Boomtown, Main Street and the Downtown Springfield Axis

[thelakelander]

I assume there are still brownsfield funds available for the cleanup.

Van Horne had to do the same thing at 9th and Main.

There should be brownfield funds available, as well as grant money available because the building is located in both an Empowerment and Enterprise zone.  As a matter of fact, there's money available for nearly any type of project in Springfield.  They key is just knowing where to get it.

[77danj7]

Man...A jamba juice in springfield would be amazing...They have some amazing, healthy stuff!

[walter]

Although it would be nice if robert got on the ball

ill call him and see whats up.

 wink wink, nudge nudge know what I mean?  

thats pretty funny Stephen.

[downtownparks]

I know that Van Winkel has been totally unsure whether or not there actually was as recently as 6 months ago, and had not commissioned the environmental to ascertain the truth.

The only person I have heard that has any uncertainty with that was Van Winkle. I have talked with people from DEP, Duval County Health Dept, and The Solid Waste Div (they deal with clean ups) They all admit, a large amount of soil was excavated when the hotel was built, but that the site is still contaminated. It is no longer active contamination, meaning its no longer being activly polluted, but there is a large blob of oil contamination still there, and migrating further downhill.

Its pretty deep down, I believe at the bedrock level, but it needs to at the very least be isolated before anyone will mark it off as having been dealt with.

[downtownparks]

Respess Grimes building?

I understand there are testing wells, but I can not attest to that, as I have not seen them.

[downtownparks]

Which building is that?

The issue with the Park View site is it was the location of a Coal Gasification Plant for the better park of 70 years. (1870's-1940's) Its a know problem site to all of the local agencies, and Jacksonville has already started pricing the clean up of the creek and park,(around 12 mill, last I heard) the problem is, they dont want to do it without addressing the source site first.

[thelakelander]

Stephen did you check up on the building getting new storefronts near 5th & Main?

[thelakelander]

When do you anticipate having that space up and running?

[jbm32206]

I've always heard, through sources in the neighborhood that the grounds were contaminated. Interesting, and thanks for your input, Stephen....it would be great to see this place developed! It's an ideal location and there's so many options that could and should be explored for it.

[Lunican]

So the contamination is just an urban legend?

[thelakelander]

I'm sure there's two sides to the story, so I'm hoping this thread won't turn out to be a slugfest.  Springfield has been good to me and several others. I don't know the real story behind the Springfield fallout (and I don't really want to know), but I believe the neighborhood has turned the corner.  There are a lot of good things in the works right now.  At Thursday's SAMBA meeting, Mack mentioned that the guys at Moon River Pizza are close to opening in the old Main Street Bakery space.  Three Layers is doing great business, the Main Street project is progressing well and Cesery's Lofts on Main should be getting underway soon.  Ian, Joey, Dan and Tony are also teaming together to pull of a major music festival on Main Street this August.  If successful, that event should bring even more visibility to the potential that Main Street has to become a vibrant urban commercial district once again.

With your last post, I assume Springfield is not in Boomtown's future.  So what's your next move?  Are you out of the restaurant business or do you have another neighborhood/commercial strip that you're targeting?

[Matt]

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,356.0.html

agreed...excellent planning...

at least it gives the homeless a nice quiet place to sleep...

[thelakelander]

Well, hopefully another pizza place and a music festival are all that main street needs, Lake.

That would be awesome, although it took more than that in Five Points.

On the other hand, Maxx's Pizza Factory, the several home tours, the Springfield Souk, and three functioning coffeehouses werent enough the first time.  The reality is that Main Street needs a whole lot more than that, just as we did in Five Points, and as detailed in the earlier parts of this thread.  Neighborhoods need more than just positivity.  They need action in a series of steps.  Steps which have yet to be taken in the neighborhood.

I only listed a few positive things happening in the community.  However, there are certainly more things going on, so its debatable to state that the steps that need to be made aren't in the process of happening.  Based on the revitalization of similar neighborhoods in other cities, I'd say Springfield has past the point of no return.  This does not mean there aren't still obstacles and issues to address (ex. leasing rates on Main, etc.), but its not as bad as you made it out to seem in the posts above.

I will probably shift career path totally again.  Im in my 40s now, and I want to do something much larger than what I have attempted before.   Jacksonville is a city that wallows in unrealized potential, there is just so much that NEEDS to be done.

No doubt, there are several issues that need to be addressed for us to see Jacksonville meet its potential.  I'm sure whatever you attempt to focus on can help in finding a solution to one of these many issues.

I havent decided what I will do vis a vis Main Street.  Im pretty much at a moment of great indecision.

