Laura Street Trio in Jacksonville, Florida

The Laura Street Trio is the name for three historic buildings at Laura and Forsyth streets: the Florida National Bank Building, the Bisbee Building and the Florida Life Insurance Building.

The Downtown Investment Authority's Resolution 2024-07-02 names them together as the Laura Trio, also known as the Laura Street Trio, owned at that time by Laura Trio, LLC. Its attached 2021 agreement places the bank at 51 W. Forsyth Street, the Bisbee Building at 47 W. Forsyth Street and the Florida Life Insurance Building at 117 N. Laura Street, along with two vacant parcels on W. Adams Street that belonged to the same developer. The DIA's earlier Resolution 2017-02-01 calls the bank the Marble Bank Building, the name most residents use.

All three stand inside the Downtown Jacksonville Historic District, which the National Register of Historic Places nomination records as listed on May 2, 2016, under reference number 16000212. The nomination describes the Marble Bank as standing at the intersection of West Forsyth Street and North Laura Street.

The Marble Bank on Forsyth Street came first in 1902, followed by the two Klutho towers on Laura and Forsyth, but Jacksonville's official records give slightly different construction dates for the towers.

The DIA columns come from the term sheet in Resolution 2021-03-01; the last column comes from the Downtown Jacksonville Historic District nomination. The two records disagree on the Bisbee and Florida Life dates, and both are shown here.

The nomination says the Marble Bank was originally built as the Mercantile Exchange Bank in 1902 from a design by architect Edward H. Gidden, as the nomination spells the name, and was bought in 1905 by Florida Bank and Trust, a predecessor of the modern Florida National Bank, which renovated and expanded it. A 1916 renovation added a large banking room with a skylight, plaster detailing and a coffered ceiling. The Bisbee Building was designed by Jacksonville architect Henry J. Klutho in the Chicago Style and built in a race against two other ten-story projects, 121 Atlantic Place and the Seminole Hotel, to build the city's first skyscraper. The Bisbee won the race, while 121 Atlantic Place was slightly taller, and the nomination calls the Bisbee the first reinforced concrete high rise anywhere in the Southern United States.

An older federal record agrees on Klutho's role. The National Register nomination for the Morocco Temple, another Klutho building, lists the Bisbee Building (1908) among his major Jacksonville commissions and calls it Jacksonville's pioneer skyscraper.

Each restoration plan since 2017 depended on city incentives, and the DIA found in 2024 that the developer had failed to commence restoration work under any of them.

The 2017 plan, in Resolution 2017-02-01, was a joint venture of the Molasky Companies and SouthEast Development Group to turn the Trio into retail and commercial office space with a hotel component, at an estimated total development cost of $44,641,568. Its trust fund grant was to be paid only at the last certificate of occupancy for the three buildings, and the REV grant was a 20-year, 50 percent property tax rebate on the new hotel construction next to the Florida Life Building. A parking structure of no less than 550 spaces was to go on a city lot at Forsyth and Main streets.

The 2021 plan, per Resolution 2021-03-01, was a Marriott Autograph hotel: 56 rooms in the Bisbee, 35 in the Florida Life Building, a restaurant and private dining and wine cellar space in the Marble Bank, and a new addition on Laura Street. The three loans it recommended total $24,674,300. By 2023 the request had grown, and Resolution 2023-12-07 records that the June 2023 proposal exceeded what the City Council adopted BID Plan allows. The June 2024 staff term sheet attached to Resolution 2024-06-13 described a city and DIA commitment of not more than $87,233,000, and the board found that the developer had failed to commence restoration work under prior agreements and that using city funds to effectively replace the developer's equity was not responsible leveraging of public investment.

The most recent DIA action found for this page is the July 2024 resolution ending the 2021 restoration agreement, and later changes need to be confirmed with the authority.

Resolution 2024-07-02 found that the developer failed to perform under the agreement's Performance Schedule, materially changed the project by moving the hotel from the corner of Laura and Adams streets to another parcel on Forsyth Street, added a multifamily component outside the agreement's scope, and on multiple occasions sought different incentive packages. It directed the chief executive to terminate the December 13, 2021 agreement by mutual agreement or declaration of default.

The 2021 agreement attached to that resolution also shows a condition any future deal would likely face: before any loan could be paid, the historic buildings had to be designated a local historic landmark by the Jacksonville City Council and receive Part 2 approval of the National Park Service historic designation. Ownership and plans after mid-2024 are not shown in any DIA or city document checked for this page. The Downtown Investment Authority is at 117 West Duval St., Suite 310, phone (904) 255-5302, per the letterhead in Resolution 2024-06-13, and is the office to ask about any current proposal.

The Barnett National Bank Building across Laura Street was packaged with the Trio in the 2017 incentive deal and was meant to be finished first.

Resolution 2017-02-01 covered the Barnett Bank Building, the Laura Street Trio and a new parking garage as one project. The developers proposed to turn the Barnett into a combination of residential apartments and commercial office space, at an estimated total development cost of $34,202,427, with a $4,000,000 city grant paid at its last certificate of occupancy. The resolution made completion of the Barnett redevelopment and the parking garage a minimum precondition for funding the incentives, so the Trio was second in line from the start.

The Barnett belongs to a later building wave. The Downtown Jacksonville Historic District nomination dates the Barnett National Bank Building to 1926 and lists it with the Carling Hotel and other high rises that reflected a shift in Jacksonville's financial center from West Forsyth Street to West Adams Street, during the Florida Land Boom.

The Trio sits in a 56-block National Register district whose oldest towers rose along West Forsyth Street in the rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1901.

The Downtown Jacksonville Historic District nomination describes a district of approximately 56 blocks and 158 acres, bounded by Beaver Street on the north, Catherine Street and North Liberty Street on the east, Independent Drive and the St. Johns River on the south, and North Pearl Street on the west. It traces the district's growth as a commercial, institutional and residential hub following the Great Fire of May 3, 1901. New steel and reinforced concrete structural systems made possible the first true skyscrapers in Florida, and the nomination names the Bisbee Building (1908 to 1909), the Florida Life Building (1911 to 1912) and the Atlantic National Bank Building (1908 to 1909) among the pioneer high rises along or near West Forsyth Street.

The nomination also counts four examples of the Prairie School style in the district, a form developed by Chicago architects in the 1890s, and includes a letter of support naming the Florida Life Building and the Bisbee Building among the Klutho buildings that would benefit from National Register status. No public access to the interiors is posted by the DIA or the city, so the Trio is a streetscape stop: the facades face Laura and Forsyth streets.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against DIA Resolutions 2017-02-01, 2021-03-01, 2023-12-07, 2024-06-13 and 2024-07-02 and the National Register nominations for the Downtown Jacksonville Historic District and the Morocco Temple.