The Story of Phillips Highway Plaza

[acme54321]

Yep, it's a pain to get to the back of RCM, they should have put a service road around the whole thing. 

[Riverrat]

RCM, while nice, and serving a great need to that area...should win an award for being the most atrociously designed center in Jacksonville. It's just a cluster...

[PATSY/AUTUMN]

you got that right!

[Charles Hunter]

It was billed as a development where people could live and shop and got out to eat, without ever getting on the public streets.  Except there is a fence between the apartments and the shopping center.

[heatherlfdx]

I remember going into the Oshman's one of the first times I drove by myself in 1992. I had never seen a mall so empty nor an actual real live rave flyer. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I missed the rave. I got yelled when I returned home because that hotel was well known as a hotbed of illicit activity and Philips Hwy was a place to get murdered or kidnapped and prostituted per my mother.

[FSBA]

Yep, it's a pain to get to the back of RCM, they should have put a service road around the whole thing.

On the apartment side or in the retail area?

[Jaxson]

Philips Highway has become shorthand for prostitution for quite a while now.  All that I have to say is 'working' and 'Philips Highway' in the same sentence and I already know the scandalized and yet titillated reaction...  I know that, before Interstate 95 took hold, that Philips Highway saw better times and I hope that they will have a better day ahead...

[HisBuffPVB]

A tad of a correction, there is no $300 million subsidy in River City Market place any more than there was subsidy at St. Johns Town Center. For over 10 years, a Montgomery Alabama group tried to get RCM out of the ground and finally sold it to another group that did.

[mtraininjax]

Getting back to Phillips Mall, yes, it was the first of the dead malls. I remember going there in 1984 to take my learner's permit at the DMV. Back then the course in the parking lot was pretty easy, since the parking lot was so empty. I remember the discount book store at the time, with paperbacks, reminded me of the book store at the base of the Jax Landing, not sure if that one is still there or not, but the mall was very nice, but was what Regency is now, back then in the mid 80s.

[Jaxson]

I remember going to the internationally-themed food court there back in the day.

[thelakelander]

A tad of a correction, there is no $300 million subsidy in River City Market place any more than there was subsidy at St. Johns Town Center. For over 10 years, a Montgomery Alabama group tried to get RCM out of the ground and finally sold it to another group that did.

Sorry, History Buff, but where is there reference to a 300 million dollar subsidy for River City Market Place?

Fieldafm mentioned it earlier in this thread:

Regency is behind the 8 ball.  It could have repositioned itself as a lifestyle center drawing in a regional audience (specifically drawing from the South GA area), however over $300 million in public bond money later the River City Marketplace is up and running (and subsidized) drawing the kinds of tenants Regency could have attracted had it repositioned itself in the marketplace earlier.  The ironic thing is that the Dames Point helped Regency (and brought even more traffic it's way via 9A), but it certainly didn't help itself by keeping up with the market before RCP filled that niche instead.  Even more ironic is that Regency's neighbor (Toney Sleiman) recognized this about 12 years ago while General Growth kept their head in the sand trying to milk the cash cow instead of feeding it more corn.  I'm beginning to think that Regency may have lost it's opportunity as a major retail destination and would be best served by becoming an alternative to an office market a few miles up the road that has low vacancy rates amidst strong market demand.

Fieldafm is right. Public money was provided by the JEDC to pay for the construction of Airport Center Drive (between I-95 and US 17), relocation of utilities, construction contingency, property tax on the bonds and bond issuance.

http://www.coj.net/departments/finance/docs/treasury/investor-relations---treasury/etr-05a.aspx

[avonjax]

What I find annoying about RCM, and the smaller Oak Leaf Plantation, is the layout.  I prefer everything together than being spread out all over where you have to drive from place to place to avoid getting run  down in the parking lots.  Some malls in other states are built in a circular fashion several stories high and with escalators and elevators and underground parking.  Wish they would do that in Jax.

Thank You!  Terrible layout at RCM. YOU HAVE TO DRIVE to go from store to store. Very pedestrian unfriendly.

[HisBuffPVB]

Just a tad of a correction, there was no $300 million in bonds given to the River City Market Place, this center, like the St. Johns Town Center paid for its own infrastructure development.

[HisBuffPVB]

Fieldafm in April commented on @300 million subsidy, which did not exist. At the time , the thinking in the planning department of the city was to assist as much as possible short of subsidy with new development. Thus making the Duval share of Nocatee go through about five times as fast as it did in St. Johns, thus making the St. Johns developers create an entire series of roads all the way down to Belfort and over to Baymeadows to insure the the exisiting roads would still meet concurrency. Most of the subsidy granted over the past 20 years has been focused on the downtown. But people vote with their feet, go out to SJTC in the evening, you can see where people are going. Not sure that is good but it is actual.