San Marco in Jacksonville, Florida

San Marco is a neighborhood in south Jacksonville whose subdivision began in 1925, according to the City of Jacksonville's Balis Park page.

The city describes The Square at San Marco as a commercial district in south Jacksonville, with Balis Park in its middle at 1999 San Marco Blvd, Jacksonville, FL 32207 (City of Jacksonville). One of the first commercial buildings on the Square, finished in early 1927, was a Spanish style Gulf service station that stood where the park is now.

San Marco lies in what was once a separate town. The city's Southside Park page says the park lies in the San Marco section of South Jacksonville, which existed as a separate municipality in 1925, the year the park was established under the name Central Park. The city lists the Balis Community Center at 1513 LaSalle Street, 32207 (City of Jacksonville), and Southside Park at 1541 Hendricks Avenue (Southside Park).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the city's Balis Park, Southside Park, Southside Tennis Complex and Balis Community Center pages, the 2013 zoning overlay workshop minutes and the Census tract tables for the Square.

Balis Park is the city park in the middle of The Square at San Marco, dedicated in January 1988 on the site of a former Gulf station (City of Jacksonville).

Gulf Oil replaced the original 1927 station with a modern one, and the City bought the parcel in 1984 to turn it into a park, which the San Marco Preservation Society and local merchants had pictured as a centerpiece for the Square, the city page says. Abla Balis, a longtime San Marco resident with her husband Sheffield, paid for the park's development in his memory after his death in 1976.

Later additions were a sound system, the bronze sculpture Windy Days and new landscaping, paid for by the estate of Abla Balis and the City (Balis Park). The listed amenities are modest: benches, security lighting and trash barrels. The page lists no restrooms or parking for the park itself.

JaxParks lists addresses for Balis Park, Southside Park, the Southside Tennis Complex and the Balis Community Center, and phones for the last two.

The tennis complex posts a closure from noon to 3 p.m. daily for maintenance, and its courts are open to the general public around league play, by reservation and walk-up. Its annual fee year runs October 1 through September 30: $175 for a family, $100 for an adult aged 18 to 59, $75 for a senior aged 60 and over, and $24 for a junior under 18, with daily play at $2.50 for 1.5 hours (City of Jacksonville). The community center takes reservations through the city's booking link on the same page (Balis Community Center).

Southside Park began as Central Park in 1925 and grew in stages until a new community center and outdoor park opened in 2003 and 2004 (City of Jacksonville).

The city's history of the park says it doubled in size between 1930 and 1955 and that the Southside Branch Library moved to the park in 1950. A large swimming pool and teen center opened in 1956; the City demolished the pool in 1991 and added six more tennis courts in 1996 (Southside Park).

The present layout came from the San Marco Preservation Society, the City and a large bequest from the estate of Abla Balis (1901 to 1996), the same benefactor behind Balis Park. That money produced a community center connected to the expanded library, opened in 2003, and a new outdoor park, opened in 2004, which together with the tennis complex make up today's park, the city says. Pickleball is offered at the park, and the tennis complex alone lists eight pickleball courts (Southside Tennis Complex).

San Marco has its own zoning overlay, one of 7 neighborhood overlays the city's planning staff described to a joint City Council and Planning Commission workshop on October 8, 2013 (workshop minutes).

The minutes list the 7 neighborhood overlays as Riverside/Avondale, San Marco, Springfield, Mandarin Road, Mandarin (building height), Downtown and Mayport, plus 1 overlay for industrial properties, for 8 in all. Planning staff explained that overlays govern property use, parking, setbacks and signage, while historic districts govern historic resources and external appearance, and that the two co-exist in areas such as Riverside/Avondale, San Marco and Springfield (City Council minutes).

Parking was the sore point that day. A Planning Commissioner said the San Marco area had reached its saturation point for parking capacity while several storefronts stood vacant, and a planning official noted that much of the parking around San Marco Square is on public streets, which raises the question of whether a developer could claim credit for it (October 8, 2013 minutes). Those remarks date from 2013, so anyone planning a business on the Square should ask the Planning and Development Department for the current overlay text.

The city lists its San Marco tree planting project under District 5, whose council member is Vice President Joe Carlucci, reachable at (904) 255-5205 (City Council members).

The urban forestry page for the San Marco Preservation Society and Greenscape project records Ordinance 2019-0089, a completed status, Davey Tree Experts as the installer and District 5 as the location limit (City of Jacksonville Urban Forestry). Its completion and warranty inspection date fields both read 1/1/0001, so the page gives no usable date for the planting.

District lines can split a neighborhood, and no fetched city page draws a San Marco boundary, so a resident on the edge of the area should confirm the district for a specific address before calling. The council page lists each member's phone and assistant (City of Jacksonville).

The Census tract that holds Balis Park had a median home value of $568,800 in the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates (ACS B25077).

That tract is Census Tract 7, Duval County, the one the Census Geocoder assigns to 1999 San Marco Blvd; the citywide median is $293,700 (ACS DP04).

The tract is a statistical area, not a San Marco boundary, so these figures describe the blocks around the Square rather than the whole neighborhood. Its estimated population is 4,292, with a margin of error of 636 (ACS B01003). The home value estimate carries a margin of $93,031 (ACS B25077), against $293,700 for the City of Jacksonville (ACS DP04). The median home in the tract was built in 1950 (ACS B25035).

Of 1,936 occupied homes in the tract, 1,347 are owner occupied and 589 are rented (ACS B25003). The median gross rent is $1,401, with a margin of $376 (ACS B25064), a little under the citywide $1,465 (ACS DP04). The Jacksonville neighborhoods guide at /florida/jacksonville/real-estate/neighborhoods/ covers the city's planning districts and historic areas.