The Half-Mile Of Riverside Avenue That Reorganized Itself This Year
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Walk west out of downtown Jacksonville along Riverside Avenue and something has shifted since last summer. The stretch between Forest Street and the mouth of McCoys Creek used to feel like a pass-through: FIS on one side, Morgan & Morgan on the other, a Fresh Market anchoring a plaza that closed early, and a lot of surface parking in between. As of August 2026, that same half-mile has an all-day coffee shop with a rooftop bar, a restored creek channel emptying into the St. Johns, a 271-unit apartment tower with a Whole Foods at its base, and a Japanese omakase restaurant working its way through city plan review.
The pieces individually have been covered. What is worth naming out loud is the shape they now form together. Brooklyn's operational center has moved off the Park Street–Jackson Street axis where Unity Plaza and Brooklyn Station carried the neighborhood for a decade, and onto a shorter, more pedestrian spine running along Riverside Avenue itself.
The HUB Brooklyn at 400 Riverside Ave. is the piece most residents have physically walked into by now. Mark Janasik of Restaurant & Hospitality Investment Group opened the three-level project on Jan. 31, 2026, after several years of moving timelines. What is in it matters less than how it is laid out. As much as 95% of seating at The Hub is outdoors, spread across courtyards, loggias, and a rooftop terrace built to draw pedestrians off the sidewalk rather than pull cars into a lot.
The tenants stack by daypart. Southern Grounds & Co. opens at 6:30 a.m. as a coffee shop and converts to a dessert and wine bar at 4 p.m., staying open until Alder & Oak and Zorba's Bar close at 11 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and midnight Thursday through Saturday. Alder & Oak is the sit-down anchor, a wood-fired concept with a menu that reads Aegean and coastal. Zorba's Bar is the rooftop with skyline views and small plates. For a neighborhood that has spent years short on late-evening options that were not a full commitment to a restaurant, the "one address, three modes" pattern is the actual product.
The reason The HUB reads as connected rather than isolated has less to do with the building than with what happened to the creek fifty feet away. McCoys Creek was straightened and hardened in the 1920s. It has been flooding neighboring streets ever since. The city and Groundwork Jacksonville have been rebuilding it in phases, and in Fall 2025 the project reached a key milestone at the outfall when the entire creek was finally connected and flowed through the newly built channel at the St. Johns. In February 2026, restoration began at the headwaters, with environmental remediation at Hollybrook Park included in the scope.
The Stockton Street Bridge, which had been shut for reconstruction, was scheduled to reopen in Spring 2026 as an elevated span with a bike lane and sidewalks. And the trail piece that ties this all to Riverside is the Emerald Trail's Riverside Link, a 2.3-mile segment that will start at Memorial Park, connect to McCoys Creek, and cross the St. Johns River into Jacksonville's historic San Marco neighborhood. It is not open yet, but the design is being drawn against the assumption that the corridor already works on foot. That is the actual thesis of the reorganization: Brooklyn is being planned as a walkable spine, not a driveable one, and the businesses opening this year are laid out to match.
At the west end of this half-mile, the former Florida Times-Union campus has become One Riverside. The 271-unit apartment building had its grand opening on September 25, 2025, and it sits alongside a Whole Foods that anchors the ground-floor retail. That combination alone rewrites how a Riverside resident thinks about a weekly grocery run, since the closest full-format grocery had been the Fresh Market at Brooklyn Station or a drive across the Fuller Warren.
The next piece is Norikawa. Pearl Hospitality Group, which operates Norikase near St. Johns Town Center and Beachside Seafood in Jacksonville Beach, signed the lease in August 2025. The city restored McCoys Creek adjacent to One Riverside to connect it to the Emerald Trail of pedestrian and bicycle paths in and around Downtown, and Norikawa is designed to sit at that seam. The restaurant will occupy roughly 4,149 square feet of interior space with a 2,500-square-foot patio along the Riverwalk, and it will lead with an omakase program under chef Francis Varias. As of the Jax Daily Record's June 1, 2026 update, the city was still reviewing the build-out permit, with Justin Raulerson of Pearl Hospitality saying the opening will begin dinner-only, likely adding lunch later.
For orientation, here is the half-mile as a resident would walk it on a Saturday, along with what each stop actually does now:
Cross Forest Street and you are still on Riverside Avenue, but the density thins out and the older Brooklyn residential fabric takes over. The compressed half-mile above is the part that reorganized this year.
Nothing about this shift replaces what Brooklyn and Historic Riverside already had. Arepa Please and Burlock and Barrel Distillery still sit alongside The HUB. Blue Orchid Thai reopened in Historic Riverside next to Memorial Park with a garden, koi pond, and pergola seating that reads more like a destination than a strip-mall Thai spot. It's In The DNA Coffee came online in Riverside in early November 2025. The Greenhouse Bar, Bartaco, and Dorothy's Downtown have all held. What changed is that the corridor between them finally has the connective tissue that residents were driving past to get to something else.
"The Brooklyn neighborhood sits at the current epicenter of Downtown's urban revitalization. With strong walkability and a growing residential and professional base, it perfectly suits a lifestyle-driven hospitality concept," Janasik told Folio Weekly ahead of The HUB's opening.
That is the operators' read. The residents' read is simpler: the same walk that felt like an errand last summer is now a weekend routine.
Coffee at Southern Grounds at 7 a.m. Groceries at Whole Foods on the way home. A drink upstairs at Zorba's before dinner reservations at Alder & Oak. A walk down the Riverwalk to look at the restored creek channel where it meets the river. When Norikawa opens, that walk ends at a patio bar instead of a locked gate. When the Riverside Link of the Emerald Trail lands, it starts at Memorial Park and continues across the river without needing a car.
None of these are hypothetical anymore. Four of the five stops are open as of August 2026. That is the actual news of the year for anyone who already lives inside this half-mile.
Corridors that shift from drive-through to walk-through do not stay quiet. The blocks immediately adjacent to a new pedestrian spine tend to see rental demand and owner-occupant interest reprice against the new amenity map, and the timing question for a homeowner is usually whether to act before or after the trail piece opens. The homes in Historic Riverside north of Park Street and the newer construction inside Brooklyn itself are the two inventory pools most directly affected by what happened on Riverside Avenue this year.
If you live near this stretch and are wondering what the reorganization means for your specific block, or if you are thinking about buying into it while the last trail segments are still under design, we would rather talk through your address than generalize. Reach out to Market Makers Group for a Riverside- and Brooklyn-specific read on your options, or start with a free home valuation.
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