Wow, it’s been almost two months since our last facelift project and on the heels of the great emerging design professionals’ urban facelift competition (check out the Times Union article on the competition), we decided we better put one together.  When choosing structures for that competition we focused on buildings in the sw blocks of downtown Jacksonville, in this case mainly the area surrounded   and Clay to the west and east, and Ashley and Forsyth to the north and south.  We photographed about 8 buildings that day and with the help of emerging design professionals president Jeremiah Russell we narrowed down the field to 4 for the entrants to use as their canvas.

The building below is one that was not used for the competition, but felt that it certainly had the potential for one of our Urban Facelift Projects.  As most buildings we choose, it has great bones to it.  For instance we love the steel beam and the rhythm and proportion of the openings.  The location is also nice, being across the street from the new courthouse which is currently under construction. Click here for a map of 324 broad street.

We thought this would be a great pizza place for downtown workers during lunch and then hopefully a great night spot for nearby residents.  On a previous posts, you can tell that we enjoy trips up to Atlanta during the year and one of our favorite spots up there is Fritti.  It is a great gourmet pizza restaurant, serving thin real Italian style pizzas and some of the best calamari I’ve ever had.  We’ve always wished that Fritti would open up a storefront here in Jacksonville, and Firenze’s is our thought on what that could look like:

existing building:

facelift:

slideshow: