Selling Jax: Groups look for best way to market city, by finding its essence

[thelakelander]

^In addition to those restoration projects and the new rail line under construction, Detroit also has programs and incentives that essentially pay employees at some of the larger companies to live in downtown.

If time and money are critical to your quality of life, then Live Downtown is for you. The average one-way commute in Southeast Michigan is 25.6 minutes. When you add it all up, that's more than 2 weeks on the road annually-the national average for vacation time! That alone is enough for you to at least think about living near your place of work. If you're still on the fence, how about some big help with your pocket book?

Here are the perks if you work at Compuware, DTE Energy, Marketing Associates, Quicken Loans  or Strategic Staffing Solutions:

- New homeowners receive up to $20,000 forgivable loan toward the purchase of their primary residence.

- New renters receive a $2,500 allowance of funding toward the cost of their apartment in the first year followed by additional funding of $1,000 for the second year.

- Existing renters receive a $1,000 allowance of funding for renewing a lease.

- Existing homeowners receive matching funds of up to $5,000 for exterior improvements for projects of $10,000 or more.
For full eligibility and program benefits, please review the program guidelines.

The Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP) is the overall program coordinator and is leveraging Midtown Detroit, Inc's (MDI) existing resources and skills to launch and administer the successful Live Midtown program.  Both DDP and MDI are non-profit organizations.

http://www.detroitlivedowntown.org/incentives/

Think about that, when considering if a project like the Trio should be given incentives.

[TimmyB]

And, get this: the Motor City is becoming one of the hot spots of America's biking scene!  They have become incredibly bike-friendly, from everything that I've read.  Who'd a thunk it?

[vicupstate]

Oh but just imagine Jacksonville in  1912... San Diego might have begged it's leaders to be the Jacksonville of the Pacific Coast.

I credit this FAIL to 5 things in a row... and believe it or not we were in a race to outpace Los Angeles in the 1880's.

'Aedes aegypti' the tiny mosquito that brought us Yellow Fever, 1888, killing 4,000 residents including our mayor
The Great Jacksonville Fire, 1901, 146 blocks destroyed, 10,000 left homeless
Influenza, 'The Spanish Lady' visited us in 1918, 50 million dead world-wide, military enforced quarantine of Jacksonville
1917, conservative Democrat John W. Martin was elected mayor on a platform to destroy the 'decadent' movie industry in Jacksonville
Destruction of the States largest fixed rail mass transit system starting in 1932 and completed in 1936

Now toss in the repeated lack of vision, planning stupidity, or no planning at all, race relations along with complete and total disregard for our own history and perhaps JTA and you've got one hell of a formula for repeated FAIL.

I didn't know about the Yellow Fever epidemic, but that was too long ago to make a significant difference.  The Great Fire brought with it a great renaissance too. Great fires didn't kill Chicago or San Fran. Influenza hit everywhere in 1918 and essentially swept through the entire population. Can't say JAX was hit worse than elsewhere.  Losing streetcars likewise happened everywhere else too, so you can't attribute it to that.

The loss of the movie industry is a legitimate point as was passing on landing the University of Florida.     

[CCMjax]

^In addition to those restoration projects and the new rail line under construction, Detroit also has programs and incentives that essentially pay employees at some of the larger companies to live in downtown.

If time and money are critical to your quality of life, then Live Downtown is for you. The average one-way commute in Southeast Michigan is 25.6 minutes. When you add it all up, that's more than 2 weeks on the road annually-the national average for vacation time! That alone is enough for you to at least think about living near your place of work. If you're still on the fence, how about some big help with your pocket book?

Here are the perks if you work at Compuware, DTE Energy, Marketing Associates, Quicken Loans  or Strategic Staffing Solutions:

- New homeowners receive up to $20,000 forgivable loan toward the purchase of their primary residence.

- New renters receive a $2,500 allowance of funding toward the cost of their apartment in the first year followed by additional funding of $1,000 for the second year.

- Existing renters receive a $1,000 allowance of funding for renewing a lease.

- Existing homeowners receive matching funds of up to $5,000 for exterior improvements for projects of $10,000 or more.
For full eligibility and program benefits, please review the program guidelines.

The Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP) is the overall program coordinator and is leveraging Midtown Detroit, Inc's (MDI) existing resources and skills to launch and administer the successful Live Midtown program.  Both DDP and MDI are non-profit organizations.

http://www.detroitlivedowntown.org/incentives/

Think about that, when considering if a project like the Trio should be given incentives.

Uh yeah . . . Detroit's marketing campaign to its own residents is essentially the exact same thing I'm talking about here in Jax.  Detroit does however have the benefit of 3 huge companies, Quicken Loans, Little Ceasars Pizza, and Rock Ventures amongst several others located downtown with CEO's from these companies investing huge amounts of their own money in revitalizing downtown and Midtown.  He can be polarizing, but Ilitch for example has done great things for that city beyond being owner of the Red Wings, Tigers and Little Ceasars.  He is passionate about his city, having grown up in Detroit.  So it helps to have extremely wealthy passionate people helping the cause.  Money talks and makes things move.  But with that said, I still think Jacksonville needs to adopt a similar game plan of marketing to its own people, particularly millennials, to live in the core.

[Ocklawaha]

Oh but just imagine Jacksonville in  1912... San Diego might have begged it's leaders to be the Jacksonville of the Pacific Coast.

I credit this FAIL to 5 things in a row... and believe it or not we were in a race to outpace Los Angeles in the 1880's.

