Ranking: Jacksonville 7th least recession-recovered large city

[thelakelander]

Jacksonville had a similar public improvement program downtown:  Times Union Center, arena, baseball grounds, new courthouse, downtown library, museum of modern art, north and southbank riverwalks.

Another thing OKC has done that would go along ways for downtown Jax is returning all the downtown streets to two-way and getting rid of the elevated freeway (see Hart ramps and Arlington Expressway).

http://okc.about.com/od/citygovernment/a/Project-180-Oklahoma-City.htm

None of this is outside the capabilities of Jax and Jax has a much better urban core to start from than OKC did when they got started.

We did get redevelopment projects started around that time (two actually, River City Renaissance and the Better Jacksonville Plan) and things are a lot better downtown than they were in the early 90s. But we weren't able to maintain the momentum leading up to the Great Recession, and we were hit extremely hard by it. As the original article says, we still haven't totally recovered even as there's been more momentum in Downtown and the urban core. Inconsistent leadership is also a big factor in our failure to capitalize on earlier successes.

Consistent leadership is a big part of it.  I think to go along with that is the makeup of City government.  Jax has 19 Council Members while OKC only has 8.  Credit and blame is real easy to assign in OKC which keeps Council Members from going off the rails.

Continuity in the chief executive's office is another big fact. OKC has apparently had the same City Manager for over 16 years. Jacksonville has had 4 mayors in that amount of time, including a one-termer (Brown) and another who's in his first term now (Curry), who's in his 1st term. Most (though certainly not all) of our mayors haven't done a great job building on what their predecessors did.

The main thing in Jax is everyone keeps forgetting about the importance of scale.  Jax has thrown just as much money into its downtown as any other place over the last 40 years.  The main difference between an OKC, Chattanooga, Greenville, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Columbus, Charlotte, Orlando, etc. and Jax isn't the amount of public money spent.  It's we have no clue of the importance of clustering our investments in a pedestrian scale setting to stimulate additional synergy between them.  Instead of clumping them on top of each other, we spread them out too thin.

[FlaBoy]

^ So True.

Energize a block and it spreads. That is why Laura/Adams/Forsythe corridor is so important and that Laura St. Trio where you already have the building stock and have invested in streetscaping.

[I-10east]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

[Adam White]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I remember coming home to visit in 2009, 2010, etc and being surprised at the number of businesses that closed down.

[Kerry]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

Comparing 2017 Jax to 2007 Jax isn't the right measuring stick.  While the last 8 years haven't been great economically, other cities still continued to see pretty good improvements in their urban cores.  Will Rogers once said, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

[I-10east]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I remember coming home to visit in 2009, 2010, etc and being surprised at the number of businesses that closed down.

Like what business (small, large etc)? Not trying to bust your chops, just trying to figure out where you're coming from.

[I-10east]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

Comparing 2017 Jax to 2007 Jax isn't the right measuring stick.  While the last 8 years haven't been great economically, other cities still continued to see pretty good improvements in their urban cores.  Will Rogers once said, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

I'm going by the entire city (like the article says) not just downtown. As for DT, the future projects aren't exactly nil. Each city have there own set of challenges, and quite a few major cities have actually lost big companies, sports teams etc etc during the recession til now (While Jax hasn't lost anything major). So I don't buy that 'everything is rosy outside of Jax' sentiment. 

[Adam White]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I remember coming home to visit in 2009, 2010, etc and being surprised at the number of businesses that closed down.

Like what business (small, large etc)? Not trying to bust your chops, just trying to figure out where you're coming from.

Well, I can remember a strip of shops across the street from Regency Square Mall - I can't remember what was there, but I think an electronics shop was one of the tenants.

Lots of empty spaces in strip malls. That sort of stuff. It was 9 years ago or so, so I can't really recall too many details I'm afraid!

[I-10east]

^^^Yeah Regency going downhill (mainly because of crime) is no secret. That effect in no way is exclusive to Jax BTW. Many many malls around the country have seen better days.   

[Adam White]

^^^Yeah Regency going downhill (mainly because of crime) is no secret. That effect in no way is exclusive to Jax BTW. Many many malls around the country have seen better days.

I don't think this was anything to do with crime. A lot of businesses failed as a result of the global financial crisis. Jacksonville was no different in that respect.

[I-10east]

^^^We'll agree to disagree.

[Adam White]

^^^We'll agree to disagree.

Always! 

[Jim]

IMO, maybe outside of real estate which tends to be very fickle in Florida, Jax was very resilient throughout the recession. I don't see any notable losses here; what did we lose to earn such a low recovery rating? CSX laid off many people (which isn't good), but it's looking to be a more efficient streamlined company. We got Southeastern Grocers to come here. FNF and FNFIS have maintained throughout a horrible mortgage crisis.

I can think of more pluses added to the city before any takeaways throughout the recession. So bottomline, no Jax hasn't had any explosive growth, but it has been resilient, and slowly but surely moving forward.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I remember coming home to visit in 2009, 2010, etc and being surprised at the number of businesses that closed down.

Like what business (small, large etc)? Not trying to bust your chops, just trying to figure out where you're coming from.

Well, I can remember a strip of shops across the street from Regency Square Mall - I can't remember what was there, but I think an electronics shop was one of the tenants.

Lots of empty spaces in strip malls. That sort of stuff. It was 9 years ago or so, so I can't really recall too many details I'm afraid!

The Regency region has been the victim of many aspects including the economy.  But simple age and new shopping destinations have taken a far greater toll.  The Avenues Mall in the 90s was one of the first major catalysts to Regency's downfall.  Then the St John's Town Center and, to a lessor extent, River City Marketplace came in, took dollars away and sealed Regency's fate.  They had stores Regency never had and were new and hip. 

Regency's regional reach and $ per household have both shrunk quite steadily for nearly 30 years now.

Oh, and that electronics store was CompUSA which moved to St John's Town Center. 

[Tacachale]

We lost jobs in more than just retail. We lost entire banks and literally thousands of jobs in finance, which are one of our major employers. We lost jobs at the port, and we're falling further behind our competitors. Real estate plummeted and hasn't fully recovered (this happened across the state, but other areas had a better recovery than we have, especially as tourism came back within a few years).

Like a lot of these lists, I wouldn't be surprised if consolidation were a factor in skewing our numbers. Low cost of living also makes Florida look worse than it really is (as they're looking at things like median household income and median home prices). But either way, we'd be on the low end of recession recovery by most measures.