Mayo Clinic in Florida requests rezoning to expand Jacksonville campus by 210 acres (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Daily Record) — Mayo Clinic in Florida is closer to incorporating its 210-acre North Campus property, boosting its 38-year-old San Pablo Road medical center to 579.21 acres.
The Prosser Prime AE civil engineering group applied to the city in February to rezone the property as part of the Mayo Clinic Development of Regional Impact.
Mayo Clinic wants to consolidate all previous Planned Unit Development ordinances on the combined campus property.
The 210 acres were not part of a DRI and were approved for multiuse residential.
In February 2023, City Council approved adding the land to the DRI, leading Mayo to then amend the land use and rezone the property. The rezoning is now in review.
Mayo Clinic opened Oct. 6, 1986, in Jacksonville. The Main Campus is at 4500 San Pablo Road S., north of Butler Boulevard.
At the Phase VI build-out by November 2045, the campus would comprise 7.5 million square feet of outpatient, research and clinical lab, education, hospital, housing and support facilities and hotel rooms.
A written description dated Feb. 5, 2024, filed with the rezoning application says Mayo Clinic Jacksonville has been master-planned for incremental development providing patient care, education, research and related medical services since 1985.
The description says the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville PUD contains about 392 acres on the west side of San Pablo Road between Butler Boulevard and W.M. Davis Parkway.
The rezoning “seeks to expand the Mayo campus to include approximately 210 acres north of W.M. Davis Parkway.”
The additional land is northwest of the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville Development of Regional Impact.
That expands its 392-acre medical center property to 602 acres.
However, the numbers are more specific now.
Spokesperson Kevin Punsky said the numbers – 210 acres and 392 acres – are “relative.”
The 579.21 acres comprise the surveyed area. Also the 210 acres include a section of jurisdictional wetland that was subtracted from the PUD because it is out of scope for construction.
In any event, it is a development plan that adds decades to Mayo Clinic in Florida’s ability to expand.
The Davis family, founders of the Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. supermarket chain, conveyed about 400 acres for the original campus that Mayo opened in 1986.
Duval County property records show that an entity of the Davis family conveyed the additional 210 acres to Mayo Clinic Jacksonville on Oct. 25, 2022.
The Jacksonville clinic was Mayo’s first facility opened outside of its home base in Rochester, Minnesota. It opened an Arizona campus in 1987.
The story is that Davis family patriarch J.E. Davis, considered one of Jacksonville’s most powerful business leaders, was so pleased by the care he received at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota that he led the recruitment drive to bring Mayo to Jacksonville.
That has led to a larger campus.
“Mayo Clinic in Florida plans to strategically grow across our 602 acres over several decades, spurring significant economic development and creating thousands of new jobs in the medical sector,” Punsky said in a previous statement.
Punsky, Mayo Clinic in Florida communications manager, said the plan “will deliver best-in-class facilities, immersive and experimental learning environments, and innovation technology hubs that drive strategic collaborations dedicated to advancing scientific discoveries.”
The property land uses for the additional acreage are designated as medical, related residential and hotel.
The rezoning does not add development entitlements. Rather, the existing approved uses will be allocated to the North Campus.
A map shows Related Medical and Related Medical/Hotel as the only uses.
Mayo Clinic Jacksonville submitted an application Nov. 28, 2022, to the city for changes to the DRI for the expansion.
City Council enacted Ordinance 2023-13 on Feb. 28, 2023, to approve the changes.
The legislation amended the Mayo DRI, which was approved in 1988 and modified and amended.
The build-out was extended to 2045 with a total 7.5 million square feet of primarily medical-related facilities, along with hotel rooms.
Punsky explained that the DRI amendment would be extended two years through 2045, but the additional property gives the medical center enough property to grow for 100 years.
DRIs in Florida were reviewed by the state to identify the regional and state impacts of large-scale developments.
In 2018, the state eliminated the review process for existing DRIs, leaving that to local governments.
The application says standalone commercial, office or residential uses will be permitted within the North Campus through converted related medical and support facilities or hotel facilities.
Punsky said the 210 acres were not part of a DRI and were approved for multiuse residential. Once the land is added to the DRI, Mayo would need to amend the land use and rezone the property.
W.M. Davis Parkway is named for W.M. Davis, the father of J.E. Davis and considered the founding father of Winn-Dixie.
Mayo Clinic in Florida says that since it opened in Jacksonville, it has grown from a single five-story building to three main patient care buildings, a hospital, two research buildings and a collection of free-standing clinical care facilities, administrative buildings and support centers.
Mayo Clinic in Florida says it provides diagnosis, medical treatment, surgery and care for more than 168,000 patients annually in 40 specialty areas.
It says that since 2016, it has invested more than $1 billion in major construction projects, more than doubling its space by 2026 with new facilities for patient care, biomedical research, education and technology.
Mayo Clinic will add more than 600,000 square feet of space for medical destinations, patient care, biomedical research and technology by 2025.