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Big changes are coming to the Kress Building in downtown Lakeland, on the inside.
The majestic, Renaissance Revival-style building has been vacant since August 2022, when the Explorations V Children’s Museum closed its doors and relocated to Bonnet Springs Park.
No longer.
JB Realty Partners purchased the 100-year-old building at 109 N. Kentucky Ave. last month for $2.8 million.
The company promptly started demolition and renovation of its 26,240-square-foot interior.
A dumpster outside the Kress Building holds remains of a faux mezzanine made of iron. Once removed, the ceiling inside will be 25 feet tall. | Cindy Glover, LkldNow 
Windows are open in the Kress Building as renovation work begins. | Cindy Glover, LkldNow 
The sidewalk is closed outside the Kress Building on Kentucky Avenue. | Cindy Glover, LkldNow
Will the exterior change? The sidewalk and five parking spaces out front are surrounded now by black-screened, chain-link fencing. Behind the barricades, workers in yellow hardhats have been filling two large dumpsters with the remains of a faux mezzanine floor made of iron.
They’re dismantling the mezzanine to restore 25-foot ceilings, according to Julie Townsend, director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority.
She said the owners are entitled to use all five spaces outside. When the heavy demolition phase concludes, in about 90 to 120 days, they might only need to block off three.
Shawn Jones, managing partner of JB Realty, said in an email that the exterior of the building will not change.
The project is expected to take about a year, wrapping up in the first or second quarter of 2026.
What will it be? The building — which has been a five-and-dime store, a county courthouse and a children’s museum — is being renovated as a bigger office for Kimley-Horn, a planning, engineering and design consulting firm, according to permitting documents filed with the city.
Kimley-Horn has a Lakeland office one block away in another historic building. It has outgrown that space, at 109 S. Kentucky Ave., behind Crews Bank & Trust in the former Nathan’s Men’s Store. That building also was renovated by JB Realty Partners.
What was the previous plan? Tampa-based Gaspar Properties purchased the Kress Building for $2.5 million in 2022 with plans to turn the ground floor into a sophisticated event space.
It would have had a grand staircase, cocktail lounge and separate bride and groom suites on the second floor, and offices on the third floor. Those plans fell through.
It once had jail cells: The three-story building was one of about a hundred nationwide built by S.H. Kress & Co. as a five-and-dime department store, each with a unique design.
The department store, built during the Roaring Twenties, sold everything from off-the-rack suits to penny candy, until about 1978, when it closed its doors.
The Kress Building in downtown Lakeland was built in 1925 and catered to middle-class Americans. | Lakeland Economic Development Council 
In this 1930s postcard, Munn Park is visible to the left and a drugstore and the Kress Department Store to the right. | Lakeland Postcard Collection, Lakeland Public Library 
The Kress building in 1956. | Lakeland Public Library 
The Kress Building at 109 N. Kentucky Ave. opened in 1925 as one of the S. H. Kress Company’s chain of five-and-dime stores. | Lakeland Public Library 
Employees of the Kress and Co. Department Store in Lakeland, Florida pose in the store for a group photograph on Christmas Eve, 1929. | Lakeland Public Library 
Cigars and novelties are shown on the ground floor sales level of the S.H. Kress Building at 109 N. Kentucky Ave. | Hinkley Studios Photography Collection, Lakeland Public Library 
Upper level sales floor of the S.H. Kress Building at 109 N. Kentucky Ave., pictured in 1939. Women’s shoes, jewelry and perfumes can be seen in the front cases. | Hinkley Studios Photography Collection, Lakeland Public Library
Polk County purchased it in 1983 for $340,000 and turned it into a satellite courthouse, with two jail cells in the basement.
The building was subsequently purchased by the Explorations V Children’s Museum (now the Florida Children’s Museum) in 1998.
The Kress Building was home to the Explorations V Children’s Museum from 1991 until 2022, when it moved to Bonnet Springs Park. This picture is from 1995. | Lakeland Downtown Development Authority, Lakeland Public Library 
In a 1991 photo, children climb and play on a huge pile of snow trucked in for Lakeland’s annual Snow Fest. The Kress Building can be seen in the background. | Lakeland Downtown Development Authority, Lakeland Public Library
Because of its historical significance, the Kress Building is qualified to receive a 20% Federal Investment Tax Credit for significant renovations and restorations.
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I’m glad the building will retain the historic look. I always like the exterior. I hope the interior keeps the look also.
We shopped that building in the 1950’s for school clothes. I was born in the Florida area 1943. I also hope that the building aesthetics, both inside and out, remain the same within reason. People lose so much in all the rampant growth and tear downs. We lose a sense of continuity in our lives and surroundings.