Downtown Development Update: What's rising, what's delayed

[Charles Hunter]

How many of the separated spaces from Winn Dixie to Aldi conversions remain empty? Fort Caroline is still empty after almost a year.

I don't go by that center often, but it's not the only vacancy in that center, is it?

[Ken_FSU]

Town Center feels more like downtown than downtown feels like downtown. Pearl square can't get online fast enough.
 

^ 90% of St. Johns Town Center is suburban sprawl. Only the original core strip is urban/walkable. That said, everyone gets your point re: level of activity.

Correction lol! 100% of SJTC is suburban sprawl. Its just as urban and walkable as the Avenues or Orange Park Mall. The main strip is a mall without a roof.

....my bad. Apologies to the Avenues and Orange Park Mall. Both are slightly more walkable....because they have air conditioning, which is pretty nice during the summer months!

Ultimately semantics in terms of "feels more like downtown than Downtown Jacksonville," but I do also see the point that MDTJGA was making and think the urban crowd is far too dismissive of the Town Center when there are plenty of opportunities to learn from what they're doing right. Particularly when the Town Center keeps exploding outward while the CBD continues to implode from the inside.

The CBD would kill for the residential and and hotel units that the Town Center area has been producing since it opened, and the Town Center area has absolutely been eating the lunch of the urban core in terms of attracting the target demographic needed for downtown to thrive. Might be suburban, but the day-to-day pedestrian activity, vibrancy, retail stability, and tenant quality mops the floor with Downtown Jacksonville. Absent massive population influx, retail activity and residential occupancy is a zero-sum game. And the type of folks who spend weekends at the Town Center are the same types of folks that we'll need to attract downtown to make it successful.

[acme54321]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

[thelakelander]

Town Center feels more like downtown than downtown feels like downtown. Pearl square can't get online fast enough.
 

^ 90% of St. Johns Town Center is suburban sprawl. Only the original core strip is urban/walkable. That said, everyone gets your point re: level of activity.

Correction lol! 100% of SJTC is suburban sprawl. Its just as urban and walkable as the Avenues or Orange Park Mall. The main strip is a mall without a roof.

....my bad. Apologies to the Avenues and Orange Park Mall. Both are slightly more walkable....because they have air conditioning, which is pretty nice during the summer months!

Ultimately semantics in terms of "feels more like downtown than Downtown Jacksonville," but I do also see the point that MDTJGA was making and think the urban crowd is far too dismissive of the Town Center when there are plenty of opportunities to learn from what they're doing right. Particularly when the Town Center keeps exploding outward while the CBD continues to implode from the inside.

The CBD would kill for the residential and and hotel units that the Town Center area has been producing since it opened, and the Town Center area has absolutely been eating the lunch of the urban core in terms of attracting the target demographic needed for downtown to thrive. Might be suburban, but the day-to-day pedestrian activity, vibrancy, retail stability, and tenant quality mops the floor with Downtown Jacksonville. Absent massive population influx, retail activity and residential occupancy is a zero-sum game. And the type of folks who spend weekends at the Town Center are the same types of folks that we'll need to attract downtown to make it successful.

From my view, they're apples and oranges markets, so there's not much to learn unless the goal is to want downtown to have the same tenants as a typical modern shopping mall, context and demographics. If so, downtown revitalization efforts (if that were the unified community vision for downtown) will struggle another 100 years because that's not its market, property ownership pattern, urban core demographic base, etc.

SJTC is what Avenues was in the 1990s, Regency/Arlington in the 1980s and Orange Park Mall in the 1970s. Its also a good 40-50 years in the making. As the metropolitan area continues to expand out, retail trends change and apartment age, another area will replace the SJTC area in prominence for that type of development. Most likely that spot will emerge somewhere in Northern St. Johns County.

The urban core is a different ballgame altogether. It history, density, surrounding context, politics, land ownership, ethnic and economic demographics are totally different and all of that plays a significant impact on development...especially when compared to suburban development patterns and trends. Even more successful downtowns like Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte, Orlando, St. Petersburg, etc. don't have the same type of tenant mix or development mix as SJTC and other malls in their regions.

With that said, there's more new stuff going in now (e.g. retail, F&B, hotel, etc.), than what downtown has witnessed in decades....but things take years to materialize (Gateway Jax's is coming along nicely though and I'm excited about what Beaver Street will resemble in five years). Nevertheless, we do have some challenges to overcome like....still not having a unified community vision for downtown's future, making strategic short term investments to keep existing businesses open, and dealing with a shifting post pandemic office and F&B market.

[thelakelander]

Might be the lack of mentally unstable homeless people on every other corner.

This definitely has to be addressed!