Dalton Agency owners plan "Sidebar" in space vacated by Subway Downtown

[thelakelander]

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/photo-gallery/dalton-agency-plans-sidebar-in-space-vacated-by-subway-downtown

[Tacachale]

Great news, and solid name!

[thelakelander]

Would have loved to see some sort of business with night and weekend hours in that space. Hemming's outer square is limiting its potential. The more and more retailers are replaced with uses that don't maintain consistent hours, the more difficult it will be to keep it consistently activated but oh well.

[Tacachale]

Would have loved to see some sort of business with night and weekend hours in that space. Hemming's outer square is limiting its potential. The more and more retailers are replaced with uses that don't maintain consistent hours, the more difficult it will be to keep it consistently activated but oh well.

Does it not? That's too bad.

[Captain Zissou]

Would have loved to see some sort of business with night and weekend hours in that space. Hemming's outer square is limiting its potential. The more and more retailers are replaced with uses that don't maintain consistent hours, the more difficult it will be to keep it consistently activated but oh well.

The good news is the city has two ready made spaces (snyder memorial and library retail) that can spring to life if the demand is there. Whether they will or not is a different issue entirely. 

[thelakelander]

The demand has always been there. I know with the library spaces, the design and restrictions placed on them make it difficult for businesses to succeed more than anything else. I still don't know why Snyder is still in the city's possession. That one should have been offered up over a decade ago, IMO.

With that said, the entire west and east sides of the park were once filled with storefronts and now they're dead. Ideally, as the need for office space declines perhaps at some point in the future, it will make sense for the city to retrofit some of the ground space in the St. James Building back to storefronts.

[KenFSU]

I'm obviously deeply biased here, but I love the plan.

It'll be a great spot for the agency.

That said, I totally agree that there is way too much dead space around Hemming Park.

We can't drop the ball with Snyder, and there's no reason we shouldn't be aggressively marketing the property during this economic cycle.

The building's actually in better shape than people think.

Needs cosmetic work, obviously, but HVAC, plumbing, and other utilities are all pretty much brand new.