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Q: About 11 months ago, fire swept through the $65 million Rise Doro apartments in Jacksonville’s Sports and Entertainment District, severely damaging the wood-framed seven-story building on A. Philip Randolph Boulevard.
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The charred apartment sections were demolished, but the concrete core — containing the central stair and elevator section, the parking garage and the rooftop pool — remained standing.
At the time, Rise Doro’s owners said they would rebuild. Jacksonville Today reader Kathy B. wonders when.
“What is going on with the Rise Doro apartments?”
“We are just shy of one year since the fire damaged the building,” Kathy writes. “There has never been a cause revealed, that I can find.”
Kathy points out that the developers stated that reconstruction would start in August, yet that has “come and gone and no movement on a rebuild.”
A: The fire struck the 247-unit complex on Jan. 28, just days before its first units were to be occupied. Some 110 firefighters battled the blaze, and it was finally extinguished days later.
City engineers deemed the building across from 121 Financial Ballpark structurally unsafe after what Fire Chief Keith Powers called one of the worst fires in the city in a decade.
Now Greg Blais, president of the Rise real estate company, says the start of reconstruction is “imminent.”
“We are finalizing the legal and financing processes now and will begin construction shortly after the New Year,” he says. “We are extremely excited to be at this point where we can breathe new life into Rise Doro through the initiation of the construction phase of the project.”
Blais thanks the city and state agencies for their assistance and says the company is “blessed to be in a position to rebuild Rise Doro” into what he said will be a tremendous community in that Downtown area.
City planners tell Jacksonville Today that the original permits for the RISE Doro (B-20-33102 for the garage, B-20-337106 for the apartments, and B-23-647478 for the swimming pool) are still active. The demolition of the damaged portions of the structure were completed under those permits, they say.
Since the building had not been completed when the fire happened, the original permits were never closed, Blais says.
As to the cause of the fire, city fire officials initially said they did not know whether work had been done at the building on the weekend of the fire. State and local investigators also were concerned about whether the structure would be safe enough just after the blaze to enter to find the cause.
Jacksonville Today has sent repeated email requests to the state Fire Marshal’s Office asking whether its investigation has been completed. A spokesperson this month said they “believe this investigation remains open and ongoing.” But the office provided no confirmation or a report.
Blais says an investigation was completed as thoroughly as possible and the case is “deemed closed.”