Drive south on Hendricks Avenue past the I-95 ramp and you will pass a five-story building with a rooftop pool, a six-story parking garage, and a run of ground-floor windows facing the street. Three hundred forty-five apartments sit above those windows, and by most accounts they filled quickly. The windows themselves have stayed dark since the building opened in 2024.
That gap between the two halves of the same project is the story worth understanding if you are weighing San Marco against another Jacksonville neighborhood, or trying to figure out how much weight to put on a listing that promises "retail coming soon" next door. The apartments and the storefronts run on completely different economic clocks, and mixing them up can cost a buyer real money in a rushed assumption about walkability, foot traffic, or resale timing.
The building that filled up fast
The Station at San Marco sits at 1300 Hendricks Avenue on 3.3 acres that used to belong to the Florida Baptist Convention. Block One Ventures developed it, FaverGray built it, and the finished project delivered 345 studio, one, and two-bedroom units alongside 5,000 square feet of ground-level retail space.
On the residential side, the numbers moved fast enough that the project's capital partner, Trevato Development Group, closed a $78 million permanent refinance in April 2026, replacing the original construction loan. Trevato's own framing of the deal credited leasing that outperformed the local market average, and the loan itself was structured at roughly 90% of project cost, the kind of ratio a lender only offers when the income stream backing it looks dependable. For an apartment building well into its second year of operation, that is a strong signal. Residential leases turn over every twelve months, rents can move with the market almost in real time, and a five-story building with a resort-style pool and a rooftop lounge in a walkable, high-demand zip code was always going to find tenants.
The storefronts that didn't
The retail half tells a different story. As of 2026, well over a year after the building opened, multiple current apartment listing pages for the property still describe that 5,000-square-foot ground-floor space as "Future Ground Floor Retail." Not leased. Not under construction. Future.
That single word, sitting unchanged on marketing pages built to sell apartments, is doing a lot of work. It means whoever manages that space has not found a retail tenant worth signing since the last piece of scaffolding came down. For a project on one of San Marco's busiest corridors, minutes from the Square and its restaurant row, that is not a small detail. It is the clearest evidence in the neighborhood right now that residential success and retail success do not move together, even inside the same building.
Why the two clocks run at different speeds
A one-bedroom apartment lease is a twelve-month commitment. If a tenant does not work out, the landlord tries again next year at a slightly adjusted price. The downside of a bad guess is small and it resets fast.
A retail lease is a five to ten year commitment, and it usually comes with a tenant improvement package the landlord pays for upfront: plumbing for a kitchen, a hood system for a restaurant, custom buildout for a boutique. Getting that wrong is not a one-year mistake. It is a multi-year mistake with real money sunk into walls and equipment that a new tenant may not want. Landlords who understand this will sit on empty space rather than sign a marginal tenant into a decade-long lease, because a bad long-term tenant is worse than no tenant at all.
That is the mechanism behind the empty windows on Hendricks Avenue. It is not a verdict on San Marco's retail demand. It is what happens whenever a residential building's fast-moving leasing math gets bolted onto a retail space with slow-moving leasing math, and the two get judged by the same calendar.
The half mile that got it right
The contrast is easy to find close by. The Shoppes at East San Marco, a Regency Centers property a short distance from the Station, filled its retail with tenants like Gemma Fish + Oyster and opened with an anchor lineup already in place rather than waiting for foot traffic to arrive first. The difference was not neighborhood demand. It was sequencing: retail tenants signed before the doors opened, instead of after.
| The Station at San Marco | Shoppes at East San Marco | |
|---|---|---|
| Residential leasing | Opened 2024, refinanced $78M in 2026 citing above-average leasing | Not applicable, retail-only center |
| Retail leasing sequence | Space built, tenants sought after opening | Anchor tenants like Gemma Fish + Oyster signed as part of the project |
| Retail status as of 2026 | Listed as "Future Ground Floor Retail" on leasing pages | Operating with named tenants |
Same corridor. Same underlying neighborhood economics. Different order of operations, and a very different result on the leasing sign today.
What this means if you're deciding where to buy
If you are comparing San Marco to another Northeast Florida neighborhood, or comparing two blocks within San Marco itself, here is the practical takeaway. A developer's promise of "retail coming soon" attached to a new residential building is not a timeline. It is a hope. The apartments above it can lease out in months while the storefronts below sit vacant for years, because nothing about strong apartment demand obligates a retailer to sign a decade-long lease on a space that has not proven itself yet.
A few questions worth asking before you let a nearby "coming soon" retail sign influence an offer:
- Is the retail space pre-leased, or is it still marked future or available on any commercial listing you can find?
- Who owns the retail component? A residential developer holding retail as an afterthought behaves differently than a dedicated retail landlord like a Regency Centers, whose whole business model depends on getting tenants signed early.
- How long has the space actually sat empty? A year or more past completion is a meaningfully different situation than a couple of months.
None of this means the Station at San Marco was a bad project or that its retail space will stay empty forever. Ground-floor space in a strong location eventually finds a tenant. It means you should not price a home's walkability premium, or a rental property's foot-traffic potential, on a rendering of a coffee shop that has not signed a lease yet.
Quick answers
Does empty ground-floor retail hurt nearby home values? Not directly and not immediately. A vacant storefront does not show up in comparable sales the way a school rating or a renovated kitchen does. What it does affect is the walkability story a listing agent tells you, and that story is worth verifying rather than taking on faith.
How long is normal for retail to lease up after a building opens? There is no fixed rule, and it varies with tenant improvement costs, the type of retailer being courted, and how the landlord is structured. What matters more than any specific number is whether the space was pre-leased before opening, which tends to predict a faster fill than trying to lease it after the fact.
Is this pattern specific to San Marco? No. The residential-versus-retail leasing gap shows up in mixed-use projects across growing submarkets, wherever apartment demand outpaces the retail market's appetite for a new, unproven location. San Marco simply gives a clean, documented example on one street.
If you are weighing San Marco against another Jacksonville neighborhood, or you want a second opinion on what a specific block's mixed-use promises are actually worth, Ernie McKinney has spent nearly two decades on the investor and contractor side of Northeast Florida real estate before ever writing a listing agreement. Schedule a call and get a straight read on the block, not just the brochure.
