Vestcor is moving to knock down the former Apex Business Forms building at 200 N. Lee St. in LaVilla, a step tied to the land-swap deal that helped assemble parcels for the University of Florida’s planned downtown graduate campus. City and permitting records show a demolition application is under review for the roughly 30,000-square-foot structure, which sits a few blocks north of the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center.
According to Jacksonville Daily Record, the city is reviewing a building-permit application that lists Realco Recycling Co. Inc. as the contractor to demolish the 29,965-square-foot former Apex facility. Ryan Hoover, president of TVC Development Inc. and Vestcor, told the paper in a Feb. 27 email, "We are tearing it down which was part of our agreement with the city for the land swap. We don’t have any plans for it at this time."
Part of the UF campus plan
The demolition ties into a broader push to gather sites for the University of Florida’s graduate campus in LaVilla. The City of Jacksonville has said it negotiated to provide roughly two dozen buildable acres for the project, and earlier council votes advanced land-swap arrangements that cleared the way for parcels downtown, according to reporting by News4JAX.
How the swap worked
Vestcor obtained the Lee Street parcel in a swap that gave the city a 2.04-acre lot on West Bay Street as part of the developer’s effort to assemble land near the convention center for UF. The building at 200 N. Lee St. is owned by VC Cathedral LLC and was constructed in 1998, according to county records cited by Jacksonville Daily Record.
The site and next steps
The former Apex building covers about 29,965 square feet and sits west of Lee Street between Monroe and Adams, roughly four blocks north of the convention center, according to a commercial listing on LoopNet. Realco Recycling lists demolition and C&D removal among its services on its website, underscoring the local contractor’s capacity to handle the teardown.
Vestcor says it currently has no redevelopment plans for the Lee Street site, leaving timing and next steps tied to the city’s permitting process and the overall UF campus schedule. The city has said it expects initial programming to begin in 2025 with a main launch in 2026, according to the City of Jacksonville.
