The state Department of Environmental Protection will be among the agencies that Jaguars owner Shad Khan's plans for a Four Seasons Hotel must go through because a grant the city won in 1985 for building a marina does not allow such development on the land eyed by Khan.
WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Unionreported Downtown Investment Authority CEO Lori Boyer said Monday the city will make the case to the state for a land swap that shifts the state grant's restrictions to vacant property in the Shipyards site that's closer to the core of downtown.
"I think that we are going to present them with a really exciting, interesting park design," she said.
The restriction imposed by the state grant has echoes of a federal grant that came with strings attached to it for building Metropolitan Park decades ago. That federal grant ultimately kept the original 14.3 acres of Met Park off limits to developmentdespite attempts by the city to get National Park Service agreement to a land swap.
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