More than three years after a section of the Chartrand parking garage caved in at Ascension St. Vincent's Riverside, hospital officials say restoration work is finally set to begin next month. The garage at 1860 King St. partially collapsed on September 12, 2023, when the third level fell onto the second, and it has remained closed and roped off ever since.
According to the Jacksonville Daily Record, Ascension Health Resource and Supply Management Group LLC, the St. Louis-based project owner, plans to start restoration in October 2026. The city of Jacksonville is currently reviewing a permit to demolish and restore the collapsed section, and the project is expected to run about $5 million, per the same account. Doral-based Florida Lemark Corp. will serve as contractor, with Kimley-Horn and Associates, based in Chamblee, Georgia, working as civil engineer.
The work will involve demolishing and replacing select precast structural members within the existing deck, along with restoring affected building systems and finishes, the newspaper's report states. The garage, built in 2006, has three stories and offered no self-parking option for patients even before the collapse, according to the Daily Record's account.
The Night the Deck Gave Way
When the collapse happened in September 2023, 111 vehicles were parked inside the garage, according to News4JAX. Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department technical rescue teams deployed K-9 search dogs to sweep the rubble and confirm no one was trapped beneath the collapsed ramp, and no injuries were reported. Ascension St. Vincent's Riverside said in a statement, per First Coast News, that the third level of the Chartrand building's parking garage fell onto the second level.
Many cars inside were damaged, and a full week after the collapse, tow trucks were still working to extract vehicles stranded on intact upper levels whose access ramps had been destroyed. The collapse also forced the evacuation and temporary closure of the adjacent Chartrand Building at 1824 King St., which houses doctors' offices and cardiac facilities, and municipal inspectors condemned the adjoining building out of caution until its structural stability could be verified. Patient appointments at the cardiology and podiatry clinics inside were rescheduled across other regional clinics as a result. The hospital's emergency room, however, remained open throughout.
A Second Garage Fails, Too
The Chartrand garage's long closure was compounded in late 2024, when a structural crack was discovered in a third-floor barrier wall of the campus's Dillon Garage at 3 Shircliff Way, facing Riverside Avenue. The city of Jacksonville issued a $3.75 million permit that November to contractor Brasfield & Gorrie LLC for major repairs to the 1978 structure, as Hoodline previously reported on the garage fix. A structural engineer told News4JAX the Dillon project likely also involved bringing the aging garage up to current Florida Building Code standards.
With Chartrand still shuttered and Dillon now closed too, the hospital lost roughly half its four parking garages at once in early 2025. To keep patients moving, Ascension St. Vincent's expanded free valet parking at 1824 King St. and deployed golf carts to shuttle people from the DePaul Garage at 2 Shircliff Way and the Kings Street Garage at 1719 St. Johns Ave., according to WOKV. Surface lots were also set aside for patients of the cancer center and family medicine center, while emergency-care patients could enter through the Dillon building.
A Slow Road to Repair
As of December 2024, more than 14 months after the initial failure, the Chartrand garage remained roped off with no visible physical reconstruction underway, News4JAX reported at the time, as engineering reviews and permitting dragged on. That timeline reflects a broader pattern on the campus: the Gary and Nancy Chartrand Heart and Vascular Center Clinic Building and its garage had opened in 2007 after a $35 million community fundraising campaign led by philanthropists Gary and Nancy Chartrand, underscoring how central the facility is to the hospital's cardiovascular program.
The extended repair timeline for both garages also unfolds within Florida's post-Surfside regulatory climate. State lawmakers enacted Senate Bill 154 in June 2023 to require mandatory milestone structural inspections for aging multi-story buildings, though routine commercial parking garage inspections still fall primarily to private owners under local policy. Ascension St. Vincent's has said it is investing in the King Street campus with planned improvements to the Chartrand garage, and that restoration work is anticipated to begin in October, according to the hospital's statement cited by the Daily Record.
