JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Downtown Jacksonville is beginning to hit its stride.
That’s the takeaway of the newly released State of Downtown Report.
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The report said 958 new residential units came online in 2025, and downtown’s population grew by nearly 1,400 residents.
That’s more than a 20 percent increase in people living downtown in just one year and a 97 percent increase since 2016.
“Downtown is growing rapidly,” Jake Gordon, CEO of Downtown Vision, which produces the State of Downtown Report, said.
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Gordon noted, with 9,200 people now calling downtown home, Jacksonville is on the cusp of hitting the long-awaited 10,000-resident mark.
“They say that’s the magic number because at some point the density of a certain area is so much living-wise, that retail follows rooftops. So, you get those things,” Gordon said.
And there are clear signs the demand to live downtown is alive and well, with 96 percent of residential units occupied.
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Gordan said that’s a strong signal to support the nearly 1,600 units currently under construction.
“So, we see this as a very healthy sign of not just how well we’re doing, but how well we could do in the future,” Gordon said.
Even before hitting that 10,000-resident threshold, there’s already more retail activity happening downtown.
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Sixteen new downtown retail locations opened in 2025, one downtown grocery store was built, and three more under are under construction or about to start construction.
“You maybe want to go to Fresh Grocer for this thing, and go to Whole Foods for this and go to Publix for a Pub Sub,” Gordon said. ”You want it all and that’s where you’re going to be closer to all three of those than you’ve ever been if you live in downtown in Pearl Square.”
The growth isn’t an accident, rather, the intended result of skyrocketing investments downtown.
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The report said $809 million worth of projects were completed in 2025, with $3 billion worth currently under construction.
And the growth isn’t slowing down, with $7 billion worth of downtown projects currently in the pipeline.
That’s more than all of the downtown projects completed between 2000 and 2024 combined.
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“And they are betting everything on Jacksonville, that downtown Jacksonville will look like downtown Tampa, will look like downtown DC,” Gordon said. ”And the reality is when they started like thinking about this five years ago, they are more right now than they were back then.”
One area where Jacksonville is still seeing some struggles downtown is office building vacancies.
It’s an issue Gordon argued every major city is facing, but he said he believes Jacksonville is well-positioned to make up for some of those lost office workers by increasing tourism and permanent downtown residents.
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