Three men who played major roles in creating a hugely popular outdoor arts venue under the Fuller Warren bridge and launched a participatory project that involved creating 902 works of art by local artists will announce plans today for an art and technology competition next year that they believe will draw more than 1,000 entrants and a quarter-million visitors to downtown Jacksonville.

The new competition, which they are calling The Epoch Project, is modeled after ArtPrize, an arts competition that last August drew 1,582 artists from 36 countries and 42 states and attracted more than 200,000 visitors to downtown Grand Rapids, Mich.

The motivation for the project came when Bill Holsinger-Robinson, the executive director of ArtPrize, gave the keynote address to the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville’s annual arts awards luncheon last spring.

That inspired a similar plan by Wayne Wood and Doug Coleman, two of the leaders in creating the Riverside Arts Market, which draws thousands of visitors each Saturday from March to December; and by artist Dolf James, whose projects have included the group exhibit Imagination Squared and the CoRK Arts District, a rapidly growing collection of artist’s studios in old Riverside warehouses.

“We’ve taken an idea that has been successful in a small city in the fall in Michigan and moved it to the most beautiful time of year in one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Wood said.

Coleman said he has attended ArtPrize and found “an invigorated, vibrant, active fun place to be.”

Like ArtPrize, The Epoch Project will match entrants in the competition with downtown venues for an exhibition that will take place April 3-14, 2013.

Like ArtPrize, The Epoch Project will then select prize winners by public voting. Wood said there will be $500,000 in cash prizes, with $100,000 going to the overall winner and the rest of the money being split proportionally among entrants based on vote totals. ArtPrize gives $250,000 for first place and distributes another $250,000 to about 10 runners-up.