Florida Avenue. Great Piece on the front page of the TU

[stephendare]

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-09-06/story/once_unmatched_jacksonvilles_avenue_all_but_lost

Nice to see the Times Union doing a peice like this.

On their page, there is some great video work as well.
Congrats to Matt Galnor for a solid job.
Naturally the baboons from the TU comments go on racist rants at the bottom.

Technically, it's A. Philip Randolph Boulevard.

That's what the green signs say on this stretch of road just north of the Sports Complex. There are a couple of convenience stores, a handful of other businesses and a sparkling government complex sprinkled in the half-mile mostly choked by vacant corners and empty storefronts.

The street used to be a jumpin' stretch of life on the old Eastside, packed with businesses owned by people everyone called by name.

But that's when it was Florida Avenue - or to those who lived on it, just "the Avenue."

In the height of Jacksonville's segregation, the Avenue was a commerce center for the black community. Hat shops and shoe stores, restaurants and clubs, service stations and a fire station.

Neighborhood kids pitched in and stocked shelves or swept floors to earn some change.

"Everything was right there on the Avenue," said Sinclair Newsome, 69, a retired longshoreman who lived on the Eastside.

The Avenue hasn't been itself in decades, and the downward tick continues as time passes.

City planners have started a handful of plans to revive the corridor, but little has blossomed.

Business trickled out, unceremoniously closing up shop.

Those still hanging on are hoping they'll see a day when it resembles the Avenue again. It's going to take a serious commitment, one several owners say has been lacking from the city - despite grand plans to bring the corridor back to life.

The unraveling started 40 years ago this fall with a white cigarette salesman, a bullet in a black man's leg and three nights of fires and looting.

---

Talk to the people who grew up here and they don't call the stores by name, but by the people who owned them.

It wasn't the Blue Ridge Inn, it was Joe Hall's tavern.

Same for Charlie Joseph's grocery store and the Chinaman's shop.

They knew the shop owners because the shop owners lived there.

It was their neighborhood, too.

Everyone looked out for one another on the Avenue.

The owners hired neighborhood teens to pitch in at the shops. It gave the kids something to do, taught them the value of a dollar and hard work, said Jametta Davis, who grew up on Franklin Street where the Police Athletic League park is now.

The Avenue was the place to see and be seen. People cruised the Avenue on Fridays and Saturdays dressed in their finest threads.

Same thing on Sundays, except it was families making the walk together to church.

The Avenue had it all.

---

Everything changed Oct. 31, 1969.

Racial tension was building and something was bound to set it off. Turns out it was a white cigarette salesman who said he was told a black man was pilfering his truck.

The salesman ran outside and fired two shots, hitting the black man once in the leg, according to news accounts at the time.

The neighborhood, and people from across the city, fought back. They flipped the salesman's truck, threw rocks through windows and set buildings ablaze.

And it wasn't just white business owners that were targeted. Black owners suffered damage, too.

Johns Furniture Store burned to the ground. Looters smashed the windows of Bill's Clothing and stole from the store. Same for Jax Liquors and a handful of other businesses.

If not for heavy rains, more damage would have been done, fire officials said at the time.

"After you destroyed their business, you had nowhere to go," said Vernon McLendon, 57, who grew up visiting family off the Avenue.

Charges were eventually dropped against the salesman and the accused thief, but the damage was done.

"It broke Florida Avenue down," said James Palamore, 57, just after ordering up a fish sandwich on a recent day at the Avenue Grocery.

Eventually, businesses rebuilt - just not on the Avenue.

"Who would want to come back and build here," McLenon said, "not knowing whether it will happen again?"

---

What made the Avenue the Avenue was long gone by the time it became A. Philip Randolph Boulevard.

The stretch between Bay and First streets was renamed in 1995 for the labor organizer who grew up in the late 1800s on Jessie Street, a block from the boulevard that now bears his name.

His name is also on A. Philip Randolph Heritage Park - a park billed in the mid-1990s by then-City Councilman Terry Fields to "put pride back into our city."

The park is right next to A Cut Above, an upholstery and custom drapery business owned by Jesse and Beverly Lown of East Arlington.

The Lowns bought the building about five years ago and, after several break-ins and thefts of anything that wasn't bolted down, Jesse Lown upgraded his security.

He got a dog that patrols the place at night, built a taller fence and wrapped barbed wire around the top.

It might seem excessive from the outside, but the city has taken a similar strategy at the park next door.

The 13-acre park has a few small entrances that are often locked and the tall iron fence doesn't exactly welcome visitors like most other city parks do, Lown said. And that reflects on the overall feel of safety in the neighborhood, Lown said, and wouldn't go unnoticed by people looking to invest in the corridor.

"I'll bet you go to my side of town," Lown said, "and you won't find one park with a six-foot fence with points on top."

---

Maybe it's the location, in the shadows of downtown Jacksonville and the Sports Complex.

Or maybe it's the history, the tight-knit family atmosphere people who remember it still long for.

Either way, this one-time main drag continues to get a look from the city when it comes to improvements and redevelopment.

Early this decade, the city tried to polish the corridor, repaving the road and adding aesthetic touches. It installed historic light poles, paved the sidewalks with decorative hexagons and put in fancy metal trash cans.

Most of the trash cans are long gone, unscrewed and hawked for scrap metal.

