Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Four friends who met at a beach nightclub spent four years and nearly five million dollars turning a 1904 ship chandlery into downtown Jacksonville's missing venue. Decca Live at 323 East Bay Street, between Market and Liberty streets in the riverfront entertainment district known as The Elbow, opened with a sold-out Kaskade show on 31 January 2025. Owners Eric Fuller, Evan Rajita, Aleksander Lukaj and Shawn Rouf - who met at the former Jacksonville Beach club Freebird Live - bought the historic Hutchinson-Suddath building for 1.4 million dollars in January 2021, two weeks into the pandemic, and pushed through supply shortages and construction delays to deliver it. The two-storey brick building carries real history: constructed in 1904 as a hardware store specialising in ship chandlery for the working port, later the headquarters of the Florida State Theater Company, and granted City of Jacksonville landmark status in June 2021. A 3.31-million-dollar gut renovation - supported by a 1.53-million-dollar city incentives package - preserved the shell while building a modern venue inside. The layout answers a specific market gap the owners identified: a 1,000-capacity room where artists play as they break big. The ground floor holds the main stage and open floor, the second level wraps it as a mezzanine with balconies, full bars serve both floors, and the green room even has a shower - a touring-crew courtesy that says much about the build's intent. Sip, the rooftop bar with covered and open-air sections and St. Johns River views, opened two weeks after the venue with its own entrance. Programming spans the board by design - EDM, country, rock, hip-hop and dance nights - with the opening calendar anchored by national electronic names, and the operation expected to employ around a hundred staff from sound techs to security. Steps from the stadium district and the Bay Street bar strip, Decca Live is the largest piece yet of The Elbow's revival - a landmark building returned to the city's nightlife a hundred and twenty years after it opened.