So, Jax May Be The Only City To Demolish Its Landing

[thelakelander]

Most festival marketplaces built in the 1970s and 1980s have struggled, but the Jacksonville Landing may be the first to be outright demolished and not replaced. While other cities have found ways to adapt their old buildings to new uses - some quite successfully - Jacksonville continues to go Godzilla on its downtown. This strategy has been a disaster for downtown - and a huge cost to the taxpayers.

Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/so-jax-may-be-the-only-city-to-demolish-its-landing/

[Kerry]

My son and I went to Miami's Bayside Center last weekend and it was PACKED.  In fact, Packed isn't even a good word for it.  There were some places it was actually difficult to move through.  That was the first time I have actually been to downtown Miami (really just been to the airport and driven by on I-95) and I was blown away.  All I can say is WOW!!!

[KenFSU]

This might be my favorite article ever published on the site.

I've been in Jax since 2005, and this is the single biggest mistake I've ever seen the city make.

It's indefensible, and so clearly politically motivated.

This isn't rocket science here.

1) Toney Sleiman breaks from party lines and backs Alvin Brown in the 2015 mayoral election.

2) The Curry campaign is furious, and accuses Sleiman of endorsing Brown in exchange for a $12 million redevelopment agreement for the Landing. They issue a press release, ironically stating, "Throwing money, nearly $12 million, at special interests while kids are being gunned down in the street because of fewer cops is not simply outrageous it's disgusting." Upon election, the Landing is entirely deprioritized.

3) The mayor takes a secretive trip with Shad Khan and Mark Lamping to visit with Cordish and tour three of their developments, and immediately starts looking into revenue sources for a Landing 2.0 near the stadium.

4) Curry announces to the press that he's "prepared to take the Landing" and that he will "put the screws" to Sleiman until it happens.

5) The city attempts to force an eviction, releases the render of the new grass field, and begins actively screwing with the Landing's business by threatening to cancel events at the venue unless new permitting loopholes are jumped through.

It's not a huge leap to suggest that this may have more to do with settling a personal vendetta and clearing the way for Cordish than doing what's best for the taxpayers of Jacksonville.

And what really sucks is that we'll never know the truth about what changed. Curry wasn't backing down. Sleiman was on the record as saying that adminstrations come and go, he was willing to wait 50 years to make the Landing work, and that a sale was off the table.

Then, three weeks before this whole thing was set to go to trial and we were finally going to get resolution as to who was legally in the right in terms of the provisions of the lease, somebody must have got spooked, the city drops its lawsuit against Sleiman re: the parking lot, and $15 million in taxpayer money was offered to and accepted by Sleiman to simply walk away.

And there's just zero logical jump between "the city needs to take back the Landing from Sleiman" and "the city needs to destroy the Landing by Fall."

What in the actual fuck are we thinking knocking down the Landing without any plan to build something better in its place.

Where's the rush? Where's the fire?

And, if we axed the plan for a convention center in part because we didn't have enough money to do both a convention center and the Cordish development at the stadium complex, where are we going to magincally find the money to redevelop the Landing from scratch?

The Landing has been downtown Jacksonville's premier civic, event, and retail space for the last four decades, and it shouldn't be one person's decision to carelessly wipe the home of Florida-Georgia, and the 4th of July, and the Tree Lighting Ceremony, and the Boat Parade, and political rallies, and free public concerts, and New Year's Eve off the map because they felt the previous owner mismanaged the property.

The settlement is going to happen, but how hard is it for the city to maintain the existing leases, temporarily mothball the unused portions of the Landing, and issue an RFP inclusive of both new development and adaptive reuse? Why are we assuming that there are no developers out there who can create an awesome Landing 2.0 using some of the existing bones at a fraction of the cost of new construction?

This is insane to me, I geniunely hate everything about it.

And I just can't wrap my head around the fact that people think the Landing has no historic value to the city.

