More than a quarter of downtown Jacksonville’s office space sits vacant

Robert Grant
·2 min read

Tens of thousands clock into their jobs in downtown Jacksonville, like Daniel Lopez.

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“The energy being around so many great businesses and organizations. There’s a special energy here,” he said. He started his job downtown in August.

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However, he said it appears the entire city clocks out at the end of the day, and there isn’t enough to keep workers around.

“Once the work day is over and 5PM hits, it feels like things clear out and things die down a little.”

Downtown Vision, Inc. said there’s more than 53,000 employees working downtown. But the organization’s new State of Downtown report showed more than 26% of downtown Jacksonville’s office space is vacant.

Read: ‘I think we finally did it:’ $2 billion project set to revamp 20 blocks of Downtown Jacksonville

There’s nearly 8 million total square feet of office space, which is about the same as Orlando. However, in Orlando, about 12% of the office space is vacant downtown. And in Tampa, office vacancy is at about 16%.

“I hope people realize that Jacksonville’s downtown is doing a lot better -- we still could do a lot more. If you look at Orlando, Miami, Tampa — those downtowns that we comped. There’s a lot of difference,” Jake Gordon, Downtown Vision’s president, said. “On some levels we’re doing better than we ever have, but in another level we still have a lot of work to do. Downtown is by no means a finished product.”

Gordon explained after the pandemic, many companies moved to hybrid schedules and more people are working from home. Last week, Action News Jax reported the Downtown Investment Authority is taking the opportunity to convert those empty spaces in residential spots.

There’s about 7,600 people living downtown with a goal of 10,000.

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