Reinvigorating the Jacksonville Landing

[Bridges]

Jax should steal a page out of nearly every other American peer city's playbook and invest in mass transit as an economic stimulant. We have +75k people living within a three mile radius of DT right now. Some of the most popular urban districts in the state are within a mile of DT. Why we continue to overlook the importance of connecting them with downtown is puzzling to me. By all means, yes more residential in the Northbank is very important and should be considered a priority.  However, let's take advantage of the +75k residing around it to help feed desired infill that's still a good decade away from having any realistic major impact on vibrancy.

Exactly!  The urban core may be the heart but the surrounding neighborhoods are the arteries and chambers that feed it full of life. 

[thelakelander]

Lake, you're right about a lot of the points you make.  Improving our transit system and connections is incredibly important to improving downtown.  While the transit system in Cleveland is much more robust than Jax and certainly helped to support the development of downtown, it had been robust during the entire period between the 60's and the early 90's also during the period that Cleveland was declining.

There is no single silver bullet to rebirth. The period of urban decline between the 1960s and 1990s was a nationalwide phenomenon and it didn't matter if you had trains or if you had residential populations in your core as dense as Chicago and NYC. National trends started to change in the late 80s and early 90s and the "negatives" that the previous generation abandoned central cities for, became assets.  Down here, Savannah and Charleston were both considered blighted high crime dumps.  However, when national preferences changed, that blighted building fabric they couldn't afford to demolish became valued assets.

Cleveland also had inner ring suburbs with lots of residents (many more than Springfield/San Marco/Riverside) but that also didn't spur development downtown.  It was the introduction of residential in the heart of downtown that made the difference.

The large scale rebirth of residential in a specific area of an urban core is one of many outcomes. While it definitely helps, the reality is it takes time. Even today, +20 years later, DT Cleveland still has a way to go. For example, Euclid, once the heart of retail in downtown Cleveland, is still largely abandoned. However, they are certainly ahead of where Jax is today and was in the 1990s, after we destroyed the infrastructure that was critical in DT Cleveland's rebirth.

The reality is that there is no one magic bullet. Transit, housing, retail all need to be improved and it's going to take some pioneers to take a chance on downtown.  The demand is there, around 95% residential occupancy rate downtown, and market studies have shown there is significant interest in living downtown if there were more residential options and more things to do downtown.  We need to work on all of these aspects and if we do, we'll eventually reach a point where they'll feed off each other and not need any more incentives or public financial support.

I agree, there's no one magic bullet. However, like previous national trends over the last century, there are common characteristics that appeal to generations making purchasing decisions and common contextual characteristics of urban centers that have turned around and those that have not. These (one of which is human scaled connectivity/mobility) are the tools that we can utilize to create the conditions that causes everything from a warehouse district in DT Cleveland to a Cabbagetown in Atlanta to come back alive.

Jax should steal a page out of nearly every other American peer city's playbook and invest in mass transit as an economic stimulant. We have +75k people living within a three mile radius of DT right now. Some of the most popular urban districts in the state are within a mile of DT. Why we continue to overlook the importance of connecting them with downtown is puzzling to me. By all means, yes more residential in the Northbank is very important and should be considered a priority.  However, let's take advantage of the +75k residing around it to help feed desired infill that's still a good decade away from having any realistic major impact on vibrancy.

Exactly!  The urban core may be the heart but the surrounding neighborhoods are the arteries and chambers that feed it full of life. 

It's important to remember that Downtown isn't the urban core, it's a district within the urban core. The reasons people and businesses flock to Riverside and San Marco are the same reasons they'll flock to DT. The longer we continue to treat the Northbank as an isolated "urban core" the longer it will be to revitalize it because we're attempting to do something that has never been done organically in history.

[JeffreyS]

I am hopeful of the emergence of Brooklyn as a catalyst.  Though it is just one step it should breed connectedness with Riverside.

[thelakelander]

Has Sleiman made any mention of why he didn't just dust-off the earlier 'it's about time' plans and just pick up where he left off?

No. However, most of it (it had a highrise and midrise buildings) was probably just as unrealistic as the current phase II (highrise/midrise buildings). The largest difference between the current proposal and the old one is there's no structured parking and it appears he believes there's too much existing retail square footage to work with.

[mtraininjax]

Lake, I have a lot of respect for you and your urban planning beliefs, but some of them are so lofty and idealistic, Jacksonville may NEVER become the city you wish to build and live in. Are you OK with this?

So you don't like the Riverside Avondale trolley system, you call it a potato chip truck. (is this a slap in the face to food trucks?) Forget what it looks like, look at what it does. It gets people out of cars and moves them from one neighborhood to another. At its most basic, this is what a transportation system accomplishes. Who cares if it is a truck with sidepanels, it could be a pickup with hay bales in it for all we care in the neighborhood. It connects neighborhoods and improves the lives of its residents, some of whom cannot get to a grocery store in West Avondale because there is no way to get there other than a long walk.

You claim there is no silver bullet to fix the rebirth of downtown, I'd agree. But you need patience for the "tribe" of people to come to the same belief that you have on how to grow downtown. You have Springfield and Tallyrand, which nobody discusses at all. You have North Riverside and McCoy's, which nobody discusses. You have Brooklyn and Lavilla (which seems to have fallen off the map), and you have San Marco, St. Nicholas, Riverside and Avondale, which are all anyone ever seems to discuss as supporting downtown.

Draw a line through downtown at Bay Street and work to get more of the neighborhoods NORTH of that line to support downtown. Springfield does a nice job, but what about Moncrief or College Gardens or Edward Waters. The new restaurant by Coles on Bay street is huge, probably the first sign to me of faith from an area of Jacksonville about downtown since the failed restaurant up on Union and Genovese Hall, but its progress.