[thelakelander]

My son and I went to Miami's Bayside Center last weekend and it was PACKED.  In fact, Packed isn't even a good word for it.  There were some places it was actually difficult to move through.  That was the first time I have actually been to downtown Miami (really just been to the airport and driven by on I-95) and I was blown away.  All I can say is WOW!!!

Downtown Miami is unrecognizable now when compared to what it was when Bayside opened in the late 1980s. Back in those days, it was pretty similar to Downtown Jacksonville. However, when it booms nationally, it really booms there. Nevertheless, the management at Bayside (along with the City of Miami) have found ways to keep people coming back to Bayside. Part of that has been clustering (like the cruise terminal being nearby). Another part has been renovation (yes, you need to refresh your property after 30 years) and another part has been changing the tenant mix to reflect the current market.

[thelakelander]

The settlement is going to happen, but how hard is it for the city to maintain the existing leases, temporarily mothball the unused portions of the Landing, and issue an RFP inclusive of both new development and adaptive reuse? Why are we assuming that there are no developers out there who can create an awesome Landing 2.0 using some of the existing bones at a fraction of the cost of new construction?

I don't know if you've noticed but it seems the remaining businesses are clearly being driven out of business and forced to leave prior to this deal going through. The local small business owners are really getting the short end of the stick.

And I just can't wrap my head around the fact that people think the Landing has no historic value to the city.

This is the same city that thought Klutho's buildings were crap and now they're masterpieces. We razed those Klutho buildings for Mid-Century architecture and now we consider Mid-Century architecture trash. I think people are so starved for something to happen in downtown that even demolition seems like progress. Unfortunately, without change in the development strategy, we're simply in the midst of the same ole same ole from the 1950s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Continuing to fight visual symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes.

[KenFSU]

I don't know if you've noticed but it seems the remaining businesses are clearly being driven out of business and forced to leave prior to this deal going through. The local small business owners are really getting the short end of the stick.

Small silver lining:

The DIA is in the process of sitting down with each remaining Landing tenant and a big map of available retail space in the downtown core to try to work relocation out.

Apparently grants are on the table.

Ridiculous that we're subsidizing any of this, but hopefully a few of them land elsewhere in the CBD.

[downtownbrown]

For those remaining committed to The Landing as an architectural footprint worth saving, I am curious to know why you think The Landing failed, and what exactly you think government can do to revive it?  It was failing way before Curry or Sleiman came around. 

[KenFSU]

For those remaining committed to The Landing as an architectural footprint worth saving, I am curious to know why you think The Landing failed, and what exactly you think government can do to revive it?  It was failing way before Curry or Sleiman came around. 

There's a million reasons why it failed, but to me, parking and politics are the big two. Big-name restaurant and retailers won't even consider a location like the Landing unless a certain threshold of dedicated parking spots are available. Not public parking spots for downtown, but spots exclusively dedicated for Landing customers. Sleiman had some really impressive potential tenants lined up when he took over the Landing, but they never materialized because the city never provided the necessary parking promised in the original lease. A big part of why the Landing failed was because it was never properly set up to succeed in the first place.

Politics needs no explanation, but as long as the city owns the land, the Landing was always going to have to be a joint venture between our local government and Toney Sleiman. It's instead been combative since Sleiman aquired the property, and there's never been a good faith effort by both sides to come together and fix the problem.

Safety and security has often been an issue as well, particularly in these last five years where we've seen everything from brutal stabbings, to gang murders, to a nationally televised mass shooting.

As far as what the city government could have done to revive it, I think just cleaning it up, beautifying the public spaces, and otherwise staying out of the way would have gone a long way. The market could have done a lot of the heavy lifting itself as all the other projects downtown brought new residents and workers into the core.

