JEA hunt for headquarters site is silent on evacuation risk

[Snaketoz]

Great choice! Plus the Jacksonville sucks, Khan bad man, Curry destroying everything crowd can take a breath! 

This vocal crowd may indeed be the reason Lot J wasn't chosen.  Good choice!

[Kiva]

This was the one I was hoping for.  I guess the expression that a 'blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while' applies here.  Good for the city of Jacksonville.

Exactly! Good news. We need to vote for blind squirrels! Or maybe the board members of JEA deserve some credit.

[jaxnyc79]

Someone help me understand, please.  850 employees in a high-rise in the heart of downtown Jax, will now move to a mid-rise in another location in the heart of downtown.  We get a new structure on a vacant lot, which will render an existing high-rise vacant?  Are we celebrating an enhancement downtown, or celebrating the avoidance of a crisis (that crisis being the loss of 850 jobs in the CBD to some tangential lot?)

[Tacachale]

This was unexpected but definitely the right choice. I reckon that the public input was a factor in pushing or enabling the board to make the right call. Kudos all around.

[Tacachale]

Someone help me understand, please.  850 employees in a high-rise in the heart of downtown Jax, will now move to a mid-rise in another location in the heart of downtown.  We get a new structure on a vacant lot, which will render an existing high-rise vacant?  Are we celebrating an enhancement downtown, or celebrating the avoidance of a crisis (that crisis being the loss of 850 jobs in the CBD to some tangential lot?)

Good question. The basic thing here is that JEA doesn't need all that space in its current headquarters, which wasn't ideal for it to begin with. Keeping them downtown and in a better fitting facility is a gain, and there are other positives of this location (not the least of which is infilling a vacant lot. That said, we need to fight to make sure the city doesn't go Godzilla on the old headquarters rather than just selling it to someone who could get use out of it.

[Steve]

Someone help me understand, please.  850 employees in a high-rise in the heart of downtown Jax, will now move to a mid-rise in another location in the heart of downtown.  We get a new structure on a vacant lot, which will render an existing high-rise vacant?  Are we celebrating an enhancement downtown, or celebrating the avoidance of a crisis (that crisis being the loss of 850 jobs in the CBD to some tangential lot?)

The latter, but I'll take it.

[edjax]

Is it too soon for everyone to start complaining about no retail being included in the large garage? 

[thelakelander]

Someone help me understand, please.  850 employees in a high-rise in the heart of downtown Jax, will now move to a mid-rise in another location in the heart of downtown.  We get a new structure on a vacant lot, which will render an existing high-rise vacant?  Are we celebrating an enhancement downtown, or celebrating the avoidance of a crisis (that crisis being the loss of 850 jobs in the CBD to some tangential lot?)

You pretty much nailed it. The crisis situation would have been the loss of 850 jobs and an empty highrise. This is about as good as things can play out with the three options on the table. 850 jobs stay downtown, downtown loses a block of surface parking and all the empty retail storefronts on West Adams surrounding it now have an anchor to help generate the foot traffic to feed them. The one negative, the JEA Tower, being vacated can be turned into a positive if that site is revamped with a mix of retail, office and residential. Given the timeline, we have roughly 2.5 years to debate and push for reuse over demolition on the JEA Tower. As for Lot J and Balanky's sites, hopefully they can find viable tenants willing to move into the core to make them feasible.

[thelakelander]

Btw, I'm looking through the scoring now. One thing that really stands out about Lot J is the 3,000 space parking garage that will be built to serve development around the stadium. It has a $40 to $45 million price tag and will be funded by a third party or developer outside of the JEA lease. Needless to say, that third party is likely John Q. Taxpayer. So we can at least add that to the cost of what the public will have to pay to get development off the ground around the stadium.

[edjax]

Btw, I'm looking through the scoring now. One thing that really stands out about Lot J is the 3,000 space parking garage that will be built to serve development around the stadium. It has a $40 to $45 million price tag and will be funded by a third party or developer outside of the JEA lease. Needless to say, that third party is likely John Q. Taxpayer. So we can at least add that to the cost of what the public will have to pay to get development off the ground around the stadium.

I watched the live stream of the meeting and it was clear the city will be building the new garage, or at least responsible for a large portion of it and that was regardless of JEA moving there it seemed.  One of the funny comments was by Paul Harden ( who seemed extremely unprepared) that the city has a good track record of operating parking garages. Uh yea, quite the record.

[KenFSU]

This was unexpected but definitely the right choice. I reckon that the public input was a factor in pushing or enabling the board to make the right call. Kudos all around.

Big credit also to CBRE for doing an incredible, impartial job scoring each proposal on merit alone and being honest and open about the pros and cons of each.

Bang-up, professional job by everyone involved here in the face of what was surely a lot of pressure to go Lot J.

Huge net win for downtown Jacksonville, even if the employee count in the CBD doesn't radically change as a result.

[edjax]

David Cawton has included on his Twitter account a statement from Iguana.  I'd post it but techno dummie and have no idea how to do it. General statement saying they were disappointed burn happy to see other excellent proposals for downtown and that it would not impact their desire to furthering their desires to develop downtown.

[thelakelander]

Btw, I'm looking through the scoring now. One thing that really stands out about Lot J is the 3,000 space parking garage that will be built to serve development around the stadium. It has a $40 to $45 million price tag and will be funded by a third party or developer outside of the JEA lease. Needless to say, that third party is likely John Q. Taxpayer. So we can at least add that to the cost of what the public will have to pay to get development off the ground around the stadium.

I watched the live stream of the meeting and it was clear the city will be building the new garage, or at least responsible for a large portion of it and that was regardless of JEA moving there it seemed.  One of the funny comments was by Paul Harden ( who seemed extremely unprepared) that the city has a good track record of operating parking garages. Uh yea, quite the record.

I was able to live stream for a little while between meetings today. It was during the time that Harden and Balanky made their closing points. Harden said a few questionable things that I wish someone would have challenged. COJ's success with parking garages was one of them. We got the short end of the stick with the Metropolitan Parking Solutions deal and have spent millions over the last decade as a result. That's anything but a success.  He also made a case for claiming Lot J being a superior location for transit dependent residents to access the site. In reality, it is about the worst location within the old city limits that one can find when it comes to access to reliable transit options.

[thelakelander]

David Cawton has included on his Twitter account a statement from Iguana.  I'd post it but techno dummie and have no idea how to do it. General statement saying they were disappointed burn happy to see other excellent proposals for downtown and that it would not impact their desire to furthering their desires to develop downtown.

Good for them. I hope they can pull in a major tenant from outside the area. I still would like that to be some Flex-N-Gate related operation! Was also disappointed with Cawton's twitter updates. They were overwhelmingly focused on Lot J, so during times when I couldn't live stream, it was hard to follow how the other options compared.

[marcuscnelson]

Well I'll be...

A good thing happened.

Hopefully we can see more decisions like these for Downtown.