Jax Chamber Headed to Kansas City - A few Pointers

[stjr]

Lost an NBA and NHL team?  What a second class city!  Not going to visit them anytime soon.  Surprise the City is still there after all their residents left for first class cities with pro basketball and hockey.  And, I bet most companies with all those jobs packed up and left.  What executive would settle for this?  No one survives losing top tier pro sports teams.  I bet the sun doesn't rise there anymore.  How could their residents hold their heads high knowing they didn't give up everything to keep these teams?  Where are their priorities?  Why would anyone from Jax want to visit this town?  Yuck.

OK, just some sarcasm.   Who will be the first to take it seriously? 1... 2... 3..........

[buckethead]

That's a bit unfair, don't you think? Perhaps professional sports franchises weren't important to them. Maybe the city council could not justify capitulation to the insatiable desires of petulant franchises. I really think you should reconsider before bashing KC in such a manner.

[stjr]

That's a bit unfair, don't you think? Perhaps professional sports franchises weren't important to them. Maybe the city council could not justify capitulation to the insatiable desires of petulant franchises. I really think you should reconsider before bashing KC in such a manner.

Buckethead, you win the "I don't get it" prize!  I guess you didn't bother to read the rest of my post:

OK, just some sarcasm.   Who will be the first to take it seriously? 1... 2... 3..........

[ProjectMaximus]

Where are we going on our first MJ trip?

[Keith-N-Jax]

With out a doubt, a waste of Tax money. How many trips have they been on? Only come back and implement nothing. Too bad I've been to KC before or otherwise I would ask them to bring me back a shot glass and refrigerator magnet.

[Keith-N-Jax]

San Diego? Baltimore?

[Lunican]

Metro Jacksonville has visited 30 cities so far this year alone: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/learning-from/

[buckethead]

That's a bit unfair, don't you think? Perhaps professional sports franchises weren't important to them. Maybe the city council could not justify capitulation to the insatiable desires of petulant franchises. I really think you should reconsider before bashing KC in such a manner.

Buckethead, you win the "I don't get it" prize!  I guess you didn't bother to read the rest of my post:

OK, just some sarcasm.   Who will be the first to take it seriously? 1... 2... 3..........

I got it. I simply felt compelled to respond in this manner in the same manner as a mountain climber chooses a climbe: It was there.

[fsu813]

A decade ago, downtown Kansas City, Mo., was similar to many other large American cities č it had plenty of office buildings, but it had decayed over time and lacked life.

Nine years ago, the city’s business and political leadership devised a plan to make their downtown a shopping and entertainment destination. They also sought to coax businesses that had fled downtown to return and interest people to live there.

Today, Kansas City has the massive, nine-block, Kansas City Power and Light District, which is filled with restaurants and night clubs. It also has a downtown shopping district as well as loft apartments where 17,000 people live. It even houses an art museum that provides free admission.

All of that impressed about 100 Jacksonville professionals and business leaders who spent three days in Kansas City this week as part of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s annual leadership trip.

“They have been able to accomplish so much together in a relatively short period of time,” said  Penny Thompson, Shands Jacksonville Vice President of Public Affairs. “It was an amazing trip.”

The city’s philanthropic track record is also very impressive, she said. The city’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research was funded by $2 billion in investments from a city couple, for example.

Many came away with an appreciation of how Kansas City’s focus on its downtown could work in Jacksonville.

“I think that is very much needed here in downtown Jacksonville,” said city General Counsel Rick Mullaney.

An integral part of downtown planning in Kansas City was the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, a CEO-led group that has worked since 1964 to focus on the city’s improvement, Mullaney said.

“I think they took a look at the dilapidated aspects of Kansas City, and they did undergo a very substantial investment,” he said.

That investment, all told, was about $4 billion č a mixture of private and public investment, including voter-approved bond issues, said Mayor John Peyton.

City Council Member Art Shad said Kansas City’s philanthropic firepower came from having large, wealthy corporations based in town č such as Hallmark and H&R Block. And that, he said, will lead to civic improvements in downtown Jacksonville.

