The founder of Kanine Social is getting ready to bring families even closer together, this time with a new concept called The Block Jax at southwest Interstate 295 and Butler Boulevard.
When Daniel Moffatt opened Kanine Social in Downtown’s Brooklyn neighborhood, it became the city’s first dog park and bar. Following the success of this venture, the entrepreneur realized the city needed another location for this unique dog park and something where families could come together, not just dogs and their owners. As a result, he is launching The Block Jax, an entertainment venue with a covered outdoor food hall, live music venue, and play park for children, according to a recent announcement.
“We had a lot of customers who were young, and they only had dogs, and then a couple of years later, they end up having kids, and they no longer could come to Kanine Social because you can’t have kids running around in a dog park. It just doesn’t work,” Moffatt tells Jacksonville Daily Record. “People will be able to come sit down, spend an afternoon with their family and friends, kids can run in the play area, dogs can run in Kanine Social’s private dog park.”
Daniel and his wife Megan Moffatt are now developing The Block Jax alongside a second location of Kanine Social at the entrance to Southside Quarter at southeast Gate Parkway and Village Crossing Drive on a 2.5-acre site. Customers can expect an outdoor food hall with eight vendors, a craft beer bar, a fenced-in children’s play area called Kids on the Block, a 30-foot-wide LED video wall, lawn and arcade games, and a golf simulator. Admission will be free, and dogs will be able to enter as long as they are on a leash. For those who want to give their dogs a little more freedom, they can take them next door.
The second Kanine Social dog park will still require a membership but will feature almost 5,000 square feet of boarding, daycare, and reception areas with more than 10,000 square feet of dog park and daycare/boarding play yards. Construction is expected to begin in early 2024, and owners hope to open around this time next year, in the fourth quarter of next year.
“What we’re doing as a society, unfortunately, is spending so much time on our phone,” Moffatt continues. “Hopefully, what we’ll be providing with The Block Jax is a place for family to come out and get together and have a good time and connect more with family and friends in person than what we do right now. That’s our goal with The Block. It’s a place for everybody to just come and enjoy and spend some time together.”
After visiting either of these concepts, anyone hungry is welcome to refuel at the food park, where experienced restaurateurs will open new concepts or expansions of previous eateries. There are a handful of rumored food options, including new concepts from the owners of The Bearded Pig, The Bread & Board, the San Marco Chz Fry Co. food truck, Canopy Road Cafe, and more.
“The food pods, as we call them, are shipping-container-style, so they’re just a small kitchen, they’re fully equipped, so the vendors can come in and they can try something out, and it doesn’t cost a lot for them to do that,” Moffatt tells JDR. “They just need to have a concept that they either know that works or they want to try something new. We’ll be doing all the programming for them. So all the events that are there to get people there — all the social media marketing, handling all that management type stuff.”
