Plan Your Meetings

Want a sports-themed venue?

The 76,000-seat Jacksonville Municipal Stadium is home to the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars as well as the annual Florida/Georgia football game and Konica Minolta Gator Bowl. Planners can rent out club seats, terrace suites or take attendees on a behind the scenes tour of the locker room, press box and field. The 15,000-seat Veterans Memorial Arena is home to the Jacksonville Sports Hall of Fame and the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It has several meeting rooms appropriate for groups of up to 200 people as well as executive and super suites. The Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville, home of the minor league Jacksonville Suns, is available in the off-season for sports tournaments and special events. Amenities include a 18,400-sq. ft. sky box, six portable kiosks, a 112,000-sq. ft. field, a media room and indoor practice facilities. In Ponte Vedra, TPC Sawgrass is home to the annual Players Championship golf tournament and part of one of Travel + Leisure Golf’s Top 10 Best Golf Resorts in the World. Its Mediterranean-style clubhouse has elegant ballrooms, reception, meeting and banquet space on two levels. Group golf lessons and tournaments also are available. (Golf fans will want to test their mettle on the Stadium course’s infamous No. 17 island green.) In St. Augustine, the World Golf Hall of Fame has a variety of banquet and meeting venues, including the Hall of Fame Tower, Shell Hall, museum galleries and a 300-seat IMAX theater. Groups can hold outdoor receptions by the water, team-build on an 18-hole putting course or test their skill on a replica of TPC Sawgrass’ No. 17 island green. The hall of fame is part of World Golf Village, which also has dining, retail, a spa, several hotels and the St. Johns County Convention Center, which has more than 85,000 square feet of meeting and event space.

Want to meet on the beach?

A short drive from Jacksonville in Atlantic Beach is the 193-room One Ocean Resort Hotel & Spa. The property has more than 10,500 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space (capacity: 500), including a 3,136-sq. ft. outdoor beachfront lounge. Docents assigned to each guest room can assist with a range of requests, from packing and unpacking to arranging tee times and more. Less than a half-hour from Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach Resorts includes the 250-room, AAA Five-Diamond Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, the 66-room, AAA Four-Diamond Lodge & Club and more than 300 oceanfront acres. Once a winter hotspot for Wall Street execs in the 1920s and 30s, Ponte Vedra now appeals to small to medium-sized groups. The Ponte Vedra Inn & Club has more than 30,000 square feet of meeting and event space in its conference center for groups of 15 to 750 (receptions) or 450 (banquets). The Mediterranean-inspired Lodge & Club accommodates groups of up to 150 and has 13,000 square feet of function space. Some rooms have ocean views; ask about available beachfront team-building and meal options.

Want an exotic setting?

A member of the Historic Hotels of America, the AAA Four-Diamond Casa Monica Hotel is a St. Augustine landmark located in the heart of the historic district. Resembling a regal Spanish castle, the 138-room property offers guests historic charm and contemporary luxuries. The property has 12,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including a conference center, poolside terrace and the Sultans Pavilion — an outdoor Moroccan-style tented lounge area decorated with Austrian crystal chandeliers. Guests have access to the oceanfront Serenata Beach Club. Groups also can dine privately at the hotel’s 95 Cordova restaurant.

Want to meet in a place with history?

The Prime F. Osborne III Convention Center began its existence in 1919 as the Jacksonville Union Terminal, the railway gateway to Florida. Up to 10 million passengers used to pass through every year, and it’s where many local families said goodbye to World War II soldiers and welcomed them back home again. The main terminal building’s grand lobby remains intact and waiting rooms have been converted into meeting rooms. Altogether, the venue has 265,000 square feet of space, including 22 meeting rooms, two boardrooms, a 78,500-sq. ft. exhibit hall and a 31,500-sq. ft. fenced grass pavilion. The city of St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city in the United States, and its downtown plaza is arguably the oldest meeting venue in America. The Dow Museum of Historic Houses is a walled complex of historic homes and house museums that accommodates indoor/outdoor gatherings of up to 200 people. The Lightner Museum (formerly the Alcazar Hotel) houses numerous artifacts from the Gilded Age, when this area was a fashionable winter resort city. Terraced ballroom/gallery space overlooks a dramatic banquet/dance area in what used to be the hotel’s indoor swimming pool. There is also Castillo de San Marcos, the picturesque Flagler College, and several historic bed-and-breakfast inns with meeting rooms. Costumed personages well-versed in the city’s Minorcan, Spanish and Gilded Age history are available to interact with groups at meal functions, receptions or on-board shuttles. Contact Tour St. Augustine for more information.