Between the two boards, this one and metjax.com  We have done a pretty brilliant job of documenting the real life issues of small businesses in an urban core.  Its something that I wish we had even been able to do in Five Points.

So many of the details are opaque to people standing on the outside.  So many reasons why a place opens or closes, or what motivates and sustains any private enterprise.

For downtown and Springfield, each of these turning points has been covered and discussed, and now there is an accurate record of predictions and speculations.

Its one of the reasons I am posting.

For example.  Remember this thread and the set of predictions during this time of indecisions and changes to the business landscape?
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,356.0.html


and here we are 9 months later, and this was exactly the outcome.

In fact, it led to this storyline on our site: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,2006.0.html

With a "government center" idea in place by the city, its illogical on our part to believe that things can completely turn around for Hemming in a series of nine months.  However, many of the ideas we pushed since the creation of Metro Jacksonville and MetJax have been incorporated into the City's Action Plan.  If we had kept our mouths shut, there's a strong possibility that downtown would be worse off today.

With the recession and the fragility of the Main Street Anchors in Springfield, much much more is going to have to happen over there. In order for it to succeed.  The Landlord Pirates were one major obstacle, the seriously self destructive internal politics of the neighborhood are the next ones that will have to be handled if anything is going to succeed over there long term.

I believe two things need to happen in Springfield:

a.) a higher priority of urban oriented multifamily housing.  A vibrant urban district can't live with expensive single family homes only.

b.) convince Main Street land/building owners to reduce rates to get the buildings filled with local establishments, as opposed to chasing chains like Publix and Starbucks.  

If the issues above can be addressed, I believe a lot of the problems will come down like a game of dominos.

[thelakelander]

This time around there are already town centers with the appropriate design and layout to compete with the recession flimsy Suburbs located between the population centers and Springfield....except for the Northside, which the neighborhood has made quite clear is not its preferred customer base.

The key is the neighborhood does not control what ultimately happens on Main.  If this was the case, a lot of the businesses there today would be elsewhere.  Main's customer base is more dependent on the amount of traffic using the road and lease rates.  The economy should help Springfield by lowering the lease rates to more affordable conditions.

Springfield's current plan is riding on the belief that all of the alternative kids are getting priced out of Riverside and are naturally being driven to the 'cheaper' rents of the neighborhood.  They see the success of places like the Pearl and Shantytown and think they can enlarge that market.

But the successes of those two businesses are totally reliant on the enormous personal popularity and longtime networking of the owners.  Christy and Ian are the reasons those places work, and only because Ian is willing to make less doing something he likes to do.

Sitting on the SAMBA board, I don't think the neighborhood has a plan in place either way.  Main's success will be determined by the ability of the area to pull in additional business owners like Ian and Christy, as well as land owners like Hionedes offering the properties at cheaper rates.  There's no other strip in town with the large amount of bones already in place like Main.

However, the relative cheapness of the rents in Springfield is about to experience a flip flop as the landlords in Five Points are forced to drop their prices in order to retain tenants, removing the only incentive that Springfield has.

I think we'll see that it won't be an either or situation.  There's a market for all of our urban commercial districts to come back to life.  Just take a look at Murray Hill, that strip is filling out nicely and its not at the expense of Five Points, Avondale or San Marco. 

Finally, as we discussed in our meeting the other night, the neighborhood's population will support about 20 restaurants.  There are about 20 restaurants now, so Springfields only real option is trading out new restuarants for old ones.  Either that or relying on business from outside of the neighborhood.

This must have been when I left the meeting for an hour or so.  If I was there I would have mentioned that Main has the ability to pull "outsiders" into the area.  In addition, there's the potential to draw from downtown's employment base, FCCJ, Shands and Swisher.  For example, Jim Brown's BBQ attracts customers who live in neighborhoods outside of Springfield (I know because I'm one of those customers).  The same goes for Carl's.  If it has a good business model and product, it should be able to become a destination on its own.

Meanwhile, the politics of interpersonal destruction that define Springfield's harder edge is the same that stunted Five Points development.  

When we started out in Five Points we already had a connected business base of about 20-25 establishments.

Springfield only has four.

I could go further into detail, but this is what I am talking about.

My advice would be to avoid neighborhood politics and stick to the business part of things.  Know you customer base, know your zoning regulations, serve a good product and collect the cash.  That's what they do in the chicken district and Popeye's, KFC and the Chicken Koop are all making out quite well.

[thelakelander]

Its smart to appeal to the dominant population of the local market.  Those places know their market and serve them well.  There's no reason they can't be a part of a vibrant Main Street scene.  The more diverse, the better, imo.