EverBank Field Development Renderings

[Tacachale]

^Go ahead and propose it with your $45 million dollars.

[Tacachale]

^Go ahead and propose it with your $45 million dollars.

does everyone else get a matching grant for all of their projects then?  Sounds like a pretty sweet environment for speculation!

I expect anyone offering to split the cost on city-owned buildings would be listened to pretty seriously.

[Tacachale]

And even beyond city-owned venues, we may get some more good deals in place, now that the media is apparently paying attention to what the city does again. It's strange, but I guess it's a nice change of pace from the last couple of years.

[finehoe]

the nice thing about a forum like this is that we have time to measure outcomes.

Yeah, I'll be interested to see how all this alleged pent-up demand for performers who will only play a 5000-seat outdoor venue plays out.

[Captain Zissou]

Jeez, I hardly know where to begin.
........
Should the city take this deal?

Would you be hosting 10,000 people who would later spend money in the surrounding neighborhoods at your houses?  Would you bring in national acts that would pull in people from surrounding counties to spend money downtown?  Kahn does get a sweet deal, to be sure, but the city will benefit greatly from having more concerts downtown without drawing the ire of the crotchety residents of St Nick.

[PeeJayEss]

the crotchety residents of St Nick.

People that live there are THE WORST!!

[ProjectMaximus]

the crotchety residents of St Nick.

People that live there are THE WORST!!

+100

[Captain Zissou]

the crotchety residents of St Nick.

People that live there are THE WORST!!

Burn everything in that neighborhood to the ground!!!

[Steve]

Jeez, I hardly know where to begin.

Let me put it in an analogy.

Let's say I am a wealthy person and I hold options to buy 500 vacant lots and distressed houses in Jacksonville, I make an offer to the city.  I will invest $45mm into building and/or renovating these houses. The city will pay $45mm as well. An average of $180k will be spent per house.  The title will be held by the city, thus there will be no property taxes to pay. I will rent out all of them and receive 100% of the rent or any other income I can generate from them. My company will have complete control of the properties in perpetuity.

All maintenance and upkeep on them will be paid 50/50 between the city and myself. 

I stand to collect market rate rent while completely eliminating my property tax expense, no small item I may add. I will also reduce my maintenance and carrying expenses by 50%.  That is not small potatoes either.  But best of all, I will be spared 50% of the debt service.
It is a pretty big payday for me, to be sure.

In return the city will 'own' these houses. The renovations/construction will likely spur new invest in the vicinity, so the city gets that benefit. People will be living in these previously unoccupied houses, thus bring demand for goods and services.

The way I see it, my proposal is a lot better than Khan's because it doesn't rob the maintenance fund of the  Sports District and the FL/GA game is not affected to the tune of $900k per year.


Should the city take this deal?

If you could positively measure the economic impact of it, then yes.

Let's put aside the Crescembeni argument of "spending $45 million to get $90 million in facilities" for a second (though it's a good argument)

Here's the thing: The city had an issue with Metro Park. Let's say you spent the millions to fix the stage and canopy, you still had the 12 concerts a year thing. You're creating a 365 Day facility that no only can take over for Metro Park's concerts, you can probably grab some shows from St. Augustine. Assuming it's managed well, they'll keep it filled. It then allows for some visioning on Metro Park combined with the shipyards/ Frankly, Metro Park doesn't take advantage of being on the river well, and should be addressed.

Then there's the stadium. Jacksonville is going a different route from a lot of other cities when it comes to their stadium; they're constantly enhancing things with good-sized projects every few years. The alternative is the route that most other cities go - they put no money into the place, then they come to the city looking for them to build them a new stadium - that's the BIG nut that has to be avoided, because I'm not sure how Jacksonville would fund something like Atlanta or Minneapolis is building.

Right now, St. Louis, San Diego, or Oakland (or more than one of them) is GOING to lose their team to Los Angles. San Diego and Oakland's stadium is from the 60's, and St. Louis build theirs on the Cheap in 1995 and put NOTHING into it in 20 years.  I'll bet the good old, Trading Places "One Dollar, Mortimer" that there is NFL football in Los Angeles next year, and one of those cities is going to have a vacant, stadium that could never attract a top tier team.