'Aedes aegypti' the tiny mosquito that brought us Yellow Fever, 1888, killing 4,000 residents including our mayor
The Great Jacksonville Fire, 1901, 146 blocks destroyed, 10,000 left homeless
Influenza, 'The Spanish Lady' visited us in 1918, 50 million dead world-wide, military enforced quarantine of Jacksonville
1917, conservative Democrat John W. Martin was elected mayor on a platform to destroy the 'decadent' movie industry in Jacksonville
Destruction of the States largest fixed rail mass transit system starting in 1932 and completed in 1936

Now toss in the repeated lack of vision, planning stupidity, or no planning at all, race relations along with complete and total disregard for our own history and perhaps JTA and you've got one hell of a formula for repeated FAIL.

I didn't know about the Yellow Fever epidemic, but that was too long ago to make a significant difference.  The Great Fire brought with it a great renaissance too. Great fires didn't kill Chicago or San Fran. Influenza hit everywhere in 1918 and essentially swept through the entire population. Can't say JAX was hit worse than elsewhere.  Losing streetcars likewise happened everywhere else too, so you can't attribute it to that.

The loss of the movie industry is a legitimate point as was passing on landing the University of Florida.   

My point being, yes much of this happened elsewhere as well (though not in such a compact 50 year timeframe) but when the stupidity epidemic followed on the heals of our fixed transit systems demise, Jacksonville went into a brain funk from which it's never recovered. The sagging population numbers from 1936 - until consolidation artificially boosted us up the success ladder tell a story not shared by our competition. I would think a more honest appraisal of our situation could be made with a census of the actual built-up area rather then Lakelanders traditional city limits or the crazy whole county count. These 5 setbacks, and you could toss in UF as number 6, coupled with an unending lack of practical vision seem to have stolen our Mojo (as Khan has said so well).

PRACTICAL VISION! We could do a story on this, hitting so far above the target we went for the overly complex and $$$ automated flying horizontal elevators with rosy predictions to hitting so low that an improved bus service is being hailed as transformational, leading, sea change... Prepare for the letdown.

[Tacachale]

Oh but just imagine Jacksonville in  1912... San Diego might have begged it's leaders to be the Jacksonville of the Pacific Coast.

I credit this FAIL to 5 things in a row... and believe it or not we were in a race to outpace Los Angeles in the 1880's.

'Aedes aegypti' the tiny mosquito that brought us Yellow Fever, 1888, killing 4,000 residents including our mayor
The Great Jacksonville Fire, 1901, 146 blocks destroyed, 10,000 left homeless
Influenza, 'The Spanish Lady' visited us in 1918, 50 million dead world-wide, military enforced quarantine of Jacksonville
1917, conservative Democrat John W. Martin was elected mayor on a platform to destroy the 'decadent' movie industry in Jacksonville
Destruction of the States largest fixed rail mass transit system starting in 1932 and completed in 1936

Now toss in the repeated lack of vision, planning stupidity, or no planning at all, race relations along with complete and total disregard for our own history and perhaps JTA and you've got one hell of a formula for repeated FAIL.

I didn't know about the Yellow Fever epidemic, but that was too long ago to make a significant difference.  The Great Fire brought with it a great renaissance too. Great fires didn't kill Chicago or San Fran. Influenza hit everywhere in 1918 and essentially swept through the entire population. Can't say JAX was hit worse than elsewhere.  Losing streetcars likewise happened everywhere else too, so you can't attribute it to that.

The loss of the movie industry is a legitimate point as was passing on landing the University of Florida.   

My point being, yes much of this happened elsewhere as well (though not in such a compact 50 year timeframe) but when the stupidity epidemic followed on the heals of our fixed transit systems demise, Jacksonville went into a brain funk from which it's never recovered. The sagging population numbers from 1936 - until consolidation artificially boosted us up the success ladder tell a story not shared by our competition. I would think a more honest appraisal of our situation could be made with a census of the actual built-up area rather then Lakelanders traditional city limits or the crazy whole county count. These 5 setbacks, and you could toss in UF as number 6, coupled with an unending lack of practical vision seem to have stolen our Mojo (as Khan has said so well).

PRACTICAL VISION! We could do a story on this, hitting so far above the target we went for the overly complex and $$$ automated flying horizontal elevators with rosy predictions to hitting so low that an improved bus service is being hailed as transformational, leading, sea change... Prepare for the letdown.

The more I read the more I become convinced that the idea that there was a past "golden period" is a myth. It's true that there was once a point when Jacksonville was a tourist destination and arguably the most important city in Florida, and probably a pretty interesting place to visit. At the same time, Florida was one of the smallest, most backwoods states in the county. What really happened is that other parts of Florida leapfrogged Jacksonville as tourist destinations and real estate boomtowns. Jacksonville, meanwhile, diversified its economy and has continued to grow strongly. In fact, we're more nationally prominent than we were when we were a winter vacation spot for rich people from up north.

For one example, look at education. Jacksonville had no four-year college until well after the streetcars closed in 1936, and now we have three, plus Flagler College in St. Augustine and two robust community college systems in the metro area. We didn't even have a black *high school* until the 1890s, for crying out loud. This was not a golden period.

The real story of Jacksonville is that it went from being a small tourist town to being a somewhat larger, more diversified city, and we keep growing. We haven't managed to shake off previous generations' small-town thinking, find our identity, or recover from years of urban decline the way most other cities have. Those are our real problems, and the causes are lack of vision and leadership and a crippling inferiority complex, not a couple of historical catastrophes that happened 100 years ago.

Also, I've heard it before, but Jacksonville was never in serious consideration for the University of Florida campus. We do, however, have the branch campus of the College of Medicine, College of Nursing, and College of Pharmacy, which is something else we didn't have a century ago.