Jacksonville Beach, FL Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

The central business district (CBD) zoning district is meant to give the city a central core with a diversity of uses, to promote flexibility in design and quality in development, and to keep public access to the beach recreational area. Section 34-623(f) carries the site design, dimensional and lot layout standards, and it starts by creating three street types inside the CBD boundaries. Table 34-623.1 names the "A" streets as 6th Avenue North between 3rd Street North and the Sea Walk, and 1st Street North between Beach Boulevard and 6th Avenue North. Beach Boulevard between 3rd Street North and the Sea Walk, 1st Avenue North between 3rd Street North and 1st Street North, and 4th Avenue North between 3rd Street North and the Sea Walk are "pedestrian oriented". Any street not listed is a "B" street. "A" streets carry building frontage requirements, build-to lines and required active commercial uses on the first floor, with parking and service uses restricted next to them. "B" streets have no building frontage requirements.

The building design standards in subsection (f)(7) apply to attached residential and nonresidential buildings. Height is thirty-five (35) feet and maximum lot coverage is "None". Buildings fronting an "A" or "pedestrian oriented" street must provide awnings, canopies or other shade refuge equal to at least fifty (50) percent of the frontage length. All buildings must use at least three of eleven listed features on street-facing elevations, among them window bays, recessed or protruding entries, varied rooflines, dormers, cupolas and covered porch entries. A building longer than one hundred fifty (150) feet cannot run more than sixty (60) feet of wall without architectural relief at least thirty (30) feet wide and three (3) feet deep.

Storefront character rules require transparent windows covering at least forty (40) percent and at most eighty (80) percent of a storefront's ground floor frontage on "A" and "pedestrian oriented" streets, and blank walls cannot pass thirty (30) linear feet. Rooflines cannot run beyond one hundred (100) feet without a variation of at least ten (10) feet. Off-street surface parking goes behind "A" street buildings or beside or behind "pedestrian oriented" street buildings. Street trees must be salt-tolerant species of at least a three (3) inch caliper, planted one for every twenty-five (25) linear feet of frontage. Utilities go underground if feasible. Subsections (g) through (j) send parking, supplemental, sign and environmental standards to article VII.