“We need to do what we can to have corporate wealth in our town,” he said. “They really incentivized downtown development. There’s not a secret to it. I don’t know if our city has the desire to incentivize people to live downtown.”

Shad said Jacksonville has desires to improve, too, but those have to be followed by funds. The Kansas City Power and Light District, for example, cost $850 million, which was raised from hotel and rental car taxes, he said.

“We have great ideas. We don’t have $850 million,” he said. “They really put their money where their mouth is in Kansas City,” Shad said.

Peyton said Jacksonville may actually be closer to a renewed downtown than Kansas City was when their efforts began. Currently, about 3,000 people live in apartments and condominiums in downtown Jacksonville, and its river walks, library and City Hall are recently completed improvements, he said. And a new courthouse is under construction.

Peyton said the main concept that he came away with from the trip is Jacksonville’s need for an organization like the Kansas City’s influential Civic Council.

“The council studies and provides rationales for bold visions,” he said.

But members of the group stay in the background, doing all their work behind the scenes and shunning public attention, he said. And, he said, the civic council hired an architect who established the first vision for their city’s downtown transformation.

“Right now, they’re studying high-speed rail connectivity,” he said. “They’ve got long-term concerns about the water supply. They take on the very serious challenges. They act as a resource for elected officials.”

http://jacksonville.com/business/2009-10-09/story/kcs_downtown_provides_a_model_for_jacksonville_leadership_group

[fsu813]

the article sounds positive

[brainstormer]

We could create a Civic Council, but the problem would be the same as every other advisory board in Jacksonville.  City leaders appoint their friends and buddies who think like they do and who won't have the guts to tell them their ideas suck.  We never make any progress that way.  A real Civic Council would include the founding fathers of MetroJacksonville, a few financial representatives from downtown banks, some small business owners and a number of people who already live downtown.  Yep.  That's right.  Real residents and taxpayers of the urban core.  Not the wealthy retired guys who live in Queen's Harbor or Ponte Vedra and certainly not career politicians. 
I also like the idea of having an architect, not a politician, create a vision for downtown.  Let the Civic Council tell the architect what they want, he works it into the plan for the urban core and then talk money.  If the plan is brilliant enough, the private investors and taxpayers will quickly jump on board.  Right now, there is no incentive and the vision sucks so we continue to build on cheap land in the suburbs.   

[stjr]

We could create a Civic Council, but the problem would be the same as every other advisory board in Jacksonville.  City leaders appoint their friends and buddies who think like they do and who won't have the guts to tell them their ideas suck.  We never make any progress that way.  A real Civic Council would include the founding fathers of MetroJacksonville, a few financial representatives from downtown banks, some small business owners and a number of people who already live downtown.  Yep.  That's right.  Real residents and taxpayers of the urban core.  Not the wealthy retired guys who live in Queen's Harbor or Ponte Vedra and certainly not career politicians. 

I think we agree on this Brainstormer.  Let the USERS be involved in the solution, not just be hand-tied bystanders.  Experts are seldom USERS, they are just facilitators working for who signs their paychecks.  We know politicians and developers are motivated by their own interests over those of the USERS.  Government employees may be well meaning, but they are controlled by overriding interests.  So, no help there.  Time to put the inmates in charge of the insane asylum! 

[thelakelander]

Did I miss the part where they learned about how these projects actually go together and promote walkability through urban pedestrian scale design?  You can form all the civic councils you want, but your success will be limited if you can't embrace and understand the concept of urbanism.

[thelakelander]

Did anyone have the opportunity to ride the BRT line?  After all, its a carbon copy of what JTA wants to bring to town.

[stjr]

Did I miss the part where they learned about how these projects actually go together and promote walkability through urban pedestrian scale design?  You can form all the civic councils you want, but your success will be limited if you can't embrace and understand the concept of urbanism.

Lake, my favorite "planners" project was hearing, upon visiting one our newer Florida universities, that the initial campus was built without sidewalks.  After a year or two, they came in and poured sidewalks wherever the students had worn a path in the grass.  Now that is USER driven!