As the Jax Daily Record reported, Dave's Hot Chicken franchisee Jesse Allen said, "We believe in this site so strongly we said, 'it's gotta be there.'" Allen was talking about a building at 730 Skymarks Drive in River City Marketplace that had already changed hands once that year. Allen signed his lease in June 2025. A month earlier, a different chicken chain had been circling the same address.
If you shop at River City Marketplace, you already know the shorthand for the shopping center off Airport Center Drive: Walmart on one end, Lowe's on the other, a Regal multiplex holding down the middle. What you may not know is what happened to the corner between McDonald's and the VyStar Credit Union branch after Pollo Tropical pulled out. It didn't sit empty. It became the site of a small, specific competition between two national fried chicken brands, and the record of who filed what paperwork and when tells you something about how this shopping center actually works.
Two Chains, One Parking Lot, A Few Weeks Apart
Pollo Tropical closed its Jacksonville locations, including the River City Marketplace unit, in a wave that hit multiple corners of the city at once. By spring 2025, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers was looking at the vacated River City Marketplace building. City utility JEA issued a service availability letter on May 28, 2025, sizing up a 2,863-square-foot space there for Cane's. That kind of filing means a company is testing the water, not signing anything.
Dave's Hot Chicken moved faster. Franchisee Jesse Allen signed a lease for the same 730 Skymarks Drive property in June 2025, one month after the Cane's utility letter. The city issued a construction permit that December for Hoffman Commercial Construction LLC to renovate the old Pollo Tropical shell, and the restaurant opened on March 13, 2026, with a drive-through and, according to reporting at the time, dozens of new jobs. It's the second Dave's Hot Chicken in the Jacksonville area, joining an existing location at St. Johns Town Center.
Raising Cane's didn't disappear from the map. It just moved its attention elsewhere. The chain's first Jacksonville location opened in Oakleaf Station, and it has separately pursued other closed Pollo Tropical buildings in Mandarin, at the Markets at Town Center, and on an outparcel of the old Regency Square Mall property. River City Marketplace went to Dave's. The rest of the city is still being sorted out one former Pollo Tropical shell at a time.
A Second, Unrelated Arrival: Breakfast Nobody Was Serving
While that was playing out on one side of the property, a different kind of vacancy was being filled a few hundred feet away, in a strip near the Starbucks and across the parking lot from Ashley Furniture and the Total Wine & More that took over the old OfficeMax space.
Keke's Breakfast Cafe is building out a combined 4,844-square-foot unit that used to hold Mr. Potato Spread and Mattress One. A permit application in March 2026 put the renovation cost at roughly $245,000, handled by Regional Construction Services LC out of Pompano Beach with Thomas Duke Architect of Jacksonville on the design. This will be the chain's seventh Northeast Florida location, joining existing spots in East Arlington, St. Johns Town Center, Durbin Park, St. Augustine, Oakleaf Town Center, and Mandarin. Keke's runs a breakfast menu all day, from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a lunch panini and sandwich list that kicks in at 10:30. It's a straightforward daytime concept, not a competitor to anything else on the property.
For now, the storefront near Starbucks is worth watching for the shift from a "coming soon" sign to an open door.
The Pattern This Fits: Two Decades of Swaps, Not Vacancies
None of this is new behavior for River City Marketplace. It opened in November 2006 with Walmart, Lowe's, and a 14-screen Regal theater as anchors, at a time when North Jacksonville shoppers had to drive roughly 20 minutes to Orange Park for the same kind of retail. A fourth anchor, Gander Mountain, opened ten months later and lasted a decade before closing in 2017. Sportsman's Warehouse and Burlington split that space. Bed Bath & Beyond closed and HomeGoods took its place. BJ's Wholesale was approved for an $8 million build in 2024, the same year Ulta Beauty and Five Below both added their names to the property's roughly 80-store roster.
The center has also pulled in tenants that aren't available anywhere else in the state. Duluth Trading Co. opened its first Florida store here on May 2, 2022, with a flannel ribbon-cutting and a professional lumberjack show, its 51st location nationally.
Here's a quick snapshot of what that turnover looks like when you line it up:
- Gander Mountain (2007 to 2017) → replaced by Sportsman's Warehouse and Burlington
- Bed Bath & Beyond → replaced by HomeGoods
- OfficeMax → replaced by Total Wine & More
- Pollo Tropical at 730 Skymarks Drive (closed 2025) → replaced by Dave's Hot Chicken (opened March 13, 2026)
- Mr. Potato Spread and Mattress One → being replaced by Keke's Breakfast Cafe (permitted March 2026)
The mechanism underneath all of it is the same: a category leader leaves, and within a year or so, another category leader is fighting to take the space. That's the actual claim worth holding onto if you live off Main Street North or anywhere along the Duval Station Road corridor. A closed storefront at River City Marketplace has consistently been a leading indicator of a new tenant, not a sign the property is fading.
What This Looks Like Right Now
As of this fall, Dave's Hot Chicken has been open and serving since March, so that corner of the property is settled. The Keke's build-out was still working through construction as of its spring 2026 permit, with no announced opening date yet, so that's the one to check before you plan a Saturday morning stop. And the Raising Cane's story isn't fully closed either. It lost the River City Marketplace site to Dave's, but the chain's broader Jacksonville expansion through Mandarin, Town Center, and the Regency corridor suggests it's not backing off the market, just redirecting where it lands next.
None of this changes what River City Marketplace has been for almost twenty years: the retail anchor for the Duval-area neighborhoods north of the river, the place that made a 20-minute drive to Orange Park unnecessary, and a property that Kimco Realty and its tenants seem to treat as a proven bet rather than a risk. When something closes here, the smart move is to watch for what shows up next, because something almost always does.
If you're weighing a move into this part of North Jacksonville and want more than a store directory, Martin Williams keeps an eye on the details that actually shape daily life in these neighborhoods, not just the listings. Let's Connect.