The $2.7 million project, from Bay Street up to First Street, was done as part of the Veterans Memorial Arena construction, said Dave Schneider, who managed the project for the city.

Schneider said the city tried to accommodate businesses during the 13-month project, adding temporary sidewalks and making parking available.

But the construction was the death knell for the last wave of businesses out of the corridor, said the Rev. Torin T. Dailey, pastor of First Baptist Church of Oakland on Jessie Street. A couple of clothing shops, a shoe repair store and a soul food restaurant closed their doors for good during the project.

"No one wants to eat a sandwich in a dustbowl," said Dailey, who has been involved in discussions with the city about the future of the corridor.

---

In 2005, the city built the new headquarters for the Jacksonville Children's Commission, a modern, $9.5 million project on the east corner of A. Philip Randolph and First Street. It also includes the Don Brewer Early Learning Research & Development Center.

The city's plan for the corridor also included a records and permitting facility. The city bought the land through the courts, forcing people from their homes. Now it sits vacant. It's hardly alone in a sea of unused land around here, but business owners say it's another prime example of the city not keeping its word.

"I think the city is really looking out for their own interest," said William Roberson, whose wife runs the Avenue Market on A. Philip Randolph near Albert Street.

The city began buying the property for the proposed facility in the early 2000s and finalized the last purchase in July 2004, said Misty Skipper, spokeswoman for Mayor John Peyton. The city paid $1.9 million for three dozen parcels that, at the time, were appraised at about $800,000. Almost half of the properties were taken through eminent domain.

But shortly after Peyton took office in 2003, the city learned the Ed Ball Building on Monroe Street might be available and began discussions to buy that building instead.

To save money on construction, and keep operations consolidated in one place, the city chose not to build and instead moved those services into the Ed Ball Building, Skipper said.

Plans for a group of nonprofits to build affordable housing and retail on the site fizzled several years ago, but talks with the city renewed this summer, said Kerri Stewart, the city's deputy chief administrative officer.

The city recognizes the importance of that property and will not just sell it to the highest bidder, nor will it bring in businesses that would directly compete with existing businesses, Stewart said.

"It needs to be something significant," Stewart said. "It needs to honor the corridor."

Those who've seen the plans before will believe it when they see it come out of the ground.

Roberson looks across the street at the vacant lot, then down at the brick sidewalk and sighs. "I don't even know why they went through the trouble to put this down, to tell you the truth."

---

Head up and down the Avenue now and there are guys set up in chairs under the old oak tree.

The younger guys stand along the businesses and vacant buildings, in front of the "No Loitering" warnings painted on the facade.

"Look out here," Pearlie Graham says, stepping out the front door of her dry cleaners into a steamy summer afternoon. "What is it that anyone would come out here for? Nothing."

Graham's seen the businesses come and go. But she's still here.

She worked for Spot-Rite Cleaners during the riot, then took the business over 37 years ago.

If she didn't own the building, she'd have been forced to close up shop, too, she says.

She'd be what she points at across the street - a handful of empty lots and a vacant building.

A memory of what the Avenue used to be.

[thelakelander]

A good but sad story.  For those who believe redevelopment is as simple as adding green space and pretty sidewalks with brick pavers, the millions invested along this corridor suggest otherwise.

[thelakelander]

What's the plan?  What are the designs of the homes?  Will they be suburban and go on lots that create less density than what existed around Florida Avenue in the 1960s?  Are we talking about low income or mixed income housing?   Is there a plan for better mass transit, lighting on the streets or a crack down on crime?  Federal money alone can't solve social, vision and connectivity issues. 

Btw, I'm not saying this time around will not be different. I'm just in search of information that may confirm a successful cohesive redevelopment strategy is in place.

[Ocklawaha]

Very indeed. The Charette for the Avenue had some wonderful ideas in it, and something like 6 out of 7 tables drew a streetcar line in the middle. Museums, monuments, Quay - market, and big hotel were just a few of the ideas. There was a bus tour and it alone was worth the effort, I'm not sure but one of the men in the TU story might have been the guide. For certain the story is right, because not only did he know what every slab was, he knew the owners, their kids, events that happened there, the type of food, the movie, whatever... The gentleman was like a fountain to a historian. I don't know who found him, TUFSU1? Somebody that the city needs to thank.

Randolph "AVENUE" certainly does have a spirit about it, which is way it is on my streetcar concepts map. That spirit, and a cash-building boom set off by a streetcar, would be amazing.

OCKLAWAHA

[mtraininjax]

That whole area changed when the City decided to run the Matthews expressway through the neighborhood cutting off the north and south neighborhoods. New people to Jax do not know that the Arena and parking lots used to have houses on them as well. So cut a road through the neighborhood, years later flatten all the houses and you lose half of your neighborhood.

Progress has a funny way of erasing the past.

[thelakelander]

Great point, mtrain.  Most neighborhoods that have highways ripped through their heart rarely end up okay.  Ripping down another large percentage of the area for stadium parking also does not help.

[mtraininjax]

I have to tell my cousins and relatives the reasons why I-95 curves around downtown. Most interstate systems are cut through the poorer parts of town, so when they built 95 downtown it curves all around, to avoid the downtown area, which was thriving back in the 50s. Imagine those City Council meetings for where to put the road...