August 4, 2020 (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) Pond, a full-service architectural, engineering, planning and construction management firm, is improving the transportation infrastructure of the LaVilla area in Jacksonville with an iconic new multi-modal transportation and administration center.
The Jacksonville Regional Transportation Center at LaVilla (JRTC) consists of two parts: an inter-city bus terminal building, served by regional and national bus chains, and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) administration headquarters, which also serves as a city bus transit hub and a Skyway transit station. The two buildings sit across the street from each other in the La Villa neighborhood and are joined by a pedestrian bridge. The historic Jacksonville train station, now Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center, is located across West Bay Street from the new buildings.
“This area of the city has always been a transportation hub,” said Steve Harrill, AIA, Pond’s Director of Architecture in Jacksonville, who completed the project as Pond’s Project Manager for the Pond/Michael Baker International joint-venture team. “The new JRTC is really bringing this section of the city back to its roots.”
The look of the building’s exterior is reminiscent of the city’s history. Jazz nightclubs populated this area of Jacksonville at the beginning of the last century and the JRTC’s glass front interprets that spirit of improvisation and free-form. “The idea was to take the historical context of the community and embody it into the design of the building so it will become a memorable, iconic building within the city,” Harrill explained.
The ornate exterior is matched in complexity on the building’s inside. The Pond/Michael Baker team collaborated with stakeholders to address the issues of building over a busy roadway and around the existing Skyway railway and station on the project site. The people-mover now literally moves through the second story of the JTA administration building. “We had a lot of challenges to solve,” Harrill said. “There were so many things, any one of which could have derailed a project, but we always found a solution that was usually better than the original plan.”
In spite of these challenges, the team worked together seamlessly to bring the large publicly-funded project to a close on time and within the JTA’s set budget. Pond, which ranks fifth on The Jacksonville Business Journal’s list of Top Architectural Firms and 78th in Engineering News-Record’s Top 500 Design Firms, provided architecture; mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering; fire protection; interior design; traffic analysis; project management; construction administration and JTA employee relocation assistance for the project.
The new JRTC is already bringing favorable capital interest to the La Villa neighborhood. “What I’m most proud about on the project is what it means for the future,” said Nina Sickler, PE, Vice President of Pond and Principal-in-Charge of the project team. “This project has spawned a lot of excellent things for the La Villa area and downtown Jacksonville,” she said. New multi-use developments are being built on nearby lots and retail space available within the JRTC itself is receiving a lot of attention. Additionally, the first section of the City of Jacksonville’s long-planned greenway, The Emerald Trail, will cross right in front of the JRTC.
The JRTC is also serving as an impetus for innovation. “Pond is working with the JTA to look at options to convert the Skyway to a system for self-driving vehicles,” Sickler said. “Looking at doing something like that downtown was, I think, spurred by this multi-modal hub that we developed here.”
“From a significance standpoint, the JRTC is a very high-profile project because it impacts the whole city,” Harrill agreed. “The creation of a facility like this is going to be a catalyst for continued redevelopment.”