At this point, Shad Khan has put $78 million in the stadium area, of which $68 million is for the public ($10 million was on internal team facilities). If you're willing to spend $68 million in Jacksonville for physical things that the public can enjoy, I'd give you $88 million if I was in charge.

[Downtown Osprey]

the nice thing about a forum like this is that we have time to measure outcomes.

Yeah, I'll be interested to see how all this alleged pent-up demand for performers who will only play a 5000-seat outdoor venue plays out.

Well considering the St Augustine amphitheater holds less than that amount, I would say there's quite a demand.

[Tacachale]

We've had several critics of the project say we don't need an amphitheater because we already have the Arena, or because the bands playing at 5k-seat venues is limited. In reality, many touring performers have been trending toward venues of that size for years. Northeast Florida misses out because we have too few and too inconvenient venues of that type, and a large-scale, expensive venue like the Arena is in a different category.

Here are some recent stops for well established musicians (ie, not newbies hoping to "move up" to stadium shows) of different stripes that were prominent in 2015:

Beach House:
12/07 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory (capacity 550)
12/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre (capacity 1200)
12/10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre (capacity 1200)
12/11 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre (capacity 1200)
12/12 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre (capacity 1200)
12/17 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore (capacity 1150)
12/18 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore (capacity 1150)
12/19 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore (capacity 1150)
02/29 – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues (capacity 2000)
03/01 – Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre (capacity 1300)
03/05 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall (capacity 1500)
03/09 – Montreal, QC @ Rialto Theatre (capacity 1165)
03/11 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues (capacity 2425)
03/14 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (capacity 1500 for the ballroom)
03/15 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (capacity 1500 for the ballroom)
03/18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer (capacity 1200)

Run the Jewels (Killer Mike and El P):
09-29 Tuscon, AZ - Rialto (capacity 1200)
09-30 El Paso, TX - Tricky Falls (capacity 1500)
10-02-04 Austin, TX - Austin City Limits (festival)
10-03 New Orleans, LA - Republic (capacity 700)
10-06 Memphis, TN - Minglewood Hall (capacity 1600)
10-07 Tulsa, OK - Cain's (capacity 1700)
10-09-11- Austin, TX - Austin City Limits (festival)
10-12 Dallas, TX - House of Blues (capacity 1650)
10-13 Houston, TX - House of Blues (capacity 1500)
10-15 Phoenix, AZ - Marquee (capacity 2500)
10-20-21 Denver, CO - Ogden (capacity 1600)
10-22 Kansas City, MO - Midland (capacity 3,573)
10-23 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue (capacity 1550 in the main room)
10-24 Royal Oak, MI - Royal Oak Music Hall (capacity 1700)
11-21 Mexico City, Mexico - Corona Capital Festival (festival)

Grimes:
10/24 – Santa Ana, CA @ Growlers Beach Goth Party Festival (festival)
10/26 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore (capacity 995)
10/27 – Portland, OR @ Wonder (capacity 778)
10/28 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox (capacity 1100)
10/31 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore (capacity 1150)
11/02 – Los Angeles, CA @ Mayan (capacity 2,200)
11/07 – Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Festival (festival)
11/09 – New Orleans, LA @ Republic (capacity 700)
11/10 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works (capacity 1500)
11/11 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre (capacity 2500+)
11/13 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club (capacity 1200)
11/14 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer (capacity 1200)
11/16 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5 (capacity 3000)
11/20 – Boston, MA @ Paradise (capacity 933)
11/21 – Montreal, QB @ Metropolis (capacity 2,350)
11/22 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth (capacity 1500)
11/25 – Chicago, IL @ Metro (capacity 1100)

