Ginny Myrick was president of her government relations firm when a priest at St. John’s Cathedral, where Myrick has been a member for 35 years, asked for help.
Dean Kate Moorehead came to Myrick to discuss how they could revitalize the Cathedral District, the Downtown Jacksonville neighborhood in which their historic church, along with four others, is located.
For five years, Myrick, Moorehead and several others, including an architect and city planner, met to discuss ways to turn the neighborhood around, according to WJCT News partner the Jacksonville Daily Record.
Those meetings culminated with a study by Urban Land Institute North Florida, which gave the group a road map for how to proceed.
One of the suggestions was to form a nonprofit, and hire someone to run it.
Myrick became that person in January 2018 and is entering her third year as president and CEO of Cathedral District-Jax Inc.
“I ultimately left my firm, closed it down and started working on this because the dean said to me ‘this is your calling,’” Myrick said. “When your priest says to you, ‘this is your calling,’ you really pay attention to it.”
Since she started in 2018, about $41 million has been invested into the 36-block district bounded by Main, Adams and State streets and the Commodore Point Expressway.
This story continues at JaxDailyRecord.com.
