The city says the new system will streamline the civil plan review and permitting process, speeding up approvals for developers and contractors.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For most Jacksonville natives, the highway that runs through the city and past an orange Tyrannosaurus rex on its way to the ocean has always been known as Beach Boulevard. The weeks-old petition proposes to rename the road John the Baptist Boulevard after the preacher and religious figure revered by followers of the Christian and Islamic faiths. LINK: View the online petition to rename Beach BoulevardThe petition’s founders, waste disposal executive John Arwood and developer Toney Sleiman, said the idea has nothing to do with recent efforts in Jacksonville and across the country to rename schools and parks named after slave owners. “There was no other road that we felt was better than Beach Boulevard.”That body of water Arwood mentioned, of course, is the Atlantic Ocean. Arwood and Sleiman launched the change.org petition as part of an effort to convince state lawmakers to change the highway’s longtime name.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A judge said the City of Jacksonville must pay the owners of the former Jacksonville Landing $3.7 million to resolve a lawsuit from 2015. In 2007, Jacksonville Landing Investments, the company owned by Toney Sleiman, paid the City $4.3 million to buy the land where the Landing parking garage sits, between the Landing and the Main Street Bridge. In 2014, the Landing’s owners told the City they wanted to end their arrangement over the land sale and wanted the money back. The City then sued the Landing’s owners in 2015 and the Landing’s owners counter-sued. After taking into account how much money the City made from the property over the years, and how much the Landing made from using the property, the judge found the City still owes Jacksonville Landing Investments $3,717,876.