Bay Street Station and Streetcars coming downtown?

[Metro Jacksonville]

Bay Street Station and Streetcars coming downtown?



Is Downtown ready for national chain retailers, hotels, a movie theater, and streetcars?  The local development team for the proposed Bay Street Station development believes so.  Today, Metro Jacksonville presents the conceptual renderings for what could become Downtown's largest transit oriented development.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/739

[jeh1980]

Great article! I hope that we will start construction on it real soon .

[Beloki]

Great article. I think this is what we need downtown; greater density in commercial and residential usage of available space.

[hanjin1]

This would be awesome to finally see something in that abandoned Mars like terrain and also perhaps seeing a streetcar. Hopefully it is a real vintage streetcar and not one of those new Epcot style monorails. But I will believe this when I see it. There has been too much talking and not much walking with development in downtown.

[77danj7]

wow...please tell me this has a shot at happening. Please!

[reednavy]

Ock will say something about the street cars for sure!

[Jason]

Building  Uses:

Lobby/Vertical Circulation - 60,518 square feet

Full Service Hotel - 233,168 square feet (15 story/180' tower)

Limited Service Hotel - 92,910 square feet (16 story/190' tower)

Health Club - 86,648 square feet

Parking - 181,819 square feet

Retail - 115,200 square feet

Office - 229,130 square feet (11 story/170' tower)

Theatres / Gaming - 134,970 square feet

The proposed building uses are awesome.  The only thing I'm curious about is the missing residential component.  I suppose that is due to the poor market conditions.

Once the market pickes back up, the parking lots on the north side of Bay Street are ideal for new highrise residential towers with ground level mixed uses similar to the ones being built in Charlotte and Nashville.

[Steve]

I wonder if this project (or at least the full service hotel portion) is contincent on the convention center staying where it is.

[heights unknown]

If this goes as planned, it will definitely spur additional development in the "in close" Brooklyn and nearby Lavilla areas and the "Mars Type Landscape" surrounding as someone defined it; look for hotels, and possibly office towers to shoot up around this area, possibly a second downtown.

Heights Unknown

[RiversideGator]

This looks great.  I do wonder whether the proposed streetcar will compete with rather than complement the skyway.  If it does compete, who would choose to ride the skyway over a streetcar? 

[thelakelander]

If the streetcar was a part of a line that stretched into Springfield and Five Points it would then complement the Skyway.  Although there is some duplication of the Skyway's Bay Street line (really its just the Jefferson Street station), the Skyway still could serve as the transit system to FCCJ, Hemming Plaza, the Southbank and possibly Riverside Avenue (north of I-95)

[Matt]

*stares at screen, mouth agape*
this...this looks like the perfect development....oh...my....i may cry......oh please let this happen....if it does...God be praised....just what the city needs....cant speak in real sentences.....can only use fragments.....oops...now im lost for words.....

[thebrokenforum]

This is exciting. It would be refreshing for the city as a whole to see this project get started. And why stop there? If you build it, they will come...as long as they feel safe in coming.

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http://thebrokenforum.wordpress.com/

[Matt]

i hope this is the end of an era, which we can look back on and call the dark ages of downtown.

[Matt]

wow this is making me giddy
the design is great, and look at that radio tower thing on the hotel.
classic and awesome...whatever it is...