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

[Ken_FSU]

So apparently there's now some kind of DIA-funded festival street project going in on the Southbank.

https://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/news/2026/oct/12/flagler-avenue-to-become-a-festival-street-on-southbank/

Certainly not a terrible idea, but would be nice to know how it's meant to fit into Downtown more broadly, or if the changes for adjacent transit have any impact on the usefulness of this, or even what programming is meant to make use of this space.

I read it is 800 feet long.  Will that be enough to build a robust following?  That doesn't see very long to me for this project but I guess it is a good start. Where will the parking be?

If it has success, the City needs to then revisit closing the nearby Main Street Bridge to cars and using it for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross back and forth over the river, maybe with a street market at the same time on the Northbank.  This would follow the very successful closure of the bridge (and Bay Street to the stadium) when we hosted the Super Bowl.  It was wall to wall pedestrians. 

The City claimed to learn some lessons from the Super Bowl hosting, but I have not seen a single one implemented.  Even most of the multimillion dollar bridge lights stopped working soon after, never to be fixed again. 

Closing streets on weekends is a very inexpensive way to bring vibrancy to Downtown.  Don't understand why we don't do it like so many other cities including New York and Tokyo.

It's almost like we need to engage some experts in master planning, involve the community, figure out how all these pieces work together to create a unified whole, and then plan and prioritize investment accordingly.

I'm in Tallahassee for the week doing some speaking at FSU. Every time I come back to Tally, I am astounded by how the Gaines Street Master Plan has so quickly and so completely transformed the corridor between FSU, FAMU, and the Capitol/Downtown. With no end in sight to new development. Went from warehouses and blight to a roaring, vibrant economic engine for the city in like a decade tops.

Meanwhile, we are just burning through money downtown, subsidizing random projects here and there, with no larger vision at all. I just don't get why it's so hard for the DIA to admit that a package of CRAs and TIFs stapled together with Bay Street marked over with yellow highlighter as "Nightlife?" and Laura/Hogan marked over with a green highlighter as "Restaurants?" is not a master plan.

[jaxlongtimer]

^ If we would just freeload off of other cities and copy and paste we would be well ahead of the present state.

Much of this isn't rocket science, it is execution.

Make streets safe and pedestrian friendly, line them with endless store fronts, make them attractive with some nice vegetation, park benches, trash cans, restrooms, brick pavers, public art, some mass transit running down the middle connecting to perimeter parking, have a focal point like a square, circle with fountain, historic building, stage and/or small park, and good wayfaring.  In some ways, RAM mimics much of this and that's a bunch of volunteers from the neighborhood.  No big studies, experts, Chamber trips to other cities, etc., just some plain ol' common sense about how to engage humans and keep them coming back.

With some decent zoning requirements and less money than one incentive to a developer, we could be on our way.

[Ken_FSU]

^ If we would just freeload off of other cities and copy and paste we would be well ahead of the present state.

Much of this isn't rocket science, it is execution.

Make streets safe and pedestrian friendly, line them with endless store fronts, make them attractive with some nice vegetation, park benches, trash cans, restrooms, brick pavers, public art, some mass transit running down the middle connecting to perimeter parking, have a focal point like a square, circle with fountain, historic building, stage and/or small park, and good wayfaring.  In some ways, RAM mimics much of this and that's a bunch of volunteers from the neighborhood.  No big studies, experts, Chamber trips to other cities, etc., just some plain ol' common sense about how to engage humans and keep them coming back.

With some decent zoning requirements and less money than one incentive to a developer, we could be on our way.

Preach!

It's so batty to hear City Council members saying that once the Gateway Publix is complete, our downtown has officially crossed the finish line.

Like, WHAT?

[Steve]

Two questions
1. Would Mary Street be closed at Flagler during these festival events?
2. What is the traffic count on Flagler and on Mary?
3. How will access to the Hampton Inn parking and the parking deck next to Southern Grill?

The answers will help assess what impact these festival events will have on Southbank traffic. I don't see much negative impact, unless traffic is much higher than I expect.

Waiting to see the presentation posted here.

I haven't heard of this until the Daily Record article. I mean, it's not a terrible idea. If you look at every vehicular property, all of the ones that have access from Flagler also have a DIFFERENT access point so with coordination from the properties, closing these accesses for construction and events shouldn't be a huge issue.

That said, one thing I'm seeing is that there's exactly one permanent storefront facing the property, the Southern Grill. Unless one of these garages is planning to retrofit retail or there's a plan for other development, it's going to be all temporary setups for any event.

[CityLife]

Like TUFSU said, the Flagler plan has been in the CRA Plan for awhile. DIA workshopped the idea 2 and a half years ago. Some interesting discussion here:

https://forum.metrojacksonville.com/index.php/topic,37873.msg527980.html#msg527980

I love the idea of having a festival street downtown, but it's only worth the capital investment if it is going to lead to redevelopment where the street is lined with outdoor dining and active uses. They are using Clematis Street in WPB as the model for this, but they are just not comparable. Clematis Street is lined with dining and entertainment uses for almost half a mile heading away from a large waterfront park. Right now, the uses surrounding Flagler makes redevelopment challenging. So you will likely end up with a cool street for events, but a dead zone the rest of the time.

Here's what I posted about the project when DIA originally workshopped it.

A good example of not executing at a high level is the proposed Flagler Avenue Share Street (Page 64 of presentation). I have pushed for years on here for DT Jax to develop a heavily pedestrian oriented street that is lined on both sides with outdoor seating and dining/entertainment. They even used my favorite example of this in Florida (Clematis Street) on the slide. So I respect the effort, but, Flagler Avenue between  Riverplace and Prudential can never be anything close to this. You have the Hampton Inn and Treaty Oak taking up the entire first half of the block (though I guess each could be retrofitted with street facing storefronts). Then there is a parking garage on the entire SW half of that block. Only the empty surface lot on the SE half seems ripe for storefronts. Then moving under the skyway there is a large parking garage covering the entire block adjacent to Riverplace. Unless there is something they know about those parking garages, this seems like a fruitless effort.