Jacksonville loves a redevelopment storyline. A dead mall. A bold new name. A developer promising transformation. A few glowing headlines about “revitalization.” And then, almost inevitably, the lawyers arrive before the bulldozers do.

Less than a year after the $19.1 million sale of Regency Square Mall, Impact Church is suing the new ownership group, alleging breaches of agreement, misrepresentation, and failures to honor the basic obligations that keep the Arlington property functioning. At the center of the dispute is Blackwater Regency LLC and its principal, developer Rurmell McGee, now facing multiple complaints in the 4th Judicial Circuit Court.

As the legal fight escalates, so does a familiar Jacksonville question: who exactly are we handing the keys to — and why does this city keep acting surprised when these deals unravel?

Impact Church is not some outsider trying to cash in. It owns the former Belk building at the center of the mall property, purchased in 2016, and has been one of the only stable anchors left on a site that has been collapsing for years. The church has long expressed interest in acquiring more control over the surrounding property, which makes sense when you consider the history of Regency Square: decades of decline, absentee ownership, and promises of revival that never quite arrive.

That decline was not accidental. Regency Square spent years under the control of Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, two names that have become almost synonymous with Jacksonville’s broader problem of commercial decay — owners who collect what value remains while properties deteriorate around them. Arlington residents have watched this cycle play out in real time: one of the city’s most prominent retail corridors reduced to vacancy, blight, and unanswered questions about who is responsible.

So when a new buyer finally emerged in 2025, it was easy for the press and political class to embrace the next chapter. Blackwater Development rebranded the property as “The Nexus at Regency,” promising mixed-use redevelopment, housing, new infrastructure, and national retail. The story was framed as a turning point — Arlington’s long-awaited comeback.

But Jacksonville has learned, repeatedly, that renderings are cheap. The hard part is execution. The even harder part is trust.

According to Impact’s court filings, the church worked with McGee under a 2024 agreement in which he would provide licensed brokerage services tied to Impact’s effort to purchase the mall. Instead, Impact alleges that McGee and his entities closed on the property themselves in April 2025, cutting the church out after it had reportedly provided offer terms, due diligence funding, and more than $100,000 toward the transaction.

McGee denies wrongdoing, and his attorneys have dismissed the lawsuits as meritless, accusing Impact of attempting to “greenmail” the redevelopment team into financial concessions. The courts will ultimately determine what happened.

But politically, the damage is already underway. Another marquee Jacksonville redevelopment is now being defined not by progress or investment, but by litigation and mistrust.

And the dispute is not just about ownership. It is about leverage. Impact alleges Blackwater increased common area fees, reduced trash and security services, failed to maintain paving and landscaping, and issued retroactive electricity bills with threats of shutoff. In other words, the kind of pressure points that emerge when one entity controls the infrastructure surrounding an independently owned building.

If you have watched Jacksonville development politics long enough, you recognize the pattern. Control over services becomes control over stakeholders. Redevelopment becomes a power struggle long before it becomes a project.

As McGee’s profile has risen, older reporting has resurfaced. A 2005 article from The Gainesville Sun described an incident in which McGee, then 29, was arrested after allegedly fleeing a traffic stop and being found to have an active warrant related to a leased vehicle. More recently, First Coast News reported questions surrounding Blackwater’s listed business address in Lake City.

None of this proves the claims in Impact’s lawsuits. But it reinforces a political reality Jacksonville keeps running into: the city’s most complicated, high-stakes redevelopment sites are often handed to players whose backgrounds and business footprints invite scrutiny the moment something goes sideways.

And this is bigger than Regency Square. Jacksonville has a redevelopment ecosystem where major sites sit in decay for decades, deals happen through opaque partnerships, community stakeholders get sidelined, and litigation becomes the default dispute resolution. The public is told to wait for the vision, while the fine print and the power dynamics unfold behind closed doors.

The Downtown Investment Authority can spend years debating park activation, incentive packages, and downtown branding exercises, but neighborhoods like Arlington are left to absorb the consequences of commercial collapse with far less attention and far fewer resources. Regency Square is not just real estate. It is Arlington’s front door. It is a symbol of whether Jacksonville’s “revitalization” economy actually works for the communities outside the urban core.

The Deegan Era Question: Reform Language, Same Old System?

Mayor Donna Deegan came into office promising a different tone — more transparency, more professionalism, less of the insider culture that has defined Jacksonville’s growth politics for decades. And yet the city’s development ecosystem remains largely the same web of private actors, LLC structures, rebrands, and closed-door negotiations that only become public when something breaks down.

Jacksonville’s problem is not a lack of speeches about revitalization. It is a lack of enforceable accountability once the cameras leave.

City Hall and its redevelopment arms are often quick to celebrate acquisitions and announcements, but much slower to demand clear benchmarks, performance timelines, and stakeholder protections — especially outside the downtown core. Too often, the public is asked to treat redevelopment as an act of faith rather than a contract with real consequences.

The Jacksonville Pattern: Big Announcements, Bigger Limbo

What makes Regency Square feel so familiar is that Jacksonville has been here before — over and over again.

Downtown has spent years trapped in redevelopment purgatory with signature properties that never quite move forward. The Laura Street Trio became a symbol of “next year” promises while the city struggled to enforce meaningful timelines. The Landing came down quickly, but what replaced it took far longer to materialize than the rhetoric suggested. JEA’s headquarters saga turned into its own swirl of insider dealmaking, politics, and public frustration.

Time and again, Jacksonville announces transformational change, but accountability arrives late — if it arrives at all.

Jacksonville’s redevelopment culture is heavy on branding and light on enforceable performance. Projects are sold as inevitabilities before the financing, infrastructure, and stakeholder relationships are stable. And when the friction becomes impossible to ignore, the disputes move where Jacksonville redevelopment so often ends up: court.

That is the risk Arlington now faces. If “The Nexus at Regency” becomes mired in years of lawsuits, fee disputes, and stalled infrastructure, the people paying the price will not be the LLCs. It will be the surrounding neighborhoods, once again left holding the bag while the property remains in limbo.

The courts will decide whether Impact Church’s allegations hold up or whether Blackwater is exonerated. But Jacksonville should already be asking the harder political question: why do our biggest redevelopment “saves” so often begin with promises and end in court?

Because Arlington doesn’t need another rebrand. It needs accountability, transparency, and partners who can deliver more than a new name on an old monument sign.