Red Cross name, logo to come off historic Jacksonville Beach lifeguard station

JACKSONVILLE BEACH — The historic Jacksonville Beach Lifeguard station will be donated to the city of Jacksonville Beach, and its familiar American Red Cross logos will be removed.

That agreement was approved during a City Council meeting Monday and comes after months of back and forth between the city and the Volunteer Life Savings Corps, which had long used the building for lifeguard services.

Members of the Volunteer Life Saving Corps, which dates back to 1912, were locked out of the American Red Cross station last year and taken off duty at the beach, stoking heated emotions throughout the Beaches communities and beyond.

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Under the agreement, the closing is to take place on or before March 31, 2023. Within 30 days of that, the Red Cross logos will be removed. The city shall no longer refer to the building using the American Red Cross name, but the new name has not been finalized at this time.

“We plan to continue to use the building for our life-saving services through Jacksonville Beach Ocean Rescue and ultimately whenever we resolve things with the volunteer life-saving corps, hopefully in partnership," Jacksonville Beach Mayor Chris Hoffman said.

Why the dispute between the city and volunteer guards?

The volunteer guards have a storied tradition in Jacksonville Beach, with multiple generations of guards wearing their old-fashioned one-piece blue suits, putting in free labor to watch over beachgoers.

But the city has said it had no choice but to bar them from the station: The U.S. Department of Labor ruled that the city had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage and overtime laws for allowing paid city lifeguards to volunteer without pay.

For many years, volunteer guards, wearing old-fashioned blue suits, had worked for free on Sundays and holidays during beach season. Paid Jacksonville Beach Ocean Rescue members, some of whom overlapped with the volunteer guards, worked the other six days of the week, though often took on free shifts as well.

After the Department of Labor ruling, the city paid about $250,000 in back wages to Ocean Rescue lifeguards who had worked volunteer days as corps members.

That led to the decision to end the volunteer lifeguarding tradition, putting paid guards on duty seven days a week.

What about the historic lifeguard tower?

The Red Cross tower, built in 1947, is on the National Register of Historic Places. The tower was long owned by the American Red Cross, sitting on land deeded to the organization by the city. The Red Cross and the volunteer lifeguard corps were partners in Jacksonville from 1914 to 2015, until the corps became its own organization.

This matters, the city says, because in the original deed, the city gifted the property to the Red Cross on the condition it was to be returned once the organization stopped using the facility.

“The VLSC and the city of Jacksonville Beach were certainly still operating life-saving services out of the building but the American Red Cross was not," Hoffman said. "So we worked with the America Red Cross, we filed a quit claim and then we worked on this settlement together."

According to the agreement, the Red Cross will donate the building to the city to be used for Ocean Rescue, lifeguarding services and related water-safety training activities. All Red Cross logos will be removed and the city must build a memorial designating it as an historical site. The city must continue to negotiate with the volunteer life-saving corps.

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The city of Jacksonville Beach has been in negotiations with the corps since 2021 when the U.S. Department of Labor fined the city for allowing Ocean Rescue lifeguards to volunteer without pay. The investigation began after a former Life Saving Corps volunteer and Ocean Rescue employee filed a lawsuit against the city over the practice of unpaid work.

Could volunteer guards return to duty once more?

The volunteer corps later filed a lawsuit against the city, saying it had breached the contract by locking them out of the station. The lawsuit is seeking damages and declaratory relief for an amount in excess of $30,000.

That lawsuit is still open, and volunteer guards are still hoping to return to duty at the station, a landmark oceanfront structure off Beach Boulevard that's topped by a five-story tower called the "peg," where lifeguards are posted to scan the beach in either direction.

For volunteer guards, it's been a social hub, a clubhouse and — with dormitories available to active and retired guards — a home away from home.

Charles Bond, past president of the corps, issued a statement about the facility’s donation, saying in part:

"The city of Jacksonville Beach and the American Red Cross reached an agreement. Under that agreement, the city is required to work with the VLSC in good faith to allow the VLSC to continue using the station for volunteer lifeguarding services, water safety training and other VLSC activities. The VLSC has scheduled an upcoming mediation with the city in hopes of resolving our use of the station and our ongoing litigation. At this time, we remain hopeful that the city will work with us in good faith to resolve this matter and allow us to continue our community service and volunteer lifeguarding services from the station as we’ve been doing for 100 years."

Mediation is scheduled for March 6.

Times-Union reporter Matt Soergel contributed to this report

This story first appeared on First Coast News.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Beach's historic lifeguard tower will lose Red Cross name