New Avondale Restaurant Proposed: Not Everyone Happy

[Know Growth]

Hi everyone, I tried this once but must have messed it up. Learning. The infamous Thad Crowe, here, not trying to be too annoying & not being compensated for anythin

Gonna name 13.723 miles of the First Coa(s)t Beltway in your honor,whether you like it or not

Lake Ass Bury   (Brannon Chaffee Sector Plan S.Fraser. Lake Asbury Sector #1....and,yepper,#2. But basically #1,that's the one to recall.)

A short section of St Johns Avenue already unofficially named in honor of Susan Fraser. And Susan gets the north half of Section 19/Brannon Chaffe Clay County/Beltway in her honor.(*) What will you claim in Riverside/Avondale , Thad? 

(*  some time earlier,MJ locked a post on this subject of North half of Section 19  )

[Know Growth]

Thad, welcome to the site

Weak


Come on,have some balls, learn to stand back,even for a moment, a couple of daze. Shut it off>
You might have little idea what just floats up to MJ,as if River Floatsam & Jetsam.

[Thad Crowe]

Know Growth - I don't want to claim anything, if you think that planners have much power in NE Florida, that is pretty comical. I did my best to improve any planning effort I was involved in, I kept to my ethical code, and I communicated to all sides interested in talking, all this at a relatively low level of compensation. I believe the plans you mention in many ways stand out for open space & environmental preservation, higher architectural standards, and pedestrian/bicycle emphasis, all developed under elected officials who were generally anti-regulatory & pro-business, guided by campaign contributors. Without these plans development would have occurred in a sprawl pattern. Nocatee preserved 5,500 acres in a greenway system, Lake Asbury requires open space & site design upgrades to get higher density/intensity. I'll grant there were some concessions, there are in any public effort, but these plans were forward-thinking for their time. In fact I gained a reputation among developers as sort of a left-wing nut due to my strong support of sound planning principles and site design. On the Outer Beltway, I represented the policy set by the county commission. So what makes me so sinister? And if they printed stories peripherally involving you could you also sound devious & newsworthy? I'm just askin. 

[Ocklawaha]

Thad, 'Welcome aboard' my friend.

A little historical prospective from the streetcar view. 5-Points, Park and King as well as Avondale were carefully crafted streetcar suburbs. True to walkable design, the streetcar missed the actual center of each business district, being built (typically) a block or two away, or having the district sandwiched between two streetcar lines as in the case of Park and King. Thus the car line provided transportation a bit more centered on the residential districts which tended to sprout apartments, putting each business within a pleasant walk from the car stop.

Avondale was planned in such a way, the car line came south through 5-Points on May Street, Lomax Street provided the pedestrian entry from the car line. It jogged over to Oak just north of Margaret Street on a long gone diagonal under the multi-unit building now lining the northside of Margaret. The line continued down Oak to King, turning toward the river to St. Johns. Again, this placed the cars 2 blocks from the Park and King business district. A bit later the Murray Hill Heights car line would come down College Street, passing the other end of the business district. The line continued south on St. Johns to Aberdeen Street, turning west on Aberdeen to Herschel Street, Herschel was not complete as a through street  in those days and ended at the north edge of Boone Park, the streetcars continued south through the park and on to Fairfax, Ortega and what is today NAS JAX. largely on exclusive (known as 'private R/W') right of way.

John Ingle Sr. was a key person in the development of the tract that would become Avondale. Thus the grand entry to Avondale's business district was on the landscaped and divided 'Ingleside Avenue.' Ingle's son John Ingle Jr. would later become an executive with Eastern Airlines and was a local historian of note, the longest serving president of the of the JHS. Today, Ingleside is largely forgotten. It's landscaped median has been allowed to grown into a disorganized jungle. The twin 'carriageways' a patchwork. It's furnishings and appointments lost. Today route 16 and 71 buses crowd their way through St. Johns Avenue every 30 minutes and along Post Street across King every 30 minutes as opposed to every 12. The people have forgotten how to walk.

By April of 1910, Jacksonville was home to 903 automobiles. That Avondale was 'designed for the automobile,' as claimed by some local historians is rather comical considering there were not more then a few thousand cars in all of Duval County by the time dirt was turning in the 1920's. The other clue is that it was developed by Telfair Stockton, himself a streetcar magnet.

IMAGINE! Ingleside returned to it's former glory.


Follow the red lines for the streetcar routes.


A glimpse of what Herschel and other local streets looked like in the early 1900's. (Orange CT)


Park Street was never a streetcar route, but the idea does have merit along park or any number of local streets.

According to NHTS, the average vehicle occupancy in Florida (all modes, SUV, auto, motorcycle etc) is 1.65 AVO.

However I agree with Thad to the point that people going out to eat are likely to have more then the norm in their car.

[Thad Crowe]

Wow Robert, what a timely description of a home-spun transit system that worked & could still be working. Thank you. And you are right about Ingleside, what a great connecting boulevard between Park & St. Johns, lost to jungle now.

[Kerry]

I don't feel like reading through 6 pages of comments so if this was already discussed please excuse me.  When opposition to urban developments are based on a lack of parking the author of said complaint loses me.  The City should be striving to remove all parking requirements in urban areas where walkability is a priority.  If anything, the major complaint for this project should be the parking lot itself.  Offer some on-street parking, create a neighborhood parking systems (residents only) and then the size of the restaurant will conform to the availability of customers who either arrive by car and fight for limited parking or people from the adjacent neighborhoods who walk/ride bikes.

