Convention center, Downtown on draft list for Curry

[Glenn OSteen]

Is this the same John Delaney that sold us a Bill of Goods with the $3.2 Billion Better Jacksonville plan so he could build the $190 Million Courthouse monstrosity that ended up costing $390 Million?  No thanks...............back to the drawing board on his $500 Million Convention Center; notice how the last one Convention Center worked out for drawing visitors?

[tufsu1]

Is this the same John Delaney that sold us a Bill of Goods with the $3.2 Billion Better Jacksonville plan so he could build the $190 Million Courthouse monstrosity that ended up costing $390 Million?  No thanks...............back to the drawing board on his $500 Million Convention Center; notice how the last one Convention Center worked out for drawing visitors?

actually that's the same mayor whose Better Jacksonville Plan brought us a new baseball stadium, a new arena, a new downtown library as well as enhanced branch libraries, and many new/widened roads.

[thelakelander]

That's a hard one to prove. Birmingham, Houston, Dallas, Norfolk, Richmond, Memphis, Louisville, Atlanta, Miami, Savannah, Charleston, Tampa, etc...  were all more important and larger hubs of activity in certain areas, during certain periods between the civil war and civil rights era.  Jax didn't even crack 100k residents until the 1920s, a feat achieved by many others listed above, prior to 1900. 

[simms3]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that while Jax probably had a raucous nightlife in its prior existence, it sounds like it may be a stretch to call it the most vibrant/best/etc nightlife in the SE outside of NOLA.  Perhaps the port/ocean setting did have an influence on diversity and leniency for liquor laws, but comparing populations, Jax was actually always quite a bit smaller than its southern counterparts, and there is always something to be said about sheer size.  Not to mention, if it's certainly true Jax was indeed liberal and free-spirited, the same people that lived in the city before at one point in the 40s/50s did a complete reversal and ever since Jax has been one of probably the top 3-5 most conservative cities in North America (western hemisphere?).  That's a pretty serious and sudden flip, which makes it hard for me to believe that Jax was ever as socially liberal and wild as we reminisce several generations later.

1930

Tampa - 154K
Jax - 155K
Nashville - 223K
Richmond - 265K
Memphis - 306K
Louisville - 355K
Atlanta - 389K
Birmingham - 431K
New Orleans - 500K



Anyway, yes to what Lakelander and a few others (and Stephen) have said.  To the rest of you - what did you migrate over to MetroJacksonville from the FTU comments section?  Clearly there are some popular opinion hurdles to overcome, even amongst the engaged so-called progressive/urban thinking crowd in Jax.  What I'm gathering from perhaps the slight majority of recent posters on this topic is that any and all money spent on anything is a waste.  That's pretty scary.

[simms3]

you mean permanent residents, I think, lake.  And I think we've been over the unreliability of the population numbers of the various eras anyways when we were comparing county populations and city limits populations.

Keep in mind that a tourist town has two to three times more people visiting that people living there.

For example New York City has about 10million residents in its greater metro area, yet there aren't only 10 million people in the city.

Every year there are at least 60 million.  Why?  because of 50 million tourists annually.

http://www.nycandcompany.org/press/new-york-city-sets-new-goal-to-generate-70-billion-in-tourism-annual-econom

"Today's announcement is another reminder of the important role tourism plays in New York City," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "Every visitor that comes to our City and every dollar they spend is critically important to our economy. After reaching a milestone 50 million visitors last year and setting our sights on attracting 55 million visitors by 2015, it is great to see the industry prepared to reach new heights."

"Over the past few years no industry has been more vital to New York City than tourism," said Robert K. Steel, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. "Tourism already supports 320,000 jobs, and this incredible increase in visitor spending is expected to add an additional 30,000 over the next three years.

and thats not counting the merchant marine and business travelers who are in the city every day as part of the trade and commerce empire of the east coast.  There are various figures that Ive seen that place the total of non residential people in New York somewhere at between 80 and 100 million annually, depending on if you count all of the people that go in and out of the port of new york.

So its not that really hard to prove, residential figures only prove what was possible in terms of generating real estate taxes.

That doesn't mean that on a daily basis there are 5x as many people in NYC as permanent residents.  Those 50 million visitors are spread over the year with a few peaks and valleys.

Jax didn't have a permanent population of 155K in 1930 but actually a population of 500K (just throwing that out there) because of that level of visitors.  Perhaps in the summer or winter months at that point the population bloomed to 175-190K a day, but then settled back down to normal in another season.

Sure it has an effect.  Perhaps being coastal had a relatively larger effect to Jax's population than being inland did relative to Atlanta's population at the time.  But Atlanta was literally 3x larger.  That's a huge difference, and you can feel it even today as there are clearly more old buildings over larger area in Atlanta than there are in Jax.

[simms3]

^^^we're saying the same thing.  But Jax would have needed enough constant visitors all year to basically double its population in order just get to the permanent resident populations of its peers in the south, assuming these other cities didn't have their own visitors.  I live in a super touristy city with a huge business base, so yes, I do understand what you're saying and I live it every day.  But Jax didn't have the millions of people surrounding it that some cities do today (it was basically 155K in 1930 in a more or less confined area...so there weren't subways and highways hauling in hundreds of thousands or even millions more into its downtown, daily), and I'm sure it had fewer hotel rooms in 1930 than San Francisco has today (~35K rooms), so do the math there for places for visitors to stay.

But conceptually I agree...I just think Jax was a pretty teeny tiny place for most of its existence, even if for a good chunk of its existence it was an amazing teeny tiny place!

