JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Three months after a $60 million Downtown Jacksonville apartment building went up in flames, the building's owner is expected to rebuild in August.
The RISE Doro building, located at 960 E. Adams St., was the site of a 3-alarm fire, beginning on the night of Jan. 28, which took several days and more than 100 firefighters to put out. Demolition of the building began on Feb. 2 after the City of Jacksonville issued an emergency demolition permit to destroy its wood frame; the concrete parking garage was able to be salvaged.
Although the cause of the fire has yet to be determined by the State Fire Marshal's Office, the developers, 'RISE,' say they hope that rebuilding can be done in an 18-month timeframe, which would mean the building could be open in February 2026.
Rise CEO Ryan Holmes was not available for an interview, but officials with the company confirmed information Holmes told to newspaper journalists, including that the parking deck and retail space in the concrete podium is sound.
A structural engineer unrelated to the project says multiple evaluations would have been completed to test the concrete for stability before the decision to rebuild was made.
“The evaluation of the concrete is going to take some significant inspection, it will take some additional laboratory testing and some fairly sophisticated testing a little bit more than you would normally do for typical concrete structure," Ron Woods, a structural engineer, said.