[jaxjags]

I see this argument and many cities do limit parking to neighborhood citizens using permits. Yes this should lead to smaller seating BUT due to COJ requirement for a minimum number of seats to get a liquor license as a restaurant. Not sure of numbers as I have heard anywhere from 200 to 280. I think lowering or removing this requirement would be a bigger help to restaurant size in these areas. The 50% requirement for food would remain to prevent the easy opening of "just a bar".

[Thad Crowe]

Well Kerry & Jax Jags, yes this is an urban area, but it is also predominantly a residential area without the hundreds of commercial on-street parking spaces on St. Johns Ave. & King St. I agree with your approach, but we are stuck with the system as it is now, with no neighborhood parking program in place, and a now-established precedent via Mellow Mushroom & others to gloss over parking impacts, particularly on neighborhoods. As I understand it the Planning Commission may feel compelled to approve parking variances because others were approved, without regards to distinctive differences between the Park & Dancy area and the larger historic commercial areas. By all means, bring the restaurants to this area, but let's move carefully! The cost & trouble of handling it thoughtfully at the outset is much less than the expense of fixing a zoning mess after the fact. One last thing, while the application shows around 160 seats on the site plan, the request is for 250-seats, so I don't understand this discrepancy. And I think the liquor license minimum is 150 seats.

[NIMBY]

Well, ain't this place is a geographical oddity! Two blocks from everywhere!

[fieldafm]

160 seats on the site plan, the request is for 250-seats, so I don't understand this discrepancy. And I think the liquor license minimum is 150 seats.

150 seats is the minimum, unless you are in special zones carved out in North Riverside/5 Points and now (in the worst case of spot zoning ever--which btw, the Overlay expressly discourages) Biscottis and Casbah in Avondale (the only buildings, by law, that enjoy this special privilege in this corridor).

I believe that somewhere between 160-190 (ish) seats are in the range of what the applicant can be approved for utilizing the 50% parking reduction and past precedent in the neighborhood... and they are requesting a variance that could allow them up to 250 seats (not uncommon as you'll always ask for the max you can fit by fire code depending on the footprint of the building-something that is not yet determined until the fire marshall weighs in- and then wittle down from there depending on a variety of factors--primarily the useable footprint of the building after area is deducted for all necessary equipment, fire doorways, restrooms, etc).

I don't think COJ Planning has given a recommendation quite yet based on the current application status.

[fieldafm]

all developed under elected officials who were generally anti-regulatory & pro-business, guided by campaign contributors. Without these plans development would have occurred in a sprawl pattern. Nocatee preserved 5,500 acres in a greenway system, Lake Asbury requires open space & site design upgrades to get higher density/intensity

Don't mind him, all DRIs are an unforgiveable sin in the Bible according to the Book of 'NO Growth'. Whether they paid for their own infrastructure and/or have significant preservation easements, or not. 

[Ocklawaha]

But of course there is a Jacksonville alternative, just tear down a block of historic buildings and put in a 5 floor parking garage... albeit one that looks like it was built in 1925!

[Thad Crowe]

Wise words fields, and it is a little soon to be engaging in the parking issues without the application in, although the 250 seats is on the record through the JHPC process. Through this learning curve, I am coming around to understanding that it will be somewhere in the high 100s, depending on the level of public input maybe. There is a problem when the regulations are so very complex, and even then get frequently thrown out. Seems like a form of anarchy. But I shouldn't criticize others too much, since I get it right back!

[fieldafm]

Seems like a form of anarchy.

I wouldn't characterize it as anarchy (more like iron fists are trying to rule in a vaccum with an incomplete understanding of the situation as a whole) ... but the process is definately broken. And that process will continue to be broken until the Overlay is changed in a manner that looks at challenges and solutions in a much more holistic manner. Some cling to the Overlay like it is the unfallable edict of the Ten Commandments, when really it's just a half-finished Masters thesis that desperately needs to be completed (and later updated as new research proves or disproves previous conclusions). In that situation, bad blood (and sometimes bad behavior) arises. It's past time to explore more realistic solutions that address the heart of the matter. So far, there has been mainly can-kicking. Which is fine now because the area is more alive than ever, but things are just going to get  much more contentious and the stakes are going to be ever so higher in the months and years to come.

You can only pound your head against the wall for so long until you really develop head trauma issues.

[PeeJayEss]

Know Growth - I don't want to claim anything, if you think that planners have much power in NE Florida, that is pretty comical. I did my best to improve any planning effort I was involved in, I kept to my ethical code, and I communicated to all sides interested in talking, all this at a relatively low level of compensation. I believe the plans you mention in many ways stand out for open space & environmental preservation, higher architectural standards, and pedestrian/bicycle emphasis, all developed under elected officials who were generally anti-regulatory & pro-business, guided by campaign contributors. Without these plans development would have occurred in a sprawl pattern. Nocatee preserved 5,500 acres in a greenway system, Lake Asbury requires open space & site design upgrades to get higher density/intensity. I'll grant there were some concessions, there are in any public effort, but these plans were forward-thinking for their time. In fact I gained a reputation among developers as sort of a left-wing nut due to my strong support of sound planning principles and site design. On the Outer Beltway, I represented the policy set by the county commission. So what makes me so sinister? And if they printed stories peripherally involving you could you also sound devious & newsworthy? I'm just askin.

Don't worry about Know Growth, that account is a metroajcksonville experiment. They have a computer logged into that account in their secret laboratory. They took the keyboard and locked it in a cage with a mouse (not the computer input device, a small mammal). The mouse crawls around on the keyboard most of the day. Sometimes words get spit out. Mostly it is just random characters.