www.JacksonvilleBeaches.info

[Chuck McCue]

www.JacksonvilleBeaches.info

[Charles Hunter]

Uniquely designed?
Looks like the Brooklyn and the UNF Gate Stations.
The issue with this one is, it will put the Beaches Diner out of business by taking away all their parking. Apparently, the zoning counted the parking at the office building for the diner, and there is an agreement between the Diner and office building. Gate claims that by changing the use, it voids the zoning agreement.

How nice that they have,Atlantic Beach architects on board. Thus, any opposition from AB residents is moot.

[Kerry]

Uniquely designed?
Looks like the Brooklyn and the UNF Gate Stations.

I thought the exact same thing.  What is unique about it?

[brainstormer]

Is it just me or is Gate kind of becoming assholes? For a locally grown company, one would think they would be more community focused and more sensitive to neighborhoods. I'm kind of thinking it might be time to start getting gas at another brand.

[beach breh]

i actually like this gas station. always annoying that there isn't gas between the BP on atlantic as you go east then none as you go south on 3rd until after fletcher... this will be nice for my AB peeps.

Beach Diner doesn't have any right to complain that their oddly secured parking is going away. They don't own the property in the first place, so they have no right to hold it hostage.

[jph]

https://www.facebook.com/events/177224562624389/

I love the rendering. A beautiful young couple taking an afternoon stroll behind the gas station. There's no sidewalk so they walk right down the alley. Reminds me of idyllic, peaceful times.

[CoastalJax]

Is it just me or is Gate kind of becoming assholes? For a locally grown company, one would think they would be more community focused and more sensitive to neighborhoods. I'm kind of thinking it might be time to start getting gas at another brand.

They aren't doing anything remotely assholish. They have every right to build a station there, and it's not going to cause the area any actual harm. The residents are complaining that "seedy people" will hang around it, which is a nonsense argument. Atlantic Beach has plenty of seedy people already, and a brand-new Gate station will be a hell of a lot less sketchy than the dilapidated shopping center that's currently in that spot.

Gate gives back to the community constantly. I'm tired of Jax residents complaining about any form of change; sometimes new things are good, especially if they're replacing old, crappy things. I actually wrote an article for my magazine about the whole debacle pointing out why the residents' argument makes no sense.

[spuwho]

Is it just me or is Gate kind of becoming assholes? For a locally grown company, one would think they would be more community focused and more sensitive to neighborhoods. I'm kind of thinking it might be time to start getting gas at another brand.

They aren't doing anything remotely assholish. They have every right to build a station there, and it's not going to cause the area any actual harm. The residents are complaining that "seedy people" will hang around it, which is a nonsense argument. Atlantic Beach has plenty of seedy people already, and a brand-new Gate station will be a hell of a lot less sketchy than the dilapidated shopping center that's currently in that spot.

Gate gives back to the community constantly. I'm tired of Jax residents complaining about any form of change; sometimes new things are good, especially if they're replacing old, crappy things. I actually wrote an article for my magazine about the whole debacle pointing out why the residents' argument makes no sense.

I dont think its the change per se. Its the desire to bring better architectural principles to the urban core.

[CoastalJax]

Actually Coastal Jax, while your points are well taken, none of these were the issue at the meetings, and had little to do with the controversy surrounding this particular plan.

While its true that people have a right to use the land that they buy or own, there are conditions placed on properties.

Zoning, for one, is one of the most important (and often, one of the most abused) bit of control placed on a piece of land.

For example, the man who lives in the house next to you certainly has a right to build on that property.  However he doesn't have the right to build a chicken factory farm that covers every square inch of the land.

Even if everyone on the block likes chicken, and the nearest grocery store is 10 miles away.

Even if he promises weekly fried chicken dinners to the eight families closest to him.

The reason is because of zoning.

And I make the absurd point in order to point out that when you are buying land in a city, the property itself comes with abridgments to your free and unfettered right to develop it.  You know that before you buy it, and you purchase the property with full knowledge that it limits your total array of options.

In the Brooklyn area, so much of the fabric of that neighborhood was damaged to intensely by infrastructure development that one of the most prime neighborhoods of the city was reduced to an industrial wasteland surrounding a neighborhood of shotgun houses.  All of the grand mansions were torn down for road and condo developments,, and the old commercial district on Riverside was completely demolished to widen riverside avenue (which must have made the thoughtful ladies who planned that boulevard to roll in their graves....they had designed the road with wide setbacks to prevent just such a thing from happening)

This happened during the federal led draining of the cities during the 1950s through to the senseless demolitions of the 2000s.  And the  neighborhood was largely destroyed, physically cutting off riverside from downtown.

At that time planners, historic preservationists, and urban activists felt that there was a great benefit to restoring a walkable, clean, beautiful neighborhood between the two to create a wonderful transition between the old downtown and the riverside.

