Mayor Curry wants the Landing back

[vicupstate]

5PTS VILLAGE

What a squandered opportunity done in poor taste.  Shows quite clearly Sleiman cannot be trusted to produce a product worthy of the landings real estate.

The landing is an embarrassment.  At the end of the day that's on Sleiman.  He needs to go.  Literally anything, ANYTHING, would be better.  Even if the city actually developed and managed something themselves, it literally cannot be worse.

Sleiman needs to go.  the design sucks.  activation and planning jargon needn't ever enter the picture.  its common sense

Lake your article should be "what the TU editorial said"   Don't use such a platform to lend an ounce of support to Sleiman.  Hes been inviting this for years.  Good for Curry

If you think the city couldn't do it worse, I invite you to dine at the LaVilla Seafood Restaurant.  Be warned, you'll leave there just as hungry as you came.  While you are in that neck of the woods, take a peek at the Brewster Hospital and realize that it took what 15 years to get something done with that building, and it still isn't actually occupied.

Drive over to the Duval Courthouse and recall the 'design competition' that produced four plans, none of which was actually built. Remember also the the tens of millions in cost overruns.   

If doing this project is common sense, then the city has shown multiple times that it has none.

Of course, maybe I am misunderstanding and you were actually referring to the City of Jacksonville, NC.  In which case, maybe they could do better.     

[jlmann]

If you think the city couldn't do it worse, I invite you to dine at the LaVilla Seafood Restaurant.  Be warned, you'll leave there just as hungry as you came.  While you are in that neck of the woods, take a peek at the Brewster Hospital and realize that it took what 15 years to get something done with that building, and it still isn't actually occupied.

Drive over to the Duval Courthouse and recall the 'design competition' that produced four plans, none of which was actually built. Remember also the the tens of millions in cost overruns.   

If doing this project is common sense, then the city has shown multiple times that it has none.

Of course, maybe I am misunderstanding and you were actually referring to the City of Jacksonville, NC.  In which case, maybe they could do better

.     

well you should obviously drop by the landing, but you missed the point entirely

fair point by other poster- didn't realize that was his brother, but it certainly looks like a toney sleiman special straight off of ______ Blvd.

[Jim]

JLmann, would you put tens of millions of dollar into a development if you didn't own the land itself?    Would you design a project that requires 600 parking spaces when the city has only provided you 300? 

[jlmann]

nope I wouldnt.  another reason sleiman needs to go cuz he isn't either.  making a deal with him was stupid to begin with.

on what occasion besides FL/GA has there ever been more than 300 spaces needed?  the city shoulve upheld their obligation I suppose but parking has never, ever been hard to find at the landing since 2005.  because of the product provided by sleiman

I was sort of joking about the city not being able to do worse.  however my point was that literally any other private party would be an improvement and a party the city you work with.  sleiman is not such an individual and I hope they muscle him out.

no personal vendetta against the guy other than him taking a knee on the landing for how many years now?  if 300 people with cars show up this weekend id be surprised

[thelakelander]

I understand why many people don't trust Sleiman, but you guys are being totally biased if you're blaming the Landing's current condition on Sleiman 100%. It had gone down the tubes well before Sleiman took over. Why would Rouse sell something that cost them $40 million to build, for only $5 million? What happened to their partnership with the city, that would make them cut bait and get out of town as fast as possible?

[Keith-N-Jax]

How can I like viscupsate post? Anyway as far as DT failure look only to COJ/JTA and there's your answer to why we have let other peer cities the same size surge ahead of us. Put the Landing and other large vacant lands in similar cities and watch them take off.

[jlmann]

not 100%, no

but sleiman is the operator.  hes been sitting around for 5yrs+ bitching about parking.  he doesn't need 600 spots or a handout to do his part.  coj is an easy scapegoat but seems pretty clear he overpaid/made a bad investment and has almost been rooting for failure so he can squeeze more money out of coj by holding the landing hostage and trying to weasel out of bad ancillary purchases like a parking lot due to coj not filing docs correctly in the meantime

I'm not sure hes earned the benefit of the doubt with past projects or the landing

[Keith-N-Jax]

^^^ yeah but you seem to think its Sleiman fault non-the-less and how do you know he doesn't need 600 parking spaces?

[thelakelander]

Rouse thought they needed the dedicated parking COJ agreed to provide them with. Having professional experience designing retail properties myself, I'm more inclined to believe retail developer's position on the value of dedicated parking than those with limited to no experience in that particular industry.

[spuwho]

I understand why many people don't trust Sleiman, but you guys are being totally biased if you're blaming the Landing's current condition on Sleiman 100%. It had gone down the tubes well before Sleiman took over. Why would Rouse sell something that cost them $40 million to build, for only $5 million? What happened to their partnership with the city, that would make them cut bait and get out of town as fast as possible?

