 days into our 90-day due diligence period. So the DIA board in April approved uh moving forward with a proposal with corner lot and aspect to um secure Culinary Institute of America on Bay Street, and so we've been meeting uh essentially bi-weekly with the development team and working to create a draft or create a term sheet that will be presented to the DIA board, hopefully within that 90-day period, although we've given ourselves uh up to 180 days to complete that. Uh Snyder Memorial Church disposition. Um we've got a couple sort of real estate issues to deal with. Um, one is just finalizing an easement with the adjacent property, but we've been working with that property owner, and the easement is drafted, and um hopefully that will be finalized, and the intent is to put out a formal disposition for uh Snyder, probably towards the um end of the summer August, September time frame. We've been doing a lot of um outreach and tours of the uh property and engaging with potential uh developers for that. Uh so we want to continue that process, and then when we put it out, we have a course decona silence, so we're unable to do that. So we're just kind of building um interest in the property right now. Design guidelines. Uh, we have an RFQ which closes um tomorrow or on Thursday, and that will be um hiring a consultant to review our current design guidelines um and hopefully make them a little bit more streamlined and um uh usable for for developers. And then we're also working on what we call the digital twin. This is essentially a digital model um that we'll be able to use for planning purposes so we're working with IT um so a lot of this will be done in-house um but in terms of creating the actual buildings that you'll see in the digital model um that will be um a third party so we'll have an RFP on the street um soon for that and then last but not least um and you'll see this in the presentation uh that's coming up is the downtown sort of storytelling and investment narrative um so tomorrow I'll present at the DIA board um some funding to put towards that effort which is really just kind of capturing everything that we want to say in a unified voice and we're doing that in partnership with DVI uh okay thank you uh just is that the only slide or is there another one I have one more on RTA so I'm happy to take questions. Okay I just have two two questions um the Culinary Institute of America did their board give any indication on wasn't there a vote or something that was happening with their board so what I understand is that the CIA did meet this was a discussion item but they haven't uh formally made any announcement I think they are working to kind of coordinate uh with the local parties here to make a a more formal announcement okay I thought that was supposed to happen at their board meeting in June is that they did meet they met last week um I do think there was a this this item was discussed but they were kind of they didn't want to make a formal announcement at that time I think they want to wait and do it in partnership with um with the folks here.