As bad as the blown-out windows are on the front side of the five-story building facing Arlington Expressway, the back of it looks even worse.
Two huge openings in the back wall running from the roof to the ground leave the interior exposed like lids peeled back from sardine cans, displaying corroded beams inside a building that's been vacant 11 years since the FBI moved its Jacksonville office from Arlington to the Southside.
Turning that office building into apartments won't be easy, but that's the owner's plan for an investment that would total about $14.5 million. It's the kind of transformation Arlington Expressway will need if it's going to reverse a years-long slide that resulted in acres of vacant buildings scarring the landscape of a corridor that used to be to Jacksonville what Butler Boulevard is to the city now.