Durkeeville 100 year old house in danger of demolition

[Kaiser Soze]

^Something needs to be done, but I'm not sure we want the city to start playing land owner.

Well, the City took over most of the homes in LaVilla and we see what happened there. Of the hundreds of homes abutting downtown only five remain standing.  This is going to take a fresh new approach and it begins with showing the community and city leadership the value of Durkeville all over again.

What would you recommend?  Slapping a historic overlay over the area and making it that much more expensive to repair your home?  Not arguing with you but its too easy to say "take a fresh look." 

[sheclown]

I don't think it needs to be one historic district after another (adding a burden to the city and the neighborhood which may not want it).    How about if someone wants to demolish a house (no matter where it is located) which is more than 50 years old, historic planning department has to sign off on it.  That's all. 

And we make sure the city allocates the personnel to do this.  A site visit, a quick look at the file, a report to HPC if appropriate.

[sheclown]

6th st

That black stuff is shingle like material that used to be used to cover exteriors.  There is wood siding below it.

[sheclown]

The shingle siding is hiding a real house underneath

[sheclown]

Interesting trim around the door.

[Cheshire Cat]

^Something needs to be done, but I'm not sure we want the city to start playing land owner.

Well, the City took over most of the homes in LaVilla and we see what happened there. Of the hundreds of homes abutting downtown only five remain standing.  This is going to take a fresh new approach and it begins with showing the community and city leadership the value of Durkeville all over again.

What would you recommend?  Slapping a historic overlay over the area and making it that much more expensive to repair your home?  Not arguing with you but its too easy to say "take a fresh look." 

Fresh look as in rethink the situation and how it should be handled.  Taking that tact often creates new ideas about how to deal with a problem.  I know this because I took a fresh look at the core of Downtown Lake Worth many years ago and it resulted in the creation of a Main Street district, some grants and revitalization of many historic structures, which I oversaw and directed.  I am well aware of what is "easy" to say and even more aware of what it takes to "create change".  That is what I mean by fresh look. 

[iloveionia]

one by one the houses fall, just like dominos.  very sad.  Savannah and Charleston, and many other communites understand the value of a complete neighborhood.  The more houses go down the less the remaining are worth, with regard to dollar value, since the vacant lots are not being used to build new historic style homes.  The integrity is lost.  All of the historic areas need to have protection, and justification.  Demo as a last resort.  If someone can't afford the repairs, adding fines and liens will not help.  There needs to be full, open communication, so there are no surprises to the neighborhood.  Who is really behind all of these?  Why the rush?  What is the true cost of demo (significant damage to the area, no chance of return to glory) such as Florida Ave (A. Phillip Randolph)  You can't revive an area that is totally gone.  Have they not learned from Lavilla?

+1
We need to save what we have.

[sheclown]

Myrtle Avenue house is too far into the system to stop.  It will be demolished.  Historic planners tried to have it come up at tonight's hpc, but it is too late.

[sheclown]

In RAP's video of Wayne Woods, he tells us that demolishing a structure and trucking the debris to the landfill  wipes out the positive effects of a neighborhood's recycling efforts for a whole year.

Think about that next time you crush your soda can and dump it in the blue box.

Jacksonville, get serious about saving historic structures, for the context and what each structure tells us about the people who walked this earth before us, for the greatly superior building components that will never be replicated in any lifetime, and for the impact that casually tossing away that which could be repaired has on our environment.

[Noone]

^Gloria, You have been awesome with taking pics of the demos. I drove around MLK parkway the other day and the building stock that has been leveled has to be in the 100's if not close to a 1000 structures. Not picking on you but this is right next to Springfield. What is your best guesstimate on what has been leveled for this road project? Do you happen to have any pics of the before and after?

[sheclown]

Those are very good questions.  I don't.  Perhaps someone here has.

[thelakelander]

^The neighborhoods of Longbranch and Phoenix have been hit hard. First, with the construction of the 20th Street/Haines Street Expressway, which severed both communities from Kooker Park.  Now, with the interchange project, they've taken another hit.



In this 1920s plat map, you can see Kooker Park in the upper right corner. Kooker Avenue, eventually became Haines Street, which eventually became the Haines Street Expressway (now MLK Parkway), effectively cutting the community park off from the community it was platted to serve.  This would be like turning Riverside Avenue into an expressway and killing access between Memorial Park and Five Points. The 20th Street Expressway was built somewhere between Freeman and Jennings Street. Now with the current project, most of everything between 21st Street and Bishop (on the map above) has been leveled.  Below is the intersection of Bishop (18th) and Gardner (Franklin) from last fall.  This one little house is all that remains on that side of the street.



Below, an aerial from of these blocks being eliminated for the 20th Street Expressway in the 1960s.  The red circle is the location of the current $30 million interchange project.



Here's the new interchange plan:



Kooker has now been turned into the type of park that people drive to in the Southside.  Too bad, the type of neighborhood isn't like Mandarin, Bartram Park or Julington Creek where people drive everywhere anyway. At the very least, there should have been an effort to mitigate the negative side of highway construction like this through a more context sensitive or complete streets design process.  Unfortunately, I believe the planning for this project happened prior to this movement, so those neighborhoods will end up with their main street (21st Street) being bordered with a suburban interchange full of FDOT retention ponds.  This will suck for the neighborhood kids trying to access that park from the neighborhoods north and west of Kooker Park.

Anyway, this interchange project to improve port accessibility and the safety of that sharp curve has been in the works for years.  It's too late to stop or alter these types of projects when you start noticing all of the houses being torn down at the same time.  The time for that was over a decade ago.

[Debbie Thompson]

By the time they get around to projects in Jax, using plans from 10-15 years ago, neighborhood dynamics have changed.  But they don't update the plans.  Same thing happened when they (finally!) improved Main Street in Springfield.

But back to the Myrtle Avenue and 5th Street house.  I think it's 1504 Myrtle.  There is something wrong with a system when you hear "yes the house is still STANDING but it's gone too far in the system, so now it has to come down."  If an historic home is still STANDING there should be a way to stop the demo.

[sheclown]

They are pulling off the aluminum siding

[sheclown]

"my Grandma's house"