Florida Blue says Jacksonville not ready

[thelakelander]

I remember Rick Mullaney wanting to establish a medical district in the urban core, when he unsuccessfully ran for mayor a few years back.  What Florida Blue has decided to build in Orlando would have been a nice anchor in said medical district.

Why Florida Blue's new innovation center is in Orlando and not Jacksonville

When plans for the Florida Blue Innovation Center in Orlando were announced last week, an obvious question was raised: Why not Jacksonville? Because Jacksonville isn't ready for a facility like the one planned, a Florida Blue executive said.

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2013/10/28/why-florida-blues-new-innovation.html

[mbwright]

Seems pretty silly, since there is lots of space at the Deerwood campus for something like this.

[thelakelander]

When they mention not ready, they aren't referring to land availability.

[Tacachale]

Orlando has the UCF medical school to manage this, Jacksonville has no medical school besides the UF branch. And they have people in place to coordinate the planning. Those are the things that make Jacksonville "not ready".

[fieldafm]

Seems pretty silly, since there is lots of space at the Deerwood campus for something like this.

You should visit the Lake Nona facility in Orlando.  That's the type of collaberative research campus that Rick Mullaney talked about when he ran for mayor.  That was his vision.  Mayor Brown's vision was to have an NBA team and a Winn Dixie downtown.

That's what Renee Finley (who btw, worked on the Mayor's team as the director of public-private partnerships) means when she says that Jax isnt ready for this yet.  She's right.

Always thought that Radcliffeville in Charleston (USC's medical school is located in that neighborhood) would be what Springfield could look like if the 8th Street corridor was filled with medical research facilities.

[tufsu1]

Note that the end of the article mentions the Healthbox incubator Florida Blue is partnering on.  This 16-week program is taking place at CoWork Jax in downtown, and fits with the entrepenurial/creative spirit envisioned by One Spark.   

[thelakelander]

the Lake Nona facility in Orlando.  That's the type of collaberative research campus that Rick Mullaney talked about when he ran for mayor.  That was his vision.  Mayor Brown's vision was to have an NBA team and a Winn Dixie downtown.

That's what Renee Finley (who btw, worked on the Mayor's team as the director of public-private partnerships) means when she says that Jax isnt ready for this yet.  She's right.

Lake Nona is roughly a 40 minute drive from my parent's house.  I have a few images from September but I haven't gotten around to making a story out of them.  Here are a couple for those who aren't familiar with Lake Nona.  I wish it were a bit more walkable but the concept of clustering medical related facilities that can feed off each other is a great idea.  This cluster will feed supporting residential and commercial development in the years to come.

[pierre]

Great shots above.

A quote in the JBJ article jumps out at me.

In addition to its central location and the bevy of direct flights at Orlando International Airport, Orlando is years ahead of Jacksonville's efforts to bring together its health care sector, despite the First Coast presence of major players like Mayo Clinic, the University of Florida and of course, Jacksonville-headquartered Florida Blue.

The presence of the Mayo Clinic and UF Shands is nice. But they are over 20 miles apart.

[thelakelander]

Mullaney's desire was to build around UF Health and the new VA Clinic. Basically what Field described above.

[JeffreyS]

So it was all merit based not any Corprate welfare tipping the scales?

[CityLife]

UCF and FIU should have never even been given med schools a few years ago, as there wasn't much need from a demand perspective. They were complete pork projects pushed for heavily by their local lobbists and legislators. In the same way that Orlando was able to get UCF a med school, they were also able to recruit a pretty ridiculous amount of medical research and services to the Lake Nona Medical Campus. Like Field said, its impressive. With the amount of research going on there, and the creation of the Florida High Tech Corridor from Central Florida to Tampa, we're so far behind, I'm not sure there is a way to compete. Not having a research university makes it even harder.

What Jacksonville/North Florida needs to do is find an economic development niche that isn't already being filled, create a long term strategy, and go all in like Orlando did with the Medical City idea. Military research related to the Navy could be one, creating an entrepeneurial haven for creative, artistic millenials is another, becoming even more of a haven for financial services operations globally could be one, taking the port/logistics/manufacturing to the next level could be one. I don't know what the answers are, but I do know that we need a comprehensive economic development strategy that all local legislators, lobbyists, and officials attempt to implement...and it also needs to be something that transcends terms of politicians. In other words...a mediocre mayor or council shouldn't be able to stop it from happening. To do that, it could be put in the Comp Plan with objective goals and intent.

[simms3]

Jax does seem impossibly far behind Orlando, and as has been pointed out, hasn't been aggressive at lobbying for itself to have certain things.  Orlando's been known as the tech center and research center of FL ever since I've been reading descriptions of the FL cities in real estate and economic magazines since the 90s.  They also have a research university and they are the squeaky wheel.

Infrastructure in place
Research university
Political will

Orlando's easily the 2nd most "important" city in FL from a legislative and economic development perspective, after Miami of course.

I said all of this ~1-2 years ago and got hushed by people saying "but we have Mayo and UF" bla bla bla.  Jax doesn't really have anything and it's all spread out, as has also been mentioned.