They worked on committees and went through the process and thousands of people over 15 years contributed time and effort into the larger effort of urban and historic neighborhood renaissance.  They made zoning changes, set in motion plans, worked to keep certain roads and uses from being deployed destructively through the areas, loosened up the codes in some ways and tightened them in others.  By doing so, they created a setting in which something beautiful and even more useful than the original neighborhood  might happen.

By a fluke of fate, it was decided that much of that work would distill down to a single committee, the Downtown Design Review Board, which was charged with taking the energy, ideas and motivations of all those people and applying them through the work of the DDRB.

The DDRBs job is to review all applications for new development and approve or disapprove of them.  If they disapprove, the project is effectively ended.  But they are also in the business of working with developers to improve their site plans so that their project will fit within the guidelines.

In this case, the objection is not that 'undesirable people will hang out' but that the building as proposed, is so far from the actual street that it breaks up the possibility of a walkable thoroughfare with its suburban design.

This might seem like a small thing, until you get out on a street and actually do some walking around. 

Howard Kunstler has done some pretty great speeches on the topic and he does a really great job of explaining it.

https://www.youtube.com/v/Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

The issue here is that despite the committee (and many members of the public) submitting a better plan proposal, Gate simply didn't want their delivery trucks to pull into the front of the store line for 40 minutes at a time (which they have to do in many many of their other stores)  And so they pretty much pitched a sullen fit over the issue.

And because Gate is such a powerful, local company, rather than doing their job, the DDRB, (with the notable exception of Wiatt Bowers) simply approved another bad design and dishonored the work of those thousands of people by doing so.

This isn't a question of being against change, and if you wrote an article to that effect, you might think about re examining your premise)but rather the opposite. Its about supporting a fundamental change in the culture that reduced gorgeous and important area like Brooklyn once was into a smoldering junk heap and ghetto for 40 years.

We've learned a lot over the past century, and now that the city is rebuilding that area, we can at least do it right this time.

And while that's certainly a fair argument to be made about the issue on a larger level, a lot of the controversy with Atlantic Beach locals specifically has been centered around the station itself. I don't disagree that more rigorous standards and analysis are needed, I just disagree that in this particular circumstance it's something worthy of the complaints. As you said, this is a large-scale problem, so surely there are better examples out there and there are projects more worthy of a huge fuss than this. It's also possible that I'm still missing something about the Gate plans in particular; I just don't think that their current plans represent an insensitivity to Atlantic Beach residents. That's the only point I was trying to make.

[Charles Hunter]

A big part of the concern in AB is the Gate Station will force the closure of the iconic Beaches Diner, due to loss of parking. Another is the impact of the bright lighting on the adjacent residential.

[CoastalJax]

Lol.  I see my mistake.

There is actually a raging controversy about a different gate station going on downtown.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,26328.0.html

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,26489.0.html

When I saw the thread title, I had completely forgotten that Chuck had also posted one on the Gate at the beaches.

My apologies for the long post, especially considering that I was mistaken, not you.

lol.

Its a good post though and Im going to leave it in the thread.

Ah! I see. I admit, I was a little curious about the references to the urban core. No worries!

[beach breh]

A big part of the concern in AB is the Gate Station will force the closure of the iconic Beaches Diner, due to loss of parking. Another is the impact of the bright lighting on the adjacent residential.

Beaches Diner has no right to hold the property hostage over parking spots that they don't even own. They don't have to close, they just need to find a solution to the parking problem that would have come up sooner or later.

[CoastalJax]

A big part of the concern in AB is the Gate Station will force the closure of the iconic Beaches Diner, due to loss of parking. Another is the impact of the bright lighting on the adjacent residential.

Beaches Diner has no right to hold the property hostage over parking spots that they don't even own. They don't have to close, they just need to find a solution to the parking problem that would have come up sooner or later.

This is why even the Beach Diner argument is flawed. They're essentially complaining about having to fix an easily foreseeable problem, just because they have to fix it sooner than they expected. Beach Diner is great and Gate should absolutely work with them to figure out a way to coexist with them as neighbors, but I think it's all being taken to an extreme that isn't at all necessary.

[Charles Hunter]

I thought I had heard there was a formal  (written ) agreement between the Diner and the adjacent business And that the new land use of the gas station voils the agreement. Is there an agreement? How does Gate change it?

[CoastalJax]

I thought I had heard there was a formal  (written ) agreement between the Diner and the adjacent business And that the new land use of the gas station voils the agreement. Is there an agreement? How does Gate change it?

If there is such an agreement, then it would come down to determining if Gate was given knowledge of such an agreement when they purchased the land. Either way, they'd be standing on shaky ground legally because Gate didn't actually enter any such agreement with them directly.