Jacksonville Armada plans to break ground on new soccer stadium by the summer on Jacksonville’s eastside

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After some delays, the Jacksonville Armada plans to break ground on a new soccer stadium by the summer on Jacksonville’s eastside.

RELATED: Jacksonville Armada stadium won’t be ready until March 2026

The stadium will be located off A. Phillip Randolph between Grant and Albert Streets and it will be the new home of the Armada Stadium.

Nathan Walter is the President and General Manager of the Armada and he’s been with the soccer club for 10 years. He was director of soccer operations and then technical director before his current role.

But he’s just not a businessman, soccer is a labor of love.

Watch the full interview with Walter below.

“It’s in the blood. I’ve been playing [soccer] since I was four, five years old,” Walter said.

The Armada started out playing at the bank, then the baseball grounds and the University of North Florida’s campus. Now the focus is building the Armada brand on Jacksonville’s eastside.

It will be a state-of-the-art downtown stadium, with space for team operations and a co-working space anchored by LPT Realty.

In 2017, Robert Palmer became the owner of the team. In 2022, the team joined Major League Soccer, MLS NEXT Pro, a professional men’s soccer league. Now fans will have a place to call home beside other teams and the historic eastside community.

“We want to be a fabric of the community as well and see a thousand, two thousand people walk out of the eastside and really take this team as their team and that’s something that’s common in Europe,” Walter said.

It’s surreal for Walter to be standing in the space where Armanda will soon play but he’s excited about the future. He drives by this land often with his daughter.

“We have been driving down this road into downtown for the past five years looking at this site and I keep telling her it’s going to be home one day,” Walter said.

While the Armada have been outside the pro league they have had their under-23 teams and they play in the summer from May to August and a women’s program is starting this year. The men have won two championships in the last two years and averaging 1,500 to 2,000 fans a game.