[thelakelander]

Yeah, from all accounts, it was a pretty exciting place. That's one thing. Most exciting and lively outside of New Orleans is another animal altogether. Very hard to prove without some decent apples-to-apples data behind it.

Anyway, I've yet to read a solid reason for leaving the Prime Osborn, JRTC, Hyatt, old courthouse site and the Elbow in their current state. Pony up and get that box built!

[finehoe]

Keep in mind also that in the late 19th-early 20th century, "tourists" didn't fly in for a day or two, they generally set up residence in one of the grand downtown hotels for a considerable time (often the entire winter season).

[thelakelander]

Yes. It just would have been the same for every decent sized city.

[finehoe]

Yes. It just would have been the same for every decent sized city.

Except that Birmingham, Houston, Dallas, Norfolk, Richmond, Memphis, Louisville, and Atlanta weren't tourist meccas the way Jacksonville was at that time.

[thelakelander]

What's the specific time period? Stephen tossed out Civil War to Civil Rights. That's a long time and some of the other cities (ex. Savannah, Charleston, Tampa, Miami, etc.) were certainly larger tourism oriented centers during parts of that 100 year time span.

[finehoe]

As I said, late 19th-early 20th century.  Around the 1880s when Flagler first built his railroad until around the 19t00s when he extended it down the state.

[simms3]

Keep in mind also that in the late 19th-early 20th century, "tourists" didn't fly in for a day or two, they generally set up residence in one of the grand downtown hotels for a considerable time (often the entire winter season).

This is true.  But how many hotel rooms do you think DT Jax had prewar?  Given hotel room sizes then and what travel used to consist of, it would be no surprise if there were more rooms than DT Jax has today.  But I very highly doubt we are talking more than 10,000 rooms in the entire city, and it's absolutely uncommon if not an impossibility for every single room to be booked (esp all the time) - probably similar to today - 80+% avg occupancy over an extended time is about as good as it gets.  The larger hotels back in the day probably had a few hundred rooms a pop.  And there were really only ~10 or so "larger" hotels.  I'm sure many other people stayed with families in permanent residences.  You still get that today.

I would imagine sailors staying on ships docked at the wharves accounted for the largest portion of any increases to the population at any given time.  But I would also be interested on official studies into the matter.  These kinds of things are still studied/tracked today.  Manhattan is about the only place that registers more non-farm employment within its bounds than its total population (2.2 million vs 1.6 million).

Below is an interesting look at changes in daytime employment.  Doesn't factor in tourism or business travel.  DC reigns as the city with the biggest daily influx of workers relative to its population.  And nobody else is even close.

http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2014/01/10/how-city-populations-change/

Anyway, semi-relevant to discussion at hand.

[simms3]

As large and thriving as Atlanta and Birmingham were for a while, with their size and the number of people who had family members there, I'm sure there were plenty of tourists and visitors to these cities.

I also would think that leisure travel back in the day was relegated to the generally wealthy, not the working middle class or poor.  So I think that probably greatly limited the audience that wintered in Jax or traveled down for leisure at any point to a pretty small population sample size.  Hence why our little town got so many big names over a 50 year span.

I don't think they had Southwest Airlines or Jetblue back in the day...I think it was pretty much the wealthy, and sailors, that contributed to Jax tourism.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong?

Contrast - per Lakelander's recent article on the Embarcadero in SF - today you'll be smushed up against mainly middle or even lower income travelers who can afford a plane ticket to visit San Francisco, buy a couple hoodies, eat some Dungeness crab, and stay at a boutique hotel for 4-7 days.  Like almost the majority of the world can do that in 2015.  Also, you have planes that fly direct for 18+ hours now from halfway across the globe.  So now you get insane crowds and throngs of tourists all year long.  I'm sure back in 1930, a railroad ticket on the Trancontinental or a ticket on a ship to circle the continent and bring passengers from the E Coast to the W Coat or a flight on a DC-6 - all of those modes of travel were "luxurious" and reserved for the very rich.  I doubt you had the Mickey Mouse matching hoodie wearing families from Indonesia visiting at that point.

[thelakelander]

Mass tourism didn't happen until after the end of WWII. Here's the population of Jax and a few other key southern port cities between 1870 and 1900.

Jacksonville
1870 - 6,912
1880 - 7,650
1890 - 17,201
1900 - 28,429

Savannah
1870 - 28,235
1880 - 30,709
1890 - 43,189
1900 - 65,064

Charleston
1870 - 48,956
1880 - 49,984
1890 - 54,955
1900 - 55,807

Richmond
1870 - 51,038
1880 - 63,600
1890 - 81,388
1900 - 85,050

Mobile
1870 - 32,034
1880 - 29,132
1890 - 31,076
1900 - 38,469

Norfolk
1870 - 19,229
1880 - 21,966
1890 - 34,871
1900 - 46,624

Memphis
1870 - 40,226
1880 - 33,592
1890 - 64,495
1900 - 102,320

Houston
1870 - 9,332
1880 - 16,513
1890 - 27,557
1900 - 44,633

Galveston
1870 - 13,818
1880 - 22,248
1890 - 29,084
1900 - 37,789

Louisville
1870 - 100,753
1880 - 123,758
1890 - 161,129
1900 - 204,731

Does anyone know what Jax's population swelled to during tourism season? Not including tourist (yes, it had them too), Louisville already had 100k residents in 1870. I seriously doubt, Jax's population swelled to those types of numbers, given the sanborn maps displaying a much smaller community during this particular era.