Chicago Pizza coming to the Landing

[copperfiend]

but sometimes it's beautiful, vibrant Jax by day and "I am Legend"ish by night :-)

The truth. I could not stop laughing when I read it.

[tufsu1]

I wish I could be there to see what everything looks like. When will they take the Tv's down? I wont be back til Sunday.

they aren't temporary

[Keith-N-Jax]

OK,,good anybody been taking any pics to post.

[Jason]

Did anyone pay the newbie restaraunts a visit?  How were they?

[jason_contentdg]

Went by Chicago Pizza yesterday afternoon, it was beautiful weather to watch some NFL, grab a pizza and watch the river flow...

[Karl_Pilkington]

went on thurs night and the food was just as good as their southside location. 

[mtraininjax]

Anyone else see this, it really hurt Chicago Pizza and other vendors at the Landing and all they can say is there was a breakdown in communication?

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The Florida and Georgia fans wanted inside, and the businesses wanted them there as well, but officials at the Jacksonville Landing said some crowd confusion at the start of the weekend is proving costly.

Some people were stuck outside the Landing on Friday night because there were too many people inside.

The problem is even when people left, no one else got in.

At one of the city's biggest events, no one expected the party to be over for hundreds who were stopped at the gates just before 10 p.m.

"It was sad and unfortunate," said Rachel Nudge, the spokeswoman for the Landing.

The fire marshal was worried about crowding in the courtyard and refused to let anyone else in, causing thousands of dollars for the businesses who were looking to cash in.

"We had upset merchants who were expressing decrease in their sales anywhere between 35 and 50 percent for this event," Nudge said. "And we have a lot of people, especially those from out of town, expressing how angry and upset they were about what happened."

The owners of Chicago Pizza even raced to open their doors in time for the big game, only to have an empty restaurant for one of the biggest weekends of the year.

Case after case of alcohol still sits in front of the restaurant untouched.

"It's extremely frustrating, but we take it in stride," said Jimmy Demarco, the restaurant's owner. "We're going to hopefully be here a long time. Lessons learned."

Nudge said they had a lot of angry phone calls from people who were confused and didn't understand what was happening, which ultimately affected business on Saturday as well.

"I heard specific things like, 'My friends always tell me to go to the Landing and I made the wrong decision,'" Nudge said. "I really do feel that could've impacted our Saturday night as well. We were getting phone calls over our public phone line with questions like, 'Is the Landing closed?' That kind of damage went into the rest of the weekend for sure."

[danno]

Wow that sucks.

[copperfiend]

That's terrible. Did they close the Riverwalk portion also?

[tufsu1]

The entire Landing area (including the Riverwalk) was closed off and admission was $10.

Remember that this was done as a request from the UF President to the Mayor...from what I hear, the extra carefulnss was done by the City in order to make sure the future-year agreement gets signed....once it is signed for 6 more years, it will be business as usual.

[Johnny]

That does suck. I hope it doesn't effect the merchants long term. The Landing needs help getting business not extra road blocks.

[copperfiend]

Is this Riverwalk portion considered private property? I wonder who profited.

[tufsu1]

none of it is private proerty...the land of the whole complex is owned by the City

[fsujax]

Yeah, I was in the Landing Friday night when they decided to close  it. It was almost a disaster. Thanks to the whinning UF President! I think they need to rethink this for next year. Maybe close only the courtyard.

[tufsu1]

well you know fsujax....they do have to keep the crowd under control...that way nobody gets their eyes gouged by a football player :-)