A Stadium for the Armada

The best real estate deal in Jacksonville closed on December 20, 2024, for one dollar.

That's what the Jacksonville Armada's ownership paid the city for 34 vacant parcels — 6.56 acres scattered across Spratt, Van Buren, Albert, Grant, and Georgia streets and A. Philip Randolph Boulevard in the Sports and Entertainment District — the future home of a purpose-built downtown soccer stadium. The dollar, of course, is the point: the city's return isn't the land price, it's what gets built on land that sat empty as "Vacant Governmental" for years.

The project had been assembling itself in public view — a development team announced in September 2023 (Kasper architects + associates on design, Waitz & Moye on civil engineering), renderings released that November, the land deal expected "within ten days" in November 2024, then done by New Year's. By the end of January 2025, the city had issued the building permit.

A soccer-specific stadium walking distance from the Jaguars' stadium district is a bet that Jacksonville's sports appetite is bigger than one team — and that empty blocks near the urban core are worth more with turnstiles on them. We'll be watching for steel this fall.

Source: Jacksonville Daily Record, 2023–2025.