Rethinking Jacksonville’s convention center dilemma

[marcuscnelson]

The suggestion seemed to be around the 5-10 year timeframe. The whole line of questions started with us standing in front of the LaVilla master plan and me asking whether a college had actually considered building a campus at the Prime Osborn (supposedly UF had been approached, but there was obviously nothing concrete in any sense), and then pointing out that you can't build a college campus on a convention center.

I realized getting in the car that I hadn't gotten the chance to ask about rail service from Amtrak or Brightline being in the DIA's long-term vision at all, my bad about that.

[thelakelander]

A five to ten year timeframe is even more unrealistic than that convention center strategy. As a downtown advocate, but also a realist, many of these strategies are pure frustrating because they show we've not really learned from our past mistakes. It's been nearly five years since we blew up City Hall Annex. Go back then and you'll find there was a similar timeline for redevelopment associated with that site. We've been talking about the Shipyards for more than 20 years now. Same goes for making our streets two way. How many years has the Landing site been dirt now? Now all of a sudden, we think we're going to redevelop the entire riverfront in five to ten years? We'll be lucky if MOSH raises enough money to actually start construction and be completed by then. Realistically, these things not only take time (i.e. planning, design, permitting, construction, etc.) they take a real financial commitment. Reminds me of the Landing office parcel RFP news the other day where it mentioned 2024 completion. Even if you broke ground on a +15 story tower tomorrow, completing it by 2024 would be exceptionally quick. So that's another date being pushed publicly that won't happen, considering we still need to go through a RFP process and all the things an entity would need to get through prior to being in a position to secure the necessary permits to start construction. Getting through the RFP, design, engineering, financing, DDRB process, permitting and other necessary benchmarks alone would push one into 2023 or 2024, not mentioning needing another 3 years or so for construction.

Don't even get me started on the talk about a college campus where TOD and a rail station should be. Seriously don't see why UF would want to be there and that's certainly something that can't happen in a good way as long as the Prime Osborn is a convention center. With that said, we should be looking at UF Health Jacksonville and growing that campus, when discussing partnerships and expansion of facilities associated with that particular school.

[marcuscnelson]

Oh, get this: apparently the idea with the campus (not from Boyer, another DIA staffer) was that because of all the work JTA is doing in innovation, a college might want to locate an innovation/tech campus at the Prime Osborn and take advantage of that work, which would have the important benefit of bringing a large daytime population to LaVilla.

Now in all fairness, it appears from JTA's more recent U2C TOD study that they've probably given up on the idea on their end, but of course JTA's study (and seemingly also the overall DIA master plan) also shows not actually reusing the train station as a... train station. Unless by some miracle all the plans demand draining and reopening the tunnels so that people can use that to reach the platforms.

[thelakelander]

Lol, all pie in the sky stuff that comes from not having enough true and transparent community engagement. JTA isn't don't anything that FDOT isn't already doing in a more advanced fashion. So basically a dream of being a Florida Poly II (https://floridapoly.edu/advanced-mobility-institute/index.php)? No college is opening up a satellite campus of significance (i.e. it being a major employer) in LaVilla because of the U2C. Even if one did magically show up, you're looking at well more than a decade or two before it could scale up to anything illustrated in a master plan that could be considered to be a major employer. That's fool's gold. Overall, a major problem with many of these dreams is they never focus on improving and maximizing what we already have first. Sometimes we tend to swing wildly for the fences, when all we really need is a bunt or single to bring in the winning run.

[JaGoaT]

Playing devils advocate I could see development speeding up to fit that 5 year time frame. We have been asking for a master plan and one does seem to be getting developed/implemented. Keep in mind we are in the "Free State of Florida" this may be one of the only states that things can be developed in the future. I envision cranes in the sky every time I'm downtown. I feel like we are very close!

[thelakelander]

^I figured I was playing devil's advocate! There is no master plan.....or there's no plan that's been publicly vetted or transparent....which would be troublesome, if true. Historically, nothing has really changed to make it remotely feasible to build all these things within five years. Much of that timeline has nothing to do with Jax specifically. It's just the nature of how things go, even in the Miamis and Atlantas of the country. I literally can't think of one city in the country that completely revamped its waterfront within a five year period. Great to be ambitious! Maybe we say five and it takes 10 or 15, as opposed to saying 10 or 15 and it taking 30.