By Will Brown | Published on March 6, 2025 at 6:01 pm

After years of work, the 112-year-old Union Terminal Warehouse on the Eastside has been reborn as a mixed-use facility offering business space, mixed-income housing and — more broadly — hope for other historic buildings in Jacksonville.

The project was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting Thursday where its Atlanta-based developers said the success was possible only because of communication with partners and connection with community leaders

Seven years after Columbia Ventures acquired the building, the Union Terminal Warehouse has been redeveloped as a place where Vantage Point Coffee Co. and other local businesses can operate as well as 228 residential units. The project welcomed is first tenants March 1.

“These deals don’t get financed without great partners,” said Columbia Ventures Development Manager Ryan Akin. He credited the Downtown Preservation and Revitalization Program through the Downtown Investment Authority, the city of Jacksonville and a supportive lender.

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Source: Jax Today

David Bauerlein | Jacksonville Florida Times-Union

The big red water tank standing on top of the Union Terminal Warehouse that thousands of motorists drive past on their way into downtown is among the features an Atlanta-based developer kept intact while turning the century-old warehouse into an apartment building.

In the building’s heyday as a warehouse, the tank held 50,000 gallons of water connected to a sprinkler system that run throughout the building where dozens of metal-plated doors also were ready to swing shut to keep any fire from spreading.

Built in 1913, the warehouse opened when memories were still fresh of the Great Fire of 1901 that destroyed much of Jacksonville.

“All of that was a signal to prospective tenants and users of the building — the city burned down but your stuff ain’t going to burn down here,” said Ryan Akin, development manager and partner at Atlanta-based Columbia Ventures.

These days, the message behind the water tank and other historic features preserved in the building is its connection to the Eastside neighborhood.

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Source: Jacksonville Florida Times Union

By Emma Behrmann – Reporter, Jacksonville Business Journal
Jan 27, 2025

Amid a burgeoning grocery business following the Great Fire of 1901, C.B. Gay
built Union Terminal Warehouse, which sat along railroad tracks that led to the

Union Terminal Warehouse at 700 E. Union St.
RYAN AKIN

largest rail yard in the state at the time — Union Station — and served as a dry
goods distribution center with barge service from Hogans Creek.
More than a century later, Columbia Ventures, an Atlanta-based developer with
a track record in historic, adaptive reuse, purchased the building in 2018. Then,
it was a 97% occupied, industrial building mostly home to storage, but it also
hosted a range of tenants like a signage company and a guitar maker.

Now, seven years and $73 million later, the 330,000-square-foot warehouse is
home to 228 apartment units, 43 small offices of about 100-500 square feet,
restaurant space, a basement with 11 flex spaces and Vantage Point Coffee
which will build-out the existing shell space soon. The first resident will mo
in on Feb. 1, and a ribbon cutting ceremony will be held March 6.

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Source: Jacksonville Business Journal