Want educational resources for medical meetings?

The city of Jacksonville has more than 30 signature medical facilities, including a Mayo Clinic, Wolfson Children’s Hospital and St. Vincent’s Healthcare, which is ranked in the top 10 percent in the nation for coronary interventional procedures, stroke and gastrointestinal care. In addition to tours of research facilities and hospital-based meeting venues, Jacksonville’s medical, biotechnology and health care businesses also offer planners a diverse pool of keynote and symposium speakers.

Want to surround your group with culture?

Jacksonville’s LaVilla neighborhood was once known as the “Harlem of the South.” From 1861 to 1867, it was an independent municipality where African-Americans held senior positions in the government, as well as police and fire departments. After it was incorporated into Jacksonville, its theaters attracted such legendary black performers as Duke Ellington. That history is celebrated and preserved in two venues, the Ritz Theatre and the LaVilla Museum. Built in 1929, the Ritz has 400 seats, a state-of-the-art sound system and a lobby, available for meetings and receptions. The LaVilla Museum has a permanent exhibit of Northeast Florida African-American history that includes fine, folk and local art. American Beach, on Amelia Island, was the first southern African-American resort community. Today, it’s flanked by the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island and Amelia Island Plantation. On Fort George Island is Kingsley Plantation, the home of a slave trader who married one of his slaves and wrote pamphlets advocating for slaveholders to treat slaves as equals. It’s part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve and Fort Caroline National Memorial, which has several cultural and natural history sites among its 46,000 acres. Fort Caroline memorializes the short-lived presence of French Huguenot settlers in 16th-century Florida and the Spanish conquerors who came before and after them; nature walks celebrate the former encampments of pre-Columbian and Timucua Indians. Meeting venues in the park include The Ribault Club, a 1928 clubhouse overlooking the Fort George River and Talbot Island that has 6,000 square feet of meeting/event space and a veranda.

Want dining facilities with spectacular views?

The River City Brewing Company has a 2,790-sq. ft. ballroom with a deck overlooking the St. Johns River; it accommodates up to 300 for a reception or 240 for a banquet. The River Club of Jacksonville occupies the top two floors of the Modis Building. Founded in 1954, the club has 13,000 square feet of dining space, views of the city’s skyline, wireless Internet capabilities, boardrooms, private meeting rooms and custom menu offerings. The University Club of Jacksonville has an English theme and 360-degree views of the St. Johns River, downtown and historic San Marco. Private dining rooms accommodate up to 200 guests and have audio/visual equipment and high-speed Internet.

Want unique activities?

Although Jacksonville has many Five-Star restaurants, for real local color, take your group to Clark’s Fish Camp, a large open-air restaurant with items like boa constrictor and gator tail on the menu (don’t worry, they serve steak, fish and chicken, too). Instead of a shuttle, use boats to take attendees from the hotel or convention center to the fish camp. Visit Jacksonville can help planners select a charter company. The Riverside Arts Market is open every Saturday from April to December, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Modeled after Portland, Ore.’s Saturday Market, it features arts and crafts, live music and street performers as well as fresh produce. It’s located on the south side of the Riverwalk, under the canopy of the Fuller Warren Bridge.

Want dramatic venues?

In the early 1900s, Jacksonville was known as the “winter film capital of the world.” Thanks to the diversity of its architecture, Jacksonville’s Arlington district could double for streets in New York, New England or the South, and its natural settings doubled for Amazon-like swamps and California beaches. Film icons such as Fatty Arbuckle and Oliver Hardy got their start here, as did Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Out of the 60 film studios that once stood in the city, only the Richard Norman Studio, which made movies with African-Americans in heroic roles, remains and it’s being converted into a silent film museum. The stately Florida Theatre has been a cultural center since 1927. Rental facilities include a 1,918-seat auditorium, three lobby spaces and a meeting room for up to 60 people. The Jacksonville Princess 2 is a dinner yacht with a 110-person reception capacity (70 for seated dinners). The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens has more than 5,500 works of art spanning 8,000 years of art history and two acres of formal English and Italian-style gardens. Planners can arrange for indoor/outdoor receptions and concerts in the garden. The Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts has three distinct performance halls, a spacious lobby and meeting rooms. It regularly hosts touring Broadway shows, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and big-name acts.