What draws the Creative Class?

[tufsu1]

museums, live music venues, theatres, the symphony, smaller musical groups, Beaches Fine Arts, Art Walk, RAM, CoRK, etc.

for comparison, Orlando doesn't have seem to have as much....and while St. Pete and Sarasota do well, Tampa itself is pretty weak....now yes, South Florida has more...but they also have 500% more people.

even though Mr. Dare and I are often at odds, I think he would agree with me that we do Jax. is not devoid of culture.

[simms3]

Jax has a good creative class relative to FL for sure.  I may be under-educated here, but I can't think of any other neighborhood in FL as fully hipster-ized as Riverside.  Jax has so much potential to be a leader in the state and in the South in terms of attracting not only the Creative Class, but also young educated professionals in general, but leadership places too much emphasis on the new and bland clean slate offered in excess in Jax (exciting in leadership's eyes) and not enough emphasis on the city's old and potential-laden bones (more difficult, "its time has passed/has been" in leadership's eyes).

If Jax devoted as much time, money and energy into its core as it has/does in spurring new greenfield development, it would be a really exciting place by now.  Nashville is the best example for Jacksonville imho on what to do and how to do it right - very exciting place to be right now with as much new construction as many larger cities are experiencing, even tops Charlotte right now and is essentially another Austin under the radar.