Work with city leaders to bring more growth downtown of residents who want to make a difference downtown from the areas that historically, have not. Or don't do anything, and we will have the same results.

The Potato Chip Truck is better than nothing, which is what we have had a lot of for a very long time.

[Overstreet]

So the current option is to tear down the radius building, leave the river buildings and put in a parking lot.  HAH!!

The circle will then be complete. We tore out the city parking lot to build The Landing. Not the first structure I built that was torn down but the largest.
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For the earlier poster the 54" force main.....is a sanitary sewer where the stuff is pumped. It was 3/4 to 7/8 full  and flowing pretty fast when I looked in there last. It is a major thing that takes up more space than you'd think.

[thelakelander]

Lake, I have a lot of respect for you and your urban planning beliefs, but some of them are so lofty and idealistic, Jacksonville may NEVER become the city you wish to build and live in. Are you OK with this?

What's so lofty? A streetcar? Better utilizing the Skyway to stimulate TOD? rightsizing existing streets to make the urban core safer for pedestrians and cyclist?

That's easier and cheaper to pull off than bringing an NFL team to town, restoring the Trio, getting the Shipyards developed and evidently living up to the promise made to Rouse to resolve the Landing's dedicated parking issues....If we consider multimodal connectivity as a lofty instead of essential, we are in real trouble and haven't learned anything since the failed 1971 downtown plan.  Just not with the Landing but all of downtown and the urban core in general.

So you don't like the Riverside Avondale trolley system, you call it a potato chip truck. (is this a slap in the face to food trucks?) Forget what it looks like, look at what it does. It gets people out of cars and moves them from one neighborhood to another. At its most basic, this is what a transportation system accomplishes. Who cares if it is a truck with sidepanels, it could be a pickup with hay bales in it for all we care in the neighborhood. It connects neighborhoods and improves the lives of its residents, some of whom cannot get to a grocery store in West Avondale because there is no way to get there other than a long walk.

What about the economic development component?   I typically base my opinions on hard data, statistics and real life applications in peer environments.  I'm not aware of a PCT being able to both move people and serve as a physical infrastructural element that helps generate human scaled TOD/change the built environment surrounding it.  If you know of one in this country, please offer it up for evaluation.

You claim there is no silver bullet to fix the rebirth of downtown, I'd agree. But you need patience for the "tribe" of people to come to the same belief that you have on how to grow downtown. You have Springfield and Tallyrand, which nobody discusses at all. You have North Riverside and McCoy's, which nobody discusses. You have Brooklyn and Lavilla (which seems to have fallen off the map), and you have San Marco, St. Nicholas, Riverside and Avondale, which are all anyone ever seems to discuss as supporting downtown.

I'm probably one of the most patient people on this stuff because I know the process takes time. The benefit of better mobility (something we've been pushing since 2006 on MJ...how's that for time?) is that you tie in these places that are overlooked but play a natural and important role in the success of downtown.   You'll cut your revitalization process down by years (and save millions along the way) by providing the basic ingredients of organic human scaled growth.

Draw a line through downtown at Bay Street and work to get more of the neighborhoods NORTH of that line to support downtown. Springfield does a nice job, but what about Moncrief or College Gardens or Edward Waters. The new restaurant by Coles on Bay street is huge, probably the first sign to me of faith from an area of Jacksonville about downtown since the failed restaurant up on Union and Genovese Hall, but its progress.

I agree. That's why I'm a huge proponent of the S-Line. Something we've taking from talk on MJ in 2006 and gotten it added to the TPO's long range transportation plan, JTA's plans and mobility fee money for over the last seven years.

Work with city leaders to bring more growth downtown of residents who want to make a difference downtown from the areas that historically, have not. Or don't do anything, and we will have the same results.

I'm not seeing where I've stated anything that goes against the concept of keeping anyone out of the process?

The Potato Chip Truck is better than nothing, which is what we have had a lot of for a very long time.

Take a look around the state and the rest of the country. The PCT is a pacifier, it's not anymore of a sustainable connectivity and economic development solution that modifying a regular bus route to become more reliable for end users and choice riders (which is something that should be too, IMO).

But all of this is for another thread.  I'd like to keep this thread focused on the Landing.

[funguy]

It seems to me Tony Sleiman is looking for a free lunch by wanting the city to pay for upgrades and renovations that are his responsibility.  I am getting tired of our city fathers spending my property taxes giving handouts to undeserving millionaires.

[JeffreyS]

I wouldn't worry if the guy running the project is a millionaire or deserving, just focus on the expected return on investment the city is looking for. If the ROI is there go for it if not pass.

[mtraininjax]

Take a look around the state and the rest of the country.

That, there is your problem, you cannot compare the rest of the country to Jacksonville. If you do, you need to move, and I mean now somewhere else. We are what we are.

[thelakelander]

Sure you can. How do you think the food truck industry has grown here locally? Here's a hint...the ideas that were implemented came from successes and trends experienced in other communities. The world doesn't revolve around Jax and us ignoring the reality of what's around us and the economic impact that has only wastes time and local tax dollars.

[hightowerlover]

This place needs a 1000 ft observation tower

[Dog Walker]

It's important to remember that Downtown isn't the urban core, it's a district within the urban core. The reasons people and businesses flock to Riverside and San Marco are the same reasons they'll flock to DT. The longer we continue to treat the Northbank as an isolated "urban core" the longer it will be to revitalize it because we're attempting to do something that has never been done organically in history.

Ennis, that is one of the most insightful things I have read about the issue in years.  Made one of those little pops in my mind and changed my perspective.

Thanks!