'Serendipity': How the community repaired downtown's historic Jacobs Jewelers clock

• The Jacobs Jewelers clock was commissioned by jewelry store Greenleaf & Crosby after Jacksonville's Great Fire. It has stood at the corner of Adams and Laura streets for almost a century.
• One day, local business owner Tina Sauvage noticed the clock's state of disrepair. She resolved to get it fixed. JWB Real Estate President Alex Sifakis agreed to pay for the restoration.
• As of July 11 — after a series of obstacles, but also help from the community — the historic clock can once again tell time, light up at night and chime on the hour.

The Jacobs Jewelers clock has stood at the corner of Adams and Laura streets for almost a century. It’s 15 feet tall, weighing over 2 tons, with four faces in gold trim over a black base. Only 100 of its kind were made, and only a dozen remain. It is an icon of downtown Jacksonville.

When Tina Sauvage saw that it was broken, her heart broke a bit too. She was on an outing with her company, Jax Tours, when Sauvage noticed that the clock’s time was wrong. It was the latest malfunction. The lights had already gone dark, the chimes silent.

Sauvage said the clock was as a beacon of hope after the Great Fire of 1901, representing Jacksonville’s drive to rebuild itself better than before. To see it in disrepair, she said, was a sad sight. It didn’t match the culture of revitalization that downtown has tried to inspire.

So, Sauvage decided to fix the clock. She had never pursued a project like this before. She was setting off in the dark, not knowing what she didn’t know.

A journey of dead ends

Sauvage began by calling various clock repair companies, but they couldn’t help. The clock was too big, too delicate; it was too expensive to even take a look at.

Sauvage also hit dead ends trying to learn who owned the clock and adjacent Greenleaf & Crosby building, named for the jewelry store that commissioned the clock. She didn’t have contacts in the development world, and she couldn’t find the right person at City Hall.

Then, in a random conversation, Sauvage had her first breakthrough. She discovered that JWB Real Estate bought the Greenleaf & Crosby building in 2022. Sauvage’s sister and brother-in-law had worked with JWB President Alex Sifakis before. They gave her Sifakis’ contact information.

“Once I talked to Alex, everything changed,” Sauvage said. “He was the one who opened up all the doors. The darkness I was in just faded away.”

Sauvage explained her ambition to Sifakis, who agreed to pay for the repairs if Sauvage continued leading the project.

The breakthroughs kept coming. Sauvage learned from the Jacksonville History Center that the Verdin Company, an Ohio-based manufacturer, had worked on the Jacobs Jewelers clock in the past. They had the experience and willingness the other companies lacked, even as they were unsure that the clock could be fully restored, Sauvage said.

Then it turned out that JWB didn’t, in fact, own the clock. Jacobs Jewelers — Greenleaf & Crosby’s successor — had gifted it to the city in the 1990s. But, Sauvage said the city was happy to give her permission to repair the clock. After a labyrinthine journey, all the details were coming to light.

One last trial

The morning of the repair, July 11, Verdin field service technician Justin McVie calls Sauvage. Does she have the key for the clock?

“What key?” Sauvage says.

She had never considered they would need a key to access the clock’s interior. Suddenly, she’s back in that unknowing darkness. Sauvage calls City Hall, but they don’t know where the key could be. She calls the History Center, but it’s too early and they’re closed. She calls a friend who has the number of Jacksonville History Center CEO Alan Bliss, and then calls him personally. He doesn’t know the key’s whereabouts either. McVie calls other clock repair companies in the slim chance they can help.

Meanwhile, the scissor lift arrives at the clock with a dead battery. Sauvage flags down a contractor working on the Greenleaf & Crosby building — which is also being restored — for permission to plug the lift into an outlet inside. Once its charged, McVie ascends to fix the clock’s light.

They still don’t have access to the interior. It’s been nearly three hours filled with fruitless phone calls. Sauvage resolves to break the lock — but no locksmith can come on such short notice.

Except for one. The contractor who helped with the lift happens to know the owner of a locksmith company, who happens to have an employee 20 minutes away. But when the locksmith arrives, the problem continues to snowball: he can’t break the lock because there’s a security seal.

If only, Sauvage says, they could get in touch with Ryan Jensen. A City of Jacksonville employee, she had seen Jensen’s name on paperwork between Verdin and the City for previous clock repairs. She knew he could help locate the keys.

The locksmith turns to Sauvage.

“Oh, I know Ryan,” he says.

“Are you kidding me?” Sauvage says.

The locksmith connects her with Jensen. He doesn’t work in City Hall anymore — neither does the person that Jensen left the keys with — but knows where to look. Jensen enlists someone still in City Hall to go to the building’s basement. There, in a lock box, are the keys to the Jacobs Jewelers clock.

Now able to access the clock’s inner workings, McVie repairs its time-telling and musical mechanisms. Finally, the clock chimes for the first time in years. Sauvage cries. She’s struck with the emotion of the day and the historicity of the moment. The passersby on Adams and Laura streets stop to listen to the Jacobs Jewelers clock sing.

Sauvage thinks, “This is it.”

This is what she wanted: for everyone to admire the Jacobs Jewelers clock in all its glory.

The clock’s restoration, from the very beginning to the day of, is a story of hard-earned luck. Sauvage describes it as serendipity, as kismet, as a miracle, as repeatedly being in the right place at the right time with the right, generous people.

In the days since, Sauvage said she’s been overwhelmed by the community’s positive response to the repaired Jacobs Jewelers clock.

“I just did it because I love the clock and the history,” she said. “I had no idea it was going to be this big of an impact. I knew it was important, but I didn’t know so many people felt the same way I did.”