A Few Observations from NYC

[jaxnyc79]

I'm not sure how to start a new thread on this site, but I visited my parents in Jax this past weekend (from NYC), and took a drive around town.  A few observations:

It seems the Broadstone River House construction on the Southbank has all but come to a halt?  Any updates?
 
Many of the commercial corridors in Jax don't do any favors for the residential neighborhoods behind them.  There are shoddy commercial strips along the avenues, but decent neighborhoods behind them.  Can't this be cleaned up?

This might be minutiae for some, but why build sidewalks with a grassy strip between the sidewalk and curbside, if you're not going to keep up with mowing the grass.  Why not just do away with the grassy strip and go from street, to raised curbside, to side walk.  Shouldn't that be less maintenance going forward?  How many miles of grass strips county-wide could we do away with?