Rouse $40 million minus COJ $20 million over 13 years with 50% of the original tenants at sale.  Thats $8.6 million in accumulated depreciation.  $11 million book value plus the PV of the current leases minus the $5 million Sleiman paid for the building.

Armchair math says Rouse lost around $4-5 million in exiting the locale.

[thelakelander]

Why would they select leaving at a loss vs staying to make a profit?

[spuwho]

Why would they select leaving at a loss vs staying to make a profit?

Because Rouse had the same problem Toney had. The inability to retain quality leases. Other issues made retention harder, but they could see the trend in their portfolio.

[KenFSU]

Why would they select leaving at a loss vs staying to make a profit?

I would imagine to mitigate future losses. At the time of the sale, Rouse had lost money on the Landing every single year for over a decade. In the year before they sold to Sleiman, they lost $563,000. There was no indication that things were going to improve.

Parking was one factor, but it's also worth noting that Rouse was increasingly concerned about the viability of a Festival Marketplace in Jacksonville even if there was ample parking. Rouse built the Landing partially on speculation that downtown Jacksonville would experience a boom in convention business and hotel space during the 80s and 90s. This never ended up happening. On average, Rouse's successful festival markets saw 70% of their revenue comes from out of town visitors. The Landing hovered near 30%. Without a strong residential base to make up the difference, the writing was on the wall.

No reason to throw good money after bad in Rouse's case.

[Keith-N-Jax]

In short terms DT Jacksonville sucks and has for quite sometime which falls on the leaders of the city. There's some momentum going on right now through out all sections but this city has lacked leadership for the last 20 years plus.

[thelakelander]

Interesting read from 2002. 15 years later and we're still debating stuff that led to Rouse getting out of here.   

The Landing may be up for sale
Rouse property still losing money
Jul 29, 2002, 12:00am

"It is not an acceptable return on our investment as it stands today," said Paul Fickinger, vice president and group director of operating properties for Columbia, Md.-based The Rouse Co.

Rouse officials declined to release earnings information, but reports to the city show the Landing loses cash.

Rouse reported a loss of $569,197 last year. It has been losing money on the property since at least 1992.

The numbers help give rise to speculation Rouse soon may try to sell the Landing.

So basically, this thing was a loser from the start.

Rouse's highest performing festival malls typically are in strong tourism markets, including Miami, New Orleans, New York City and Boston, Kiddy said.

"You're either going to have to pull in the tourism and convention business or reinvent what the Landing was originally intended to be," Fickinger said.

So they made a bet on the downtown Jacksonville tourism and convention business and failed well before Sleiman rode into downtown.

Festival malls similar to the Landing, including Rouse's Bayside Marketplace in Miami and the Riverwalk in New Orleans, generate 70 percent of revenues from out-of-market shoppers, namely tourists and convention attendees.

Rouse executives expected similar results at the Landing. But out-of-towners generate 30 percent of the Landing's revenues.

"The project was designed as a festival marketplace, which demands a huge level of tourism traffic," Fickinger said. "[Jacksonville's] tourism and business travel has never been high enough to generate the type of sales this project would require."

At the time of the Landing's 1987 opening, the Prime Osborn Convention Center was open two years and, at 78,500 square feet, was ahead of competitors in convention business. Today, the facility lags behind competitors in size and bookings. Several major shows, including the Cheerleaders of America, which filled 5,500 room nights in 2000, have outgrown the center and headed for markets with bigger facilities.

"It was everybody's understanding Jacksonville was a city on the grow and there would be numerous Class A hotels built Downtown through the late 1980s and 1990s," Fickinger said.

Sounds like the Rouse expectation was the clustering, complementing uses (in this case...hotels) with a compact setting (adjacent to the Landing), to generate tourism oriented pedestrian traffic to support the Landing's retailers. Not attracting suburbanites to downtown. Needless to say, this did not happen in Jacksonville.

The Landing also may be losing potential customers to a frustrating parking issue. The city originally agreed to build and maintain an 800-space, short-term parking garage before the Landing's opening.

Instead, the city struck a deal to allow Landing tenants and customers to park in the Daniels Building garage. Adam's Mark took control of it when it opened last year, and Rouse's privileges expire next year.

The city is negotiating with Humana to allow Landing use of 300 weekday and 375 weekend parking spots in its proposed 1,000-space parking garage to front Hogan and Bay streets. But the project is hung up in discussions with JEA concerning underground utilities.

Meanwhile, last year Jacksonville waived Rouse's $100,000 a year lease payments until builders complete the garage or the city fulfills its obligation to provide parking in another way.

Hmm, so Sleiman isn't totally off his rocker?  Rouse (a national retail developer at the time) was frustrated over the parking situation as well. 

Full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2002/07/29/story1.html

For me, it just solidifies my opinion that the Landing's condition is less about picking sides between Sleiman's and COJ's redevelopment dreams or the structure itself and more about what downtown Jacksonville can and can't support from a market perspective.