Show me the money

[thelakelander]

If their home is a few blocks away, then they are obviously categorized as a downtown resident, as well.  The residents want their staples within easy walking, transit, or yes even driving distance with parking.

Which is why if anything is seriously invested into on a public level, it should be a starter fixed transit system.  It doesn't need to stretch into the burbs immediately but it should definitely tie downtown in with the surrounding neighborhoods.  For example, invest $30 million in a three mile line that ties Springfield/Shands, downtown, and Riverside/Five Points together.  Link San Marco Square to the mix via a short skyway extension to Atlantic, and then you immediately have an urban environment where all the expected staples of urban living are available.  In addition, like a new suburban highway, fixed transit stimulates infill development.  Thus, you make areas like Brooklyn, Lavilla, Sugar Hill, and the Cathedral District viable locations for market rate projects like 220 Riverside and Riverside Park.  All of this movement between surrounding districts, leads to more growth in the heart of downtown.  You'll get more out of that $30 million investment than dropping $100 million on a new convention center or gimmick like an aquarium.

[kells904]

Lake, let's say we could bend the rules of the Duval County Matrix a little bit, and downtown wasn't as forbidding...Is there any secenario in which we could round up some of the colleges sitting in office parks and centralize them somewhere in the core?  I noticed that, in VA Beach, Univ. of Phoenix, Strayer, and the Art Institute were all on top of each other in the same area.  We've got tons of schools like this scattered all over town, and that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 

[thelakelander]

Sure, but you'd probably have to be like Charlotte (with Johnson & Wales) and pay them to come to a certain location.  As the thread title suggest, Charlotte and North Carolina showed Johnson & Wales the money to get them to close their campuses in Norfolk and Charleston and relocate to a new $82 million campus in Uptown Charlotte, back in 2002.  In that case, they enticed the school with $10 million from the State of North Carolina, reduced land, tax breaks, and other incentives.  Now the culinary school has 2,500 students living in Uptown Charlotte.  Would Jax be willing to toss that type of cash to bring more education facilities downtown? 

We didn't do it with Florida Coastal back in 2004.  For example, when Florida Coastal wanted to be downtown a few years ago, we should have made that happen.  Instead, the parking situation led them to Baymeadows, so that ship has now passed.  Personally, I think if we want college investment in downtown and the urban core, JU, FSCJ, and EWC are our best short term opportunities.  In addition, something like this is best tackled on an individual basis as the opportunity presents itself.