Sheriff's office set to move to former Florida Blue site

Hundreds of investigators and employees at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office are preparing for a big move this fall.

Homeland Security and countless other police departments will move from the 47-year-old Police Memorial Building on East Bay Street to four floors of the former Florida Blue Riverside office complex on Riverside Avenue.

The move will cost about $7 million and includes security modifications to the Florida Blue building, which Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida still owns. The new offices should be ready for occupancy by the end of October.

The move constitutes Phase I of the eventual move of police headquarters from Jacksonville to the Brooklyn community, said Sheriff's Office Director Jennifer Short. The rest of the sheriff's office will eventually move to the former Florida Blue facility during Phase II, Short said.

“We have outgrown this building, to say the least,” Short said. “We tried to renovate, find little nooks and crannies here to accommodate more staff, but we just outgrew it, and so did Homeland Security. … We have new gun labs and more staff.

The move to a larger, permanent police headquarters comes as the city studies construction of a new jail to replace the current overcrowded downtown facility, a project that could cost $1 billion, officials said. responsible. Mayor Donna Deegan said she sees the sheriff's office's move to Riverside Avenue as a necessity and understands the problems her staff faces with its 47-year-old headquarters.

“I think we've all seen this building, and we've all seen what the prison looks like, and we've all seen where it needs to be,” Deegan said. “I think it makes perfect sense that they would want to be somewhere else. Obviously the next thing we will consider is going to the new prison. We'll see how it goes next.

Florida Blue began moving its headquarters from Riverside to Deerwood Park North in 1997. The move was completed a few years ago after the campus was completely renovated. That left plenty of space in its two-building complex in Brooklyn, with a 10-story center and an adjacent 22-story tower.

The sheriff's office has about 3,500 employees, including nearly 2,000 police and corrections officers. The current facility opened in 1977 at 501 E. Bay St., replacing the former police headquarters at 711 Liberty St.

As the sheriff's office grew, each of its six police zones established substations in their communities. But the current facility has outgrown its staff, vehicles and more, Short said. So about three years ago, the department's Homeland Security division began looking for a new headquarters due to the expansion of its divisions, she said.

“They looked at a lot of properties throughout the city,” Short said. “A feasibility study was completed in 2022, and after several months of searching for a location, they decided on Florida Blue. During this process, it was determined that there was some space there that could accommodate the rest of JSO as well.

The Jacksonville City Council approved a 15-year lease nine months ago with two five-year extensions. The lease includes space in the parking lot and four floors, or about 60,000 square feet out of a total of 571,459 square feet, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record, a Jacksonville today press partner.

Renovations to the Florida Blue location will include dedicated parking, a separate lobby with security measures, and preparation work for labs and detective offices. The building still has other tenants, but police will have separate restricted access when sharing the same floors.