As bad as the blown-out windows are on the front side of the five-story building facing Arlington Expressway, the back of it looks even worse.
Two huge openings in the back wall running from the roof to the ground leave the interior exposed like lids peeled back from sardine cans, displaying corroded beams inside a building that's been vacant 11 years since the FBI moved its Jacksonville office from Arlington to the Southside.
Turning that office building into apartments won't be easy, but that's the owner's plan for an investment that would total about $14.5 million. It's the kind of transformation Arlington Expressway will need if it's going to reverse a years-long slide that resulted in acres of vacant buildings scarring the landscape of a corridor that used to be to Jacksonville what Butler Boulevard is to the city now.
"When you look for the rebirth, it doesn't happen overnight," said City Council member Joyce Morgan. "It's one step at a time. I believe we're going to see it. I remain hopeful."
Morgan, who represents Arlington, said it's often easier for developers to get financing by building new construction on open land, so they simply bypass older built-out urban areas such as along the expressway.
"Some of the plans that we have had are starting to slowly come to fruition," she said. "There are so many possibilities, and the biggest thing is getting people to take another look."
For the planned apartments at 7820 Arlington Expressway, the city will help by providing an incentive of up to $820,000 for the redevelopment, a rare instance of Jacksonville deploying incentives for residential development outside downtown.
It's not the only development in the works along the expressway.
Read the full story at Jacksonville.com.