Thread I started back in May that is totally relevant:

"Life Science & Biotech Clusters"
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=18514.0

This thread from 2010 is even better:

"Is Jacksonville Ready for an Urban Medical District"
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2010-sep-is-jacksonville-ready-for-an-urban-medical-district

This thread I started in 2012 also might be relevant:

"Less Than 20% of Young Adults in Jacksonville Have 4-Year Degress"
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=14998.0

As is this thread from 2009:

"Peyton's Struggles: FSU Medical School"
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jan-peytons-struggles-fsu-medical-school


The list goes on.  My company is under contract on over $300M of lab/life sciences office space right now.  I have some fascinating OMs on lab space in Cambridge, MA, which is equivalent to the Silicon Valley of biotech/life sciences research.  I can also share some recent photos of Mission Bay here in SF at some point when I have time - the W Coast version of Cambridge, lots of stuff going up, all basically driven by UCSF which has the #4 medical research university behind Harvard, Stanford (also major SF presence), and Johns Hopkins.

You can basically go down the list of both Top-Ranked Medical Research Universities and Top-Ranked Engineering schools (especially in Bio-engineering), and deduct which cities are seeing massive amounts of research, infrastructure, and attraction to smart people.

Top Medical Research Universities
1. Boston - Harvard
2. Bay Area - Stanford
3. Baltimore/DC - Johns Hopkins
4. Bay Area - UCSF
5. Philadelphia - Penn
6. St. Louis - Wash U
7. NYC - Yale
8. NYC - Columbia
9. Raleigh-Durham - Duke
10. Chicago - Chicago (my gfather attended med school here)
11. Detroit - Michigan
12. Seattle - U Dub
13. LA - UCLA
14. Nashville - Vanderbilt
15. San Diego - UCSD
16. NYC - Cornell
17. Pittsburgh - Pitt
18. Houston - Baylor
19. NYC - Mt. Sinai
20. Chicago - Northwestern
21. NYC - NYU
22. Atlanta - Emory
23. Raleigh-Durham - Chapel Hill
24. Dallas - UT SW Medical Center (UT Dallas?)
25. Cleveland - Case Western

Top Overall Engineering Programs
1. Boston - MIT
2. Bay Area - Stanford
3. Bay Area - Berkeley
4. LA - Cal Tech
5. Atlanta - Georgia Tech
6. Pittsburgh - Carnegie Mellon
7. Chicago - U of I
8. Indianapolis/Chicago - Purdue
9. Detroit - Michigan
10. LA - USC
11. Houston - Texas A&M
12. Austin - UT
13. NYC - Cornell
14. San Diego - UCSD
15. NYC - Columbia
16. LA - UCLA
17. NYC/Philadelphia - Princeton
18. Milwaukee - UW Madison
19. DC - Maryland
20. Chicago - Northwestern
21. LA - UC Santa Barbara
22. Philadelphia - Penn
23. Boston - Harvard
24. DC - Virginia Tech
25. DC/Baltimore - Johns Hopkins

Top Biomedical Engineering Programs
1. DC/Baltimore - Johns Hopkins
2. Atlanta - Georgia Tech
3. San Diego - UCSD
4. Raleigh-Durham - Duke
5. Boston - MIT
6. Bay Area - Stanford
7. Philadelphia - Penn
8. Seattle - U Dub
9. Houston - Rice
10. Bay Area - Berkeley
11. Detroit - Michigan
12. Boston - Boston U
13. St. Louis - Wash U
14. Cleveland - Case Western
15. Austin - UT
16. Pittsburgh - Pitt
17. Nashville - Vanderbilt
18. Chicago - Northwestern
19. Bay Area - UC Davis
20. NYC - Columbia
21. NYC - Cornell
22. Milwaukee - UW Madison
23. Boston - Harvard
24. Indianapolis/Chicago - Purdue
25. Minneapolis - Minnesota

[icarus]

It was interesting to reread the article regarding FSU's medical school.  The most interesting portion was how the article pointed out the lackadaisical attitude of the City in pursuing the opportunity.  The sentiment from years ago seems to mimic the sentiment of our Governor today regarding Jacksonville's efforts to boost the economy.

[CityLife]

It was interesting to reread the article regarding FSU's medical school.  The most interesting portion was how the article pointed out the lackadaisical attitude of the City in pursuing the opportunity.  The sentiment from years ago seems to mimic the sentiment of our Governor today regarding Jacksonville's efforts to boost the economy.

I almost mentioned it in my earlier post, but I heard back at that time that UF/Shands did not want FSU stepping on their turf and actively worked against it opening here or forming a strong partnership with Mayo. Another poster alluded to that as well in the article. How true that is we'll never know.

UF has had no problem partnering with UCF and USF on the Florida High Tech Corridor though. I know there are a lot of UF grads in this town that are very successful and do great stuff for the city....but us getting left out of the Florida High Tech Corridor is a potentially catastrophic loss to the city in the long term.

[fonz]

Seems pretty silly, since there is lots of space at the Deerwood campus for something like this.

You should visit the Lake Nona facility in Orlando.  That's the type of collaberative research campus that Rick Mullaney talked about when he ran for mayor.  That was his vision.  Mayor Brown's vision was to have an NBA team and a Winn Dixie downtown.

That's what Renee Finley (who btw, worked on the Mayor's team as the director of public-private partnerships) means when she says that Jax isnt ready for this yet.  She's right.

Always thought that Radcliffeville in Charleston (USC's medical school is located in that neighborhood) would be what Springfield could look like if the 8th Street corridor was filled with medical research facilities.

This is the project that Michael Maher turned down the DIA ED spot for:

http://charlestonhorizon.com/