Jacksonville, Florida, Mayor Donna Deegan (D) plans to invest nearly $3M USD in building an esports center at the University of North Florida. According to a report from FIRSTCOAST News, the money to build this new center and tackle some other important city projects, will come from unused funding (roughly $7,980,286) leftover from the 2023-2024 fiscal year that was identified by the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee on Monday.
Plans for that leftover funding include spending $4M to renovate two city fire stations (Fire Station #45 and Fire Station #54), $693K for a personal protective equipment wash facility (more info on that from OSHA can be found here) for firefighters, and $3M for a “state-of-the-art” esports arena in UNF’s John A. Delaney Student Union. The campus already houses the UNF Game Room, a free facility for students with equipment including consoles, PC stations, ping-pong, board games, lounge space, WiFi access, and more.
The Mayor’s office hopes this new esports arena will help bring more students to the college interested in careers in science, technology, engineering, and math; bring national attention to the city; and provide some future revenue to the city. It is unclear, as of this writing, if this might be a multi-use space capable of hosting non-gaming events.
“We continue to make investments that create the greatest return for our citizens and these projects are no exception,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan told the publication. “The fire station renovations and wash facility will ensure our firefighters have the resources needed to continue keeping citizens safe and insurance rates down. UNF’s esports arena will help us build a next-generation workforce and position Jacksonville as a leader in the fastest growing sports genre nationally and globally.”
These proposals still require approval from the Jacksonville City Council.