We're literally tearing down the Landing at a time when it's got its best opportunity to finally succeed. VyStar's adding 1,000 employees to the core. Hyatt Place and Courtyard by Marriott are adding hundreds of travelers within eyesight of the Landing. UNF and FSCJ are adding students. Atkins and Vestcor are adding hundreds of residents. La Quinta and Jones Furniture will be coming online soon. We're subsidizing a 300+ room hotel a few blocks away at Berkman II. Mosh is planning an $80 million expansion right across the Main Street Bridge, with a smaller expansion planned right door to the Landing at the Times-Union Center. Lori Boyer is making plans to activate the riverwalk and make it a more popular destination. Local tourism is exploding.

Now should be the time that we're investing in improving the Landing and making it a true anchor for Laura Street and a central hub for all of this new activity, but instead, we're bulldozing the only 24/7ish retail/restaurant/entertainment/gathering space we have in the CBD and replacing it with a passive park.

It just defies all logic.

The structure isn't the issue.

There's so much potential there.

[Kerry]

I don't know if you've noticed but it seems the remaining businesses are clearly being driven out of business and forced to leave prior to this deal going through. The local small business owners are really getting the short end of the stick.

Small silver lining:

The DIA is in the process of sitting down with each remaining Landing tenant and a big map of available retail space in the downtown core to try to work relocation out.

Apparently grants are on the table.

Ridiculous that we're subsidizing any of this, but hopefully a few of them land elsewhere in the CBD.

So those grants now get added to the running $22 million taxpayer total as well?

[thelakelander]

The DIA is in the process of sitting down with each remaining Landing tenant and a big map of available retail space in the downtown core to try to work relocation out.

Apparently grants are on the table.

Good to hear. Hopefully, instead of spreading them out all over the CDB, they're zeroing in on clustering them together. If not, half of them will close within a year or two from the lack of foot traffic, visibility and programming.

[thelakelander]

For those remaining committed to The Landing as an architectural footprint worth saving,

You think too much in absolutes. I think you can change the architectural footprint without wholesale demo and come up with a pretty cool, authentic product that also opens the site up for more outdoor uses.

I am curious to know why you think The Landing failed,

I know I've written a few articles and posts about this. Most people here have the failure thing totally wrong because we've forgotten our history. Quite frankly, just about all of Rouse's festival marketplaces failed. There's nothing Jax could have done to make the original Landing successful because the market was too small for the concept then. Both Rouse and the City knew it. However, Rouse was wooed by public money and promises of a downtown vibrant scene that ultimately never materialized. Thus, within a couple of years after its opening, most of the original tenants abandoned it just like they did in the other festival marketplaces. In the 1990s, the tenant mix was changed a bit to rely more on entertainment and riverfront dining but you can't fill 125,000 square feet of space up on those uses alone in a downtown that was still hemorrhaging office workers, attracting very few new residents and not investing in any of the additional promises like the dedicated parking and other complementing development that would make it rival Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Rouse eventually gave up and Sleiman came in on the cheap. However, Sleiman's entire time has been filled with political fights and an uncertain future, causing the remaining tenants to suffer the most.

and what exactly you think government can do to revive it?  It was failing way before Curry or Sleiman came around.

IMO, the best thing local government could ever do is get its hands out of the cookie jar. Carve out whatever space you feel is necessary along the waterfront for public use and sell the rest of the West and East Lots for a market rate price, take those millions earned and reinvest them into activating the surrounding area.

[Kerry]

What about just returning the spot back to the river?  It is on in-fill anyhow.

[thelakelander]

I don't know what would be the point? That would be a more expensive move that accomplishes less ROI on tax dollars.

[Kerry]

It is better than a homeless hangout - which is what it will become exclusively.

[heights unknown]

I hope, and pray to Almighty God that they don't put a park there; we've got hemming a few blocks down. Be innovative and put something else, other than a park, in there to draw the public/citizens to that area of downtown. No, I don't have a clue what they should put there. even if it's an office tower fine, but NO PARK!!! Are they going to raze Hemming Park and put another park in there as well? Sometimes I wonder about the leaders, and others of good old Jacksonville. My goodness.