Culver's is exploring a restaurant site at Bartram Corner in southern Duval County, where JEA issued a service-availability determination letter on Oct. 16 for a proposed location at the northeast corner of Bartram Park Boulevard and Race Track Road. The utility sent that letter to Newkirk Engineering Inc. of Orlando Beach, the same firm tied to another Culver's project the chain has been eyeing elsewhere in Jacksonville.
A Second Restaurant for a Growing Corner
According to the Jacksonville Daily Record, the proposed Culver's would rise on a 5.16-acre site, per the real estate number on file, and it appears to be the second restaurant planned for the broader Bartram Corner property. Bartram Corner LLC, a Ponte Vedra Beach-based landowner associated with Palmetto Properties, owns the tract. A Palmetto Properties flyer shows the site carved into multiple parcels, with Chick-fil-A slated for Parcel 1, a 2.38-acre piece, and Valvoline marked for Parcel 3, a 2-acre parcel. Parcel 2, where the Culver's interest is centered, covers 2.6 acres and has been marketed for a 1.49-acre ground lease.
The Chick-fil-A piece of the puzzle is already further along. That chain was permitted in April 2026 to build on 2.38 acres at 15455 Bartram Park Blvd., according to the Jacksonville Daily Record's earlier reporting on the Chick-fil-A Bartram proposal, which described a 5,094-square-foot restaurant with 106 seats on a vacant property that straddles the Duval-St. Johns county line. That site plan also calls for a dual drive-thru designed for 24 cars and able to handle 40 at peak times — the kind of stacked-car demand that has become routine at busy Northeast Florida drive-thrus. The report notes those 2.38 acres sit within a larger 6.98-acre master site owned by Bartram Corner LLC.
An Early Signal
A JEA service-availability review signals that a site is being explored for development, not that a final decision has been made, the Jacksonville Daily Record reports.
That pattern of early-stage utility paperwork preceding any public commitment has shown up elsewhere in the city this fall. The chain has also been shown on a JEA service-availability request for a site along Lem Turner Road in Northwest Jacksonville. On Lem Turner Road, JEA issued a letter in September for a proposed 4,300-square-foot restaurant on a 1.29-acre site a quarter-mile north of Interstate 295, with a layout showing indoor seating, patio seating and a drive-thru, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record's coverage of the Lem Turner Road site plans. That land is owned by John Grant-Dooley, Jean Grant-Dooley and Robert Gittings, and the franchisee is not identified there either.
A Chain Still Adding Restaurants Across the Region
With the proposed Bartram Corner restaurant, Culver's would have 13 locations in Northeast Florida either open or under review. Middleburg was the region's first Culver's location, and the chain has expanded steadily since.
Earlier expansion in the region included a restaurant that began construction at 101 Monument Road, the former Miami Subs site across from Regency Square Mall, alongside another build roughly eight miles away at 7818 Gate Parkway near IKEA, as Jacksonville.com reported in 2021.
The Wisconsin-based chain, known for ButterBurgers and frozen custard, is expanding well beyond Jacksonville too. Culver Franchising System plans to add 59 new franchisee-owned locations nationwide in 2026, including 14 in Florida, according to BizTimes. That would push the company's Florida footprint from 126 locations at the end of 2025 to 140 by the close of this year, building on gains of seven Florida locations in 2025, 17 in 2024 and 11 in 2023. Nationally, Culver's finished 2025 with 1,041 restaurants across 26 states, reporting $337.7 million in total operating revenues — up 13.1% from the prior year — and net income of $125.6 million, a 20.6% increase from 2024.