Sleater-Kinney
12-04 Indianapolis, IN - Old National Centre (capacity 2500)
12-05 Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall (capacity 1,700)
12-06 Cincinnati, OH - Bogarts (capacity 1,464)
12-08 Royal Oak, MI - Royal Oak Music Theatre (capacity 1700)
12-09 Cleveland, OH - Masonic Auditorium (capacity 3,165)
12-10 Buffalo, NY - Asbury Hall (capacity 1200)
12-12 Brooklyn, NY - Kings Theatre (capacity 3000)
12-13 New York, NY - Terminal 5 (capacity 3000)
12-14 New York, NY - Irving Plaza (capacity 1,025)
12-15 Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg (capacity 550)
12-16 Brooklyn, NY - Market Hotel (?)

Kendrick Lamar has done a mix of very large and mid-sized venues:
10-20 Washington, DC - Kennedy Center (capacity 2462 in the Concert Hall)
10-22 Brooklyn, NY - Barclays Center (capacity 18,103)
10-24 Columbus, OH - LC Pavilion (capacity 5200)
10-25 Chicago, IL - United Center (capacity 20,500)
10-27 Atlanta, GA - The Tabernacle (capacity 2600)
10-29 Dallas, TX - South Side Music Hall (capacity 1500)
11-01 Washington, DC - Lincoln Theatre (capacity 1225)
11-02 New York, NY - Webster Hall (capacity 1500)
11-03 Philadelphia, PA - The Trocadero Theatre (capacity 1200)
11-04 Cleveland, OH - House of Blues (capacity 2000)
11-08 Los Angeles, CA - The Forum (capacity 17,505)
11-10 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater (capacity 2800)

Northeast Florida has a dearth of venues of the type listed above, and in fact we have only a handful of venues that hold between 300 and 10,000 people. Those that we do have (Florida Theater, Times-Union Center, St. Augustine Amphitheater, PV Concert Hall, Met Park) all have major drawbacks. The Florida Theater and Times-Union Center are great, but they have fixed seating and aren't designed for amplified music. The St. Johns County venues do very well, but they're poorly located for the vast majority of the metro area. Met Park had a good run, but it's now virtually unusable for this purpose.

The amphitheater plugs a hole we've had for a long time. I doubt this would be controversial if the Jaguars weren't involved.

[coredumped]

I doubt this would be controversial if the Jaguars weren't involved.

Nailed it.

This forum shouldn't be so hard on the jags (obviously I'm biased, look at my avatar), because the jags bring 60,000+ people downtown every weekend.
I would have rather seen some of our existing buildings get the money, but as we've been told they have to use this money for tourism things, and if that's the case I think this is a pretty good use for it. It makes downtown a destination for many concert goers. In the past I've driven to St Augustine and Tampa to go to a concert, maybe they'll stop here next time.

[finehoe]

I doubt this would be controversial if the Jaguars weren't involved.

Well, duh.  What other private business in Jacksonville receives such lavish public subsidies?

[vicupstate]

Unless it has changed, the refrain I always heard as far as Jag games goes was this: JSO traffic control is such that the traffic is funnelled to the stadium and funnelled out, such that little economic benefit trickles to the DT area.  There is or was a business in the historic building next to the arena, and Intuition Ale Works (when it opens) would be exceptions obviously.   

Is that a fair assessment still, and would it be any different with concerts at this Amphitheatre?

As for another use of tourism funds, there is (for the moment) 2 cents of the bed tax going directly to promote tourism marketing. Given the low profile of JAX, it would seem to be woefully inadequate.  I realize in 2009, these funds were tied specifically to the Stadium district itself (the city should have NEVER agreed to that, btw).  I would argue that certain marketing spending could still be in direct support of the district however.

       

[BridgeTroll]

I doubt this would be controversial if the Jaguars weren't involved.

Well, duh.  What other private business in Jacksonville receives such lavish public subsidies?

What business in town brings more 8,7, and 6 figure salaries to Jacksonville?

Here is the staff directory... http://www.jaguars.com/staffdirectory/

Here are player salaries... http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/

This private company is good for Jacksonville... Muslim owned too!